A Mourning Symphony   A quiet thunder muffled in the drums of cheap, thrift store speakers for years the volume knob was lost on a number line, stuck at a low grumble, generic static so pervasive I confused its cancer for consonance.   I forgot I was a string q

Trust   Yesterday I found a faith stone on Barry Beach. Sand and rain and sea testing its word in relentless ways. I took the pebble to a rock pool and found a dismembered crab. The sky peppered gulls and all their noise. I plopped the weight from my hand into salted water, like an alien from another universe.     Thimble   The sea breeze cuffs a skirmish of salt across the buckthorn; choughs clown above our path that clings to cliffs; sky, scarfed with cloud, ribbons through

By Ron Nelson   I wake to my tent etched with a cross stitching of frost, and my half-empty water jug frozen through. Though it’s early November, I wasn’t expecting temperatures to get so low. It’s the kind of cold where every noise breaks sharply across the open ground, with halting finch calls interrupted only by the sound of my tent zipper and gear latches. I’m slow to leave my sleeping bag and I quickly come to regret that I didn’t pack a second jacket. Fortunately, the s

I have been whacking caterpillars with an index finger Off my window sill. Down my wall. Into her soil. Not so today. She has brought her wiggly body with her again and creeps slowly on my cement like a slug. Thick like my thumb, she is nesting an explosion inside. I don’t think they’re that different - caterpillar and slug mishy mushy slow things that I was taught to squish. Instead I look at her today and know her for the first time She is ravenous of course - carrying a he

1. the lake lives in light its raindrops surf sun and deep now, I'm gold. now, here 2. an ocean of clouds drowns out daylight. fog lamps...

Interlude There is a long sea that burns blue beyond the pine road to my house. I heard a knock on my door each morning for a year as the...

The cars sped by at eighty where the surfers entered the water, paddling out between cars. No driving home that day when another wave...

By Will Evans The sign on the wooden railing said, “Be shark smart. Know your risk when entering the water. Recent sightings here. Do not swim with seals.” The two men stood beside it, peering over the empty beach forty feet below the bluff. The sky was a blushing indigo at the far reach of the water, and the waves were small but perfect, lines like endless corduroy stretching over the sea. One man turned to the other. “Nothing,” he said, and shrugged, frowned, chewed his lip

By Erin Bondo Imagine a hole. Make it bigger and bigger, like the lake sturgeon your Dad’s been crowing about since 1992 , and deeper and...