The soul doesn’t worry
whether the heart is at its best,
or if your ears are dumb to sound
and your lips unwind a crooked smile.

It is the eyes that count--
Look at these sable-laced eyes
and you’ll know if I pump
dead or alive.
Look at my eyes
reflect
your eyes
in blur or sight.
Don’t blink away and
cover those storyteller lids.
Look me
in the eye
and negate the lies
that bleed from your mouth.
Our eyes, our eyes
Be alive
These windows
Be alive


Author Bio:
Kanika Aina Wright (K. A. Wright) has been writing ever since she could talk. She was always the student who wrote two paragraphs instead of the required one. As the only one in her family with a passion for writing, she is the go-to person when someone needs help with writing a cover letter, updating a resume, or revising a paper. Her writing is an inspirational collage of personal experience, nature, and the power of places and names. She daydreams ever so often about winning the lottery and building her dream house on a beautiful beach shore in Bermuda. K. A. Wright earned her BA degree in English Writing and her MFA degree Creative Writing. She’s received an Honorable Mention in the Children’s Fiction Category from Writer’s Digest, interned at W.W. Norton & Co., and has a published article in a one-of-a-kind online magazine for collegiate black women. Besides her constant rendezvous with writing, she enjoys traveling, star gazing, and skydiving.  

Chipping, crooked spines--
Peeling paint has never seemed
So weathered; a shallow shatter,
Stained by dark ink

Peeling paint has never seemed
So fragile to my hands and heart,
Stained by dark ink
And those corrosive fingerprints

So fragile to my hands and heart,
This dance on the edge of a wine glass
And those corrosive fingerprints,
On its crystal bowl

This dance on the edge of a wine glass--
We will never slip or stumble
On its crystal bowl.
Eyes bright, smiles sharp

We will never slip or stumble
Though our skin wears and tears
Eyes dull, smiles dull,
Chipping, crooked spines--
Curled, rest in red wine


Author Bio:
Magdalene Kennedy is a writer and visual artist from Nashville, TN.

I was engaged twice when I was fifteen – three times before I was nineteen. The first two times were to the same man, four years older than me. I was a sophomore in high school; he had graduated the year before. He lived in his parents’ basement and told me which clothes to wear and which kids to know. He kept trying to plan our wedding.

“Let’s fly to Antigua,” he said.

“My parents can’t afford it,” I replied.

“That’s the idea,” he said.

 He settled for local, but then I wouldn’t sit at the computer to type out the names of people to invite; I refused to pick colors, bridesmaids, menus, and the place and date remained undecided.  Some people will say of me that I do not know how to say no. I do; for me it just takes many more words and much more time.

When I was nineteen and engaged to another man, time ran out before I got through saying no. Everyone kept asking if I was sure, and I wasn’t, but I kept saying yes. I really meant no. I know this was confusing for all involved, but it was finally straightened out eight months after I married him – when I kicked him out.


Author Bio:
Katie Elizabeth Holiday is interested in how nonlinear stories work. She writes craft essays, short stories, and memoir. Having growing up in a whirlwind, Katie is writing a nonlinear memoir about loyalty, instability, and isolating, alienating love. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College and a BA in English from Wellesley College.

On the flat road up from the Marriott a woman paroxysms on
conceit like some updated parched Saturday Night
Live church lady inhaling self-righteous snake-oil.
Trees fenced off from the sidewalk, impotent
to give shade left late into autumn yield to their cages.
Lavender lace sweater tied around my waist, caliente October.
Antediluvian air made of uneasy transplanted woman walking, a thing
people do--pink communist flowers all the same to you,
ditto flowers gone floppy and brittle as calcium-
deficient fingernails. I needed too much from this air of dead
flowers--that they hold out promise or have the decency
to pretend and just pose. Sweetheart lady in the dull blue car, I 

would never go against the right of way, but you see, you saw
me, you see-only-me as you ram and I gasp and you ram harder and I fly
like a ballerina in adagio, a song crumpled out into the sun to scatter.
Darling cop, I pull my ear, sounds, gauche in their landing, break my drum.
What did you say? Oh, you don’t want my statement? My heart droops
on the rammer kept at bay. Days later, I spastically push the thin blue
line, baby steps, giant footprints way beyond the sound.
The only hand that can cease my mouth smokes, please stop, sweet hand.
The rotten Tulsa PD, foreign as chicken-fried steak, sings to me, Bitch!
No report. False report. Civic Center melee, a song that calls for me,
spasms while the thirsty blue-car lady is eating
through me. Listen to the nusach of the dying
unharnessed every night, lonely overdue hospital
bills spilling over my muscled lace arms.

Let me abscond now.
If I knew Tulsa would be this dismal, I would have gone sooner.
Unassigned land crawls through sinkholes they tell me drain rainwater.
I have no song for I came after the land-runs. Like flying
off the hood of a dull blue car, I have no more doubts about water
or Tulsa when early autumn sinks to late December, when the prison
wall gall stinks like dirty cops, when manure & forlorn sound erases
sight to the invisible world where scrims are the scene
and curtains of flight await.


Author Bio:
Nanette Rayman is the first winner of the Glass Woman Prize for writing. She has two poetry books published: Shana Linda, Pretty Pretty and Project: Butterflies from Foothills Publishing. Nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, she has published in The Worcester Review, The Berkeley Fiction Review, gargoyle, Pedestal, magnolia, Oranges & Sardines, up the staircase featured writer, Arsenic Lobster, Red Ochre Literature, Stirring’s Steamiest Six, carte blanche, Wilderness House Literary Review, deComp, grasslilmb, Arsenic Lobster, Prick of the Spindle, Carousel and Sugar House Review where her poem, One Potato, Two, was mentioned in Newpages.com. A story was included in DZANC Books Best of the Web 2010 and a poem, “Shoes” was included in Best of the Net Anthology 2007. Her poem, “hope” was nominated for Best of the Net Anthology by Glass Journal. A portion of a one act play she wrote was performed for her in Israel in 2013. She attended Circle in the Square Theatre School and the New School. She has performed in many off off Broadway shows.