By Bob W Christian Peace is a liar. It wears a mask of soil and silence, But beneath the garden, something breathes. Not worms. Not rot. Something that remembers my hands. The farmhouse walls groan in tones too close to your voice. At night, I hear footfalls in the hall… Not the echo of my own, But yours, dragging like broken promises. The mirror is the first traitor. Where once I saw resolve, now your grin. Eyes black, glistening with remembered laughter, The kind that came

By Mary Mulholland you ask why         i keep cigarettes    if i       don’t smoke     never     notice scars    under my clothes & last night    we argued because  i squeezed   the middle  of the toothpaste as if that mattered      the world to you    when you said i was weird  i pulled the duvet   over my head with a sheet until i heard you were sleeping.   then tiptoed down     switched the iron to linen    waited until the light went    out then pressed the tip     on my

By Jessie McLean Would that it be me, not them that is insane. My sacrifice to a world too dear to leave to a dream. I need to be wrong about what I see.   Even reasonable people I know are talking about civil war, how neighbors will shoot neighbors dead like doves, painted on the steps of their own doors, like cattle corralled and panicked, like leaves leaving too soon for fall.   A story is raped a number of ways. First by a man, then by the law. Choice quakes like tall gra