How the Fire Must Have Started | Kathleen Hellen

"black smoke charring faded floral wallpaper. / they were old, we didn’t know them. call it failure of occupation. the grass untamed. trackless. / the vines that willed a wall. call it failure of attention..."

Loneliness is a Room | Mykyta Ryzhykh

"If anyone knows where this tlanguage of rocks leads then it's a trap / A dead end for people who are looking for something resembling the truth / We drowned like drowned men who have swum out three times..."

Selected Prose Poems | Colleen S. Harris

"My room is rural dark, back field dark, so dark I can read by the wan glow cast from the kitchen light through the crack under my bedroom door, the same dim radiance as this unhurried burn of inflammation..."

I Give the Angel Chuck’s Watch, and He Recalls the First Night of Creation | Zachariah Claypole White

"We had no language, you understand, / only the possibility of it; / three strands of hibiscus arranged / left to right would mean grandmother; / it could also mean subway or wheelchair."

Getting Personal with Dr. Phil | Nadia Kalman

"Did you ever think you’d end up here / Those times you went on Oprah, talking tough / To teenage moms? You never quite became a star." Nadia Kalman is an NEA Literature grantee and the author of The Cosmopolitans (Livingston Press).

Call to Order | Heikki Huotari

"In the beginning not yet sacred all is apropos. As I traverse a simple closed curve counterclockwise the interior is always on the left. I'll gaze in wonder only at that which I've gazed in wonder at ten times before."