Part I
1 . Poetry Reading by Beth Cooley^
lights and our communal gaze the man bends over the page, pushes his hair behind his ears. His words circle the stage like a moth, a real one, that orbits the back of his head like a halo (not real), descends upon his hair. There it folds itself up, a neat paper boat, gray craft on gray water. He finishes on an anapest, turns the page, and pays no heed to the moth embarking, dragging our gaze (that clumsy skier) up and away.
2 . Honey Stand by Katie Shannon^
3 . Downtown Spokane by Katie Shannon^
4 . Mountain Air Suits Me by Laura Collins^
for things to go this badly. What does it mean to mean something? I thought that it meant something that we were We were: Climbing past treeline you leading, as you tended to do, crunching gravel under your boots Crunching isn’t unlike crushing, which you also did A pair of elk flitting across the path one in each direction neither one stopping to look at us or even just you (most things would stop to look at you) They say your lungs constrict with altitude. But, I had never breathed better Things get clearer as air gets thinner. Long before then really it was thinning out between us They say the canyons there are really quite gorgeous. I know they were deep. Things fall into them quickly. –– I didn’t mean for it to go this badly, but you never meant anything.
5 . Not-So June Brides by Amanda Opitz^
6 . Finally by Anne Pauw^
Blackstrap binding me To appropriate wine pairings, Fresh cheese and Asian pears. Again, last night, I dreamed I was pregnant. A little relieved. A little ashamed.
7 . Untitled by Anthony DeLorenzo^
8 . Cigarettes and White Caskets by Sam Brooks^
light bulbs. You can see now his fingers turning yellow. Whether from filter-less cigarettes or jaundice I am uncertain. A man in white says his lungs are cloudy. I find myself laughing, “Told you to buy filtered.” Only he finds it amusing. I catch slight phrases about kidneys: “Kidney disease,” “kidney failure,” “transplant.” But none of these words move me. Death has been knocking at that boy’s door for years, yet there he was: whole. Had I listened, maybe a white casket filled with flowers would stop haunting my dreams.
9 . Siblings by Katherine Eulensen^
gasp of air caught in sleepy lungs, a chill breath, purging old tears, when our quiet world was blank and fresh. Our calloused feet thrummed the road in steady beat, and armed with crusty green fishing nets and tupperware we would traipse through dewy grass and pass red tulips, their wide satin petals cupping drops of shimmering rain, bending heavily toward the ground before the sun wilted them, spines bowed to expose dark stamens as the red cracked and faded and petals melted away. The shadowy green opened to soft and muddy bottoms, with slick rocks coated in olive moss. We would wade in knee-deep, our feet spinning up spirals of silty grass and tiny tadpoles, toeing our way through the tangle of brown weeds and the silky layer of algae. Standing still, trembling hands and hearts beating in our chests, we waited for the tadpoles to return cautiously, blindly into our cupped palms and plastic jars. Swooping them up we always felt triumphant as we added them to our bucket, our big stash, our final stockpile where they milled about in mild shock and we ignored them as soon as the novelty wore off. In the afternoon we sat and watched soft drooping leaves and silhouettes of pine trees as they faded into the grey-pink glow of the waning sky. We breathed in the air and the dirt rose up and blended with hair and skin, growing musty inside of us until it seeped out of our pores. So we stood up and went home dragging our sloshing bucket to boast to our parents and leave under the eaves of the porch til they nearly died in the dense summer heat and our father drove them back and dumped them into their murky home. Our feet were black like charcoal, careless, sinking in the road, following the broken beat of fading light.
10 . The Sting of Gravity by Katie Bates^
He obstructs the disgusting numb Of distant mind resistance. The jumper is quick, hoping his courage will shift Him into an exclamation point. As he drops off, the stinging pull and kiss Of rushed wind hits his soles, thrust With no firmly fastened street To land on. There is only the silt sitting Under glassy water fast asleep. The impact is violent. Ripples burst near the missile. Hydrogen and Oxygen Fight for their voice in the riot, But the body bounds back.
