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…
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…
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…