Raspberry Picking There are the first-level berries, their bright fuchsia announcing the entertainment—you can see them like a marquee from the parking lot, advertising easy picking. When you get into it, though, it's the second-level berries that hook you, flourishing from the other side of the…

Everywhere I look Clumps of her hair stuck in the shower drain Long dark strands of it— scattered on the pillowcase the kitchen floor my old blue shirt My cat throws up a hairball and it's there, too. Niki E. Marthek is a writer, conlanger, and amateur musician from New York City. She is currently…

Unmoored I cannot think of roses as a whole anymore. I only see petals crumbling in my head, falling on a bed of voices dying to retreat back to the buoyant silence of privacy. This nakedness I see in front of mirrors now startles me to stillness. It's like a spell. It's a carrier of phantom arms,…

Muddy I wish you came to me one rainy day —a muddy melody— I'd take you in and clean the russet and make the hours taste good— I'll have you seat where the sun sets and I'll revolve around you— and we will claim the sky once more—beyond the clouds— and blades won't harm our flesh and words won't…

Calming The Capitalist Nerve – Sheet Music For Your Body Calming The Capitalist Nerve - Sheet Music For Your Body Pattern NOT EVEN ONCE: Our natural being is believed to exist in a state of pattern. Your days have become regressions with little change. You drift not to representation but to…

Cloudcover Low hanging doubt at the ridgeline, tectonic pressure ten million years into the earth, but time doesn't stop to look back at itself. The wrens on the boulders have been there since beetles found their way out from the ground and desert chose as its day of rest one with mockingbirds…

Dusk Moth It's chosen a lantana bush to taste the dusk and sips light until there's only enough for a spirit to see by. It knew as a larva this moment would come, foresaw itself as sleep with wings and after transformation be an agent of the unseen. Stony pathway to the clouds that darken…

Following the Night It's three steps down the rocks connecting night with day to the gravel where animals dream with their feet: javelina between arroyo banks that sleep while they hurry to reach water before it turns to light; coyotes from yip yip to a howl in which the human ear hears…

Belonging Wings locked for pace, a hawk glides through the cloudy light and wheels around, back high enough to view the dry, the cracked, the wrinkled desert whose rocks tumble until they have no energy to continue and stop to wait for brittlebush to yellow in between them. The ground here…

Clear Day Sunday blue from Four Peaks south, shadows soak into the mountain and late sunlight clings to outward reaching slopes. One step for javelinas, one for the raccoon and it's time to pack the view away, turn back with one more pocketful of truth, with thanks to the arroyo, the easy way the…

Looking for submissions to fill the schedule for May and beyond!

Rangefinder do you remember when I gave you the camera back then time moved slowly enough a little used Yashica could capture it with ease reeds bending over the lake a dune at the beach with sunlight fastened to every grain of sand even the wait for the film to be developed had a sweetness that…

Cuneiform not Akkaras longing for Istir not the raucous wedding day or the two children a boy and a girl lost to fever nor the days of drunken festival nor the brothers' betrayal and the long estrangement not the hot sun on the fields of wheat or the evening breeze cool off the river just these…

Postcards from Cape Cod I. The Resistance Across the street, all the oak trees bare, not a leaf left. Over here, a lone oak holds scattered clusters of leaves at its peak, hanging on to greet new growth in spring. Friend, I'm on the right side. &hnbsp; II. The Wind Today, the wind out here on…

Nantucket Sound at High Tide in Winter Clear and sunny after the cyclonic Nor'easter changed course and left behind no snow, perfect day for a stroll along the Sound, the tide higher than normal, thanks to a full moon, making an icy walk along  the beach somewhat dicey, the groins water-covered…

Ward Off We pulled back the hospital curtains in Sacramento to let the morning light pour in, as if the light could slip through layers of skin and drive away the darkness, and then placed a glass of warm water beside the box of morphine. We looked at the belly where a thin scar lay horizontally…

Grocery Store, 5 PM The security guard follows me— or doesn't. I can't tell anymore if the footsteps are real, or if I've memorized the rhythm of being watched, so much that I might be watching too. My mother taught me to keep my hands visible. To smile at the cashier. To speak clearly when they…

