Online Issues
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crabapple tree
By Sera Gamble
photo by Huie Dinwiddie on Pexels
I.
he makes a fist.
my world splits:
the truth / the thing
that makes it stop.
lying is easy
as slipping
into a silk coat.
but we become
what we practice.
who was he before
his father?
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500 Days and Counting: Memories from Ukraine
by Clare Cannon
photo by Tungsten Rising on Unsplash
Day 7
“Bomba. Over us,” my friend Anya, who cat-sat for me in Ukraine, typed into Messenger. “Pray. We are in corridor.” I slumped in the wooden chair where I sat at the Spear Physical Therapy clinic in Manhattan as I read, “Rocket was here.” My world exploded. My physical therapist Nada brought me a box of tissues and a cup of cold water. “My friend just got bombed,” I sobbed.
“Clare, I’m so sorry,” she said in her lyrical Egyptian accent.
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Someone Mentions Wild Geese Were Kept in Greek Households to Warn the Family of Fire or Intruders When Father Was Off at War
By Christopher Smith
photo by Ekaterina Astakhova on Pexels
Wade far enough into the valley, the sun marks banker’s hours.
I sit some shade of darkness two-thirds of every day.The figure I relate to in the Phaethon myth: that downy little greenhorn
presses Phaethon to prove he’s the chariot’s child.Who can buy even their own fables about their father?
Portraits of him waving down a sunbeam. Personal oliosof corporate fishing retreats, wood block watchtowers, the empty chair
at back of the theatre. -
Box Negative
By Tamas Dobozy
photo by Karl Griffiths on Pexel
Your locket terrified me as a child. You were an
old lady then. It swung back and forth as you
bent, pouring tea, knocking against your
breastbone below where your dress, always red,
parted at the neck. I kept asking you to open it,
and you did, out of tiredness. Open it again,
please. Open it again. I had no actual desire to
see the photograph inside. There was nothing
special about it, -
Gravity
by Lisa McMaster
photo by Peter Anderson on Unsplash
It’s a dark November evening and the rain slants across the driveway and backyard. My mom and I have just returned from my piano lesson and I am in a good mood. I am singing something silly when I see my dad sitting at the dining room table, his face drawn tight, eyes down. I keep singing because he often doesn’t smile, or say hello, when I walk into the room. When he tells me to stop, his voice is sharp and I assume I have done something wrong.
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Woman Encounters Haystack
by Erika Mailman
photo by Adrian Bancu on Pexels
It was from another century
It made her feel broken
it hissed of cows and ploughsharesMen who didn’t have time
to talk to their womenfolk
who were sick with shameif they burned dinner for
no one ate and the cow
was dishonored.The straw spoke
of how night would claim
them all if the womantold her desire to make art,
of her dispute with the cast
iron stove,
