On the same side
turn a car
into a parallelogram,
an oft-read Bible,
a shelf of books
with a few
missing, a man
sitting and a woman
standing. Her hand
is on his shoulder.
His head lolls forward.
Her feet are anxious.
Kevin C. Stewart is the author of The Way Things Always Happen Here, a collection of stories, and Margot, winner of the Texas Review Novella Prize. He teaches at Carroll College and lives in Helena, Montana.
[Purchase your copy of Issue 09 here.]
This forest is named for the first head of the National Forest Service, who warned of assuming natural resources were inexhaustible, who said without conservation we pay the price of misery, degradation, and failure, who asked if these resources were for the benefit of us all or for the use and profit of a few? He was also a leading eugenicist.
FATIMAH ASGHAR
i cursed the frog / that found its way into / my house. murderous, i laid / poison for the ants. i threw / my moon in the trash. / when he cheated, i wished / him a hall of mirrors. / doomed to endless versions / of him. i prayed they’d undo / each other. & they did. i took / from the earth without permission."
LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA
Do not name your daughters Shaymaa, / courage will march them / into the bullet path of dictators. / Do not name them Sundus, / the garden of paradise calls out to its marigolds, / gathers its green leaves up in its embrace. / Do not name your children Malak or Raneem, / angels want the companionship
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