WIZ readers and writers: Remember that the deadline for Torrey House Press’s Creative Literary Nonfiction Contest (2,000-10,000 words) is midnight, September 30th. First Prize: $1000. Second Prize: $250. Third Prize: $100. There’s a $25 entry fee.
Torrey House is offering a special arrangement for entrants who can present “reasonable evidence” that they’ve bought Torrey House’s first [...]
Strange vibrations, east of coal country.
Black sky, dusted by filmy cirro-nebula.
Rumbling on a trestle, high above the Green,
train whistles legend’s high, lonesome sound.
Highest water in a decade, but river’s
calmed tonight, lapping in a little cove.
Noses streaked with sunblock, bodies
with Skin-so-Soft, hair silted with residue
of a day on the water, we’re children
on the verge of adolescence, [...]
On her closet floor, what
looks like a dried flower—
arrayed in a display of faded
glory (tendrils splayed
to welcome her)—plays
tricks on the eye. Can’t
say what stops her
from picking it up. But
living alone in the desert,
under an endless sky,
gives even a dead tarantula
a florid allure. And out
the back door of her Virgin
hideaway, the iris
(orange, green and brown
growths)—lovely or [...]
After the electrical storm
rattles the windows
and spikes the sky ocher
and I go out in the dark
to douse the garden hose
superfluously watering the roses
a shock
to be blinded
by moon
full in the face
in the closed corridor
at the side of my house
and it is clear to me
like cool white fire
the you I know
still glows
in dark somewhere
______________________________________________________________________
To read Paul Swenson’s [...]
Do the dead know when we speak of them?
Cell phone to my ear, I hear Alex say, “Yes,
every time we say their names—it is like food
to them.” I’m in Liberty Park, watching
a gray squirrel negotiate the irregular bark
of a broad, green locust tree. “You
know,” he says to me. “I didn’t think
to mention this before, because [...]