hospice home death hangs over this house like a willow's branches over water, & i cannot help but tense in anticipation of the final and the inevitable. i escape the house twice a day to fill my lungs with smoke & watch the crows cackle and play. yesterday, the rain washed the grime off my skin…

most wanted: the eyes of a fox. better bone marrow. to be irrefutable. someone i can't even imagine. to wake up rested. an interview. an internship. a city that pulses under my bare feet like moss did when i was a child. my grandparents. a new perfume, with notes of lychee, clean laundry, and…

THERE’S A DOOR TO HAPPINESS AT THE END OF SUFFERING To an orchard strung with gold. It sparkles like the first time you kiss someone. Open- mouthed and magnificent. Like that night in August when I found a little god in your mouth. The sky smeared with blues, our bellies plump with laughter. I…

In San Diego, I Think About You before I know you exist. It's storming in La Jolla, and I'm too drunk to keep a promise. It's always August here. Everyone so wet with wanting. Seals lie slick on the rocks, buoys sit upright in the water. The night yawns wide. Bars fill and then empty. A man on…

Love Poem on Calle 66 On the stoop of a Mayan pub with Marlboro Gold's and a knack for sadness, tallying every time you shared a cigarette or a life. How surreal! How you've walked out of parties and jobs, apartments & dives, on people you loved or didn't. Feel that desire surfacing now, that…

Something Orgasmic about April I don black stockings & hang the moon above the bed with a tack. Your mouth moves around the shape of my name, the croon of your voice painting my heart shut like an attic window. Coffee-coloured freckles mark your cheeks in bloom. I'd like to catch your moans in a…

mangrove the sea swallowed my parents, salt stiffening their bones: grandmother flicking my father's school fees across a poker table, wine souring grandfather's breath. my mother's scalded hands pushing dim sum up the mountain; children her age leaning down from schoolyards. salt crusted their…

Bright Garden of Abandonment After a photograph by Yevette Hendler Marvelous in ruined rooms upholstery flowers go on blooming even as their underpinning fibers molder. No one having told them pulchritude no longer was required, they go on beaming under fine, filmy grit—dumbly, perhaps, or…

The Bird My mother loved birds, my father had no language for loving anything. She found a wounded bird, a cage, wrapped it and let it rest in the sun. It would not cry out, only ly and shook, and then died. It took hours. I was eight or nine, I had been playing outside, it was my first true…

It came, not as news but as weather through the throat of the house, around the rivets. Sometimes only as a hum, a threading in the wind. I learned its pitch, the ways it sits in the ribs like a memorised hymn. I knew it first as the opposite of cloud arms widening to measure the storm before…

Learning to Lean into Solitude after Ridwan Fasasi It's another night, and I wish you'd text me "good night" but I forget your goodness is like the brightness of the sun that drowns with the evening. Every night, the darkness taunts me of your images. Like tonight, you're in a corner undressing…

A map… A map of the known world rooted in the ground floor of oblivion Steven Michael Hanson received his MFA (fiction) from Columbia University. Under the pen name Julius Kalamarz, he has published work in Opium Magazine, DIAGRAM, The Los Angeles Review, Juked, Jellyfish Magazine, Ninth Letter,…

Mending (the heart) In her hands the clay pot fired hard scrubbed clean she spoons moist soil plants the heart its curved walls nestle in the hollow space she made. Gently scoops more soil over the heart. In the dark confines of the closet she places the pot until the first shoot rises white and…

On the Empty Boat "If you can empty your own boat / Crossing the river of the world, / No one will oppose you, / No one will seek to harm you." Chuang Tzu, Chinese philosopher Once, years ago in Maine, I saw an empty boat, staked, waiting, swaying on the marsh pond I'd been walking the edges of.…

OCD isn’t the problem I wait for my niece to make it through boot camp like I plead with the skies during turbulence like I interrogate my work emails before letting them fly. Hell's worms creep through my brain chanting nightmares while I go about my day. "Bad news, there may be BAD, bad news,…

writing casualties each sentence becomes a forest I wander far, dismissing trails to forge my own one I must abandon, lest the forest overgrows Ree Villaruel resumes writing after a long hiatus.

