Andrew Hemmert
Accidental Prayer

Andrew Hemmert - Accidental Prayer

Poetry
Andrew Hemmert is a sixth-generation Floridian living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, North… Read more »
John Sibley Williams
Birds of Prey

John Sibley Williams - Birds of Prey

Poetry
John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled… Read more »
Robert Hahn
Called Back

Robert Hahn - Called Back

Poetry
Robert Hahn is a poet, translator, and essayist. The poem in this issue, “Called Back,” is from his new manuscript, a narrative sequence of poems entitled Afterlife. Five books of his poetry have… Read more »
Rick Mulkey
Mingo County Men

Rick Mulkey - Mingo County Men

Poetry
Rick Mulkey is the author of five books and chapbooks, including Ravenous: New & Selected Poems, Toward Any Darkness, Bluefield Breakdown, and Before the Age of Reason. Previous and current work… Read more »
Angela Voras-Hills
On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Angela Voras-Hills - On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Poetry
Angela Voras-Hills lives with her family in Milwaukee, WI. Her first book, Louder Birds (Pleiades 2020), was chosen by Traci Brimhall for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize. Other poems have… Read more »
Marc Alan Di Martino
Runaway

Marc Alan Di Martino - Runaway

Poetry
Marc Alan Di Martino grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rattle, The New Yorker, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Palette Poetry, and… Read more »

Mingo County Men

Rick Mulkey

When I knew them as boys
shooting spit wads at Principal Martin
and sneaking peeks at the fishnet hose
of our young 4th grade teacher Ms. McCall,
they already sneered like grown men
with jobs as haul truck drivers
or longwall miners for Independence Coal.

They already had wives whose girlhood
dreams had fallen flat as cakes
dislodged from Easy Bake Ovens,
whose cheerleader smiles were swapped
for a Bud and a bottle of Oxy.

Even then, slipping on sneakers
instead of steel-toed boots, their houses had an air
of lumberyard sawdust and coal-tar pitch.
Their lunches carried the stench of onions
and potted meat. Their hands, stained yellow
by Camels they’d snatch from their father’s packs,
were already calloused and gashed.

And how they dropped then crushed
the finished butts beneath their feet
said failure; though, they still stood,
that harness of smoke encircling them, watching
and waiting for their futures to begin.
Read more »