By Kaley Hutter Mother I’ve been listening to the bees, and I’ve decided to memorize all their names, like how H knows the birds, and L can list the countries in Africa, and I keep a spot open on the balcony for our past selves, the ones who

By James Lex The hospital sits at the base of the mountain where the amusement park used to be. The ghost of children, ice cream dripping down their small hands, haunt the ER waiting room. The faint squeal of teenagers on the wooden roller coaster echoes in the maternity ward

By Gillian Lionberger Flee nothing with drunk vigor through highway flooded with one car’s headlights, roll windows down, let will of wind take its course acting as antibody to addiction, curve ear canals like mountain roads into hot air balloons, mind take flight, learn language unhinged from concrete slab

Outside, the yard is gap-toothed. It’s like there’s been / a war: Oaks choke the yard with limbs askew.

Every day for more than a decade I took the same road / to work in the morning, and home again in the evening.

Many of Genghis Kahn’s children wanted nothing to do with their father’s lifestyle ...

Beginning with those hedges, gnarled like her hands, / branches of veins spreading out, setting the house apart.

I used to be able to get lost in the woods / entirely dependent on my parents to find me

The Sheriff in this small southern town / Appears regularly on TV

Why would anyone buy a pair of used underwear? / I ask myself as I search through a bin / of miscellaneous clothing at Goodwill.

What happens to a voice unheard?

without caring for the actual peach / we would wait for Ma

He barged back into my life, / demanded my heart.

I find six strawberries / drowned in a blue Ikea bowl / abandoned

This morning / a praying mantis— / I call her Virgie— / climbed ...

Raindrops tinkle on the tin roof / like fingers on the ivory keys / of Grandma’s old piano.

Clouds swirl around. / Rain pounding down

We met at a summer dance, / Then she was gone.