footsteps my footsteps are most alive in stolen pauses, over hot sand, through the nest of home, across midways under firework skies then disappear to appear among grown-up things, around champions who name corners, toward the lazy ones who remember shorelines and fields Ree Villaruel resumes…

Lolita (1955) Somehow, I can still feel the book burning under my shirt and I remember the shirt, white, billowing at the edges, the one-handed bike ride, my right arm wrapped around the jagged corners, dulled with cloth, the path home, darkening behind me. Always, I am outrunning the darkness,…

What I Want to Tell My Husband While We Clean the Kitchen I need you to know I ache today. I need you to know and actually give a shit this time. I am tired of being graceful in the face of death. I am tired of trying not to wonder what age will take from me. The smooth skin like clear glassy…

The irony of an AuthorsPublish listicle generating a flood of submissions when the listicle made a typo with our name.

Sitting Alone in Our Apartment Against All Better Judgement  It is late spring. I am seven months along. It won't stop raining. The worst part of the rain is all the wet ashtrays making my hair smell like someone else's smoke. John is smoking now. Even my sister is probably out smoking somewhere…

The Love Pains It is hard to admit but even my heart can be moved beyond right or wrong, grudge or self-satisfaction, empty or full: Here is the place where Peter touched me bending over to sweep my hair from my face There, in the sunlight, he pulled off a button from his coat to give to me. I…

Baseball Season, 2007 Emerging from the shrubbery, a stick in my shoe, I see her. The coach's daughter, her hands at the bat, the sun on her white hair— Honest to God, white hair. This is second grade. I am constantly pulling my knee socks up in the swelter, the dome of the baseball field like an…

Down at the Bottom of the Lake Charlotte Mayberry was dead, and he had killed her. That's what Tom Birdie thought as he laid his head down on his desk in Mrs. Baker's sixth-grade classroom. There were whispers and sniggering behind him, but he was somewhere far away inside himself by then,…

Dancing with insects Those old days hanging our picture on the wall, even the fleas bowed their heads snickering in the cushions. We felt more than we said saying something about everything, and the way the yellow light touched your eyes— touched the part of my brain that knows something I don't.…

I Spend My Days Reading Poetry and Writing Poetry And then reading poetry and writing poetry while everything is horrible. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies…

The Window Opens Noiselessly It is twice as large as an ordinary window. I see my reflection. It is a shed. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole…

Splash Those pine trees. The black pool of a single mind. It's going to read your heart like all the burned novels. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology,…

A Seagull Asks For a word. An empty boat. Thirteen white clouds. The wind's heart blows southwest. It answers: One afternoon dies in an hour. It is the colour of the bay. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or…

Separated It's useless: the afternoon, the statue, the pomegranates, the halfwit moon. What a joke. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry,…

Trace the Sky It was once candy. I bought a bag of it for a handful of pennies. Now I eat my hand. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry,…

The Fauns Let's become moss together, you and I, in the wound. Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a Canadian writer and teacher. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry, Pacific Review, and The Pit Periodical.…

expiring leaves… expiring leaves in one corner winter garden Gareth Nurden was born in Newport, Wales, and has spent his recent years writing haiku, senryu and haiga, and has had several hundred pieces published by sources worldwide in countries such as Wales, England, USA, Canada, Russia, New…

soft sand… soft sand two names fill with spilling sea Gareth Nurden was born in Newport, Wales, and has spent his recent years writing haiku, senryu and haiga, and has had several hundred pieces published by sources worldwide in countries such as Wales, England, USA, Canada, Russia, New Zealand…

