Art by Demont Peekaso Pinder
I Wish
By Allysza Castile ● 2019
Last night I woke up out my sleep and I cried for you. I tried to hold it in, but my tears just flowed like an endless river that would…
West Saint Paul
By Roberto Sande Carmona ● 2019
Tengo un headache. Maybe it’s the combinación de lenguas en my head, on the billboards (espectaculares, dice mi abi), y en las conversations of people pasando por Cesar Chavez Street.…
Art by Christopher E. Harrison
Pet
By Kurt Schultz ● 2019
Kinda clammy, kinda wet, the goldfish kinda needs a vet. A little pale and looking ill, the doctor thinks she needs some pills. The pills won’t do, get a knife,…
Art by Ta-coumba Aiken
When Words Are Not Enough
By Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen ● 2019
For Philando Castile, his family, and our community He was no one to me, but never no body Yet in an instant he became every body Every body sacrificed Every…
Art by Moriah Pratt
Philando Castile
By Norita Dittberner-Jax ● 2019
In that Cathedral atop the highest hill in Saint Paul, we gathered for Philando. He came on a white catafalque drawn by horses, his coffin carried up the hill by…
Art by Sandra Menefee Taylor
If I Declare the Obvious
By Kayla Gray ● 2019
After Ada Límon’s “The Conditional” What if you stayed a little longer? What if you told the afterlife to shove it? What if I picked up the phone to your…
Art by Tom McGregor
Glass Womb
By Rebecca Frost ● 2019
In the crystal hothouse to escape the cold I am here, at last. Wrapped myself in gray wool, blue parka, scarf, mittens, galoshes. Tissue in my pocket. Slipped just once…
Art by Susan Solomon
Alzheimer’s Lament
By Georgia Greeley ● 2019
Right this moment, in this place, Mother doesn’t know me, her daughter; yet she is still glad to see me and talks gaily. She is happy and cared for. Right…
Art by Kristi Abbott
Listening
By Tim Nolan ● 2019
I learned about listening from my grandmother Ruth who allowed great silences to live and breathe in a conversation. She then would say the most apt thing, having thought about…
Art by Sara Endalew
Wiigwaasabak
By Marcie Rendon ● 2019
Our ancestors dreamt your future The iron rail, Angus cows slumbering in shorn prairie The buffalo remembered only on the metal That buys and sells on the grain exchange There…
of a time
By M. Wright ● 2017
damp hours dried by coexistence these trumpet calls reverberate through century-old buildings but not everyone can follow the horns. so a few of us linger in the empty square, dry…
Art by Immanuel Bratzel
Tell me again
By Julia Klatt Singer ● 2017
about the man with the pear tree who lost his wife after fifty-six years of marriage and how he had that old gnarled tree in his backyard, and that that…