A good literary anthology has much in common with the musical playlists we make for our love interests. Every inclusion is a clue to the compilers’ personality and our ambitions for the relationship...

Donal Mahoney Dingle, Ireland   The bathroom carpet, wall to wall, is blue, the lightest blue, to complement the bowl and ceiling. Apropos the moment: I bend the waist and heave the gristle from last evening’s steak. Tomorrow I shall row again to see those ancient men in caps and coveralls stand like statues while they talk and tap gold embers from clay pipes forever glowing. I’ll go there at the dinner hour and see them...

Ashleigh Eisinger Jessie stands before me, a circus mirror image of the woman I married ten years earlier. Slight and shriveled, the sight of her furthers my longing for the plump blonde that used to laugh with me, that same woman who would not hesitate to shear off her top and slacks before crawling into bed with me on a Saturday afternoon, would let me stroke her skin until we could take it no longer and gave in to all of our desires —...

Alan Drew PART 4 OF 4 Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here “Everything all right, Sarah?” Roberta yelled out from her desk as she passed in the hallway. It was the next morning. Sarah thought she might be able to slip by again, not have to speak to her until lunch time, but Roberta must have been waiting. She stopped, leaned against the doorway to Roberta’s classroom and blew out a deep breath. “You usually say...

The Dirt Riddles, Michael Walsh’s first book of poems, has taken several awards. But it is interesting, and to the credit of Walsh’s talent, that the awards were not in contests reserved solely for first books.

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. Like divining rods that tremble at the sensing of some hidden wellspring I stretch my tired arms, lay them down, slowly, like a pilgrim with a heavy wreath of cross on my chest hoping to still the undead fountainhead of these Tears. There is a river deep kept raging by the restless unforgiven, It keeps washing away the frail spillways of my resolve towards forgetting. Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. is a...

Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. In many ways she is more like the vase that holds the flowers she tends with backbreaking care in the backyard you’d never see her take off the ring her gnarled finger had outgrown; about time, maybe, someone taught her how to use search engines online Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr. is a Communications Officer in the Middle East and author of A Fistful of Moonbeams, his first poetry chapbook published by...

Marc Petersen Today, you don’t make it past Livermore. With a hundred miles to go, you pull off the freeway. You park. You get out. You watch traffic pass at eighty, heading northeast. You wanted to see where she’d lived. You imagine roads and barbed wire fences. It was a long walk. This is what you remember. And big tin mailboxes with their metal flags up. Marc Petersen is a poet and photographer living in Santa Clara,...

Brendan Constantine There are people our eyes can’t ride. My grandmother had an expression for it in Greek: Our eyes fall off them. Who don’t you see? What do they make plain instead? Have you thanked them? It’s probably relative. That is, not a question of beauty or character but rather, where you’re standing & when & how long. Today I said hello to someone who didn’t answer. No telling which of us wasn’t there....

Brendan Constantine I put my hand on her stomach and feel for the baby’s head. Earthquake season. After a beat, it finds my palm, nuzzles. I sense other movements, a fumbling in the dark of this woman. The couple downstairs are blind and clumsy. Their daughter is ashamed of her sight and pretends to stumble all day. The baby kicks twice, like its foot is caught on a rug. Yes, like that, I think and move my hand. Long ago, animals...