M. Anne Avera

Tall and handsome with a mind for finance, Bryce Martin quickly made a name for himself in the Louisiana real-estate

Woodland of the Fair Folk We were misled, through woods where boughs of pine ate starlight from the ground. Our

A Hymn to the Mother-Sire What hand first stirr’d the calculus of clay, and bade the mineral think, the

Sonnet for a Gravestone Not for nothing would I kiss your chloral corpse, grandmother—panic-flung near Fresh Kills (before that

Some of you have been with The Dread long enough to remember when this was a looser, less intentional space.

You might find such a claim disagreeable, but what I contend is this: there exists an interminable impermanence to human

we heard he was coming weeks before, when people in the village heard from relatives the other side of the

When Satan Smiles When slumber o’er-takes the steadfast state of worried wakefulness; when sleep comes silently and unshaken from

The attic bedroom was a pleasant enough place to sleep in fall and spring. Less so in summer and winter.

It started with the faucet. Not the one in the kitchen, the one in the bathroom—the one Anna had