Glenn Ashley Paterson In a forest of starlings there is no sound. This worries me. Should there not at least be a muttering? … I once read— this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear— but I only heard the last blood returning from her fingertips. … Last night I spent hours trying to acquaint myself with my vestigial organs. I feel as though I am missing something. …  Most days I am nothing more than a...

Peggy Dobreer Everything. Everything is burning, quiver and bow. All things coral or pink, held in a box with a fan on top. Even the silk kimono is burning, two cranes preening at the hem. The shamisen, its body up in flames even as the plucked note quarters, even as a hand strums the belly. And my fingers are burning, my lips. Even the thought that puckers the lips, burning, all burning. The pout, the flush, twisted ankle, knee where...

Guillermo Filice Castro Naturally you can’t hear me Over those boys Who’ve hung a momentary eclipse Above our blanket With their soccer ball. In lieu of conversation We watch and shiver; they yell and grunt. What carries all of us through? A tremendous bounce Toward the sun. And just as fast, of course, The fall. Guillermo Filice Castro’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Assaracus, Barrow Street, The Bellevue Literary...

Guillermo Filice Castro into a hole something      of the self always disappears light    mother tongue into mouths and this morning that bunch of hairs peeled off the drain and dropped into the toilet almost as mournful       a gesture as a wreath laid in the ocean Guillermo Filice Castro’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Assaracus, Barrow Street, The Bellevue Literary Review, Brooklyn Rail, Court Green, Ducts.org,...

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...

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...