After the Mastectomy for Terry When my waking mind became rimed solidit only allowed me memories in dreams like when I dreamed I was trying on new clothesin an enclosed cubicle in a high street shop and someone parted the cubicle curtain – the shock!How fast and inexpertly I tried to cover myself. How fast the relief when I saw it was you,no threat, but only a sense of comfort. I woke up knowing the threat of waking upis to be once more connected to the truth. The truth is you have died and I feel pain again.It jolts like a horse with a hot-headed rider. The weight inside me…

Buttons Trains tuck into the stationthen resuscitate with resilient cadence.These days unlikeother days you know are an anatomyof sound and weather. Clamor, advance. It is enough of a purpose to move through—to concentrate on moist earth odors.Rain at the gate. Leavesdive from trees. Ringing bells. Inside white rooms insiston accurate measuremoving to proof. The doors are alllocked in this ongoing sequence. So you are loose on the path.The harbor licks the road, rolling up and along.Even as the fog flings out, ducks frock. Men fish in morning orange, thigh-deep,the rods continual. How finethe line until it tarps. Red-berried groundcherry buttons its coat.The sky is wild as goats.It is as if…

Strawberry I shot my grandmother, almostat the cabin in Strawberry,snow kissing its chestnut slatsand white scalloped trim.Two-year-old me upstairs, alonein the slanted bedroom,which smells like painted firewood.I inspect drawers and finda comb, a pencil, a .45I level the barrel at the dooras Gran appears,her mouth a perfect O.     Sandra Hosking is a Pushcart-nominated poet, playwright, and photographer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in Red Ogre Review, The Elevation Review, Havik, Black Lion Review, and more. She holds M.F.A. degrees in theatre and creative writing.

Ode: Age Spots On suspended platforms          outside the apartment building across the street, masons           move about in an order seemingly chosen by chance.           Two to a platform, they break open patchy sections of brick           and then mortar in replacements, the new bricks a tad darker—           haphazard but thorough work proceeding as if there’s no plan           to finish.                       Isn’t that how skin is— cells replaced by new ones      …

The Dunes When I told him of the deer skull,he leaned in, so I took him backthrough where I’d been exploringunder oaks and down game trails to the dunes where it was—the single vertebra and the eyelessthing, egg-like and bleached by the sun,its broken jaw a couple hands away, and I watched him lift it from the sandto wrap as a relic and nest in his sackto carry home until he found enough bonesfor his art, and although I never knew its weight, I try to remember how it felt,the deep light over that sea, the whitebowl embalmed in the bag, as I put my handto the head of my…

Edith And Lot’s wife did look back….and I love her for that, because it was so human.Kurt Vonnegut What do you remember? the stench of burning hair               a chlorine yellow hazedisobedience of the screen doorslam of my backward glance Stand closer      listen to the rasp of my breathas I become salt            tastethe mineral of my fingertipscrystals sharp on your tongue It’s not too late to turn back watch me bid farewell              to my daughterstheir bright bodies twistingin the eucalyptus I am here with the linens still dampmy palms frayed lace   …

Anecdote The first year, students would come up to mebetween class while we all stood outside the little kindergarten that had been convertedinto the English faculty in the hinterlands of the former Soviet Union and say, Mr. Kurt,tell us please an anecdote. Life until then hadn’t lent itself to Chekhov, let alone Turgenevor Tolstoy, but I’d lived a slew of anecdotes. The students would lean in close and laughat the end, glancing at one another, one maybe balling his hand in a fist and clipping a neighboron the shoulder, before they would thank me and shuffle back through unlit halls paintedwith ducks and dancing bears to their next class. My…

Tidepool: Elegy 1. Waves fall into themselves all night long. I dream ofinsomniac children playing at the water’s edge, darkcircles under their eyes – so many unseen deathsbattering against their sleep. 2. Grim skies, grey, no shadows, rain-pocked sand. I listento sea water slip down rock. Drops hit the surface of atidepool. I am there for the moment when the surfaceclears: body and thoughts, still. 3. The drop moves through the seams of tendon, networksof blood, marrow, into a cave without light, arrivesat a cache of smooth black stones placed in a circle bygrief. 4. A sculpin with huge black eyes takes in the worldfrom the safety of a red…

My Body My body smells old Leaves overturned and wet Bark peeling down to limb Wine dried in tumblers left on the counter Sunday papers disintegrating in the rain   Barbara Miner holds the position of tenured Professor and Chair in the Department of Art, at the University of Toledo, in Toledo, OH. Her mixed media sculptures, installation works, paintings, and writings, informed by the nexus of human/nature iteraction, and the practice of meditative repetition, have been exhibited nationally (Maine to California) and internationally (Sweden and Poland) in over 107 exhibitions.

Observer’s Paradox When I was eight I watched my cousinget hit by lightning.                                   It felt likeI made it happen.Lightning                  drew on him: Lichtenberg figuresthe startling henna, a map of his veins. Everyone who looked at himcould see his blood,                  could follow where it went. If people pray it makes me                           uneasy, but the statueof the virgin of Guadalupewith plastic flowers             …