On the night my father died, I sat on the floor with my son who he had guessed was a daughter. I didn’t answer the call, the voice mail told me We think we have your father. Is his name Jack? I had to think for a second to remember and ask my wife Should… Read More “On the Night My Father Died” by J Ryan Bermuda
I woke up with a poem on the tip of my tongue, the beginning of the daydream where I think of the word azar in Spanish so fluky, and how the z in the middle forms its sound in the center of my cupped tongue and slides out my mouth almost surreptitiously between my upper… Read More “En la Punta de Mi Lengua” by Cecilia Martínez- Gil
The old plum tree on the vacant lot where the family home stood two decades since bends like a dancer, two arms reaching in from the fence, black twigs tipped in purple. It bloomed outside the kitchen door that banged when the child who could not drink cow’s milk came home with a shout from… Read More “On the Bluff” by Suzanne Gill
The blossom comes after weeks of empty gray days. Its gestation was unknown to us. We did not think the soil capable of such transfiguration, or the gray dead branch clever enough to make a hole that bled such beauty of form and color and fragrance. We were impatient we broke the twig ourselves and… Read More “In Lent” by Suzanne Gill
…et vitam venturi saeculi From time to time they’d decide it was high time to get ready and they would lay out the good china with care and polish all the gleaming silver and examine against the linen’s light the stemware of their consciences for smudges chips or cracks. Long weeks and months and even… Read More “The Arrival” by DB Jonas
Impatience is a plumb line stylites use to measure laymen’s balance when both feet are on the ground. The yogi topping his pillar seated above temptation, the showman poised on his flagpole doing nothing effectively, thinking his backbone is the planet’s axis. Inner peace does not belong to the tortoise for no matter how far… Read More “Festina Lente” by Denmark Laine
I miss the womb of that magic house, walking its garden, a lush labyrinth of green, always here in a dream, running my hands along warm wooden walls, memorizing moments, abiding ancestors who call, long-distance, from the in-between. I yearn for the fruit: I can still taste the gooseberries growing down by the fence, smell… Read More “Villanelle at 37” by Rosa Sophia
“I can’t control the wind but I can adjust the sail” –Ricky Skaggs Poor visibility on the slopes. We may want to descend while we can, if the weather holds and we are still ourselves, or nearly the several someones we started out as, who haven’t changed a bit. Well, a little bit. A bit… Read More “The Ends” by Caley O’Dwyer
I was doing several things on a regular basis. Finally, I woke up fascinated to a gurney, diagnosed with “fears, doubt, dread, lies,” and a bump on the head. I felt delighted, light as hair. Although I would no longer be the host of a network talk show, I knew the meaning of life, at… Read More “The Desire Line” by Caley O’Dwyer
I began to wonder if the sparking coupons could be redeemed. Much as Will and Holly lost their father through the door of time, had the source codes gone bad? the solid-state devices through which we’d been transmitted collapsed in a surge of current too gracious to bear? I could smell someone’s hair burning as… Read More “Land of the Lost” by Caley O’Dwyer
Sentience Literary Journal 