Exangel

by Ed Ahern.

Our vessels are broken early on
by stresses outside and internal,
leaking energy and intentions
more and more as we fill them
with the desired and the despised.

Craftsmen who claim repair
are almost always maladroit.
We must with clumsy hands
attempt gold seamed wholeness
for our flawed earthenware.

by Jeff Howard.   In the playground, a small sea of grass and child voices, I circulate in slow eddies and drift, helpless, in a larger pattern of green too slow for the eye to see, until at last, helpless, I reach the stacked-rock wall that rings the sea. My eye settles there, my hand […]

by Lana Hechtman Ayers. Our vehicle for great adventures—a refrigerator carton rescued from the garbage pile at the curb in front of my best friend’s house. Wise and inventive Joann, five years older than me, wove myriad stories out of thin air, the way a line of robins suddenly appeared on electrical wires overhead. The […]

by Barry Vitcov.   Once we wrote in sentences with hue-toned voice, punctuation as a choice and guide to pace and tempo and how to look-see from phrase to phrase. Once we wrote in sentences those secret notes passed in class like a psst, would you like to meet later? Hoping for a penciled reply […]

by Chris Farago. At 7 pm dusk eclipsed the shoals, leaving Carlos and me to wonder whether the mute geese remained on the shore, or if those greyshorn hunters were successful. The tribulations at midnight were varied: filling the potatosacks with enough millet to last the week, fending off the malarial air, composing a toast […]

by Brendan McBreen. once   people would gather food and store it in little towers these little towers dotted the landscape and all was plentiful after a time some of these towers were combined into one big tower and it kept gobbling up the other towers until it was the only one left no one […]

by David D. Horowitz. I entered my mother’s apartment, as I often visited her to share dinner, chat, or help with errands. She sat on the edge of her bed. Whispering, she confided she was having a nervous breakdown, couldn’t teach or work, and would be in a psychiatric hospital for several weeks. She asked […]

by Jim Meirose. This cassette contains the only recoverable part of that final transmission. Fine tooth comb it viz the usual protocols, and place a report on my desk by close of business today. You heard the boss, run this out, let’s get started. Okay; push play hear r’ rainy all came grain-wokin ‘n rollan […]