She rose at 3:15 from her plastic chair,
the wooden desk carved with curses.
Her bones began to sing.
She ran home to unwed shoes,
lost socks, and blue shadows,
chores to complete until dark,
criticism swallowed like bites of tough meat.
She focused on the bright stars,
the winter air, crisp as a white shirt,
and soup.
I saw you pluck a piece of sapling from the hills
A present, I don’t know,
A sun-scorched story,
A tale
A massive ambience of the liquid time.
But the manner you beheld it
Like you could see through its bare bones,
If you lick up the juice, now and then.
This morning I read about sex toys
a design student was creating for old people
(defined as those over fifty),
a market he felt was overlooked.
One concept was a steel ear trumpet
to listen to a lover’s heart.
You have been gone for many years
but I still feel the warmth of your soft sternum
pressed against my cheek, still hear
your drumbeat vibrating through my bones
I wonder who lives in the house
With the bright red chimney, someone must
For on cold winter mornings
Smoke bellows from the stack
And the smell of freshly baked bread
Stops me in the thaw and snap
So, I linger for a moment
And stare at this dreamy abode
Lit by the soft edges of snow clouds
And the sun a pale embroidered gold
‘All is well with the world’ then I say to myself
All is well in the house with the red chimney
Delta Mouth Moon pull swift tide bringing arrowheads quiver dropped loosened skirt strings tight arm and notch to bow dead elks bloat in the shore foam Moon swift pushing so saturnine up a slick and bawdy ship hull up a sickly girl-thigh on a naked shoreline Moon full drip ink on a violet dry notches […]
Read more "Delta Mouth"Bones Where I am from, women have broken fingernails that dig in the dirt like badgers, looking for bones. Bones mean yes, a lovely spot for pansies. Plant two there. We scrub our hands before dinner. We get the dead dirt rubbed off our palms like it was bad, what we did in the garden. […]
Read more "Bones"Personify Me The trees speak in Shakespearean sonnets; The tulips write short memoirs. The honeysuckles smell of metaphors and similes, Vines are smirking complex sentences. The sun has these exotic eyes— The moon tells of faraway lands; The ocean never leaves you… Grass has flushed secrets. This earth keeps you stirring coffee. The seeds have […]
Read more "Personify Me"JuneLather that Place below the navelFingers treading waterTime transcending timeShe trails the oceanDrags it behind her Moves through it like glassCutting continents in halfI floss myself with her bonesshe sinks into me like poisonTeeth grinding teeth into ash Niamh Burns is a 23 year old queer writer from Alberta, Canada. Through their love of written […]
Read more "June"Christine A. MacKenzie is a student of English, creative writing, and psychology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She is a crisis counselor and a writer. In the future she plans to become a psychotherapist and continue to write. She has recently been published in The Inflectionist Review, Xylem, The Merrimack Review, and Fourteen Hills. […]
Read more "The Wishbone"Andrew Dooley is a graduate of Rhode Island College with a BA in English/Creative Writing. He has published a short story titled “creature!” in the Spring 2015 issue of their literary magazine, Shoreline, as well as a collection of poetry titled Shine Walker on Amazon.com. He works full-time as a business office manager in Westerly, […]
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