Salt / Belinda Maddern

Sometimes I forget how to speakand have to shake words outlike salt I am used to being alone  When I am walkingearly in the morningor after rainand I accidentally step on the snails—their tiny shells cracking unfairly underneath my feet. I always apologize 
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INSOMNIA / KATE DEIMLING

At night my eyelids flutter like birds— crazy ones, like in Hitchcock. Thought upon thought upon thought lines up in my head like ducks to be shot at the fair. The ozone layer—my friend who hasn’t called—did I send  the Visa bill?
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FAMILIARS / TARA TAMBURELLO

The airport is full of peoplewho look like people we used to know. Every third face a memory, a whelming obligationto say hello to another not quite so-and-so.Swallow your tongue.He is not your father who stands in the terminal—a pillar—the same totem-carved face, the same crag-eyed detachment.He won’t
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DUNE / KATIE CAJIGAS

I take this beating heart out and place it on the ground next to me. I won’t need it anymore. Please, take away my ability to feel, This cavernous pain in the hollow of me.  Pulsating. Ringing out. Exacerbated. Am I a
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CAINSDÓTTIR / JIM RYAN

The wolf woman takes out the last of her curlers, puts her slippered feet up on the coffee table. Well-fed, she settles in for a lazy morning. If those sons of Ask and Embla don’t want her eating them, they shouldn’t taste
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SNAILS / DS MAOLALAI

Trying to avoid the snails after the night’s rainstorm, the crack and squelch of sorrow DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and five times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is
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