Winter 2022: Origin Stories.

by Mark Robinson.

After I watch you tread the current
I sleep on the banks of the Umpqua River basin

and I dream you are my mother—
lashing at my foolish blank face
with a tail-fin sharpened by mercury and iron.

You raised me in the gravel-
bottomed stream, I felt the olive-green
circles on my back, the cool water flow
through me like an open sphere.

I have one reason– being fertile, vibrant,
plunging the river redds.

Now I have children and
now I have grand-children—
the little distant creatures.

 

by Barry Vitcov. Not meant for dry land sailing off the coast of Croatia a week’s journey discovering her own mythology, her roots rebeginning whenever she goes to sea Five in the morning finally she can relax a little exhausted and yawning after a sweeping flood washed over the boat a black night full of […]

by Tim J. Myers. Winter has blown down from the north this starry hunt: hunters and proud; the Sky-bear, a grizzly in dizzy circles. All the men of the tribe together slew the Bear (little Alcor a fire-pot in which they cooked the meat). The soul of the Bear, however, visible over snow. The hunters? […]

by Marissa Bell Toffoli. A place that claims you: home. Keeper of all bespoken in me, all my hands have sewn. What does the wary crow carry in its feathered heart? I can hold many a thing in my hands, including a compass, but the heart points home. Gives time a pulse. A bird could […]

by David Bolton.   When I was a San Francisco cab driver in the ‘70s, for a time I drove a Plymouth sedan powered by propane. The white tank fit in the trunk, leaving not much room for suitcases. Propane did not pack quite the same punch as gas, no get up and go from […]

by Sean Murphy.   i. 1985 First off, you have to understand: this was a job—and a time, and place (what older generations call a different time, and that’s hardly the half of it) when the words dark meat combo, or de-greasing pipes, and especially cutting up the raw meat were not sexual innuendo or […]

by Paul Jones. WHEN I get to my nan’s house I’m going to have egg and chips my nan does the best eggs my mum used to burn them all black and crispy underneath like a barbeque my nan said she doesn’t do anything properly uses too much oil she said the best way to […]

by Benjamin White. In the big inning, The rally was without form And the storm of fans said, “Let there be runs!” And we got a lead-off walk, And that was a start To part the waters drowning Our run production And so, the fans said, “Let there be hits!” But our batter had A […]

by David Selzer. In what is now the back garden of a house – a between-the-wars semi – in Mold, a town in North East Wales, a gang of labourers, one hundred and seventy years ago, hired to demolish a burial mound – known as Bryn yr Ellyllon, Goblin’s Hill – uncovered what seemed to […]