Cronelight? Cronelight. But crones are haggard old creatures with no teeth and hooked noses. Crones, dear heart, are ‘mischievous, cantankerous women’ – Shorter Oxford Dictionary. And if you look a little harder, sweetpea, you’ll see ‘withered...
Modern Minotaurs The labyrinth at Crete was a mansion, its expansive hallways winding each after the other – yet it had only one exit. The Nachusa Grasslands of western Illinois fill 3,500 acres – huge fields of native foxglove and clover – fenced...
Here’s a twist. Since I’m always reading and editing YOUR poetry, how’s about you edit mine this time? Here’s a rough, rough draft of a long poem I scribbled down last night around 2 am. To give you a little backstory: I live in the Czech...
Reviewed by Lindsey Grudnicki “When Riley’s brother, Desmond, asked, ‘Why did Riley die?’ I wrote a poem.” – Chanel Brenner It is not every day that I read a collection of poems that lays bare to me the writer’s soul. It is not every day that I read a...
Making Bread, New Year’s Day For Tim Shaped like a brain, warm as the flesh of those soft responsive hidden oases for hands (euphemism for buttocks, belly, breasts), the supple dough, culmination of formula and feel— of call of water waking yeast from...
I don’t celebrate holidays. “I celebrate every day,” I say if anyone asks. Mostly, I just prefer to avoid crowds and social pressure. My home reflects this choice for solitude and quiet. I live at the end of a gravel road where all but one or two of the houses I pass...
He wore eyeglasses with thick frames, usually black, sometimes tortoise shell that made him look like a studious raccoon. These spectacles suited him perfectly. He could recall the facts of ancient history and postulate on the fine details of Talmudic...
My mother is smashing my Jack-in-the-box with a broom. I know not to cry. Toys and games are the work of the Devil. She tells me to find all of Jack’s pieces. She puts them in the can for the garbage man. * My aunt and uncle are here. My mother grows a black...
Photo Credit: “Father’s Hand” by Gayle George I. My grandfather burned a house down when he was a kid, my dad said, when I was a kid. His father’s father was in the Klan. Pale eyed and thin lipped, I throw acorns. ...
If I were to write a love song for my father, what it might sound like? A dirge perhaps, dark and lonely, haunting, wistful with what could have been, heavy with emptiness of unrequited love. And the words – they might cry with rage, might swoon with...
