By Jeff Hardin TREE The maple having died years ago while a walnutsprang up beside it, inches between them, nowcovered in vines, its own life strangled, the wholemisshapen form leaning south—I could havelong ago taken care of the clump, but…
UNDO THE FOLDS Rain’s syncopated beatdrums the tin roof.Wind pulls back the folds of nightand a voice runs through my head.It’s better to be welcoming,let it land like a birdthat sees it won’t be caught.A towhee swoops down for a…
Maxx Dempsey The First Conceit Eve discovered Adam had already bit the apple. He had eatenthe whole thing. This was the first lie man told woman.The surprise on his face at the taste of her offering was well put-on,but he…
Revelation by Sarah Starr Murphy Her mother named her Margaret, but the name slid off the infant’s greasy, vernix-coated skin. Everyone who loved the child called her Sweet One. Sweet One’s childhood was the rippling hush of barley in a…
by Naomi Thiers Song in the Dark Will you take all my youth, yank outevery pearl, leaving me stunned, mouthinga garbled message in the dark? How many friends of my heartare dead now, or their bold strokes dimmed(by you) to…
————————Cullen McMahon———————— THE MISSING LINK WHEN the doorbell rang, I was in my room pretending to put on a holiday sweater while actually playing my fifth consecutive hour of Super Mario Brothers. In those days I had a Nintendo with…
___________Jory Mickelson______________ The Annunciation We lived in a world mostlyunlike the world. We didn’t knowthe names of any growing thingamid the marble pillars & porticos& the obelisk of the angel’sruffling wings. In the ruinsof the oligarchs’ harvesting,their alpha & omega…
Editor’s Note: A Reconciliatory Approach by Albert Kapikian (photo by Rochelle Cohen) The new heresy is to assume good faith, but since Potomac Review comes out of a community college, where we have no principle of sorting, where there is,…
An Interview with John Rolfe Gardiner by Ellen Sullivan John Rolfe Gardiner spoke to Potomac Review from his home in rural Loudon County, Virginia, 50 miles northwest of Washington, DC, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The handsome,…
William Hawkins FAMILY’S GOT EVERYTHING A GOOD COUNTRY SONG NEEDS Look at you. They’re wiping the last bits of birth off you, two nurses in lilac scrubs weighing you, measuring you, lifting up your arms, your legs, poking, wiping—they’re absolutely…