Thank god it didn’t rain, everyone said And I said, yes, thank god Though what I really wanted Was that the bruised sky Would open up, and the droplets, Fat and milky, Fall That breathless day I kept myself Whole by imagining: The tulle clotted with wet, The inexpert pawing with Damp shirt corners and […]
Contributors 76
Peter Ramos: Watching Late-Night Hitchcock
And before we know it, the sexy lead is —Mother of God!—rubbed out. It turns out we don’t know exactly what we want. Rilke wrote that beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror. That’s fine for Germany, Prague or wherever. Not here. We like things clean: the boat flag snapping in the breeze, the […]
Sarah Heller: Tiny Elijah
No one is safe, not even from worms, like the one in my mozzarella sandwich. The worm in our relationship, come alive. A giant black bean until I noticed it blindly squirming, covered with oil from the pesto, a little tomato. Ribbed like my favorite shirt, but blessed with animated life. I looked again – […]
Thomas Devaney: Sonnet
You know all those sonnets the ones where I said, “I love you,” well This time, I mean it, this time I’m talking about Your curly hair soaked black from October’s frozen rain. You reading Milton and eating a BLT. Our up-front lies about being vegetarians, (Milton’s, “I can not praise a cloistered virtue”). More […]
Veronica Castrillón: Some Abundance
If I could carve out my own heart, I think I’d survive it. What I am now, something too close to involuntary. It does not admit me, doesn’t yield to release its secrets. It fastened itself to my self. I have a mane, my nostrils flare. Some kind of remainder: But I am the human […]
Keetje Kuipers: Restlessness
Another afternoon. The mail, a pile of credit card offers I rip in two and dump in the bin. As a child, I stood at the edge of Lake Michigan and imagined a future as wide as those shores. Now, I drive my old station wagon across town to my best friend’s house where there […]