Submit

show us your work

Subscribe

to the publication

ProForma

enter contest

Submit

show us your work

Subscribe

to the publication

ProForma

enter contest

POETRY

Origin Story

Paul Christiansen

A current-tumbled stone,
the story’s been told so many times, it’s
smoothed of all its corners.

Âu Cơ and Lạc Long Quân.
She the beautiful mountain fairy,
he the powerful water dragon.

A monster pounced as she traveled.
He rescued her, ushering in familiar tropes – 
lust, love, marriage, family.

In the same way time dulls a story,
it sedates a romance; he didn’t want
to leave his coasts, she longed for her peaks.

They say it was the world’s first amicable divorce.
She took half their 100 children to the highlands, 
he kept half on the beaches. 

This is the origin of the Vietnamese people.
But what’s been lost in the retellings? The pang 
she feels in her gut when crossing riverbeds?

How he must resist the urge to stomp
each sandcastle their children build
that resembles a cliff?

Do they both gaze into the sky,
sighing at the sight of wind
that whisks clouds apart

as it slips untethered across the earth?
Would they trade everything for
such unattachment?

Paul Christiansen received his BA at St. Olaf College and his MFA at Florida International University. He is the author of Beneath Saigon’s Chò Nâu (Phương Nam Publishing House), a bilingual collection of essays and the co-editor of A Rainy Night in the City (Hanoi Publishing House), a bilingual anthology of short stories. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Best New Poets, Pleiades, Quarter After Eight, Threepenny Review, Zone Three and elsewhere. A former Fulbright Fellow, he currently resides in Saigon and works as content director for Saigoneer.
Artwork by Rebecca Pyle

Artwork, essays, poetry, and fiction by Rebecca Pyle have appeared or will soon magically appear in Gris-Gris, Gulf Stream, Rappahannock Review, Cream City Review, Terrain, Penn Review, Honest Ulsterman, and in a yet-unnamed anthology to be published in Australia by Grattan Street Press. Rebecca was a lit and writing and art (see rebeccapyleartist.com) student, once upon a time, and now lives amid many mountains in Utah.

More Poetry

Issue 15

Alive in Ohio

Abby Wheeler lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a 2021 finalist for the Great Midwest Writing Contest, and has work published or forthcoming in SWWIM, The Free State Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, In the Roots, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Read More »
Issue 15

Confessional to Famous Iranian Pop Singer Dariush II

Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.

Read More »
Issue 15

beach house

Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the novel Paulina & Fran, the short story collection Pee On Water, and the poetry books MOODS and HAIRDO. Glaser studied painting at RISD and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Umass-Amherst. In 2017, she was on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. Her fiction has been anthologized in New American Stories. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA.

Read More »

More Poetry

Alive in Ohio

Abby Wheeler lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a 2021 finalist for the Great Midwest Writing Contest, and has work published or forthcoming in SWWIM, The Free State Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, In the Roots, is available from Finishing Line Press.

Read More »

Confessional to Famous Iranian Pop Singer Dariush II

Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.

Read More »

beach house

Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the novel Paulina & Fran, the short story collection Pee On Water, and the poetry books MOODS and HAIRDO. Glaser studied painting at RISD and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Umass-Amherst. In 2017, she was on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. Her fiction has been anthologized in New American Stories. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA.

Read More »

Niceville

Collin Callahan was born in Illinois. His first collection of poetry, Thunderbird Inn, won the 2022 Minds on Fire Open Prize. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, SLICE, Cream City Review, Hobart, Carve Magazine, Witness, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Collin holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas—where he was awarded the 2017 Walton Family Fellowship in Poetry—and is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He is the recipient of the 2021 Bat City Review Editors’ Prize in poetry.

Read More »