Issue 34
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Origin Story by Kayla Beth Moore
Let the waters swarm, She said. And She set the birds to flight and the sea monsters She
delivered to the deep. Both waters swarmed and She saw that it was good. Let the earth creep,
She said. Cattle and all crawling things took to the land and the wild animals and the trees and
the fruits of the trees and the seeds of the fruits of the trees filled the earth, and She saw that it
was good. Let something very different happen,
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Primavera by Kayla Beth Moore
First there was the void—
known elsewhere as Chaos,
which Ovid called a shapeless heap,
which others know as darkness,
which still lurks in the creases of things.
This was the first of all is.
This shapeless abysm of is
has at certain times in history
found people to bother—
one was Botticelli.
One day the void stared at Botticelli
such that Botticelli felt the bluntness
of its stare like an invisible finger
pressed against his forehead.
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Today the Gulf of Mexico Is on Fire by Patrick Kindig
The ocean opens
its red eye & blinks:
another witness
in the age
of witness, another
natural thing made
man. Which is to say: silent
& intent
on watching itself
die. Some things
can be helped. Some
can’t. For example:
when sand
scratches your cornea,
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Helen, On Childhood by Elaine Johanson
Wild grapes grew in a torrent
above the hill, the vines
billowing over a wall so old
my sisters and I could roll
the stones out with our fingers.
Grapes overfilled our skirts,
our hands. We peeled
them with our teeth, held
the naked globes to our eyes
to track the climbing sun.
We packed our mouths
to feel their skins pop
in a chorus of honey.
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Regions of Identity by Jeri Griffith
She is me, twenty-two years old, young, younger than I can imagine being from this vantage point. She’s driving a car down a narrow road, wending her way through the New Hampshire woods. That girl is trying to master a stick shift for the first time. She’s not doing too badly, but on inclines, when the gears don’t catch, she finds herself rolling backwards and gets a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
My former self is newly married. She blasts the car radio, making pop songs into a soundtrack for her life. Rock me gently.
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Walls by Tim Fitts
Living in one of those fifteen-story domino type apartment buildings on the outskirts of
Cheongju, South Korea. When I went to bed at night, I could hear screams in the walls. All over
the apartment. I sometimes walked each floor, one end to the next, listening for reverberations
against the metal apartment doors, but nothing. No sound at all. Once back in bed, the screams
kicked up all over again. Men screaming, women screaming, children screaming, like a
collection of lost souls. I couldn’t tell if the screams resulted from shock, or were begging for
mercy,