by Meghan Sterling

Tell me again why we came here,

this land of pine and water with its scent

of undone stitching, all of us busy

with our children and gardens.  My kale

did nicely this year.  July was wet and stormy,

the tomatoes drowned.  I woke up this morning

and the sunrise looked like a bowl of scrambled eggs.

I wade through shadows with my fingers

to find the words that will comfort September’s

rainfall.  I write so that I can contain myself

in a cup of tea, small as a thimble on the tip

of a mouse’s tongue.  Tell me why every morning

aches like the color lilac, why sleep is racked

with dreams of earth’s bright end.  Tell me why

my daughter shivers like a dandelion against

a blowing mouth, why my daughter in the night

sings out all her generation’s acquired terror.

Tell me again why I inherited the bad stomach,

why I see my father blurred in the mirror before

I’ve put on the makeup that hides the resemblance.

Tell me why fog tastes like raspberries, the trees

laughing in the clouds with their little hidden

leaves, the morning fallen down and sleeping.

Tell me how my story isn’t the same story

lived by the men before me, wading through

the dark into more dark, now that I’ve lost the thread.

by Ellen Taylor

These days start with an X on the calendar,
meaning No Blood.  Five days late isn’t too bad,
but ten days late she wakes up to dread —
like a dead parent, or a plane crash,
and a hunger no food will fill.

The sour cashier doesn’t make eye contact
under the fluorescent lights of CVS,
the home pregnancy test package
slipped into a plastic sleeve
as transparent as she feels
walking home, pregnant.
She is sure of it.  Her small breasts
announcing themselves for the first time,
her fear growing like a tumor.

Just as she thought, the dark brown
ring of positivity appears like a planetary
halo, and she with no ring and not even a boyfriend
feels herself float out of her bloating body
over her studio apartment like a Chagall figure.
Outside, the sky is blue as a baby blanket,
children pedal their bicycles on the sidewalk
before mothers call them home for dinner.

She’s lucky, she tells herself, no coat hanger
needed, no unmarked door on a dark street.
She still has money saved from baby-sitting
for the neighbor who works nights at the track,
her husband left her and her three kids
who love hotdogs in a skillet and toasted buns.
She’s been waitressing the morning shift
at the diner, filling coffee cups and juice glasses,
scraping runny eggs off plates into the trash.

She’s lucky, she tells herself.  She’s 18.  Now,
there are clinics where women and their children
wait outside with posterboards of bloody fetuses,
larger than life, red splotched babies
bobbing up and down the street
above the protester’s shoulders,
“Jesus Loves You,” they call to her.
“Don’t kill your baby.”  A middle-aged woman
older than her mother, takes her arm
and leads her inside the clinic disguised as a house,
to the worn couches and tables strewn with pamphlets.
All the chairs but one are taken.  She sits on the nubby upholstery,
the women around her like fellow passengers on a train
greet her with weary smiles.

She’s lucky, she tells herself.  No coat hanger, no coat hanger
she tells herself in the room, where there is a dragonfly painted on the ceiling and a warm, smooth hand that squeezes hers when the pain starts.  They remind her to breathe.  And she does.
She breathes with her own sort of labor, until it’s over.
Home, she pulls off her boots and pulls a blanket over her,
a thick down quilt that swaddles her in warmth and safety
and for the first time in weeks, she sleeps, she dreams, she flies.

by Craig Brandis

nobody’s / mesmer-eyes / bent leg / small wag /
whip taut / in a kill shelter / in Oklahoma /
until Jenna / found him / brought him
home / named him Phantom /

by Martin Vest

The Call

When the phone rang
I answered
and heard the news
of your death.
And the first person
I wanted to call
was you, of course,
to tell you that
someone we loved
had taken his life.

You had no doubt
visited the woods,
had chosen the tree,
picnicked beneath it
even, drank and
swooned, had come
to know its birds.

And then the end
of your rope —
all the old agonies you
could never express
cinched in the duffel
you had made
of your throat —
hung in mother
nature’s arms
like a sick pietá,
explicit and final,
your phone
a lost detail
in the dark
understory,
ringing and
ringing