Night Whispers I remember the cloudless night when the pale sky swallowed our shadows while our inner thoughts were scattered in silence. Tonight, reading Snyder's poems return me to that overcast evening when I memorized your eyes so I would have an image to remember. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim…

Near Moose Hill Orchard In the early hours of a May morning, I pass a scattering of purple lupine a mile before the apple orchard where boughs burst in pink blossoms. After noticing a fading crescent moon only minutes after sunrise, yellow finches alight from nearby maple while I anticipate warmer…

The Scent of Cherry It was snowing last night when we gazed at the glitter of a February sky, white pine and junipers glistening— moments fleetingly remembered, magical nights when we were drunk on solitude in the silence of a northern winter— orange flames dancing over birch in the stone…

Savoring the West Silence gazes silently over Granite Peak as a tangerine glow highlights snow-covered Beartooth Range 12,000-foot peaks before nightfall blankets Montana before the horizon transforms into licorice, before our silhouettes are mirrored on glacial peaks. A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim…

Remembered Moments In the silence of a Maine summer evening, I listen to a symphony of cicadas, anticipate another pomegranate sunset, before we embrace under moonlit shadows before soundless stars drift west like random words across a blank page, before anyone notices the fading August daylight,…

Topeka in January As I gaze across rolling hillsides, random phrases drift from heavy clouds. I treasure these moments, hope for nothing except sunlight on snow-crusted tall grass prairies in eastern Kansas. Today, I leave behind a river of complex syllables written in cursive on scattered pages—…

Meditation at Mountain Top Before I draw the drapes, I breathe in evening air as daylight disappears behind a distant mountain range. Tonight the stars shine in a deep cobalt sky where your presence is only a dream that lingers in my thoughts, a dream swallowed by the night as the call of loons…

Under Winter Constellations After a three-hour drive north on a cloud-laden afternoon, I linger at the New Hampshire rest area listening to an old recording of Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" in the information center's lobby. That ballad rekindling my faded memory of your whispers that…

Still Daydreaming I need to remind you not to forget the apricot sunset we witnessed as winged shadows of milkweed parachutes glided across open Vermont meadows where we stood hand-in-hand on that late October afternoon where birdsong surrendered to silence where time moved in one direction. A…

Weekend Festival On a mid-October afternoon, we drove two hours on back country roads past meandering hills dotted with hay rolls, ripe orchards offering apple cider doughnuts, and pumpkin displays guarded by corn husks before reaching the Connecticut River Valley. After we arrived, we traced the…

Every Friday Every Friday evening, beneath the fluorescent lights that adorn the drive-through of Raising Cane's, I order fried chicken and Texas toast. 8,000 miles separate me from my family and their memories, especially those of my little brother, who is not so little anymore, but his eyes…

7 Years: The Father’s DNA Stays Within The Mother Oranges leave tattoos of their scent on my skin I unpeel without desire and a bit of contempt instead, I undo this fruit in flesh and untwist its porous dressings into nakedness, white pith under fingernails – I will leave its remains in the sink…

Night 2 I've never known smoke this intimate before. Molecules clicking together like the locks on our doors we can't use. Dancing on the lips of a smiling, eyes clouding, "you can eat with me," roommate I just met. Smoke escaping my window view, the curl of her lip. The quiet waltz of our exhale…

Bagel You can't sum it up, a life– but you can divide the morning's bagel. Dig a jagged nail in and break bread open. Hollow the guts the way mom read in a Homelife magazine when dad left. We don't need the fluff, she says. Pile on cheddar cream cheese dad only used to tolerate because it's the…

Healthy Command v and ratatouille— Press the dough of breath in my chest and mold the exhale. Click ballerina on play station 2; triple pirouette: press a, a, b. Remind myself to be. I can tiptoe around How are you doing darling? and five and six and seven, eight. Suck in your stomach. God, you…

After the Date, Your Bedroom, Midnight It's a still game at first: locking of eyes, the inward press of cocoons. The cat's eyes bore in, and your hand creeps out like a child's first steps. Whiskers extend and contract, and gears of joints grind against the creak of grandma's hollowed old bed.…

How to go on: Feel the weight of drapes– that drooping hug of heavy amidst the persistent patter of the rapid morning's tears. Know that as you unfurl from the tightening of sleep, the sky is crying too. The concentrated creak of grandma's cracked bedframe, ricketing its soft scratch of age to…

