botanical illustration of mandrake

A Quiet Root

We comb through hundreds of literary magazines to bring you one stellar poem or flash fiction piece every weekday.

“Poem in which I consider mosquito bites after Maureen’s memorial in the arboretum” by Denise Duhamel

Soon I sported red splotches like an ankle monitor telling me stay home and grieve. I scratched through the night, annoyed by death. I used cortisone cream on the outside, my own cortisol pumping inside as I thought of everything I needed to do besides feel sad.

Read it in Only Poems