On the same side
turn a car
into a parallelogram,
an oft-read Bible,
a shelf of books
with a few
missing, a man
sitting and a woman
standing. Her hand
is on his shoulder.
His head lolls forward.
Her feet are anxious.
Kevin C. Stewart is the author of The Way Things Always Happen Here, a collection of stories, and Margot, winner of the Texas Review Novella Prize. He teaches at Carroll College and lives in Helena, Montana.
SAKTHI ARULANANDHAM
With the swiftness and dexterity / of a hawk that pounces upon a chicken / and takes it by force, / the bird craves / snapping up a vast terrain / with its powerful, sharp beak / and flying away with it. // When that turns out to be impossible, / in the heat of its great big sigh, / all the rivers dry up.
BRANDON SOM
One grandmother with Vicks, one with Tiger Balm, rubbed / fires of camphor & mint, old poultices, / into my chest: their palms kneading & wet with salve, / its menthols, to strip the chaff & rattle in a night wheeze. Can you / hear their lullabies?
JINJIN XU
my mother, my father. / Her skinny blue wrists, his ear caressing a cigarette. In the beginning, / it is already too late, but there is hunger & no time / to waste. All they need are six hands, three mouths, a clockwork / yearning for locks of their own, windows square & fresh.
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Celebrating 15 Years