On Being The Artist

By Mary Barghout ● 2023

Maybe in learning the shapes of your strength You will one day be able to return To the small sounds of your softness Maybe your softness is The most courageous

Untitled

By Chong Yang ● 2022

Cia lub ntiaj teb los ua koj lub vaj Tus njuj neeg yog ib lub paj, xim twg los zoo Txoj kev tsaus ntuj yuav tsis kav Ib pliag xwb,

Minnesota Nice

By Ty Chapman ● 2022

At fifteen, I watched a cop shove a child down concrete school steps, his body flailing between impacts. His skull battered to fragments. Crimson rivering down a well-ironed shirt.

Stones

By Julia Klatt Singer ● 2022

Each word a stone. We can build a wall or a path to each other.

Let Us Consider

By Christine Mounts ● 2022

Let us consider where we were born. Where else might that have been within our vast, lifeless known space? Science fiction movie myth Of fantasy escape shuttles To nearby livable

Children of Michigan

By Stephani Maari Booker ● 2022

“God made dirt, and dirt don’t hurt. Put it in your mouth, and it will work.” — Children’s rhyme We ate fire retardant in our 1970s burgers. Suckled on sewage

Fire Medicine

By Sagirah Shahid ● 2022

In Remembrance of Breonna Taylor The ancestor of triggers started off as thick and hollow grass, bamboo chopped down and sculpted into a tiny cannon which, if fed gunpowder functions much

Diagrammer of Sentences

By Mary Kay Rummel ● 2022

Diagrammer of Sentences    In the corner of the living room, huddled over my pink wooden desk, brothers fighting, mother angry because I’m not peeling potatoes, I’m wandering in English

Restoring prairie

By Leslie Thomas ● 2022

Restoring prairie   June 24, 1854: Some of these flowers must be preserved—not that they can ever be made any more beautiful or arranged with any better taste than now.

How I Became a Feminist

By KateLynn Hibbard ● 2022

How I Became A Feminist   Because she could not bear to waste a thing, My mother always drank the coffee dregs Straight from the pot, and dribbled on her

Between the Stations

By Benj Vardigan ● 2022

Between the Stations The presets are nonsense, directions to nowhere. Coaxing the dial across the notches we nuance, tune our ears to any clear scrap in the static.   On

Art by Barbara Evan

Salvation of Bread

By Diane Jarvenpa ● 2022

Salvation of Bread   Every time sorrow is a rock to the skull   I chant up a stove it’s belly all fire bloom    as I beg any ancestor