Equidistance
“It’s the best thing I’ve found in 31 years of diving: the spot where a centuries-old shipwreck lay hidden under the water for more than 200 years.” —Maurice Belgrave You can tell, the violence that keeps a boat afloat has nothing to do with fuel. your paddle of a …
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Narrative Device
In every story the girl who doesn’t become a woman becomes a deer. A crystal. A column of salt. The state of her own sleep, stretched beyond the borders of logic. I too have tried to follow directions. Directives. I have tried not to ask what is the difference between, …
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Yet Another Poem at Solstice
. . . . so koukla, all is death + darkness . in this ravishing bright day. . …
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The Expectation
One childhood summer morning in Maine by the lake, I lay in my top bunk studying the creatures formed by knots in the pine board walls. One resembled a bat spreading its wings, another a bull snorting out steam. I contemplated the knots like puzzles, just awake in that time …
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Radicle: An Interview with Gretchen Legler
Gretchen Legler is a teacher, a writer, a sketcher, and an avid gardener who earned a Master’s of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. When I asked about her history as a writer, she said, “I have always been one. It was a gift.” She wrote and illustrated stories as a …
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translations of an ancient text
. for Chris L. Butler in the new world we still say jawn . {n.} as in the spot, {n.} the lick, {n.} the good good, {n.} the what i need . . …
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A Matter of Taste
First day, near the end of a one-hour dive rotation. No sharks. A November plankton bloom has reduced viz to 20 feet, if that. Vastness of the sea compressed tight around the shark cage. These waters of Isla Guadalupe are known for their clarity, like an inverted sky, you were …
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Home Schooling
cw: domestic abuse/neglect Desert Road, New Zealand. November 1985. Caoimhe Connelly was blithely unconcerned that her parents were waking two hundred odd miles north, asking where the hell has she gone this time? Jandals kicked off, feet on the dash, she read the DepEd leaflet (Home Schooling Curriculum) while …
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Circled by Sun
The sun is my drug. The light spirals the ice sheet and fades only with clouds and thick storms and wind that howls. I could stay awake through this longest of southern days. I could stare into the yellow tent fabric flapping frosted condensation onto my sleeping bag. I could …
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Love’s Drowning
cw: self-harm and disordered eating My foster daughter Janine stares me straight in the eye as she rips off one fingernail after another, dropping each into the bowl of oatmeal I have served, sure that I will not make her eat it now. Her blue eyes pierce me. Her soft …
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