Non-Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75) UPDATE: We have re-opened non-contest submissions for fiction, nonfiction and poetry for the next two weeks, until Saturday, November 10th, 2018. Submit! Contest Submissions: “Desire” (Issue 75) Submission Period: September 24th – November 5th Finalist Judges: Jo Ann Beard – Nonfiction Contest Nicole Walker – Flash Prose
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Eyes towards the skyㅤㅤㅤit’s hard to discern what’s realWhen all is bathed in stardust It covers your skinlike the glitter gel you covered your body inat twentyㅤㅤㅤㅤsweating out your traumaon the dancefloor
I’ve seen them dart among the cattailsat the slightest shadowlike commas scattering over the surfaceof a page. And I have sadly senta few of them to their deathslast summer, when I ranthrough
Shellac Cicadas sing:The world doesn’t want us! Nobody wants us!I thought chewing felt the same.I am finding myself to be stranger and more fragile, like a dog that bites first.Bad dogBad godblame
free verse copper wires gnawed bareas thick as a little finger ready for scrapthat’s the best of what’s in my poems and in additionbreathover the coal cathedral of a half-ruined minedaytime moments airy
Up yonder, the sky yawns openwide in a downpour. I suck greedy on the silken stem of one last God-white honeysuckle blossom & I watch the rain close in. The hot aircrackles
* * * * * * * * * * Each morning before breakfast my grandfather walked to the edge of the yard to raise the flag, to fly its colors near the heavens. My job was to hold the hard pack of
Accumulated through the season, like black exhauston white snow, winter cruelties linger—a dirtyepidermal merengue sealing in all that wouldotherwise melt within us; the closing of the bellowsthat precedes the closing case. We
When I wear sunglasses all day, I forget what the world actually looks like There is a pool with an ocean view. Chlorine mixes with beachmusk and sunblock and hotdogs.Metal grating digs
To think there is such a thingas a good dayis to neglect the sun’s eternal indifferenceto the clouds and fogthat bottle it up invisibleand block its raysfrom reaching our foreheads. What kindof
the newspaper boy once told melove is loud. scream three times each day, and someone will at least feed you: sugar-snap peas thrown, showeringlike hail, macadamia nutsscattered like words, even safflower seeds sprinkling the nest of