The Seeds for Distinction*
By Jessica (Tyner) MehtaConductor drives us, the cow-
catcher barreling straight into the teeth
of Memory’s harshest winter.
Search Results
Remembrance
By Kateema LeeShe grew up hearing about girls
who never made it to womanhood, girls
whose names wore away with each decade
Blindness Locked Me Out
By Emily K. MichaelThe speed reading class for seventh graders
slumped over tight columns of text spread flat
on tables in the library where in her half-glasses
Of Avocados
By Juan J. MoralesLike two hands pressed
together, they are twice as large
on the island. One feeds
Clarification Card: The Spiral (“The cigarette is pretext: smoke rises from within”)
By Hari AlluriUnless you’re practiced as a lola’s wrinkles,
do not flip the lit side of the yosi in your mouth.
They developed this skill in war and carried it
Ode to Jacob Blinder
By Janlori GoldmanHis face stared out into the living room
of my grandparents’ walk-up on E. 13th.
After they died my father hung him
We
By Deborah A. MirandaThe people you cannot treat as people
Whose backs bent over your fields, your kitchens, your cattle, your children
We whose hands harvested the food we planted and cultivated for your mouth, your belly.
From “Shadow Poems”
By Jennifer FoersterThe war appeared to be coming to an end.
The no-name people not yet taken
left their crops for summer’s drought.
Hope is a Bruise
By Dasha Kelly HamiltonPaintball pellets batter shoulders
and thighs at 190 miles per hour
I count the purplish bruises and
smile at the post vision of us toasting
Music Arises from Component Parts or The Dream of a Clarinet
By Tobias WrayOnce done,
my father pulled
the instrument apart.