171Jun 7, 2018
Bill waited for his brother, Richard, on the curb outside the Summer Sky Recovery Center in North Pole, a thirty minute drive from Bill’s house in Fairbanks. His coat collar covered his cheeks and the bottom half of his frostbitten ears. He smoked a Viceroy. He was done with drying out. He hadn’t had a […]
172Jun 7, 2018
lies under the blue sky and its white cloud in the Pearl River estuary, dredged sand is piled alongside droning ships are busy, engaged inside the Venetian Macao a mirror world with man-made sky and cloud high above this patch of never rains, nor ever becomes cloudy hailing from Italy singing Gondoliers glide down the […]
173Jun 7, 2018
Red Bird A red bird perched and sang a song of leaves and rain, summer storms of May: The driving rain, phantom bullets, a windmill turning in the night: Bird perched on the mill, signal in the night, solitary red: Within a May- storm of leaves and rain, the red bird caught and held my […]
174Jun 7, 2018
I hear the click-clack worry of the Tic-Tacs shackled in their plastic container… an orange flurry of candy hurries into her hand. We’re parked, engine idle. It’s 1996 and we’re stationed at an ATM. My mother, waiting for an automated response, reaches back into the vehicle to the center console for a pack of safety-orange […]
175Jun 7, 2018
the song, a garbled bag of birds the trees outside my window are golden today, i will drive the electrolux all over this place; taking up the extradited crumbs of children left in their hunger and haste in this emptiness i imagine what could be present what could be devised what could be devastated out […]
176Jun 7, 2018
Time smoothes rainbow hardness Of tree basalt, vermillion jasper, Silvery granite and pale feldspar With the help of humdrum But patient jeweller of tides; Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried, Heat-cracked, wind-carved, Death shapes compact among the rocks; It drifts light as a fractured bone When the tide uncovers, It blinks among the smashed shells, Upset by gulls, bleached by salt and […]
177Jun 7, 2018
John Casquarelli is the author of two full-length collections: On Equilibrium of Song (Overpass Books, 2011) and Lavender (Authorspress, 2014). He is the Chairperson of the Santa Fe chapter (The Santa Fe Poetry Trails) of the New Mexico State Poetry Society (NMSPS). He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Long Island University—Brooklyn. John was […]
178Jun 7, 2018
The kids across the street had daily tasks, Leon’s to sweep the inside stairs, which often he forgot, and we’d sit on our porch, waiting for his mom, waiting for the air to fill with thuds and wails, and in the calm thereafter we’d speculate on marriage, the oddness of pairings – that sturdy fishwife’s […]
179Jun 7, 2018
When I told Dun Dunt that I had fallen in love, he served me cold tapioca. With magic powers. I became a large house. A new family moved into me, opening my doors and windows. Two kids clattered up my stairs. The parents bickered about where to put the venus flytrap. I made a frumpy […]
180Jun 7, 2018
If I try to get everything back, sometimes pure essence of a single flower is all that comes when I call. And sometimes, all I smell is the nothing of fire because flames only smell like whatever they’re consuming. But I keep hearing the slam of the oven door, the scuff of pointed shoes on […]