Mud Season ReviewInspo Obituaries The year before he died, my father would send them to me, casually, the way one might pass along a recipe, little strips of newsprint snipped from his local paper and slipped in an envelope, or else hyperlinks copied from a funeral home’s website and pasted into the body of an email. Sometimes […]
Artwork by Nicole Sylvia Javorsky
Having Severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder is Crippling Me into Agoraphobia He leaves to walk the dog: a mundane task I imagine him shanked prison-style. Dog kicked or taken. I see a Dodge Charger run him over like Death Race 3000 for points. Mangled body flattened as if steamrolled. Dog whimpering, tongue lapping a bloodied disfigured […]
Night Migration Songbirds sit in the high branches and wait the whole afternoon for darkness to drop down like a coat sliding from a hanger. Some think they follow the stars, or magnetic pull from the poles. Others believe they avoid predators that roam the light sky. During peak migration, uncountable birds glide above while […]
You Wouldn’t Like It Here When Michael Jackson slides into my DMs asking for a bitcoin or two, I am sure that nothing sits on the other side of death. Sure, that Elvis is lying deep beneath the soil of Graceland. Sure that the dead don’t return. But once, after Kailey told me of […]
Artwork by Kate Garklavs
By Skylar Milkus Etymology I Between flashbacks I hear echoes of verb bend, from Old English bendan, confine, fetter, how he constrained my body to the corner where cinema wall kissed floor, my knees to carpet grime. Causative from bindan, to bind, as his mouth bound me to service every knot in his build. Proto-Germanic […]
Installation in 3 Rooms: Possibility & Enclosure I. Setting The room is grey and dim. A single spotlight provides instructions on where to look—the last place you would: the wall beside the door you came in. You must place yourself, shield your eyes against the bright, keep your own shadow tucked in, […]
Scientists Found Ripples in Space and Time And You Have to Buy Groceries We’ve just learned that the whole universe is humming around us. Now what? — Adam Frank, The Atlantic The grocery list grows and shrinks, pulsating. This week bananas, apples, tampons, extra hamburger, […]
Artwork by Jennifer Lange
SINKING SHIP Did you receive my invitation I picked you at random from a faded phone book I found in my mother’s attic next to some roller skates with a silver key I flipped through and there you were on page 522, my lucky number and my sister’s name is Amy too so it […]
Bone Content We disagree about the weight of wonder, how long it takes a body to disappear. Your father’s bones are not boxed in a cave, not fossilized. One midnight I said he was gone and marrow boiled the pot to stew. I promise to stay with you though you forget this vow half […]
Ode to Avocado My dear alligator pear, you fickle berry fruit. To bow to your every whim is pure devotion. Neither Dionysus nor Pomona could cherish your unpretentious grassy undertones so. When I peel your pebbled skin, green petals curl at my feet, and I exhume paper-husk flakes encasing the seed where carotenoids dwell. I […]
Dyspnea 1. HOME I breathe in the heavy summer, heavy with the scent of young jasmine blossoms, heavy with gunfire. 24th Street is the deep red of teenagers’ bodies. And my mother’s brother is one of them. It is the same red that flowers from the robes of monks face down in the rivers, […]
Orphaned i. I searched for your yellow bodies, your cup-shaped nest in which you tried to raise your babies – four, now scattered in the grass. A fifth, nearby, on the sidewalk; its body melting into the concrete. ii. You were new parents. Maybe not first-timers, but these chicks – not even two weeks old: […]
Purification An ode to kidneys / CW: Eating Disorder References If I’m being honest with myself – which I rarely am these days – every attempt to purify this body has destroyed my own temple. I have knelt at the front of a church and given my heart, […]
AT THE POETRY READING I read the poem about my mother to my mother’s face. In the car, on the interstate, in her 2006 Black Honda Pilot, she says you made me look horrible. She says what an undeserving child. She tells me to feel ashamed. We eat burgers and sea salt fries and drink […]
my lover is left-handed I read poems about death & think of my lover. Susan Browne wrote, “2500 left-handed people are killed annually from using right-handed products.”(1) My lover is left-handed. He could be one of them. The man already wears a CPAP, chokes nuggets of pills for diabetes at 38. Where’s the fairness in […]
Rhapsody of Icarus where Daedalus is an Orchardman He believed in miracles. He buried a mustard seed in the earth,& watered it every morning & night. For days. & months. &years. & from every seed, there wasa tree. Then, a grove. Then, gravity pulled fruits off their branches. Then, his son, off the branch of a healthy oak tree. The […]
last payphone in times square she came up to my eye. i asked to borrow a pen. people attend the removal of the last payphone in times square. i wrote her number in a note- book stained into lines. a power saw is used for the phone. eulogies are said. first time i called set […]
Sonia This is a poem about enlightenment. No, I lied. It’s probably just a poem about Sonia the concierge, but I’ll let you be the judge of that. Sonia is a mystery to me. One day I noticed she was wearing a silver necklace with a Sanskrit symbol on it. There were two swirled, rolling letters. Maybe OM. So Sonia does yoga, I thought, […]
Artwork by Britnie Walston
Few Exceptions Unaccustomed to my vacant life, I come slowlyuntetheredas if treading on birds. We are imperfectinstruments—I make up my mindto read Ulysses out of spite, again,and pay to spend time in a greenhouse,ironically.Under its ribs, which pushinto the sky,the mist falls across my face, hissing.The fronds of an overgrown cabbagecup my head from above,as […]
March Spring wets us with longing.Pale bloom, green fuzz. Mossgrowing in the cracks betweeneverything. Wearing the rainon our faces. This, right now,is the best part: the opening.Thin spray of pink light,I’m opening with you.I’m dew and I’m honey on breadand I’m singing along to the wordsI remember and humming thoseI long ago forgot. Nobody grievesthe […]
Breathing America Brown Dad flooded the house with English; it swept through the open front and back doors and trickled in through drafty windowsills. He stored it in the cabinets and refrigerator to pour out in the face of want. Sentences were broken: no English, no eat. Brown Dad understood a human body, like […]
Regarding Cairns In the beak year of bird, we observe bird— though some, fashioned by man, stone-birds not flying. So instead, I pray and gift such a peach-blossom morning to my brother, together with this […]
The Best in the Midwest There’s a town in Indiana called Liminality. I’ve never been. Liminality is the name above the bank, the name crowning the post office. The school, the police station, the church. The diner, famous for its hash browns, The Best in the Midwest! Letters arrive in Liminality from elsewhere and disappear. They […]
The Penitent Kneels in Rubble What he couldn’t say: That he’d been swallowed whole and couldn’t see a way out. That faith is a useless weapon against falling sky. The weight of heaven, too great. That he could see himself fading, was almost invisible in the mirror of Room 214 of the Grantmoor Motor Lodge. […]
