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In the backyard of his home in Bend, Oregon, my brother broke the ground with a shovel, two hands clutching the wooden shank, a foot heavy against the blade. Bent over, he traced a fourteen-by-twelve feet rectangular space by digging a perimeter trench, then worked his way back and across, eventually leaving the ten-inch-deep plot empty. Roughly eight weeks later a shiplap cedar storage shed would stand in the place of this dugout space, the deep roof overhangs and shingled peaks making it look somewhat cottage-like, but now the work of building was just beginning. ... [more] |
Janis Hubschman | bio
A Day at the Beach
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Departures are paradoxical. So often, they contain contrapuntal forces that simultaneously pull inwards and push away. John Denver pleads “Hold me like you’ll never let me go” in his iconic song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and we know that such an embrace is a lie. Ultimately, we must separate: departures are never half done things ... [more] |
Paula Marafino Bernett | bio
Is for glad, gone, and gabby
Which grief
With a martini in hand
Is. ... [more]
Jenn Blair | bio
caking the car windows this morning,
while obligated early risers stand in
their gently sloping driveways, scraping,
some in smooth sideways strokes, others
with a frenzied up and down. The trees
look cold in their sockets. ... [more]
Christina Cook | bio
Shards of a window through which much
has been seen: boiling kettle,
pelvic bone, low-burning lamp, your voice
up the wide open curve of my ear ... [more]
We watch shadows stretch daylight
as far as they can,
then gather themselves
into a single vision of evening ... [more]
Andrea Scarpino | bio
Warry, shift.
—Walt Whitman’s last words
As in to layer
or stratify,
change direction,
emphasis, gears ... [more]
Too much of anything
will bend you to your knees.
Exhibit A: gravity. Exhibit B:
rotation. Arms pulled
to your chest, turn faster ... [more]
Mitchell Untch | bio
Anne Sexton Bakes Cookies for her Daughter’s Local PTA
I dreamt last night I saw Anne baking cookies
for her daughter’s local PTA, dipping her hands in flour
like rabbit ears, fluttering the darling little angels
as they gagged on cigarette smoke ... [more]
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