... business. It was late summer and my six-year- old mind thought it wise to contend with this band of nature. I envisioned Steve Austin —​living up to his six-million-dollar price tag, protecting those unable to protect themselves —​ driving a long stick into the hole...

...Elizabeth O'Brien © 2016 Elizabeth O'Brien 2016 Elizabeth O’Brien Thérèseon a Bench Seat, 1939 She sticks like a childhood memory or a scab sticks to me. She swizzles her legs, like straws with oscillating stripes, cherry red, she wants...

... 2011 Kaethe Schwehn 36   37 her earmuffs and I mine though hers are red and mine are mintish-blue. We wear our earmuffs so the hearing comes in quieter. I try to stay inside my brain and play my stick and ball game but sometimes ribs...

... deserve. It is a task that I prefer to delegate to other people. I reach out for a gadget as though nearing holy water when the private viewing booth begins to hum a soft duet of sticking sounds and sighs: a shrill female and a furry-throated guy. Below the door: Timberlands trembling in place...

... developed, Rachel draws a stick figure in red marker with a line through it to indicate Gina will be absent today. Eliot grabs the marker and recaps it so the blood inside doesn t dry up and we have to give it a transfusion. He races to the coat room, jerks all the jackets off their hooks, and refuses...

...Charles Booth Charles Booth Unsportsmanlike Conduct e rst time I rode a school bus, I stabbed another twelve-year-old in the forehead with my pencil. He didn t bleed much, but when I let go, the pencil stayed in place, like a pin sticking out of a pincushion. Years later, in high school...

... first just a stylized stick figure a nicely done symbolic line drawing of gook generic with conical hat but then people added stuff the slant eyes the buck teeth the hat strap the thorn crown and cross I can picture it now...

...Darrel Alejandro Holnes © 2010 by Virginia Tech 2010 Darrel Alejandro Holnes R. Dry grass tickles me, Rough housing my face I kiss dirt and eat earth, Though I was Raised to desire angels, I’ve found this earthly heaven Rubbing sticks...

... besiege the atmosphere, great precipitous toolkits, galaxy noises on the roof. Forget your plucky-helmet. Not even double hockey sticks can save you now. minnesota review 76 (2011) DOI 10.1215/0026 5667-1221957  © 2011 Olivia Valdes...

...] but nothing sticks. Somewhere, a sky [is struck] with a firefly s flash pattern. I think of the elephant s call as it weaves [infrasonic] through the forest [so much] of what is spoken [we cannot hear]. [On my lips, the last flicker of] a flashlight between windows [this darkness, I promise] is trying to say...

...Karen Kilcup [email protected] Copyright © 2024 Karen Kilcup 2024 I've come to believe in tools, have bought myself a new one— a standing bulb planter, tall green stem with padded handles— that punches four-inch holes even in our hard clay ground. As if riding a pogo stick, I...

... was born with   now closed your breathing slows my ear suctions to a thin layer of sweat sticking like the gel recently wiped clean once you’re asleep i ask if you still clench your teeth if your legs still go numb when you sit on the ground if you...

... lacks self-respect. How can I tell you about loss the way it eats heathen street shoes the way loneliness dwarfs the tongue and courage can be a secret pact that keeps a family stick pinned together on heavy knees the way...

... scribbles in the dirt at his son’s little league games, in the margins of his ATM receipts. At the Super Target over by the frozen pizzas, I found a little poem written on a discarded match- stick. It was a nice poem about fire, the dirt of our lives...

.... But it was valuable, she knew, she had picked it out herself & I, five years old, had taken it out to play by the pond, placing it on a stick like a makeshift finger flinging it into the water Another time, across that pond, while I slept, she witnessed a man slamming his wife into the ground, wildly kicking her...

... as witching— the bucket and broom girl slips into the silence of your private chambers circles the four corners to banish and purify the remains of meals and baths where hairs stick to toilet seats skin flakes breed into dust...

.... We tumble our arms into air, scoop sticks, hammer an empty oil drum every action hawkish, frantic to prevent dimpled limbs, flustered wool, bellies hooked open like grain bags. Meanwhile in the fields, the llamas shape themselves a circle, siloing their young. The clamoring flinches, then recedes...

... and not waves like (waves) but waves like (pulls back durag) waves. Stick Tom Cotton in a white robe and put him at the top of Orthnac Tower his Saruman looking ass. Turn the Lonely Mountain Atlantan stone and toss Cuban links in its bowels and get all my niggas to survive Helm s Deep in ways we did not Katrina...

...Paul Otremba © 2013 Paul Otremba 2013 Paul Otremba The Swiss Are Coming! The Swiss Are Coming! The sharpened sticks and palm fronds make simple the old equation: what’s left to carry after an unstoppable force meets with an unstoppable force with meat on its...

... are barely unearthed. Give me today some quotidian thing —​a cloud, rising up in the sky as if to embrace; a short stick of candle to hold between my palms for a night; an undulating ape between trees —​any representation of the kindred to curb my appetite. Forgive me...