Tag: Issue 17

splice the remaining fragments             smell of vodka, basement room filled with debris, sharp pull of hands      zippers             teethed             apart with drunken care   what were we supposed to trust but collapsed filaments?   we embraced teenage stupidity          left ourselves a sticky residue         …

I crashed through clouds of insects on my riverside run and carried some away from their copulation   and the rising warmth of a sodden bank. Were they me, humans, I’d name the juggernaut of my body a natural disaster   … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

we averted our eyes from the blown-out tire by animal instinct, though it was not flesh, its singed inverted fibers waving invertebrate in the blackened wind. at the horse-themed mexican restaurant, i took 1 photo of my body in the mirror and my phone died. body my house my STORMIN PROUD PAPA my HANDFUL OF…

The dark brown doors to the playground are heavy behind our early arms. Without windows. We are used to holding small hands, so, once and a while, a teacher will help us push. To find. If we hide then maybe there is someone counting with their face in their hands / excited to see us.…

– after Nancy Reddy I’ve never longed for a longer winter, for those ghosts that bed down with geraniums, then float loose, like early pollen. My father and I flip pennies heads-up when they glisten in our paths to give others better luck. Everywhere, violets. Violets on the sofa, violets in the neighbor’s yard, violets…

She contained innumerable bodies. For ages, she had swallowed our deceased so neatly. With woven roots and grasses, she’d mended shut the million mouths we’d cut and dug into her skin. She’d rebirthed our departed into night-blooming jasmine, cats, avocado trees, snow, razor clams, and delicate blue moths. But hers was the kind of body…