A:\
You remember coming
together like two halves of an urgent message.
I remember
using another tongue.
by Michael K. Gause of St. Paul
Memory Crashes
Memory Crashes
B:\
It’s what people make
with what life gives them, you said.
I remember
it just never being sweet enough to enjoy.
by Michael K. Gause of St. Paul
Memory Crashes
C:\
You remember the shock in my voice
the flowers in the vase.
I remember hurting
like my mother’s funeral.
by Michael K. Gause of St. Paul
Memory Crashes
D:\
You remember how happy you were I called,
so you could finally tell me off.
I remember my orders
You will start a fight, and you will lose.
by Michael K. Gause of St. Paul
Memory Crashes
E:\
You remember finding your power animal,
a better job.
I try to forget your voice didn’t crack,
how tail lights blur with the years.
by Michael K. Gause of St. Paul
The New Testament is Often Misunderstood
Lillian cursed her green skin for soaking up water back in the ditch before she came onto the blacktop, before the boy trapped her under an eight-by-eight Pyrex pan. The boy tossed the pan in the grass. He got a hose. Water came down as sharp as ditch rocks. "Lazarus!" he yelled. Lillian’s eyes were too sticky to roll but that’s what she felt like doing. Lazarus. As if water had anything to do with raising the dead.
by Ann Rosenquist Fee of Mankato
Modern Inspiration
She brought him here to show him her favorite piece.
My art teacher cried when he saw this, she says. You have to look deep.
He knows it’s bullshit. What’s this one called, Red rectangle on large black rectangle, 1945, oil on canvas?
She scoffs. Emma was right about you. Thank God for that ass.
Later, the man unplugs his phone. He is not to be disturbed. He is painting triangles. All the same. All vacant.
by John Sobieck of Minneapolis
All Tomorrow's Parties
I touched her face and kissed her eyes, promised through her crackling cries that she'd never die. She asked me why and I asked her if she thought of suicide. Every day, she said, her eyes from grey to blue. I begged her to live. She laughed, cacophonous crescendo, and said, That's what tomorrows are for.
by Edward J. Rathke of St Paul, MN
The Fall
I told her that angels live in the sky and watch over her. A flashed eruption between the blushing sun and the smirking moon. Smoke billowed, chasing the plummeting holocaust towards the earth. She held my hand tight and pointed. I picked her up and we watched the casket pyre crash into the horizon. Her eyes were glass when she asked me if angels die.
by Edward Rathke of St. Paul
Finding Him
It begins converging
Blue blood pooling
Around his ear
Limb on the ground
Can’t put it
Together
Into a story
That makes sense.
Later
She will.
by Helen O’Brien of St. Paul
Blue blood pooling
Around his ear
Limb on the ground
Can’t put it
Together
Into a story
That makes sense.
Later
She will.
by Helen O’Brien of St. Paul
