Eve Young and Alone

No, I am not selfish;

I will live forever. Where

is Adam?

Who cares. Look,

Sunlight falls through the leaves

of that tree

like the wasps that swarm

the fruit.

What? Oh yes,

I suppose I am Beautiful.

What do you mean I can't sting?

Of course I can.

Watch this.

By Jessica Otto

Susan Showering

Brilliant
May morning.

Upstairs
Susan
showering,

singing,
as the children
waken.


By Donal Mahoney

itchy noses

ghostly steps move
through a
garden.

evening dew drenches
my paws.

hollowed footsteps paint
the driveway with
muddy outlines and

dirty hands trace the
lines of a rusted
fence with feathered
dandelions tickling my
nose.

I sneeze.

By Jessica Hamel-Akré

There is a crown of robins in your chest

when you sleep i hear them weaving old papers
and dry grass, a tinderbox
your breath a ragged banner,
a standard at the head of infantry
the blankets a mountain range
where you spit out a reel of stars and swallow them again
and the small head of our baby
claims the space between your body and mine,
as it did when she grew,
when she was engendered there,
a hot spark in dry tinder
a flame in a bookstall,
a tiny open mouth in a nest

By Jacob Rakovan

Grown Up

Too tall a tale

she said

with drink in her hand

through smoky bar air

with one hundred

Conversations

going round and round us

100 conversations

about little lives

and real estate

and watering lawns

so they don't go brown

By Nathan Schaffner