miCRo: “Cruising” by Scott Broker
Cruising becomes regal in proper light, / or lightlessness. If only they could see us / here: knighted by kinder swords
miCRo: “Hemiboreal” by Elsa Nekola
In “Hemiboreal” Elsa Nekola draws on setting to power the story, imbuing the narrative with energy and meaning.
miCRo: “Notes on Translation” by Kien Lam
Here, everything is shaped by qualities of light, by context, by choice: “You will see that where there is no shape, there can be every shape too.”
miCRo: “Chimera” by Allison Funk
When I first read Allison Funk’s poem, it lingered with me for days—not just because of her fiery last line, but also this concept or, rather, this fact that sometimes children’s physical cells can remain with a mother forever.
miCRo: “Lifeboat” by Janika Oza
All three sections of Janika Oza’s “Lifeboat” revolve around food—as sustenance, as survival, as a way to connect to a lost country.
miCRo: “A Tree That May in Summer Wear” by Amy Stuber
Through an explosion of the idiom “empty nest” and a vocabulary that swings from tender to profane, Stuber asks: how can a mother survive knowing what the daughter must survive?
miCRo: “How close the fire, how hot the oven” by Evan James Sheldon
This microfiction upturns the gentle mother cliché and shows instead a mother whose decision to set fire and kill is an act of compassion.
miCRo: Seventeen Fouettés by Mark Wagenaar
Mark Wagenaar’s piece, “Seventeen Fouettés,” brilliantly shows us how violence juxtaposed with art and poetic language can infuse even the saddest of situations with hope.
miCRo: “From an Agnostic” by Kyle Carrero Lopez
Parentheses usually indicate a digression, a nonessential thought, language without grammatical relation to its surroundings. Yet through them Lopez reshuffles the possibilities, demonstrating that what has been erased or discarded is often what is most essential, and ultimately questioning narrative-formation itself.
miCRo: “No Horses” by Erin Slaughter
The first line in Erin Slaughter’s poem “No Horses” is an answer to an unasked question: “Because giving pleasure is less vulnerable / than receiving.” In a tangle of image and interruption, the poem circles an unspoken force.
miCRo: “Compensation” by Ken Poyner
In “Compensation,” Ken Poyner shows us how improbable relationships can become possible once we accept that complexity can be as beautiful as harmony.
miCRo: “The Therapist Asks, How Does the Brain Feel” by Prince Bush
“The Therapist Asks, How Does the Brain Feel” is an evolving answer, a rickety list, a masterclass in the semicolon.
