Who is nothing, now, but a few fistfuls of ash. Not even that, since ashdissolves and is taken into the bodies of plants, or swept into the airon the wind. He’s so very fine he slips undetectedthrough a whale’s baleen, or a beetle’s gullet. He can even risethrough a stalk of grass with the upward…
If you forget me, remember the Italian icewe shared in Venice, leaning over a parapet.I believe it was sour apple. Now, you plucka single tulip from the pixelated blizzard,expecting from me, a Pavlovian response.In the absence of stimulus, my mind returnsto a paradisiacal state, where I am continuallypiqued, but not obligated to produce, or respond.There…
I remember the lure of seed, the outstretched hand begging me to nest beside him in bed during those first nights, the pecks, the treats, the ecstasy of new love swelling inside my breast right before everything changed. Some nights, it’s just once, a soft blow that stings for an instant, but doesn’t leave a mark. Some nights,…
It’s an art to suck the marrowfrom a bone, a womanwho lived through povertyonce said to me. My owndebt-to-income ratio drives meto drink, in the afternoon, andat night. The neon strobe lightsat our favorite club illuminateyour face, before it shuttersand closes off. In the end,happiness and meaningare irreconcilable differences,especially on the dance floor.I am passionate,…
He sits in the hallwayreading one of those magazinesabout famous military campaigns,all the grand deeds of valor and futility.He is a father, he is a son,jaws of a hungry animal.A storm passes to the west,cutting then restoring our slim cord of light.Hard rain on the pavement,heard but not seen.Zebra finches flicker in their cageat the…
In fiction, our winner is Anne de Marcken for her story “Foil.” Of her story, fiction judge Carmen Maria Machado said, “I couldn’t get enough of this story, its beauty and strangeness, the way it turned in on itself over and over again. So many moments and sentences quickened something inside me—gorgeous. I loved how…
Our daughter never puts her mind on displayLike a jewel too precious to own, or an animalToo wild to cage. At church she’s able to sit still,But then for weeks rattles off the names of poisonousSnakes and admonishes us that knowledge liesOnly outside of Creation. She stops playing in the yardBecause the tomatoes have turned…
So quiet you can hearthe Archer drawing his bow,the Moon powdering her face,the elegant axle of creation turning.A tiny iridescent frog appearedon the lip of the toilet bowl this morningas if waiting to receive us.He seemed to be the king of somethingyet made no protestas we ushered him outsidein a loose wad of tissueand set…
A chain of crushed nouns has upended my mind.It’s o.k. It’s all right, pretended my mind. A quick cut. A small nick. A surgical touch.O Penthidine, Tramadol, so splendid my mind! Ram drew back the string of King Janak’s great bow,Sita shot through the lifetimes and tended my mind. Monkeys and blossoms, a long metal…
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