Grass by Beth O'Brien

I hear the scrape of gravel and wish for only grass,

the sponginess of it reminding me that there are things

that are stepped on that don’t collapse or die, but duck,

bearing the weight of something a thousand times their own

and reemerge, arching their backs and swaying

because they are strong but not infallible —

like a blade.

---

Beth O’Brien is a English Literature graduate from the University of Birmingham. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Light Perception, was published by Wild Pressed Books in 2019, and her first full-length poetry collection, I Left the Room Burning, is out February 2021. In 2019, she was featured in the Black Pear Press, Pressed Flowers, anthology. She is the Editor of Mad Hatter Reviews and a reviewer for Riggwelter Press.

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Home by Jessa Forest

Home scratches at her shingles with tree branch fingers, pulls the air conditioning unit close to her grimy aluminum siding, and keens an empty song of mourning. We found her wandering the tornado snarled wild three months ago, starved and lonely. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself, you see? We fed her shards of dining room tables, kindling for the fireplace, and cast iron bathtubs clawed feet first. She was slow to recover so we gutted her plumbing, ripped out her nerves, and rewired the electricity. She let the water in every time it rained so we put a new roof on her and let her out for regular walks around the wolf pen. Let her mingle with the vultures, I said, let her feel useful and clean up the dead but no one wanted to listen. We found rot an mold in her corners, infused her insulation with antibiotics, and quarantined her for two weeks while she belched ladderback chairs, sofa cushions, wind chimes, and broken bookcases. She still has her bad days. After feeding time

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