Issue 1

I let fifteen years lapse before returning to Michoacán, my ancestral homeland. The last time I had seen my mother’s parents, I was thirty …

It seems the cold, dark winter has ended. Today, finally, it felt like spring. I sat on a park bench waiting for something to happen and, like always, something did …

Tonight, whenever I’m too parched / to mouth it, / I have not belonged to you: / province of hardening bandwidth, inbound call …

“Hold my feet to the fire, guys.” He gives a small laugh to soften the words though there is nothing funny about what he is asking …

I don’t believe in luck though I find myself saying / that’s lucky as a filler for silence or merely / that’s that …

Dry things catch fire more quickly: less water to vaporize before the flames can do their work. Snake skin coils into papery curls, chars into powder …

Bad enough that at night nature conspires against us, do not need it from the milk pails. Early morning still dark in the barn tripping on milk pails …

Later she would come to believe that her eldest son’s long descent into lawlessness was due to nothing more or less than his own survival …

In the past, everybody had a farm. You had to eat, you had to farm. Oh, yes, lawyers and adding-machine people abounded in every small town …

And she left her three children / eating sugar cereal in front of the television, / and at 85 mph burned along the winter highway, / the many improvident miles …

These days I’ve taken to agreeing with everyone, / I agreed my cousin shouldn’t have worn / orange to her father’s wedding. I’d rather see it shorn …