Permeable Divide by Ellen Rachlin We are together in a galaxy called Loss. Because I know nothing other than time and place and where to go to speak with you, I invented one for you. No light, no atmosphere needed to be who you once were. Since there's no fooling grief, and remembering is also what I do, forcing thought to etch you into sight, there is no time, no nothing— just spaces collapsed into immortality.

my mother’s hands BY NATE MARSHALL            would moisturize my face from jaw inward the days she had too much on her hands when what needed to come through did or didn't show. she still shone, still made smooth her every rough edge, heel to brow. hugged my temples with slick hands, as if to say son be mine as if to say this i give you as if to say we are people color of good oak but we will not burn, we survive every fire without becoming ash.

New Bathing Suit BY TERRI KIRBY ERICKSON My friend is wearing her new black bathing suit. It came with the proper cups, made to fill with one breast and the memory of another—which is not to say emptiness— but the fullness that comes to us, with sacrifice. There is no one more alive than she is now, floating like a lotus or swimming, lap after lap, parting the turquoise, chlorine-scented water, her arms as sturdy as wooden paddles. And when she pulls herself from the pool, her new suit dripping—the pulse is so strong in her wrists and throat, a little bird outside [...]

No Images BY WILLIAM WARING CUNEY She does not know her beauty, she thinks her brown body has no glory. If she could dance naked under palm trees and see her image in the river, she would know. But there are no palm trees on the street, and dish water gives back no images.