Origin Stories – Kenton K. Yee

Metaphor Of A Muse by Kenton K. Yee The counterfeit is conceived on 14 point stock, sold, bought, received in a plain envelope, entered, dated, signed in Bic blue. How its front is flashed to prove. Truth be told, beauty isn’t proof. Still, the card almost achieves lamination of truth sequencing words like these in […]

Origin Stories – Annamaria Formichella

Numerology by Annamaria Formichella The word “quarantine” comes from Italian, quaranta giorni— forty days or the length of time a ship was held in isolation when suspected of carrying the plague. First spoken in fourteenth-century Venice and revisited six hundred plus years later. In 2020 quarantine and lent are coterminous, contemp- oraneous, collapsing and conflated. […]

Origin Stories – Alison Stone

Reverse Ghazal by Alison Stone (for B.) Secrets that lips hold back, the body shows. Be gone, Sun. In moonlight, the body glows. Rittenhouse sobs he shot in self-defense. Entry wound in the back, the body knows otherwise. The heart houses love, pumps blood. Is illness chance or debt the body owes? Top model insists […]

Origin Stories – Carol Deering

The Rio Grande Café by Carol Deering See the taco lady her ruby slippers hanging out one side of a papier-mâché taco, her arm bent over her eyes. She’s resting while the jukebox slides another oldie and the toy train roars around again. Each flash of light as the doors swing open, she’s off in […]