An independent literary press featuring poetry and short fiction at the confluence of Charles Simic and Ray Bradbury. We publish books and a periodic digital magazine, Hidden Peak Review.
“I felt myself on the edge of the world;
peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”
— H. P. LOVECRAFT
Spotlight
El Cardón
Do not give me roses: delicate tissue-thin skin withering where strewn down wedding aisles. Petal promises arranged in crystal vases. The ferocious heat of me with you too easily swallows scarlett blooms. Give me instead a cactus. A fearless behemoth,…
Homecoming King
It takes a few seconds to train spiders to travel in my suitcase. I trust the bent legs will protect me from ancestral pollens, suggest a design for my next tattoo. I have faith piped in music will land this…
And I Never Stopped Dreaming
You dropped your backpack In my kitchen. Everything Spilled out and scattered Across the linoleum: Pencils, ChapStick, Candy wrappers And a dog-eared copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. These became the contents …
What Do I Wear to My Friend’s Funeral?
I DIDN’T REPLY to Jacob’s last text message to me, but I did show up to his funeral. I’d spent the entire morning deciding what to wear. A lot of the clothes that I once wore don’t quite fit me…
Inflation Is A Flagrant One
I’m burning twenties like a kid with ants in his pants and a magnifying glass. Memories of Hendrix in a rainbow shirt glance off the refrigerator magnets in a ricochet blaze of Saturday sun between seasonal showers. In each life…
Grandpa Mohr
Blindness did not deter him from shuffling every day down the path along the Canal at Buckeye Lake to Harry’s Bar for a few beers, white cane, a gift from the Lions Club, extended in front of him like a…
The Glass Slumber
Cryonics n. the process of freezing a body at the moment of its death with the hope that it will be brought to life at some future time. ~ The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary This definition was like a sick amen…
After the Virus, Royalty Came Back to Rule the Land
Sitting here at the dining room table sun bouncing and shifting through the curtains with sleep still left in the panes — wide-eyes gaze at Farview Park. Some Du-ragged, some hooded, sagging pants with creaseless Jordans Kings and Queens spring…
While Seeking to Understand Her Brother’s Death
My youngest daughter requests facts. Floral-printed cards litter the counter, attempting to temper our loss with calligraphy in pastel hues. Grief is a journey, curved letters proclaim. But no map exists for this dark forest. No charted stars beckon from…
I Wake Up Dreaming, Undress Myself
I wake up dreaming, undress myself to go out into the world. Cars are being driven in the ditches; the roads are all empty. On the sidewalks, dogs are walking their owners on a short leash, and a thoughtful bee…
Alternate Hauntings
I worry about: gardeners spading through the worm’s afterlife ghost geese tormenting the park’s clairvoyant toddlers daffodils mown down, lingering to announce spring the after-death hive-mind of army ants a river of unfinished business the size of the world —…
Close Encounters
Extraterrestrials — we chart the topographies of feeling. We abducted grief, poked and prodded: found nocturnes, saline solutions, saxophones thrown through broken windows. The cartography shifts. Lost, we erase memory. Light-years distant from even ourselves, we miss most the missing…
Quits
Let’s take a break. Let’s take five. No, seven, in honor of the seventh day. No, in honor of the cigarette, which takes exactly seven minutes to smoke all the way down. Let’s call it quits. Let’s take a liquid…
One Week After
The flowers have wilted now. Burnt orange half moon pistils burst forth from a sea of darkening, lily white. Amid the detritus living on the kitchen counter: discarded dirty socks, molding dish sponge, half-empty casserole pan, unsigned school assignments, sits…
Southbound Amtrack
As the train sends ripples into the Hudson, I imagine bloodwood carvings awakening beneath the surface to be baptized in mud, to commune with an assembly of tadpoles. I think of the components of a river when I am traveling,…
A Dead Thing
IT IS A HUMID NIGHT in D.C. and the air feels clotted and dense, like it’s on the verge of hemorrhaging outside instead of raining. It’s sick air, damp and shameless; the perfect conditions for reminiscing. I slow my pace…
Changing Seasons
The forest is carpeted with October. The ochre, red, and gold hold an old dog firm as he limps through the dry crackling. Horse tails swat at the last of the flies, and the geese pond hop across the county.…
Wolf Mountain Center, Central New York
The wolves of Smyrna howl from their refuge to their timber kin by the Boundary Waters, to the coyotes beyond the fencing, to the yellow labs at the autobody shop. We humans hear it and long to answer the call…
The Prophecy
Because I’m the seer deep within the tower, preferring the whip to the prayer cords, the rough wool & hard stone to the downy pillow, it’s too easy to hear it from you, such prophecies of who I am &…
fans over knobs
She was right, you do resemble the moon. A vision. Dim light The opening of a mouth, a door, a soul I reach my fingers through your corridors “Am I interrupting?” It’s a delicate space, pink rooms filled with glass…
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