“The novel I finished reading/last night/in my system like a drug,/a hangover, numbing, dulling,/but for something dark, unseen,/some residue, some fated turn./I have outlived myself,/what now?”—Patricia Waters Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE…

“It’s as if our home yearns to satisfy us, although lately dinner’s been perfunctory and the dusting lackluster. In this, we sense our home’s human ambition, its human distraction. Tonight, we will loan…

“I soaked up like a sponge/my mother’s Thirties ethic: Throw away/nothing! Yet somehow, out of the blue,/here you are, a spendthrift, prodigal, clean/break with your ancestral line, a brush/with risk and danger.”—Maryann Corbett…

“We often hear the word quirky applied to contemporary poets (just glance at five random blurbs, you’re sure to find quirky), but perhaps no one writing today inhabits the word quite as fully…

“Love is strange and calls me to stranger things/When I was young I thought that I’d know why./I’ve drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.”—Luke Hankins Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South…

“There were three girls jumping/double dutch on the blacktop below/him, and he looked down because/even their voices sounded nimble.”—Charlotte Matthews Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—December 2017—Charlotte Matthews’ most recent…

“Write what you know, my first teachers suggested. But I have never been a big fan of reality. Reality feels like sandpaper on my skin. Sometimes I think I would love to escape…

  “So they all went to get their digging spoons, and set to work, the eldest with his sterling silver baby spoon from very long ago; the middle child with her sea-shell-shaped sugar…

“When I was in Timişoara, Romania, I discovered these beautiful, tall churches made of mud and straw with exaggeratedly steep roofs. The churches, however, were so small inside they were almost of no…

“. . . and you sitting behind the wheel/turned to me and said:/‘It’s like slicing butter in heaven.’”—Malena Mörling Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—June 2017—“How Wondrous Strange It Was…