Aurora Shimshak

•Brute Blood

The poem begins with a literal bang, reminiscent of an airstrike—“A sudden blow: . . . ” That first phrase of William Butler Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” is followed by a quatrain-long sentence describing how Zeus, in the form of a swan,…

From the Editor – Issue 25

•Letters to a Friend

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the U. S. Postal Service. Sending and receiving letters is one of the things I love most. Here at Ecotone we’re about to have one more reason for writing letters, and for going out with hope to check our mailboxes.

Out of Place – Issue 25

•Montaigne in the Age of Trump

David Gessner

1. Awakening My neighbor across the marsh keeps on hammering. There is a new president this morning, my daughter can’t stop crying, and still my neighbor hammers on. It is possible this is celebratory hammering.

Poetry – Issue 24

•Doppelgangbanger

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Fox Valley Mall, technically in Aurora, attracts slightly / rougher edges—ya mans right here, stoners, guapo boys / and black.

From the Editor – Issue 24

•The Craft of Editing

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

How do editors learn to edit? It’s a question I think about a lot. And it includes an assumption I fear is threatened in these lean times, as publishers lay off staff and streamline processes: editing is a craft.

Fiction – Issue 24

The Lineman

Jill McCorkle

I know people are amazed by all the wireless invisible stuff, and so am I, but I have to say I never got over being in awe of the real honest-to-God wires stretching across this country and around the world, those we can see and tend, those that can drop and jerk around like a snake, light up a mud puddle and fry the fragile life out of anybody.

Out of Place – Issue 24

•Letter to an Apprentice

David Gessner

I am writing to you at the beginning of something. As one who has been through many beginnings, some more successful than others, I can confirm something you may be starting to suspect: there is nothing harder than beginning. The…

Poem in a Landscape – Issue 22

Reading Plato

Rick Barot

I think about the mornings it saved me to look at the hearts penknifed on the windows of the bus, or at the initials scratched into the plastic partition, in front of which a cabbie went on about bread his…