Current Issue

Coal

Ángel works at a print shop, casting logos onto sweatshirts, white letters on black tees. TGIF. LONG HAIR DON’T CARE. YOLO. KEEP CALM AND…

Cut and Dry

I’m not even halfway out the door when one of my girls starts screaming at me over the sound of her hair dryer. I don’t care about her date with her boyfriend; she can close down the salon for one night this week.

Underwater

We sit in a semi-circle booth at Max’s Ultimate Sports Bar, nibbling out of obligation on hot poppers and fried mozzarella, silently absorbing the familiar comforts of a chain restaurant.

Tidings

I understand why the shore line is uncertain; why castles are sand.

Sift

The fragile bones. The highway snaking through the maze of rigs.

Home-Made Gods

Why not create gods that work better for us no gods requiring two sets of dishes or prayers five times a day knees-in-agony O Lord

Made Up Saints

I weep at cartoons. Wile E. Coyote free-falling from a cliff, Sylvester flattened by an iron safe, scads of sodden Kleenex at my side.

Field Study

E A G L E S written in vapors in the sky A dalliance of eagles overhead

Evensong, King’s College Chapel

Our days are longer than glass, longer than Stone, longer than light and air, longer than The waters of this softly flowing river that will Pass, rise, fall, and pass again while we speak

Trail of Ghosts

When I was a junior in high school, I got a job at a flower shop. I worked there for almost five years, scraping money together for SATs and prom dresses. On the weekends I roamed South Jersey roadways and highways in the shop vans.

To Start A School

When John Thompson Morris of Philadelphia turned forty-four, he took early retirement from the presidency of his father’s Iron Works to pursue other interests. Morris, unlike his father and uncles, preferred the role of benefactor, one who reaches into the past and buys up rare objects, then donates them for public edification.

After A Phillies Game

Sitting in the backseat heading north on 95 after the game eating cold pretzels straight out

The Writing Prompt

A little known fact, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina was inspired by a writing prompt suggested during his Thursday evening writing group at the Moscow library. The prompt: “write a story that ends with a suicide via railway. Make vocab twelfth grade reading level and use numerous flashbacks, a minimum of one blizzard, and two characters with [...]

Book Review–Scranton Lace: Poems

“In Vulgar Latin, Lace means entice, / ensnare.” Poet Margot Douaihy and scratchboard illustrator Bri Hermanson do just that with Scranton Lace: Poems.