Adrie Rose
Diagnosis Summer

Adrie Rose - Diagnosis Summer

Poetry
Adrie Rose lives next to an orchard in western MA and is the editor of Nine Syllables Press. Her chapbook Rupture is forthcoming with Gold Line Press in 2023, and she has a micro chap forthcoming in… Read more »
Jared Beloff
Mezuzahs

Jared Beloff - Mezuzahs

Poetry
Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). He is the editor of the Marvel-inspired poetry anthology, Marvelous Verses (Daily Drunk, 2021) and has been a peer… Read more »
Allisa Cherry
My Mother’s Cold Hands

Allisa Cherry - My Mother’s Cold Hands

Poetry
Allisa Cherry’s poetry has recently appeared in The Maine Review, Nine Mile Magazine, The Ilanot Review, Rust + Moth, The Columbia Review, High Desert Journal, and The Account, and has received… Read more »
Sarah Elkins
Refusal

Sarah Elkins - Refusal

Poetry
Sarah Elkins lives in southern West Virginia. Her work is forthcoming from or has recently appeared in The Cimarron Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Quarterly West, Hiram Poetry Review, SWWIM, Porter… Read more »
Kimberly Glanzman
Sitting Next to My Brother’s Ghost on the Dock at Our Grandparents’ House

Kimberly Glanzman - Sitting Next to My Brother’s Ghost on the Dock at Our Grandparents’ House

Poetry
Kimberly Glanzman (she/her) earned her MFA from the University of Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Electric Lit, Puerto del Sol, Iron Horse, Harpur Palate, Whale Road, and Barely South, among… Read more »
Michael Minassian
The Cathedral of Time

Michael Minassian - The Cathedral of Time

Poetry
Michael Minassian is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a new chapbook, Jack… Read more »
Jane Zwart
There are so many levels called darkness

Jane Zwart - There are so many levels called darkness

Poetry
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and… Read more »
Pete Mackey
Wood

Pete Mackey - Wood

Poetry
Pete Mackey’s poetry has been published in numerous venues, most recently in West Trade Review, Moving Force Journal, Farmer-ish, Bangalore Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, and Third Wednesday,… Read more »

Mezuzahs

Jared Beloff

The units of my late 40s co-op are adorned with mezuzahs on their door frames, tilted to announce a Jewishness left over from a previous generation: 5G has an ornate black and gold case, its Hebrew prominent and gleaming, 5C, a simple gilded dome, 5F has been painted over, its splinter calloused under the skin. According to law, you should not remove one, but after so long I question whether the parchment remains, whether these cases cling to their thresholds like cicada shells, shadows gripping bark—delicate, amber and empty. When I was eight I walked along the treeline at summer camp searching for their little bodies. A soccer team circled in the field praying, twelve evangelicals speaking to God hoping that this Jewish boy, who just wanted to play, would find his way back, join them in Christ’s light. I thought if I could only hold one between thumb and forefinger, I would feel what was missing, their shells, the only barrier to a fragile faith waiting to climb toward the sun. Now I am forty, a father in Queens, in this building of abandoned mezuzahs. My door opens on a slanted scar, a glossed white indent where a mezuzah once kissed the frame. Missing. God’s blessing, thin as parchment, hangs on the doorpost: you and your children may endure. I am what is left.
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