By Han Ong
Icall Norton and (where else would a number made available on the internet get you?) speak to a young voice, front-of-office, an unpaid intern probably, not unfriendly, not unhelpful, but the gist is the sooner I get past him, the sooner I’ll get to—
By Alicita Rodríguez
The dancing bears of Sancti Spíritus show up at inopportune times. During mass at Parroquial Mayor, for instance, where their kicks cause the thurible to swing wildly on its chain. Amid this pendulum of plumes, we suffer the clouds of frankincense.
By Alicita Rodríguez
Perhaps because of the French influence, Cienfuegos is a city dominated by outlandish color. It is called the Pearl of the South for its beauty. It should have been called the Mother of Pearl of the South, for its painted houses.
By Alicita Rodríguez
Havana is a city of doors and windows, an array of rectangles and rhombuses. Transom windows inside crumbling mansions let breezes blow from room to room.
By Laura Post
1. Who are you and whom do you love?
I pulled my teeth out
one by
By Lillian-Yvonne Bertram & Steve Davenport
You are the woman
from the television show who would rather
be sedated than cry—my one friend
always this species of correct
By Laura Post
I have bursts of being a body, but they never last long.
I buried a lightbulb,
thought it might hatch fire,
set those lazy fields ablaze.
By Sean Howard
i. the conquest of the river plate
pampas, horses
ford the stream… (
waves making the land
fall.) silence: conduct-
By Sharon Coleman
Before radiation conjoined continents. In those windy days by the Pacific, when we went to empty our hands of grades, bills, unpaid work.
By Sharon Coleman
she shed words like her sister’s hand-me-down anger mis-sewn
dress
she folded into slow july streams, tall dry grasses over warm granite
of a coast they were moved up and down too many times she slept
By Michelle Lewis
Now trees have shaken in the wind where there is
no wind and you must clutch yourself.
You must toggle on your heelbone and become it.
By Michelle Lewis
The thing about my mother is I don’t think
you understand cramhole, I don’t think you understand back into.
The thing is take the scissors to bed.
By Michelle Lewis
Will tonight be every night?
Outside the kick-out door
saying if the dark
By Rajpreet Heir
In the outskirts of Boystown, a neighborhood known as Chicago’s premier gay district, is a male dance lounge called the Lucky Horseshoe.
By Holly Day
The Weight of Man is a needlepoint piece, approximately 29” x 22” and composed entirely of linen canvas and cotton thread.
By Emile DeWeaver
We play
chicken where the brave
stay the course. Frames will twist,
By Gray Tolhurst
bridge to bring the language together
(Babylon)
divided the channels
Por Elena V. Molina
Entrevistas
Un grupo de personas son entrevistadas respondiendo la misma pregunta: ¿qué es Democracia?
By Elena V. Molina
Translated by George Bert Henson
Interviews
A group of people respond to the same interview question: “What is democracy?” Later the recording of their voices and faces is cut into small pieces and ordered in such a way that they give a continuous speech written by the editor.
By Peg Alford Pursell
Ihadn’t visited the abandoned church by the sea in many years, not since that day with my teenage daughter.
By João Anzanello Carrascoza
Translated by Ilze Duarte
violent, the water crashes, and the white foam advances toward the sand and, eyes stung by the salt, his lips part and he laughs, my boy, and soon another wave builds up, grows and gets ready and catch this one
By Keith Stahl
Marne didn’t believe that Geoff saw a buffalo in the woods behind the cemetery. He could tell because he got the same distracted I believe she always gave on Sunday mornings when he switched her over from the TV evangelists to NFL Today.
By Ihsan Abdel Quddous
Translated by Nabeel Yaseen
I will never forget Madam Angel. Months might pass without my having any thought of her—but suddenly, while I sit at the dinner table or perhaps walk out of my office, I see her rawboned face in my mind.
By Kelly Werrell
In each moment, she was digging a smaller and smaller hole until she came upon a skeleton, and time for a moment stopped. The skeleton was a curved, small body, and it lay there at the bottom.
By Timothy DeLizza
Surrealist sexual playing cards lined the wall of Dali’s restaurant. Each was as small as a regular playing card and had the pair making love to each other in unlikely positions. Some cards had two men, some two women, some a woman with a monster.
By Debby Bloch
Still on my back. Legs spread. Feet held in metal stirrups. I say to Dr. Dubrovnick, whose face peers at me from between my knees, “I can’t go through with this.”
“Debby,” he answers, “it’s against the law.”
By Laura Legge
Kiki was not fun. She had been forced to live faithfully so her identical twin, Bouba, could survive as her shadow.