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Featuring work from Vikas Menon, Paul Hostovsky, Joanna Pearson, Adrian S. Potter, Nate Pritts, Carine Topal, William Trowbridge, Matt Mason, Becca Barniskis, Natasha Kessler, Alex Lemon, Michael Hurley, Sheila Black, Jim Peterson, Alex Stolis, Lori Brack, Kelly Fordon, Francesca Bell, Amy Hassinger, Benjamin Sutton, Natalia Treviño, Richard Robbins, Gary Dop, Natalie Young, Lindsey Anne Baker, Teri Grimm, Candace Black, Joseph Somoza, Marge Saiser, Ira Sukrungruang, Nancy Devine, Christopher Leibow, Benjamin Walker, John Stanizi, Allison Campbell, Erika L. Sànchez, Jane Rosenberg LaForge,Megan Gannon, James Henry Knippen, and Steven Langan
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from DINNER TABLE (CONVERSATIONS AT THE)By James Henry Knippen
1.
when a tree sprang up inside the ear
trunks would echooff a softer fate as for now
my pillow brims with needles2.
we make believe a broken tongue
play our paper violins
as thunderstorms do windows
our eyes are ears in darkrooms filled
with paper chairs
where we can hear moths flutter
like teacups we make
believe they can hear us believe
and like to think them finicky
as wrens
but moths are not wrens
they have no beaks
our mouths feed wrens to one another
and taste exactly the same
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Homing
By Lori Brack
I am standing in a room made
of lilacs. It is April and I
breathe white and lavender, my aunt’s
ruffled powder box. I am held in a room of lilac.
In June the cherries are ripe and I have
picked the ones the birds have not
pecked, leaving only the tiny red fruit The cherries are ripe and I
with the single black piercing. leave only the red ones.
I am falling into the September sky lying
flat beneath the swing’s rusty pendulum. I fall into the sky and its touch scours me.
Its shade rakes me, rakes me. My address is flown.
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