May 2023 | Issue #27
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Open Casket, 2020 | Kelly Vance

Open Casket, 2020
(flesh, memory, unhinged in wood)
This is a body,
an empty parking space nothing shiny
ever filled,
a grassland with shadows whispering
along its paths,
a coded message too long to decipher
in a single lifetime.
My mouth remembers the trails along
each impermanent
bicep, but hunger is a waiting game,
… Read more
Mostly Sorry | Susan Wadds

Mostly Sorry
… Read more
Transmute | Laurie Easter
Transmute
More than four years into my grief over losing my husband, I unzip the ocean, part it like the Red Sea, not as Moses or any figure inhabiting supreme God-like capabilities, but as a woman unzipping the vagaries of her life. I unzip the water, but it doesn’t part away leaving me dry; rather, it rushes in furiously around my ankles. So I step into the flavor of it—salty, fishy, scented with dulse and sea palm. The water cascades all around then rises quickly up to my thighs, my waist, my neck. The icy cold triggers a sharp inhalation of breath … Read more
