Soon there will be an eclipse ploughing a dark swath across the country from Portland to Charleston, everyone is waiting to see what kind of hole will be punched in their universe, everyone is buying smoky glasses from Walmart to hide squints and...
The President is Missing
We think he is somewhere in the White House, but we cannot find him. He was last seen wearing his robe, watching television in the presidential sitting room, flipping through news channels, pausing occasionally upon seeing his likeness. Many of us...
Sweet Talk: Refugees and the Language of Community
“Hi sweetheart. I’m on my way. Can’t wait to see you.” The WhatsApp message appeared on my phone, just after my plane touched down in Athens, Greece. A moment later, I heard another ping and looked down to see “I’m here out of the door number four”...
Two Poems by Peycho Kanev
__________ Creating in Reverse This world is created by language and everlasting light of nouns and gerunds coexisting within the shell of silence. Even the tiniest miracles can happen under a snowflake— If anyone asks if you lost your faith tell...
The Body Confesses
We were so young, my sister and I, both of us still wearing dresses that showed our grubby knees. I don’t know why we joined the crowd that followed our father, who was acting again on one of his “feelings” when he led us to the abandoned...
Waiting for Them To March on Us
As we link arms (mine far from steady) she tells me, before sunrise every morning her grandfather would gather twigs, and slowly he would begin to spin and as he spun, his arms would rise, head lifting, back arching, all spiraling up while he began...
Poems By Reginald Dwayne Betts
Secrets At two a.m., without enough spirits Spilling into my liver to know enough To call my tongue to silence, Miles learned Of the years I spent inside a box: a spell, A kind of incantation I was under; not whisky, But History: I robbed a man...
Invisible Theater
Not long after the Loma Prieta earthquake, our collective decided to stage an Invisible Theater performance in the atrium restaurant of a grand hotel in San Francisco’s Financial District. When Eva and I walked in, she nodded to our brother...
Searching for Safety and Home: My Family’s Story of Migration
It is 1931. I picture my grandmother, Annie, standing on a wharf in Santiago de Cuba awaiting a ship. I see her with a hand beneath her pronounced belly. Her two older daughters, Inez and Pearlena; two young sons, Herman and Ragland; and husband...
Two Poems By Tony Hoagland
DINNER GUEST The dinner guest goes upstairs to use the ladies room, and after she has washed her hands, just out of curiosity takes a peek in the medicine cabinet- where among the Nyquil and Ativan and dental floss she sees a bottle labeled Male...
Two Poems by Martha Zweig
Beauty Sleep Kwitcher bitchin, dad snorted. Shut yer yap up. I hated the salt stinging my cheeks, it curdled my sass. Little blue gas flames itched in the kitchen. A pudding seethed, the better to set. Pulpy crushed gripes folded in. Bard: the...
You Don’t Know Until You Test It
If a Cheerio rolls under the refrigerator, I think I’d stick my hand under to get it out. It’s scary what’s under a fridge, believe me. And I’m human. But I wouldn’t hesitate. I see it all the time from my sky box at Yankee Stadium. A foul...