Poetry
Nonfiction
Fiction
Cover Art
Headline, Here
Isabelle Shepherd
A child says, “I want all the days
to end so I can rest.” Already,
the problem we live with. Just another day
at the office. Two journalists shot live
on air; a viewer says they were
like real people. A language dies
every 14 days.
A grieving husband plants a ribbon
of sunflowers, tries to fall
in love again, but the women all feel
like the beach in winter, taste
like wine
left out overnight. We’re mining sunlight
these days, ain’t that something? I love
when the weatherman is wrong, when the rain
comes unbeckoned. A hummingbird
tries to drink from the chili peppers on my porch.
In India, a man jumps
from a building, doesn’t feel
the impact, walks away.
He dies within hours—internal bleeding.
Let’s not kid ourselves,
we’re all waiting for a break in traffic.
I’m talking nights spent chasing
dive bars, our past served up warm
with well liquor in a plastic cup.
Like a tap
running, then I thought, then I thought.
Isabelle Shepherd is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When she isn’t writing, she’s reporting the news for WHQR, the local public radio station. In her spare time, she battles cat brier in the backyard, expands her vinyl record collection, and paints her nails wild colors only to chip off the varnish the very next day. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Tinderbox, Connotation Press, and elsewhere.