fisherman he is only seen in flashes, gold thrashes on the line, reeling it was not he who was found, so cold to the touch, that sallow...

Whimsy The day I saw the life-like parrot swaying on a string in front of your kitchen window I knew you had made a pivot in the cage...

Disney’s recycled animations It’s been said that Woolie Reitherman had the cels of those scenes drawn over each other because it had...

Plumb or Plum? There, just outside my living room window, are six standard issue, old school mailboxes fixed on top of six wooden posts...

Novel in the Making The story is short, and not very novel. A man and a woman, both brisk as cloud breaks: The woman is not bad, but...

Both a cartoonist and writer, Berin Aptoula holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Adelphi University, where she also teaches. If you’re...

Her Name is Grace She sits on top of a mountain, crosses her legs and bounces a free foot in the air, fields are barren in the valley...

ST. XAVIER’S ACADEMY The nun’s wooden ruler so big and white against my scrawny brown hands when my mind was enjoying the sleepy sky a...

Over a low soft hill is a black forest. Weave your way through the dark tangles to the forest’s heart. There springs a river of blood and...

It may be directed by a hive mind or synergist contrary to my cogitation, but that doesn’t diminish its dignity. Those eyes tune in...

I drop our daughter off at your house After my weekend visit. The small talk we make at the foot of the stairs Just isn't easy, now is...

Some nights I just want to talk to you. Get a true sense of us. Learn the ins and outs of your childhood stories. Take a brisk walk...

Let me tell you a secret: When I’m old with a mouth like a gravestone party(all tilted teeth and mossy gums)I’ll still know your face...

The Titillation A bird has left an azure feather on our cold red cement sill. It corroborates the curiosity's tale about the bird, about...

After First Frost Let’s be unrealistic. I’ll pretend the armadillo isn’t dead in the ditch, it’s half burrowed hole beneath the hostas...

Everybody Knows In childhood father said I was indelicate, clumsy, straw bristles for digits and feet like oil drums. About these things...

Within the cocktail of sound, the only thing I hear is a car tyre grinding my bones into a fine powder. To be exhaled by rigid...

This Is Not Another Poem About the Moon The next blue supermoon won’t come until 2037, and by then, we may be gone. Have you thought...

Finished in Dreams Deduction of the general from the specific is no longer needed, the evidence is in— The ice caps are melting, oceans...

sitting poolside at a Dominican resort an older couple guessing mid-80’s shuffles by my wife turns to me and asks will that be us...