Author: Qu Literary Magazine

When it was time, the old woman lay down on the forest floor. She furred with moss; she became the ages of the trees. Each year, new shawls of orange leaves, flowing gowns of snow. She lay waiting still. In all her life, never a sound had crossed through her lips. She spent her days…

no one exists   behind the lens     no one but another body standing in darkness   1950s streets   they called the beautiful women transvestites   words hadn’t changed   yet.   only in the dark would their faces stare out   like models only not.   I am drawn into her eyes    they tell me    love is transformation…

“Be very quiet,” advised the Duke, “for it goes without saying.” The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster Old poet wakes to the fable of himself. More snow has fallen and the trees are white. Enter a fox. Now he will watch all day to see what else. In a far different county on the margin or…

Whenever a man follows me too close, I think of my Nana scrubbing out my father’s mouth with clementine soap, like a mudslide in frosted tip southern California, just after the Ham Man stopped by on Christmas Eve to deliver their annual lump of cinnamon crusted gorgeous fat— how when anonymous footsteps don’t pass me…

We should formulate a solution. Perhaps an immaculate contraption to reverse the heartbreak, to unflatten the little rabbit. The tread mixed with red is not a good match for the fur. Your conviction (gulp) that you will endure a going-to-church accident is not unfounded. A little joggle should free you from the muck … [Click…

A man collapses sideways into his wife’s arms, his ridiculous hat falling. But she is not there to catch him. She has already departed for the field of blackbirds. Oak leaves tremble. Lime blossoms drift over the water. Six centuries pass by unnoticed. The man’s house stands vacant, … [Click here to purchase a copy…

Till age twelve, I fear fire like a bear come from the trees to maul me. I shy away from patchouli incense left smoldering by my hippy mother, yahrzeit candles Bubby and Zaidy burn for their dead. Till Bubby huffs in frustration, Don’t hate the beast for its nature, and passes me a matchbox—her twisted…

To her question about childhood, he shrugged. Couldn’t figure out how to say it. As a boy, he had tried the choir and quit. Served at the altar for a single summer and fall. Once, he pilfered church wine and rubbed it across a small wound to feel for Jesus. He had studied the Stations…