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.
ABIGAIL MENGESHA
Steel kicks in this belly. // Girls with threadbare braids / weave between motor beasts and cement bags. // Tin roofs give way to glass columns. / Stretching as if to pet the clouds. // In the corners: cafés. // Where macchiatos are served / with a side of newspapers.
RANA TAHIR
If you look now, / the beaches are full. / People wading in the open gulf, / picnics, bonfires. / The sand whole, / not broken like an
eye dangling out / the socket. / The soldiers my father / misled must have found / the trench by the amusement / park
ZUZANNA GINCZANKA
I’m searching my thoughts for a man’s lips, to bind his arms in a braid, / When in the stifling sleeplessness of a second a sob breaks out— / —and now purse your lips and coolly, firmly condemn me: here you have my nights—bare, shelled like peas.
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