in the beginning, there was a river and an old man in a rowboat fishing the hazel water for coins and feathers and things and there was you, in the silt, all twisted up in soda rings with the hook burrowed deep in the red flesh of your foot.  soContinue Reading

the aching snowflakes cling like cold butterflies to the black fingers of dark barren trees reaching upward to the storm-driven sky with no recourse but to bear  the onslaught of the storm and the wind’s winter teeth… a tempest. Lynette G. Esposito, MA Rutgers, has been published in Poetry Quarterly,Continue Reading

I never knew thatthe name Osei-Afrifawas one of royalty,until a classmate whispered: you are of noble blood— but I had been beatenand belittled by so manythat I didn’t believe for years I slept as untilI felt the stars of Anansiand listened tothe djembe drum: I dancedin the astral realmand askedContinue Reading

after Karin Gottshall lake superior whispered me into existence, from dream to bodily dream. my body was never meant to be so far from the water. but so it goes. summer of 1997, a year early and a little extra change. my mother was round with life, my father ripeContinue Reading

The soul of each moment is alive. A living voice, a broken down song. Like an abandoned car in an alleyway, from another life you’ve lived. Within another’s ghost towns. *** “The most beautiful thing about you, is that you’re strong enough to be vulnerable.” (Fuck you). “The ugliest thingContinue Reading

Muscles churning, coiling, tightening, releasing,Bunched beneath the rawhide saddle, slick withFoam and sweat, a dirty brown lather frothingAt the shoulder, obscuring the flea-bitten grayCoat wrapped around the powerful creature,Whose magnificent galloping strides fly towardA starlit horizon, soaked in plum and magenta. Pounding hooves echo through the rain-washed canyonDripping in darknessContinue Reading

Elephants and eyelash mites, streams of life, Of heritage both mighty and minute, Existence spies through milky eyes in strife, Cascades in raging sound—genetic root; The song, the strife, the milky streams all end And yet that end comes as a mystery —The wintry absence of breath— You are theContinue Reading

“My little angel.” It was what my mama called me since before I could remember. She said that I was the most beautiful child to ever exist–her “gift from god.” According to her, when I was born the nurses couldn’t look away. They said that I was the most beautifulContinue Reading