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Poetry: Luisa Caycedo-Kimura
Cartagena Sunrise–April 2009
The guitars finally hushed their trebled
chords over the sand. Accordions rested
their bellows. Even the twelve-year-old
boys stored away their peddler chants (more…)
Lemons and Peppers
Lemons are yellow and round today. Not oval like the rants that screw our minds
to surface in jealous rages. In Colombia
all were limones–yellow or green (more…)
Poetry: Renee Emerson
I Take the Kitchen Scissors to the Double-Strollerslice along the plaid print, trace with blade the baby-pink grid. (more…)
Snowmaggedon
If you ask the locals, ground warmth makes a snow dangerous in North Georgia, where even the man-poured asphalt doesn’t know when to forgive its commitment to each and every sun-soaked day. (more…)
Fiction: Leah Griesmann
The SlaveThree-thousand-dollars? It seemed exorbitant, even for a work of, what was it, Meso-American era Nahuatl pottery? (more…)
Poetry: Lisa Hiton
Moon ChildLike living inside an angiogram, I remember the womb:
blood vessels illumined, eellike, hot to the touch. (more…)
Afterfeast
There is a deep-sea fish with two stones in its head. When you eat it, if you only find one stone, you’ve killed the fish too soon. (more…)
Fiction: Saskya Jain
Chapter Two from Fire Under AshThe prayer mark his mother pressed on to his forehead with the tip of her middle finger had dried on his skin as a heavy drop. (more…)
Poetry: Abriana Jetté
The WomenIt was the butcher who got me
thinking, after he kissed mom
on the cheek, … (more…)
Commute
Day drags between stops. Doors
ajar; gray shoes. Shut: black
suits. (more…)
Featured Faculty Member: Karl Kirchwey
Ocean GroveThe onshore breeze this morning arrives unopposed
since Portugal and the Azores. (more…)
TWO TRANSLATIONS
1. The Owls
Under the black yews that shelter them,
all in a row the owls wait
like foreign gods on a tympanum,
and dart their red looks. (more…)
2. The Garden
In what garden forever watered and blessed, where,
on what trees, from what calyces stripped and tender,
does the strange fruit of comfort ripen? (more…)
Poetry: Aviya Kushner
Highway
Driving in the fast line, the left lane,
I finally understand
what it is to say “if I forget thee O Jerusalem
let me lose my right hand…” (more…)
Ancient Hebrew
How close the villain is to the harp!
Two vowels separate them, just as two small
letters separate the harp from the generous. (more…)
Poetry: Calvin Olsen
TerritoryThe owl’s eyes are perfect
circles the color of hay
almost ready for harvest
but backlit… (more…)
I Wish the MoonI wish I was the moon.
I wish you were the moon. (more…)
Fiction: Laina Pruett
The Last ConCollectables were not Clyde’s primary area of interest, so he quickly walked past the first aisle of booths at the UberMegaCon Pop Culture Spectacular. (more…)
Fiction: Patricia Robertson
The Calligrapher’s DaughterIt was the fourth day of Ramadan and the calligrapher’s daughter sat, as she always did, with her qalams of sharpened reed, her inks of soot and copper sulphate bound with wine, her burnished paper. (more…)
Fiction: Shubha Sunder
The Western TailorAt seven o’clock Ramesh turns off the sewing machine, slings his leather bag over his shoulder, and says his customary good-bye to his boss, Parul. (more…)
Essay: Tomas Unger
Listening Now Again: On Seamus Heaney
It is now two years since Seamus Heaney died. To certain of his younger readers—say, those who might have discovered “Digging” in a high school class, and gone further, until they couldn’t “remember never having known” the ground this poet opened, and made familiar, and made loved—this loss was the first of its kind. (more…)
Poetry: Anna Ziering
PleaseIn my dreams, you are faceless,
blank space lightly shaded.
I would sculpt you, red clay
dug from riverbanks. Terra cotta,
small warrior, to fit
between my fingers like a charm. (more…)
Litany
Like ice, fright,
dishes smashed
on the counter
old bruises at night,
swiped-away
cobwebs, bricks… (more…)