a frantic species she walks so slowly you can see the wicker becoming a basket and then she bends over to pick up a penny but, it’s...

Ghost Apples Gothically sublime as Frankenstein’s monster, they hang as fruitful impostors, bending boughs under icy loads: ghostly,...

I’ve looked up at this building many times, from a cardboard city. It might as well be a different planet, made for those whose lives...

The Sounds & the Hiker Down in the valley, you hear a Whole plethora of noises - loudest are Croaking & barking; halfway Uphill, you hear...

She reeked of debt, despair, and a litter box that hadn’t been cleaned for a week. She bulged in all the wrong places. He reeked of...

the way that she looks in both directions as she boards the c train, as she focuses her eyes on the people around her, hoping to see the...

The sky falls to the ground it looks like small pieces of shattered glass a bit like water a bit like a broken lake of water you pick up...

Christmas Boxes They have been roaming streets and avenues long before honest souls had awakened into another Monday. It was to be a...

On the Shawangunk Mountains behind the Correctional Facility, I trip on boulders I cannot see in low luxurious slanting sunlight....

e s i A proportioned r after a d i v e re quires a bit of an an gle to get ho me James B. Nicola’s poetry has appeared internationally in...

Each Diwali, Amma would light up Small earthen lamps From a big one, And ask us to place at Everywhere we have a connection with: The...

We Swayed Furtively I You were a shadow of rhythm In the arms, song, and body Of another man. So from a distance, I became him In order...

the sweet spot she weeps & creaks into the ooze & creep & scrape & crushing crackle of whenever trim / shape / slice / sculpt to feed ...

pills got bigger: ten to twenty milligrams. now they’re horsesized. change in dosage prompted by a cry for help. by a secret told to my...

Your scuffed, unruly top hat has settled onto an adequately round head. Your body leans left, but not that smile. Small steady hands have...

I looked out at the half frozen lake. How lovely to be here without you: no stones or pinecones breaking the crust of ice and disturbing...

We choose our words with care. The garden is still and honeysuckle-sweet again, and the evening shade shadows our faces. We cradle our...

I am the rough fish that escaped the winterkill. somewhere, at the bottom of the lake the light reached me, trickling through a hole in...

He asked her out in junior high, and they were inseparable for seventy-one years—he loved her thoughtfully and sincerely. Dementia had...

His last name was Sugar. At least that’s what I thought, until he wrote the characters on a napkin, and showed me, with his grass-fluid...