After we spot the spider
crawling in the cockpit,
we tip the kayak
into the water and wait
to see if eight legs are
enough to keep it afloat.
Stephen Pisani works at a golf course, where he watches people chase a little ball around a big patch of grass.
You are cruising, soaring,
you think, ’til a crack
shatters the glass
and you realise the sky
was never more
than a picture
beneath you, whose blue
you would nevertheless
drown with.
Celine Low holds an MA in English Literature and has written short stories for 9Tales from Elsewhere and Blood Moon Rising.
She, a stranger
separated
from him by
a skin,
sang herself
into the hollow
of his rib
and with her breath
prayed
to fill
it.
Celine Low holds an MA in English Literature and has written short stories for 9Tales from Elsewhere and Blood Moon Rising.
cooking at her laptop mid-COVID, stared
sweetened with a shot
of affection
at his brown cinnamoned hands
moving so deftly
over the pan
and wondered
at the beauty of man.
Celine Low holds an MA in English Literature and has written short stories for 9Tales from Elsewhere and Blood Moon Rising.
Thank you for naming
the cracks on the ceiling,
like dried-up creeks,
as we wondered
how wide they would
have to expand
before they could swallow
the roof whole.
Stephen Pisani works at a golf course, where he watches people chase a little ball around a big patch of grass.
I miss my still closed
gym, walking uphill
on the elliptical’s
steep slope, entitled to
an hour alone at work
day’s end without
you asking if I’ve seen
your phone or if I knew
the ancient Romans
cleaned with urine.
Many years ago, as a child with 20/20 vision in Indiana, Hilary Sideris shot her neighbor with a BB gun.
At JBS mothers
& daughters chop
shoulder to shoulder,
sweat, sneeze, scream
over machines in Ixilean,
Tagalog, Mai Mai about
Wuhan’s flattening curve,
New York’s sharp spike,
the budding trees like
lungs turned upside
down in a flat land
prone to flooding.
Many years ago, as a child with 20/20 vision in Indiana, Hilary Sideris shot her neighbor with a BB gun.
The riptide drags me
through the pain and the outrage
crashes down my throat, but
I’d rather drown
in the stories of others
than learn to swim
through my own.
Matthew Malmberg loses days almost as often as he loses his keys.