Ryan Hurley

Things We Cut umbilical cord, my mother’s kite string. pine tree bark, the saw blade hungry for heat. foreskin, our first offering, sin, sacrifice. birthday cake, the sugar’s tragic reminder. hair, this should be more difficult. wrists, plump with fear. bread loaf, thins slices of salvation. wing tip, the caged animal’s final passport.   May 22, 2011 - The Day After “Judgment Day” I cried myself to sleep last night, the morning landed softly, light shone through Read more [...]

Nineteen in London

For Peter Lake.   I still see you — haze of tweed, loafers, and cake running towards the pub, rain pelting your back, hair already fading white when I blew out the candles how does it feel to be young; I could not answer   that night — noise, free beers, every man watching me in red, a dress you bought but, I could only see you, so handsome with your face alcohol-lit, you, who quoted Cocteau, Whitman, Proust, carried me home in the storm and laid me Read more [...]

Paisley Wallpaper

You are a memory. Like a wildflower in the pages of an old book, like a monarch hanging in a shadowbox above the fireplace, like a Polaroid in an album under the bed, like paisley wallpaper yellowed with smoke, like sand between our toes where a mountain once stood, like an old star in the summer nights sky. by  Doc Marek Read more [...]

Daniel Ruefman

The Nameless All summer I wander the cemetery between the fenced-in family plots and the ornate stone mausoleums. Occasionally I find my way to the nameless resting in the north corner; orphans, tucked away a century before in that one place where the sod struggled to take root.   There the markers are little more than sand; birthdates once carved reduced to shadow, as if those dates were as inconsequential as the bones tangled in the roots Read more [...]

Joshua Robert Long

783: invention becomes the mother of the incandescent   in here beneath the hum and rigging all wires and false senses of places to go   invention becomes tired of itself tired of reinvention tired of movement and political traction   invention all folding back in on itself   reminding us of history   those calm pages we were read as children.   784: in the center of Read more [...]

A Tired Performer in Another Half‐Assed Season

A change could be a bloom as well as a withering.   Her half‐world suspended between two superstructures: a mystique of waxed floors and shattered mirrors, spiderwebbed with cracks.   On the rim of her sky were only hints of sunrise, like goldfish swimming in ink.   No one was disturbed by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, the movements of her braid.   She bleached out herself, Read more [...]

Spooked Horse

I am riding the spooked horse through a world of shadows –   In my visions, there is nothing but ghosts of all things.   There is another world behind the one we live in. Everything I see here, is a shadow from that world.   When I am riding, things I see before me disappear. There is no more grass or trees, skies or rocks.   When I am standing still, I am traveling on a horse made of bellows.   by Craig Read more [...]

Attention Deficit

My mind does not sway like awkward young lovers slow dancing at their high school prom. My mind does not run up and down a beach like water carried by the tide. And my mind most certainly does not billow like a branch in the breeze.   My mind is erratic and sporadic, It’s fantastic and its spontaneous. It jumps from room to room, wall to wall like electricity it is electric.   My attention deficit is not a disorder, it is a way of life. A Read more [...]