An Alabaster Knight Kathryn Ratzko Still as stone, hands on your chest, an alabaster knight; protector, warrior who once slayed dragons. Dawn is here. The ferryman still waits; a bittersweet relief. I stretch. Cramped on a makeshift bed, I ache. I lean in close to hear your barely breath and whisper that I have to […]
Of Righteousness and Sin Ayesha Asad At dusk, I take my prayers and cradle them to my heart, watching them slip into volant arrows from my papery fingertips and slink up a tree, where they flutter, untethered and groan into the undulating leaves. After they dust grit off their wings, they rise – […]
Sleight of Hand Ruth Taaffe You were thirteen and crooked, about to embrace the retainer, conjure your own face from the pack. An x-ray then you lay supine against stuffed leatherette waiting for the show to begin. Behind the scenes the assistant prepared tricks of the trade for the maestro who appeared in the snap […]
In Waves James Croal Jackson It comes in waves, the grief, though you laugh as you say so, because we are in the Atlantic, children again, uppercutting large tides, and I never learned to swim, but the saying– the metaphor– is true, the water is relentless, and we were states away from the hospital, […]
Kaci Skiles Laws is a writer and artist living in Dallas—Fort Worth. Her work has been featured in The Letters Page, Bewildering Stories, Pif Magazine, Unlikely Stories, The American Journal of Poetry, and a few others. She won an award for her poem, This is How it Ends, by NCTC’s English Department and is currently […]
Falling Angels For my mother with love Peter Branson The conjuror behind closed doors, she mine, me hers, she scrubs our mangled family life starch-white; stems tears, irons creases out, darns holes; small miracles – makes money stretch the week. Her present tense is all I know and we are doted on, consumes her […]
Job No. 1621 Gaynor Kane Once, a carpenter on the Canberra. Now, Rheumatoid anchored aground for years. Got thrown off after a week, you said – caught having tea and a fag. Shipped to a tanker, as your own boss you skipped off early on Fridays to smooth talk girls and dance. I […]
When My Mother Was a Giantess Avra Margariti She let me sit on her shoulders, fed me spotted eggs plucked fresh from mountaintop nests, flew me like a girl-plane through the clouds to gather their moisture on my tongue. When she got sick, she shrank and sank while I underwent a stretching metamorphosis, […]
Overdue Ruth Taaffe This was the date that should’ve been. It catches me every year like the gasp of a plot twist I almost forgot. While all the world waited on an inhale for your first big cry you were reserved, belated, biding your time. ‘Not yet cooked’, your Grandma joked as […]
Waiting Sue Morgan I was at Crewe station between trains. I had a call to make from one of the old pay-phones. After, I went to sit on a wooden bench to wait for the onward connection. A nun came to sit beside me. An omen I thought. I wondered whether to […]