Author’s Note: “New to Delaware, I took my 18-month-old on day trips to the sleepy beaches along Delaware Bay, where we first encountered horseshoe crabs. My life then was dominated by firsts: first ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The Beautiful Impossible”—speculative and oddly detailed—imagines the speaker before he was born, a figure who inhabits Nebraska and falls in love with a woman who ultimately turns away from him. At its core, the poem plays with questions we all ask at times: What would’ve happened had I done this instead of that? Would I be happier were I another? [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “When a significant relationship ends painfully, we often find ourselves rehashing the turning points, the decisions, the regrets. With the repetition of “when, then, that,” I hope to ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This poem came to me when I was traveled to a conference in Asheville, North Carolina. I grew up in Tennessee, and when I took a walk in those southeastern woods, I was flooded with ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: For the last few years I have had the honor of working with children in special education. It has been a humbling and educational experience. Every time I think I understand, I realize how little I know. Christopher, the protagonist of this nonfiction story who has now graduated high school, is one such student who taught me much more than I expected...[Continue Story]
Author’s note: Let’s not pretend all long-term relationships are a place lust dies, where neither party finds another person attractive ever again. Fantasy allows for a moment of escape in what is otherwise a committed coupling, and this poem explores how romantic fantasies are born and the ways in which they exert influence in real life... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: In my short story, Professor, I wanted to explore the complex nuance of sex, power, and choice. The protagonist is a middle-aged divorced mother who is pursued by her professor. She is flattered by the attention, feels powerful, and thinks she is making her own choices in their relationship. In the end though, it becomes clear how little choice she actually had and that her agency and power were an illusion...[Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Ribbon Room” not only chronicles a trip into the Iowa countryside to buy groceries, it is a record of a trip back in time for my inner child who is simultaneously in the fatherly care of myself. “I bought a bag/of licorice pipes from their candy counter,/a grown man thinking he was seven…[Continue Story]
Author’s note: “This poem began as a simple list playing with the idea that beachcombing can be a metaphor for living one’s life. But I love the ... [Continue Story]
Editor’s Note: Each word leads to the discovery of unexpected sweetness from the “loco” motion of a powerful love, left to our interpretation, unaffected and unbound from any sense of order. Writer’s Note: This poem is part of a series of love poems called “Something About the Way,” just out from Kelsay Publishers, first published… [Continue Story]