We are, hips Where do we go after harvesting siling labuyo at five in the afternoon? After sharing this sunset, touching slivers of life through these red, red peppers? Is there a word for relish running through your mouth after eating day-old eggs grilled and dipped in vinegar and onions? Your…

fall crisp, I let go and fall naturally. between the branch and the barren land, there is a moment of lightness, I am a feather. brief in my faltering. before I reach the ground, I am a lullaby. there is comfort in falling—a leaf in a pile of forest leaves smelling of earth. I bid my mother tree…

carabao grasses Dear, there is so much love hiding in between carabao grasses, wild plants blossoming under crepuscular rays, fruits that visit my tongue for the first time. Among these tall grasses, days are pregnant. Along the trails paved by farmers before us, there is self-sacrifice. Decades…

The Secret Warrior They are driving the maid home – she says her son will get shoes this Christmas. "Shoes...and what else?" asks the boy in the back seat. Mom changes the subject; he looks out. The bus stops have people at them. There are trodden earth paths from sidewalks to apartment fronts. At…

Arrows When you gave up thinking the autumn sky brought love you charged out into the lanes. The air was cool: everyone in the gabled and rainy estates was inside, tending such small fires! Crouching breathless, hidden in foliage, you watched Mrs. Parminter thwack arrows across her lawn. The…

Pastor Edwards in Light It was somewhere around here: that church where, back in the day, a balcony dropped. Riven off its notches by winter ice. Imagine! Many fell; no one died, no bones were broken. Was it a rebuke, a miracle? In that age, one adopted convictions about such things. Locals are…

It Was Sort of Terrible / It Was Nothing Special Forget me: something the dead never say. Maybe I ought to consider other possibilities, something like blood-letting or blue-veined countertops. Who wouldn't want to see your face everyday? You died. We all do. In every great tragedy, all the…

Last of the Root Children Why are crocuses so desperate to be martyrs? Even the violets close in mourning. Tiny dark-hearted soldiers, solemn-faced. Nearby the lake lies; black watered, reassuring. You were a child here, there was the sterile surface, your small hands reaching... on the shore,…

Things Worth Looking At To Roberta F. Foote (1938-2015) You think I would have given you the jewelry. Eventually, yes—but first we’d sit on the balcony painting our toenails the wrong shades of red. You kept leaning out over the railing toward the canal, while alligators drifted below us, like…

The dig site is a drowned city the bruise on my back is an albatross, from afternoons spent cleaning tree roots out of bones, beetle crawled out of the eye of what was once a child, I brought my body down on the steel. Alice has a sunburn the shape of a mare, from curving her spine over an…

Pregnancy dream comes for me, stirring up a bloody sweat on a cheap mattress in a room in a house that is not my home. The visions flood in, tree upon tree weighing down the horizon, witnessing myself in untethered solitude. I lie naked on the lawn, shielded from audience by wild grasses, a blue…

Old growth-new growth forest For months, my scalp burned. Wildflowers first: flaring into requiescat dazzle, then crunched to no-name cinders. Not Daisy-bush, not Milkmaids, not Slender Billy Buttons skipping through spear-grass in bobbled yellow beanies. Grasses next: hissed chlorophyll farewell.…

And and and And almost every verse in Genesis begins with and. And long after the exodus, I still couldn't read it. And there was no angry God, no flaming sword; just a mind in its eyrie of doubt. And my father lost his faith in humans too. And my mother went along, having read Bishop Spong. And…

The other one In thick tropical air, drifted around a corner of the veranda, bare toes on sunlicked terracotta as distinct as Descartes could wish from mazy thoughts caught in the insect symphony (Schoenberg on acid in a 40-degree bath), I experience myself innocently beyond language: a composite…

Instructions for Visiting Start in the market. Smell the cumin and rosewater, the bitter tang of mint leaves and lemons cut on a cracked board. Touch everything, as if you might remember what your mother tasted when she first stepped off the boat. Visit the old mosque— the one that still echoes…

Half the City’s Missing Skip the small talk, screw tradition. This was gasoline and sparks; no loveseat could hold it together without bursting into flames. You mapped our journey on your arm, I brought the magnets. A backpack full of counterfeit parking tickets. A shoebox packed with fake…