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Vo l . 7 N o . 2
Ellen Reichman
Perfectly Fine Glasses my friend tells me when she was an optician old ladies would come in saying they needed their glasses adjusted their glasses were perfectly fine they were just lonely wanted someone to talk to please don’t let me be like that my life was once so full now reinventing so that i never go to the optician to have my perfectly fine glasses adjusted
Kimberly Davis
Sherry Rind
Wildlife Rescue A woman—it is always a woman— scooped this resentful heap from the base of a tree. Now he has a private suite, mesh-draped to hide the sight of human faces. He hunches in his fug of meal worms, chopped grapes, kibble, and smelt heads, Aegean eyes a talisman against us. Caretakers say he’s cute. We are above the law of nature that declares a baby dead when it falls from the nest or loses its mother, but we have rules: love all, touch little, mourn no one, do laundry. I pick up a grape with the tongs, tap the side of his beak; let me in. I’m a mesmerist, circling the grape around his face; he sees the shadow of a parent swooping down and the beak opens as wide and deep as a post-hole, sounds bubbling up even as he swallows, flapping his wings for more. I’m shoveling fuel into the voracious furnace, up to the shut-off line. He sleeps while cells divide and multiply and the creature shape-shifts into a glossy black hellfire deacon.
Guitar Recital
Robert Bharda
We move him to the teen street gang perched in the rafters of an old horse stall where we leave their meals, bowing our heads from sight, and never speak. Once they light out for the cedars, they’ll listen only to the clicks and caws of other crows. We were never their friend.