Porter in Martin, KY #91 (Hyperreality)

Did the serpent in the garden flood the forest or fertilize the soil? I've seen miracles in muddied water. An old lumbering beast rotting in a shallow pond in the cat tails, thrushes making a nest in his hair. Children crawl from his stomach covered in gore to look for mercy and love in a lost and forsaken world.

Anna Lee in Cayce, South Carolina #90 (Transcendence)

Is that a fire? I set one of those. It has left my bruised vessel in ruin and scorched my broken body. I don't want to feel better. I'm not afraid of the little death that is all of ours to share if we strive to claim the destruction that will be our salvation.

Willy in Lafeyette, Louisiana #89 (Sorrow)

Frost and weeds arriving to strangle and lacerate the flowers. The frailty and innocence of Bellworts fills me with horror and a kind of somber awe. Man's estate.

Katherine in Rockville, MD #88 (Sexuality)

Hands between her legs. Out bodies throbbing with love. I lick and kiss her thighs while she pinches my erect nipples. She turns me toward the walls of the cave and claws my back with her jagged nails. These are the kind of things I dream of. The fall of man.

Angela in Elizabeth, OH #87 (Sorrow)

Water flowin toward my loss. My girl on the banks of Storm's Creek after a heavy rain. Wonder if she saw her reflection in that muddy water? I was yellin at her from across the yard while I was weedin the garden “Get away from that Crick, girl; you're like to get kilt” and as I was yellin I saw her lean over too far and get pult into that surgin creek. They found her face down and on the shores of the lake with algae and frogs eggs in her hair and spirit delivered from this world.

Kelly in Teays Valley, WV #86 (Dreams)

I had a dream last night about an aged preacher trying to plant a garden in a cemetery in Mexico; tearing into the barren desert floor with a rusted pitchfork. The sky was shuddering like film that was decaying and the preacher sat down on a tombstone. He started speaking in a grave, moving Southern dialect but I forgot most of what he told me. The last thing I can remember him saying before I woke up shook me in a profound way: “Be the announcement of God's love.” I woke up feeling incapable of doing that.

Larry in Kitts Hill, OH #85 (Self Evaluation)

You know that dog that's blind in one eye, always on Rosewood Drive eating trash? That's me. Wandering this world without vision or meaning, just trying to not get killed.