Maureen Alsop

Hippomancy
listen to this poem

divination by means of observing the movements and sounds of horses

Nothing describes the verdant science of your ribs. Yesterday, the shaman spat in small orbits before you, examining traces of buttercup, courtyard sun splashes, roadside places confessed onto gravel. You have learned to die without confusion. [...]

Andrew Borgstrom

Then We Are Six

Carl wanted to know what I found in his yard when we were six, ran to my house, hid it somewhere, and hid myself in the bath. “You were naked and wet,” he explained. “You didn’t even dry off or clothe up. I can’t remember what you [...]

Doug Paul Case

Four Rotting Oranges

There is a small kitchen that smells of fading sunlight and baby powder. On the counter there are four rotting oranges and a Spock bobble head. Leroy enters and says “It is time for a snack.” He taps Spock’s head and Spock says “Fascinating.” Leroy watches Spock bobble [...]

Mark Cunningham

[specimen]

He honks his horn only after he’s parked his car and is walking away.   I can’t recognize her voice from a distance, but I can recognize a TV’s.   Jean-Paul Sartre:   “I do not mean that when I chose between a cream pastry and a chocolate eclair, I [...]

Geordie deBoer

Agrarian Sex (Hey, Rube)

Snippets: Horizontal Barn-dance

—moonlight-slice across barn floor, Johnson’s Miller-little-sister-fuck, skin, bone, pale white, performance-silent, shame-feeling for my want, but scared to…

—she passes note, sit with me on school-bus, panty-less feel-up, note-drop, teacher-find, principal-pass, no-nonsense paper-trail…

“barn-meeting, hand between her thighs, said she always wanted me, teased about once passing [...]

Sutherland Douglass

The View From “Mr. Rockefeller”

Finding himself imprisoned beneath the ground in Boston-Mass., the conman “Clark Rockefeller” couldn’t help but understand: That {with his own two hands shoved for years down his pants} he’d quite literally diddled away his life up till then.

His massive grand-ma’am had said as much the last [...]

Dave Housley

Dear Friend

Dear Friend,

Do you know that there are only 500 Siberian tigers left in the world? These majestic animals once roamed free in packs of twenty or more, the kings of the dense Russian forest. Now, their habitat depleted, their food sources ravaged by “progress,” abandoned by those who supposedly [...]

Stephanie Johnson

C’mon, Get Happy

So far, the baby’s a one-hit wonder. He says puppy and, even though we don’t own a dog, my wife cheers. Already keen for female attention, the baby says it again “Puppy puppy puppy” and the vicious cycle continues, him babbling and her clapping.

Because the world will want [...]

Carolyn Kegel

Anna in the Free-Floating World

Anna was a small girl who had caused a lot of trouble for her family.   They did not know where she was.   Anna did not know where she was either.   She was eighteen years old and she was in her car, somewhere in [...]

Thomas Patrick Levy

are you aware that your illness affects your mind and your body?

I am aware that my body is part of my mind and that it is stretched tightly over a roll-cage of stone-colored metal. In the morning, even when I am an illness, you wake from the dry mussel of [...]

Amy McDaniel

New Year
A Romance

April passed, a blanket of medium days.   Linda was reading for pleasure when the telephone rang.

It was her accountant, Terry.   Linda could just tell that once upon a time Terry had been a troubled teen, a Jesus freak secret cutter or a real Nintendo addict, some [...]

Carrie Murphy

The seven strongest men in town

say I’m a perfect doll,
say I’m a tiny queen.

They
stand around with strong shoulders
and spit darts.

They
say I can’t drive in heels,
even if I practice.

They
crunch cans with their pinkies
and know how to punch.

They
say I should keep my lights on,
and cradle a baseball bat.

They
say they eat eggs raw.

They
say [...]

Joseph Murphy

Pact

First you die, and then I do. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but they’ll think this was all my idea that way. You thought of that, remember? I don’t mind. I’ve never minded. Also, it’ll be easier on you this way; don’t think I don’t know that. I’ll [...]

Alec Niedenthal

A CATALOG OF WAYS TO HOLD SOMEBODY

Some days before something stabbing was pressed against my chest, I connected with the girlfriend. We watched the other dissolve in on the screen, set by the sights of two strongly pixelated webcams. My laptop glowed as its eye a green light, by whose [...]

Ani Smith

Excerpts from

Girl: A Guide for the Uninformed

__________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction: About Girl

If you have the opportunity of Girl you should take it. If you have the opportunity of the experience of Girl you don’t hesitate you dive in with your whole anatomy and some mind; enough tenderness to grant her respite, but not [...]

Janey Smith

STAY BY ME (AND MAKE THE MOMENT LAST)

My kitten is furry and has a spot—that looks like a bruise Frederick gave me for Christmas—just below its eye.

Frederick says something like “blow job,” and I just sit there watching TV. He storms out of the room, taking heavy steps.

He disappears into [...]