Prose & Poetry

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“King Radio” by Olena Jennings

His father’s voice
came to him
in his dreams

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“Day of the First Turtle” by Ann Leamon

learn
to be better turtles,
to stick their necks out…

Birch Bark Editing 4/30/25 Birch Bark Editing 4/30/25

“KING Radio” by Olena Jennings

His father’s voice
came to him
in his dreams

Birch Bark Editing 4/30/25 Birch Bark Editing 4/30/25

“My Lover Sends Me Bulbs I Keep in the Basement” by Mary Dean Lee

I go down to plant a red amaryllis, ripping open the plastic bag of black dirt in the box when I can’t get the knot out…

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“Aunt Theresa” by Olena Jennings

Later, the sun poured over our shoulders
as we read our name
on the grave stones.

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“That’s the Thing with Anger” by Tom Schabarum

Were it not for the other mothers,/ fathers, families, and grandmother/ that kept it pulsing, my heart would be long dead./ They made it a sea, deep enough to weather storms,/ until a day, when love settled home, opened me up,/ and guided my heart’s tempest until it was repaired./ Remembering everything, my heart, at last, broke./ And now? All we feel is gratitude.

Birch Bark Editing 3/14/25 Birch Bark Editing 3/14/25

“On the Metro” by Philip Alcabes

…the moody sighing of beech leaves and the persistent grasping of rhizomes of grasses, the roots of pittosporum, as well as the hiss of nitrogen fixation by the underground nodules beneath the clover and, too, the industrious feeding of earthworms and termites…

Birch Bark Editing 3/14/25 Birch Bark Editing 3/14/25

“Stories We Tell Ourselves, or Narratives We Take for Truths” by Steffi Gauguet

Lately, I have become more aware of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we can do or even should do in our short little lives, plagued as we are by nihilistic melancholy and fear of anonymous mediocrity. Stories grown from ideas put into our young, inquisitive, spongy childhood brains by our parents, our teachers, friends, ourselves…all the messages we internalized, that grow into neuronal connections and pathways we keep carving deeper and deeper through repetition until they turn into trenches of thought patterns we can no longer escape.

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“Year's End” by Yuliya Musakovska, a poem from THE GOD OF FREEDOM, translated by Yuliya Musakovska and Olena Jennings

How much is left here, o universe, trembling and alive.

Birch Bark Editing 11/7/24 Birch Bark Editing 11/7/24

A Salvage Operation by Sue Repko

I am in a dentist’s chair in July, watching a plane make two parallel lines across a clear blue New England sky, as that racy heart-feeling from local anesthesia kicks in.

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Queen of Everything by Valerie Fox

When inventing a religion, be sure to include laser-focused, arch eyes, at least if you want your religion to have a God, a catechism, etc.

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For My Sons, Who are Convinced We’re All Screwed by Craig Holt

Guys, I love you but I have bad news: we are all fucked by Time as surely as we are by our wireless internet providers. And during the flicker and fade of our brief lives we will burn too much time sorting laundry and navigating the labyrinthine phone trees of insurance companies who make billions betting on our mortality.