Prayer to the Starving Dog I pray to the starving dog. My hips growing outward like a bear breathing. Loose skin of my arms wiggles wild. I stand on a mountain edge looking down; human figures planted small among the weeds. I offer the hole that screams my name in monthly blood. I pray to bleed…

Peony on the Grave of My Hair Tell Jack I want to be a stripper. Half-assed pirouette, turquoise rhinestones, hair bobbing, ass nodding; saying yes in baby red heels. If you want to touch me, touch me. Run your hands through my hair, pin my body to yours like we're the last pieces of grandma's…

Is Dating Someone Who’s Never Been Married a Red Flag? When you touched him his face took on the expression of a person immersed in a beautiful piece of music, Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 2, cello and violin rising and falling like a rainstorm. But he didn't know to bring you coffee or make…

My Blind Date at Zizou We met at a little French place in Lincoln Heights with steak frites and rose-lit patio walls. He waited with Daphnie, his silvered poodle service dog. A nice build, he wore a Hawaiian shirt, unshaven, cowboy boots and a diamond stud I'd read about in articles on the murder…

Romance at the Airport I fell in love on a Monday on an airplane jetway, amid rolling luggage and voices clamoring from the gate. Blue-eyed, surfer- build, sophisticated with Southern manners and Jasper, his chihuahua, both of us with small dogs, the same suitcase, his in green. Later at a chic…

What Happens in Threes My mother died at exactly 3am, a Sunday. It sucked the skylark out of my insides. We put her ashes in an 18-by-18-inch box. Gravediggers dug a hole just big enough for her contents to fit under a stone she designed a year before—five pounds of dust and parts, incinerated…

After the Movie I sit in the low light bathed in the lambent aftermath of people talking about a film, I loved it, says a woman to the right, I couldn't wait to leave, says one on the left, whose cell phone blinked throughout. I don't know anyone here but it's comforting being in the swirl of…

Ex When I think of him now, I think of the gifts, whisks he gave me in various shapes and sizes, over top love letters and flower arrangements—I think it’s called Love bombing, the trigger temper when I glanced at another man, waiter, gay dance teacher, car repair guy. I cannot say anymore. To do…

Map He showed us a map of his brain— branches and swirls, oceans, violent and pooled. I see a tree, said a friend, her smile bouncing off bottles of Reposado, light lassoing us and the bartender like a circle of boats idling to see the whales. I'll buy you a drink, because you are alive, I said.…

Relinquished The wind crooned against a window shade letting in just enough brisk air to make you want a little more— the billow and clang, the wren. You could feel your body detach from the idea of his arms around your waist like June. On a video an astrologer said, Let go of what isn't even…

Soliloquy Some days camouflage under blankets, wear sunglasses on subways. Nobody sees despair in full view at the bar ordering a second Tanqueray and Linguine Ala Zingara for $9 bucks at happy hour. The room smells like a radiator, chocolate chip cookies and Absinthe. The world lets you swim…

vacant cab for Tablo i looked up and there was a cliff before me. behind me were those who stretched out their arms, the pretence of support vanishing as they pushed me. i was afraid of ending up with empty hands, of ideals ensnared by numbers. the wind was blowing, the rain was approaching, the…

exercise in the silence of a spiderweb, the unfamiliar cold crept across the concrete, enveloping the tired bodies, sun straying across green mesh and damp fatigues. twinkling yellow butterflies fluttered between the blades of grass and spindly trunks. my fingers folded, gratefully, around a…

i walk into the light of a new year after Lucille Clifton i walk into the light of a new year bright embrace through the murky cracks feeling the oscillations and knocking of the soul, the gale of the old year, its regrets and reliefs, the ascending of the covenantal prayer and the generosity of a…

Glass on Acid Though I had never seen him before, I knew that was my husband's old cellmate sitting on that park bench. I stopped dead in my tracks, like slamming the brakes when the light goes red. He knew me because my husband used to sleep with my photographs in his government-issue pillowcase.…

Poetic Immediacy What are you thinking? he asks. Although Gil is not looking at her, he senses the shift in Shiloh's gaze as she turns away. He always does. Outside it is spring and little green shoots dot the barrel-brown garden soil. Tightly wrapped leaves on trees threaten to unfurl. Shiloh…