The food is cold and so his mind drifts
a blue fin angling toward deeper water
the sky’s thin music
like a woman’s singing
from the other side of a wall
and so he tongues that night’s gristle
he can spit it out later
he can cover it up like a cat
his heart throbbing
muscular butterfly among the marigolds
though now he nods/speaks little
to the swagged faces
animal/vinegar stink of a sister
a brother’s waxen scalp
his parents higher up
with their bronzed teeth and wrecked liquors
he waits for the shove-off into dusk
when he can drag the short blade
through woven bark
the initial or full name signifying possession
or un-thought-through greed
then the longer blade pinched open
for deeper cutting
sometimes so quickly
accidentally
the skin, even the shirt tails
are blurred with bloody moth-prints
though he sometimes draws it
on purpose, a dare
over a thigh or forearm’s bunched skin
so he can follow each layer’s snap, release
a fraying rope inside the dermis
and sense something give
the whole elegant structure collapsing
a girl’s hard breathing beside him (her turn next)
as blood oozes from the hardly bleeding wound
spit rubbed in to make this tribal
the names still un-carved
the witness still to be carved
the girl’s arm laid out in a stench of creosote
for eternity is a steel blade in a child’s hand
Suzanne Strempek Shea is the author of twelve books, the first four of which were novels set in her native Polish America that led to her being featured in national and international media, including twice on NBC’s Today; on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, NPR and Voice of America; and in major newspapers and magazines in both the United States and Poland.
Awards for her books include the New England Book Award and the Oskar Halecki Prize. Her journalism was shortlisted for the Penney-Missouri Awards, and her creative writing was recognized in Best American Fiction. Her freelance journalism and fiction has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Yankee, The Bark, Golf World, The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Brevity, Down East, Organic Style and ESPN the Magazine.
Suzanne co-directs the annual Dingle Writers’ Workshop in Dingle, Ireland, and the annual Iota Short Forms Writing Conference on the easternmost coast of Maine. She’s taught in MFA programs at the University of Southern Maine, Emerson College and the University of South Florida, and at conferences through the United States and in Ireland. She lives in Howth, Ireland.
Karen Sherk Chio (she/her) earned an MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans, where she was the winner of the 2025 Andrea Saunders Gereighty/ Academy of American Poets Award, the 2025 Maxine and Joseph Cassin Prize for Poetry Thesis, and the 2023 Vassar Miller Poetry Award. She brings 25 years of professional experience leading and managing projects for non-profit organizations to the role of Editor-in-Chief, as well as experience as an associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine and West Trade Review. Her creative work has appeared in swamp pink, Salamander, CALYX Journal, and SmokeLong Quarterly, among others, and her critical work has been published by or is forthcoming from Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, and West Trade Review. Chio holds two Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of Connecticut and a Master of Public Health from Boston University.
Monica Jimenez is the senior culture & trends editor for Tufts University news and features and assistant editor of Tufts Magazine, and a community ed acting and playwriting instructor. Her work has appeared in publications including Ruminate Magazine and the Mini Plays Review, and her plays have been produced in festivals including the Boston Theater Marathon, Boston Slam Theater, and Short ’N Sweet Hollywood. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program and former co-editor-in-chief, fiction editor, and designer of the Stonecoast Review. She was an honorable mention for Ruminate Magazine’s William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and winner of the flash fiction contest at the Boskone sci-fi and fantasy convention.
