Issue 19

The deer was here again last night eating flowers but all we saw was his behind—diving into the bush, the entry closet to his world, as we rolled into the driveway. There is no orange juice in [...]

A late fall storm rides the coat-tails Of early winter Dancing with the whistling wind God speaks with crackling thunder Jesus spits lightning The Holy Ghost not to be out done Sings a lullaby in [...]

Lines beginning to form At the corner of my eyes And I eat not from hunger But from force of habit The fire in the loins Is still there And the hose still hard But no one to man it

My mother found it watering the plants— a hind leg bone. We considered, once we dug a shallow hole between two shrubs, waiting for my father to cover it. For weeks, he’d searched the fields for [...]

After a summer that sipped iced tea on my lawn past Halloween, then a fall that barely unpacked its bags, and then was gone, winter’s arrived like my new son, shaking fists and blustering. [...]

eye remember seeing the oblong fruit—mango, papaya—in a photo of a lynched black man's head fixed above the exclamation point of his tad- pole body, swaying easy in a tree in a gentle breeze, it [...]

the roll-up door lifts, reveals a yellow light bathing the black & white photo of miles dewey davis resting on the white wall of our house in goyave as a cool sea breeze tongues in, messages my [...]

August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009 “He was a very fragile soul in a very cruel world” — Deepak Chopra speaking about Michael Jackson after his death on the “Morning Joe Show” on June 29th 2009 1. it [...]

Three New Books of Poetry Paul Allen. Ground Forces. Cliffs of Moher, Ireland: Salmon Poetry, 2008. 100 pages, $22.95. Cathy Smith Bowers, The Candle I Hold Up to See You, Oak Ridge, Tennessee: [...]

This tree has stood here in this one spot, growing a few inches each year while men have waged wars and cheated on wives, built ships, crossed oceans with guns and horses and slaves; while they [...]