Your Words Still in This Place

soon after we parted
but then against the General’s command
we drove the boy out beyond the salt flats
to the northern edge of the mountains
where he said for a thousand years
no one would wake him

you spoke you remembered
how he could not grow a mustache
not like the revolutionaries and caudillos
he could not clear his lungs
in the desert air
we stoned him for taunting the Chihuahua
stolen from Arango himself
but he loved his family name and honor
more than all men

Forest Spirit

Many selves,
a raging fire, a sparkling chasm.
viper slithers to its apogee – the sun –
almost succeeds, almost destroys –
I am justified in brevity, breathing
as I, come face to face,
and so it is – angry souls in each other’s bodies –
while August burns treacherously
in the dry grasses.

Boy leaves tracks. Life trudges.
Brooding, endorsing the searing sun,
Can’t close the seed captured here,
die brother…live sister….
no distress or bitterness or revenge –
merely randomness that
divides itself unmercifully

Cornfield Basketball

Mark Jackley‘s most recent book of poems is On the Edge of a Very Small Town. His work has appeared in Sugar House Review, Fifth Wednesday, Talking River, Timberline Review, and other journals. He lives in Purcellville, VA. Cornfield Basketball The muddy court is empty, the net hangs by a thread, flapping like the cornstalks […]

Woman Wants to Have the First Baby Born on Mars

Laura Sobbott Ross is a widely published award-winning poet whose work has appeared in more than 100 literary journals. In addition to four Pushcart Prize nominations, she was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize and won the Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. She has published two chapbooks, A Tiny Hunger and […]

The Passing Down

Erric Emerson is a poet residing in the westerlands of Philadelphia. He is a founding member of Duende literary journal. His work has appeared in Beautiful Losers, Crabfat, Five:2:one, Neon, Gingerbread House, The Black Napkin, Mead, and By&By, among other places. The Passing Down a 1980-something coed rehab in upstate New York // an all-nighter tête-à-tête […]

OK. I Wanted a Girl

When I was pregnant with my second, I had an eighteen month old son. I loved him with every ounce of my being, of course, and I loved that he was a boy. No real reason, except I didn’t know much about boys before him, and there was something about the discovery that was fascinating and fulfilling. But in […]

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Literary pilgrims welcome

boy