visual art
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Oceanside – Jeff Kaliss
Mom will call for me before she goes. Josh kept repeating what he could fit in his mind while his mother lay in an assisted living center 450 miles to the south, where hospice care was now assisting her dying. It was the hospice nurse who called Josh’s home office in San Francisco on a…
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Birch – Matt Luedke
The wind is too cold to smell like anything. All it carries now are secrets. Not the kind of secrets everyone thinks of first: Forbidden lovers Spies with disguised loyalty. Instead, the secrets of tiny, perpetual revolution: Skepticism lodging in the slums of the stomach Unsatisfied yearning driving the eyes Unfaceable loneliness turning a warm…
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The Boys I Like – Edisol Wayne Dotson
I like Jewish boys with Jesus tattoos And the ones who challenge Christian taboos. I like nasty boys who always smell And the ones who promise not to tell. I like pretty boys who cannot dance And the ones who hurry to take a chance. I like angry boys who carry guns And the ones…
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Fleeting Life – Charlie Amore
It took peeing on a stick Everyday For weeks To confirm your place Inside of me But souls have a way Of rushing through Blood streams Of superimposing on cells Acting as platelets Healing scars All that to say No stick could prove I had two souls For a short time only It was proof…
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Asking For Directions – Francesca Bavaro
“What are you doing?” Martin asked. He was a portly man with a bad combover, half-hidden behind an oversized city map. His wife Dee waved him away, as if she was swatting away a bee or fly or some other pest she didn’t care for. She was short in stature, neither fat nor thin, but…
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Taking tea: Experience During my Travels – B. Lynn Craig
I am a tea drinker. I’m not fond of coffee. During the early part of my life I drank Orange Pekoe black tea. I had it with lemon. When I graduated from high school, I got a gift from my elderly neighbor – a fancy cup and saucer with painted yellow flowers and gold trim.…
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Sonnet 1: Lost – Gary Kwong
When we seek everything that we have lost, Back traveling to old, but finding new. Not knowing if those steps were worth the cost, So slowly did Time shift our precious view. Thine eyes do fail to see thy fated wrath, As if the unknown would be obsolete. The pain of loss brought by the…
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into salt again – Katie Seifert
the love I know has tasted salt- let it seep into its wounds. sting until the burn is the same as it’s always been recognizable, mundane almost. I fear I will become an immovable pillar of salt among the waves forget home cease to hear the drumbeat on the sand become a woman who no…
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RIOT – Henri Jacob
We wrote a letter after he died We made t-shirts as memorial We began a social media campaign We asked the murders to take an eye exam We called our neighbors and formed a cop watch No one heard us Our efforts muted We grew restless We saw red We marched We had a sit-in…
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“Taking Sides” by Roberta Moore
My left foot is a perfectly fine 72-year-old foot, with slender toes, a slender ankle and a proportionately shaped calf. It has a low arch, but an arch nonetheless, so it can enjoy any shoe style. It is the best foot that I put forward. Its counterpart has a completely fallen arch. So much so…
Forum Literary Magazine 