Poetry

Virgil believed bees were born from dead cattle, spawning out of bloody rust and bones grown hard under sun. I don’t know much about bees, but I believed I’d see you in the withered air of August, standing there at the mouth of my sister’s gravel road. Our sciences, they – these stories we tell and believe, we share as ravenously as vultures tearing constellations into flesh, a white carcass, one honest manuscript. Does it matter if this is true if it feeds you all the same? Zachary Lundgren received his MFA in poetry from the University of South Florida [Read more]

1, Suburbia is never quite cracked up to what’s it’s supposed to be whatever that it’s cracked up to be while it’s never ever really quite real which is what gives it all its charm and sex appeal living happily ever after; deal of a lifetime and guess can be just fine but for the most part not that’s why throughout our life-cycle we order things from the back of cereal boxes, catalogues, marvel comics i.e. charles atlas so we won’t get picked on or made fun of and now able to pick up all the girls in their bikini-clad [Read more]

One, someone who will throw a rock…

The City’s come to saw down the pear tree they planted out front thirty years ago, when I moved here, replacing the maple tree that crashed down in a storm—a near-tornado. At three a.m. a beeping truck arrived with men in slickers wielding growling chain saws. Lightning still lit up the eastern sky as they chopped the maple’s trunk and hauled the logs away. I asked if they could bring a pear to re-plant in the maple’s place— paid extra for it. Pear blossoms every spring! Just fifty bucks for a lifetime of bouquets— unfortunately, a tree’s lifetime, not mine. [Read more]

Oh, weaver bird! You do not knit or sew, But weave straw into houses. You hang your golden pear apartments On tree cities, in tree villages High-rise lofts Resting on yards of air In a neighborhood where Front doors are always open And homes sway With warm winter sands Oh, avian architect! You test the tensile Strength of Earth’s hair You unwind her, repurpose her Resurrect her dead, Collect her gilded kindling And set it ablaze In the dawn of each new day Glittering baubles Of elevated oases Decorate an arid Arabia     Rachel Bryant grew up in Florida, [Read more]