Chad Gusler

We The Village

In the days when our courthouse was being built, a mason—we don’t know who—came to our village in the night and inscribed a simple phrase on the building’s cornerstone: God’s will be done. We were, at first, outraged that someone had dared to soil our builder’s work, but over the course of generations, the mason’s […]

Rickey Laurentiis

Ghazal for Emmett Till

A poem in the ghazal form that elegizes Emmett Till, an African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after reportedly whistling at a white woman.

Luci Shaw

Holding on

In this poem, Luci Shaw evokes sharp images of winter, mystery, nihilism, and death.

Luke Hankins

Blood

I’ve drawn blood from others, in my childhood, even friends and kin— slit the heavy garment of skin or split sinus caves with the hard hammer of my fist. Very young, I cried if my sister hurt herself. Later, her hot blood slicked my hammering hand— that hurt was, more than hers, my own. And […]