Vespers

Evening arrives
on the pinnacles
of eucalyptus

they take flight from high perches
wingspans shift
and catch currents

hungry
not hunting
scanning for carrion

the door, the tornado

that was so big it could hold a thousand hearts racing
at the sight of a face they thought would never show up again
beating down the road like a breathless storm or worse,
finding only the wind’s racket forced into a fist
perfectly rapturous and strange how we’re all picked up
and dropped off at some other threshold. fate and chance
met up this way, plucked and flung in the same gust
like a thousand seeds mingling into entirety.

yellow dandelion

Anum Sattar is a recent graduate from the College of Wooster in Ohio, USA. Her poems have been published in the American Journal of Poetry (Margie,) Notre Dame Review, Meniscus Journal by Australian Association of Writing Programs, Lullwater Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Triggerfish Critical Review, Coal City Review and Florida Review. She won the first […]

Raspberries in June

Raspberries in June He asks me to come by, read her some of my garden poems at four o’clock. June sun will be high and hot through the windows in her hospital room. She may sleep. The surgeons opened up her abdomen from stern to pubes and poked through the curves, bends, folds and hiding […]

A Small Gold Ottoman

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 […]

Butterfly Kisses

Cameron Kirk is a writer. Some of his ideas are good. Some are not. He writes to amuse himself, because nobody else really cares. Butterfly Kisses Harry Johansson came home 3 days late and dead. He kissed his wife and stuck his proboscis down her throat. She gagged, and opened her eyes wide in horror. […]

Cancer Sun Shimmers

Ray Ball is a writer and history professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. When not in the classroom or the archives of Europe and Latin America, she enjoys running marathons, hiking, reading, and spending time with her spouse Mark and beagle Bailey. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Alaska Women Speak, Foliate Oak, and NatureWriting. Cancer […]

Agnes Person | Tree Line

Below is Part 12 of 23 monthly installments for Visitant. ◄◄ Read the prologue / introduction: Meet Agnes Person ◄ Read the previous installment | Cross Words Tree Line For New Year’s Eve, Agnes Person has dyed the back of her hair black as India ink. She would dissolve in the dead of night, but for her […]

Within Passings

Edward Hemstreet is a surfacing writer from New Jersey, United States. In general, his writings center on depressions, the body, nature, and vignettes on mundane life. When not writing, he may be found drinking uncomfortable amounts of tea. Within Passings When Socrates drank hemlock, I was in the chalice; I glided down his gullet And […]

Double Mastectomy Ins & Outs

It’s been a couple of months since my last post on PDXX — months (1? 2?) that have both flown by and dragged on like a train with wooden blocks stuck under its wheels. I had a double mastectomy on November 4, a preventative surgery I chose after finding out I have the BRCA mutation. The post below […]

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cancer