The children are, at last, asleep. Like bright brass plates we’ve stamped them with new names: Peter, Rachel, Levi, Esther, Aaron, Ruth. Each day’s lesson is how to forget a bend of river, word for willow, your grandmother’s hands. We cut your hair. Release it easily as smoke. I promise sadness doesn’t last if you let it go. Learn this new word heaven, a better life that awaits you it is this one.
Jory Mickelson is the author of WILDERNESS//KINGDOM, the inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press and winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. Their publications include Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, Jubilat, Sixth Finch, Diode, The Rumpus, Ninth Letter and other journals. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and have been awarded fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.
Featured artwork: but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree Digital painting Katrina Monet enjoys playing with digital media for fun. Monet minored in photography at Stanford (minus one art history class) and managed the darkroom for many years. Analog is Monet's sweet, mysterious and guilty pleasure. Monet's work has been selected for various contests and both independent, small batch, and internationally focused media outlets. Monet shares: "I’m a writer, nonetheless, and a marketer by trade."