By Abigail Pinder I watch my lovers trembling hands reach for sacred thighs Gripping my velvety flesh with wonted abandon, he splays them into the old hay My body doesn’t fight as his fingers press trails into the blue lines of drying veins The stillness I gift him pricking his exposed appetite Heavy hot breath dripping between us, against the frosty draft penetrating the slats of the barn Unfrozen, black blood seeps, oozing down my paling skin to meet his calloused touch And

By Sonia M. Your silence now reigns—raw and painful. Almost like the rubble after an earthquake: land littered with broken homes and still corpses. Yet, yours is so much worse: a sign of neither loss or acceptance. Disappointment sews your lips into that tight pursed line. There will be no grave mourning, because only loved ones plan funerals, and you have chosen bitter resignation—the 20th century widow that raves of his wife’s fallibility, flipping all her portraits as

By Alethea Cavanaugh Don’t listen too closely as the voices hush. I am the jarring echo of brittle laughter that blossomed within the cacophony before the quietude.  I am words that once felt safe — camouflaged by white noise — but now sink in unanswered awkwardness across the divide. My words cut the silence, but the chorus in my mind whispers you’re a broken record. As a stopped clock is right twice a day, there are instances your pitch offers melody or harmony, but do not