Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

THE AIR UP THERE

The fanciest restaurant where I grew up
was built inside of an old Boeing 747.
The maestre d’ told my dad he had to wear
a jacket and a tie in order to be seated,
but Pops didn’t have either so they dug out
a old jacket and a clip-on tie from [...]

CL Bledsoe

But There is Genius in Their Hatred

The man who killed himself in my bathroom is
no longer in the bathroom, though he is in the dark green
stink-taste of the water faucet, the torn
window screen, the still cracked door.

I can’t stand over my razor without feeling
vertigo. Same with the tub. Through the [...]

Tracy Bowling

Pink
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Today I have taught Yeti “walls.” He has built two woody sides that come only up to our knees. Yeti crafts them with care; he has felled ten trees. There are not many left in the valley.

The Yeti labors. He stacks the trees with snow, wraps them [...]

J. Bradley

Seaside
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The condom looks like
what a sea serpent miscarries
in the gymnasium’s bathroom
during Junior Prom.

After naming it Carl,
I use the toilet brush
like a priest to give him
last rites.

I put the casket lid
of the seat down,
watch until the burial
gargles, rinses.

True Story
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The biker’s forehead acted
like a mother hen [...]

Jo Cannon

Mercy is sick today

Mercy is sick today. She was sick yesterday, and the day before, but tomorrow will be better. An old woman gave me herbs from the bush. I boiled them to juice and made my sister drink. Mercy lies wrapped in her chitenge on a straw mat outside [...]

Robyn Detterline

Zamala

I didn’t want to take the lion because he’s scary. I mean, he’s a lion. Three-inch canines and all that. They don’t let pets in the dorms anyway.

Take the lion, Mom said. We were packing my things into the car. Her offer surprised me because she and Dad love the [...]

David Erlewine

QUIET

In kindergarten, after confiding to her about my daily horrors, Mom showed up one day during recess and made a beeline for Jenny Willack, sticking a long finger in the blond girl’s face. “You l-l-leave my D-D-Danny alone!” Halfway across the monkey bars, Jenny began bawling and let herself drop [...]

Russell Evatt

Poem ending with a fragment from A Theory of Truth
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“Certain things can never be spoken.”   To demonstrate, my friend vowed to keep his big mouth shut for a year.   “Nothing said,” he said the day before he started keeping track.   Now he relies solely [...]

Ben Fama

Jules

**

Because it is raining Jules
is a messy rain         past midnight
no one is up           Jules put on shoes
and walks into the halting rain,
she goes to the curb the street
unfolds         rolls and rolls

**

Over the forest Jules
sails if she wants
she [...]

Roland Goity

Sand Trapped

My wife would hate it here, she really would—the heat, the wind, the wavy mirages of the plain. This place cooks you all day, spits sand in your face at night. Cavernous in the way it makes you empty inside, carnivorous in how it swallows your every [...]

Nick Allen Herink

THE BOY BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS OR POE HAD IT WRONG

1.

I was dead by two a.m. Dismembered skillfully. My heart held in your palms as it pulsed narcoleptic. Not a drop of my blood touched the ground – of that you made sure. You bundled me up tightly. Placed me underneath [...]

Sean Lovelace

Why I Never Say No to Coffee

It was late night Tuesday, or maybe Sunday, early—I’m a recovering alcoholic, so bear with me—when I swallowed down my last cup of coffee, picked up the phone, and dialed my agent. I said, “Babe, I’d do anything to get published. I’d [...]

Marie-Elizabeth Mali

Octopus Attack!
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As I sponged down the walls of his tank and scooped
his excrement, he got grabby, all eight arms suctioned
on both breasts, my crotch, my butt, both ankles and left ear,
his beak nipping at my neck. Deaf to my screams—the perfect
sexual predator: no ears—he hung on, changing [...]

Ravi Mangla

SUMMIT

A woman climbs the sliding ladder by the shelf with books on sustainable living. She opts to stick around. The air seems, even if by the smallest of increments (a single molecule, less), cleaner — warmer, too. A bookseller comes rushing over, all chin and forehead, tells her she needs [...]

Matt Mendez

A Girl More Still

I dream I am a mountain.   Alone until the sun dips behind me and everyone says how good we go together.   I want to believe, but when I wake up he’s glowing outside my window, not wanting company. Lena stops scribbling and rips the page [...]

Shya Scanlon

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast. Also, FORECAST found a home at Flatmancrooked and will be released in hardcover in Spring, 2010. Chapter 34 is available at Remember We Were Famous and Chapter [...]

Eric Shorey

Sirius

The way my wife rearranged the chairs, and how the kitchen table moved a few feet to the left in the living room.   How, at my favorite diner in town, they raised the price of two eggs and toast with bacon. The songs I don’t recognize on the radio. [...]

Joe Stracci

The Fourth

1.
Killing carpenter ants with hairspray and stick lighters got boring.

The relatives said, “You’re wasting your time. Watch where they come from. You need to find the nest.” The relatives said, “Don’t forget the newspapers tomorrow morning.”

We said, “But it’s always the end of the world.”

The relatives said, [...]

Jeanann Verlee

communion

I know a boy who called his girlfriend’s body a “crime scene.” Dad, my body is a crime scene. My body is lint and gasoline and matchstick. My body is a brush fire. It’s ticking, Dad, a slow alarm. I have rain boots. Lots of them. It isn’t raining anymore. [...]

Helen Vitoria

we were horses

Break me. Swat me into a box. Put eighteen stitches in my lower lip, make my teeth the fault line.   You should not have to tell me twice.

Whisper from your green, unbroken mouth into my pricked ears, make me believe it.

Force me. Let me thrash. Teach [...]