51Feb 21, 2022
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in six years he’s published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 175 journals and anthologies on five continents. Publications include 580 Split, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Hippocampus, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, […]
52Feb 21, 2022
(in memory of Lavinia Andronicus) how many times have you found yourself on your knees begging for life for redemption for what is yours, stolen? the slick on your legs is but dried blood stretched out on skin. your god watched the rest of it drip back into the earth. your uncle watched the rest […]
53Feb 21, 2022
i. self-destruction They’re standing on the banks of a river — in a gully – cutting through a wall of emerald foliage kin: The trees know all of our secrets. After all, we hide them in the curves of her voluptuous leaves and pray the silver lining doesn’t unravel —phloem intact, xylem singing. We are […]
54Feb 21, 2022
Olivia runs her hand up and down the glass. Blue Moon swirls, drops of condensation pooling in the lines of her palm. She wants to wipe her hand on her thighs, but she came straight from work and is wearing a dress. The water droplets will show. She doesn’t want Tom to see. Her eyes […]
55Feb 21, 2022
The pine martin watches, the wren takes flight, as men circle ‘round and the cutting begins. When it is finished, her rings Will tell the story – if anyone stops to look. Some parts dark and heavy, others soft, almost silver in the light. The measure of her final age as a tree, the last […]
56Feb 21, 2022
driving home from the orthodontist this morning, I’m thinking about the way birds fly while peaches are ripe & dew-damp & eager & you can’t help but let the juice explode inside your mouth & have you ever seen a hummingbird suckling its feeder? as if she’s trying to get out every last ounce of […]
57Feb 21, 2022
Chadda told people her husband died raking leaves. This wasn’t true. He’d rolled his ankle while rushing around to bag up the leaves, but he hadn’t keeled over dead or anything. She thought this was a technicality. After he came limping into the house, she’d wrapped an ice pack in a tea towel and propped […]
58Jul 26, 2021
I’m my father’s green thumb turned hard from the weeding, plucking out the overgrown. They whimper at my hand, clinging to Earth, damp with dawn. I cry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. The roots surrender. This corpse at my palm- I place into the basket. When I walk home I cry with the writhe […]
59Jul 26, 2021
1. 1918 What was it like for you that last summer, the humidity of cicadas endless as the ocean between the sunny fields of Romania and this throw-away street in what they call East St. Louis? Were the clouds too low, the children too loud, or, even worse, afraid to speak at all while your […]
60Jul 26, 2021
You pen a note to your friend in math class asking my friend in phy-ed if she’ll tell me during lunch that you want to meet me after school so we can walk home together. I find you behind the buses and we move down the sidewalk, our coats touching along their sleeves. My fingers […]