There is a letter, hand written, faded,
smeared and crumpled up, tucked in a book,
glued beneath endpaper, snuggled
into a hollow oak, abandoned
in an ivy tree, encrypted in cypher   ...

We're excited to announce the publication of a new poetry collection Crossing the Waters (Nodin Press) by poetry editor Norita Dittberner-Jax.

Author Ron Arias (My Life as a Pencil, 2015) was recently announced as the winner of the 2016 Peace Corp Award for his fiction collection The Wetback and Other Stories (Arte Publico).  

You can read more about the award here.

And if you want to get a copy of the award winning book, you can buy it here.

safe in a moat of bone until
the invasion    ...
 

These two little girls are naked in the sun. One stands in the galvanized steel washtub, pouring water from a jug onto her sister’s shoulders. (They must be sisters: look at their ease with each other, and their similarly tangled curly hair.) The younger sister is crouched, bowing her head, allowing the water to flow over her skin. It is summer (of course). ...

In the center of the ring, you balance
a blue-skirted rider, her ruffled edge

the audience, blinking in a gust of lights.
Your trainer has taught you to bear barebacked,

mane a cirrus trail feathered by exhales.   ...

Later that morning after classes were cancelled,
I crossed the river, beneath a perfect sky,
going home to you.

We didn’t think that Al-Qaeda would reach us
in this college town,
this pin that the angels danced on.   ...

Even at four in the morning,
the crescent moon makes it so;
hanging low enough to touch. I pretend
not to have heard the trash tip over,
a bottle crash, a creaky gate swing
some way, but I know not which.  ...

last night the moon
drove me home
wheeled up the sky
grinning orange  ...

Struggle and splash
drag my eyes to the lakeshore.
Wing in water, log in lake ...