Featured Creative Nonfiction

Deer in the window watching the deer

Emily Madden

The skulls of deer in the window watching the deer. At a distance I have only

A herd of female elk everywhere west of the Mississippi. Enshrined upon mantels carved within preserved wood reliefs are Bambi and his mother watching. Penned in, rejoining

predecessors known only as a memorandum—

there is a strangeness in the things we bury alongside the ones we do not leave in windows,

the living (the human).

On the continental divide bearing witness to the last herd of deer not watching—I wish to

split, paying homage to the continental divide imposed upon the Snake River.

Neurosurgeons cut along the skull with perfect symmetry (when they do the job right)

Would you cut my skin/(sin)                                                                                              open too? 

I have attempted to repent to you for the years inside me that account for displaced grief. Showering the American continent in rain over the desert while the salt marshes dry themselves in a February spring threatening the livelihood of avocados, rarities. Unlike the white tailed. Shed my plumage

                                                                  

use my feeble pheasant wings.

(how do doctors cope

with anatomy?) 

Featured art

 

featured poetry

 

Marching

Chelsea Embree

i only bloom in a bottle of vodka—

how nice does that sound? like soil

in the glass that held the liquid

we squandered. like seeds, like

sun, like put me in

the windowsill and wait—watch

if you want to. i only unfold,

unfurl for light, yellow leak that

gets in my eyes all wrong, makes me

squint. in my room, light-

canceling curtains, and eyeshades,

and when all of that fails, last night’s

eyeliner pressed in where my biceps

should be. i dream i say syllables

to you so much clearer. you replace

your body with a pillow, close

doors, start your grumbling car.

 

in which a piÑata figures prominently

Noah Baldino

When you asked me what’s inside

the piñata, I told you to see

for yourself. I knew

what it held: grief—

it’s always that, isn’t it

a strange sweet candy

if we let it—but we don’t,

swinging with the wild

desperation of batters

in this losing streak, the crowd

already forgetting their rally

caps, their windmills

as the air decides

to settle, the ferris wheel

which always struggles

just before the top—

but plunges, fighting

to surface before resting, before

floating there: a dead man

atop all that clear, that

blue, so empty—so

envy it: it’s easier

to sway in water than sky, which

holds the piñata, which holds—