Richard Stoltzfoos: Large Things to Forget
Once I lived a terror dream that I was all that mattered;
My world was red, in pressed the stresses, flattening as I flattered,
My world an apophatic point upon a blank white wall,
Continue reading . . . “Richard Stoltzfoos: Large Things to Forget”
Hannah K: In Flight (United Airlines 2383)
I will not waste my good tea on this one
it’s a Lipton’s-in-a-paper-cup sort of flight
but still, a cloud blasts past us
in icy pinprick wispy glory
Continue reading . . . “Hannah K: In Flight (United Airlines 2383)”
Michelle Miller: I Love to Walk a Dirt Road in the West
I love to walk a dirt road in the west—
To feel like a speck in the vast world of grass and sky.
I walk and raise my arms.
Continue reading . . . “Michelle Miller: I Love to Walk a Dirt Road in the West”
Encamped along the hills of light, ye Christian soldiers rise.
The familiar words lift my eyes over stained-glass windows
to the vaulted ceiling of the unfamiliar church, far from home,
Continue reading . . . “Rebecca Weber: Hesson”
The summer that we decided to be kind to people was hot. A few years have passed since then, but I still remember how the gardens in our community grew that year. The plants, as fruitful as the Mennonites that raised them, Continue reading . . . “Missy Burkholder: Acts”
See how this yellow
Zinnia petal, alone still
Furled, cups, curls,
And holds the morning world
Continue reading . . . “Sherri Steiner: Nectar”
Shannon Blank: When I, Sick of Self
When I, sick of self, declined to eat or drink
lay down upon my bed
and instead proposed to think
commencing there to query
Continue reading . . . “Shannon Blank: When I, Sick of Self”
Eshan Dabak: How Dost Thou Love Me?
How dost Thou love me? Let me count the ways.
Thou lovest me beyond the depth and height
My life can reach, beyond the crushing might
Of death, what wondrous sacrificial grace.
Continue reading . . . “Eshan Dabak: How Dost Thou Love Me?”
Richard Stoltzfoos: Delineation
The Definition is
The slender Needle
That crucifies an
Enterprising Beetle
Continue reading . . . “Richard Stoltzfoos: Delineation”
Sophia Bricker: What Grows In Cursed Ground
Mama said time heals all wounds, but I doubt it. I once saw Sara Beth skin her knee when we were playing basketball in the schoolyard, and the cement ate up her knee. Continue reading . . . “Sophia Bricker: What Grows In Cursed Ground”
What a place for men to kill their brothers.
These gentle slopes were slippery slopes
The evening mist was haze and smoke
The spreading oaks were shade of death
Continue reading . . . “Hannah K: Brandywine”
The memories grow thick here,
a lush tangle of brown grass and green
under the old apple tree
where I used to soar on the swing.
Continue reading . . . “Rebecca Weber: Home Turf”
Karen Yoder: God, We Are Hungry Creatures
Just more sophisticated in our scrabbling
Than newborns nuzzling for a nipple.
Continue reading . . . “Karen Yoder: God, We Are Hungry Creatures”
Emily Gingrich: Where Is Your Sting?
The wasp of death is buzzing on the ground,
A helpless, stingless spiral, and I see
The heavy heel of heaven coming down.
The foot that crushes snakes will set us free!
Continue reading . . . “Emily Gingrich: Where Is Your Sting?”
“How can this be?”
Almost aloud again, her gasp
moves hand to womb and rests it—there,
a knot of fear and wonder—where
Continue reading . . . “Jon Raymont Jost: Expectation”
Kenneth La Von: A Few Bad Apples
If you could fly as the crow flies from Butch Corner all the way to Watersburg, then the time it would take would be within ten minutes but no more than thirteen. With this in mind, you would also consider two independent factors if you could fly as the crow flies. Continue reading . . . “Kenneth La Von: A Few Bad Apples”
The past has a phone in a farmhouse
A yellow rotary phone, hanging on its kitchen wall;
Its cord loops down like coiled springs,
Its faded yellow smudged with fingerprints.
Continue reading . . . “Lori Hershberger: Amnesia”
Jon Raymont Jost: ‘tok long kheu fon’ or Rain
“Our lives became like those of animals
desperately trying to escape their hunters.”
—a refugee from U.S. bombings on the Plain of Jars
Continue reading . . . “Jon Raymont Jost: ‘tok long kheu fon’ or Rain”
Josh Nisley: Post-Truth Prayer
These days of death, when all around us sighs
of limp acedia seep from acid souls
and bots vomit their algorithmic lies
in prattling wastelands now the haunt of trolls,
Continue reading . . . “Josh Nisley: Post-Truth Prayer”
Look down on Kentucky, which is what they have been doing all this time, and you can see a little ink blotch about south-central. This is the river country along the Cumberland River. Continue reading . . . “Pete Kauffman: Seeing”
