doom eager * because one of us took a spike to the lung a minivan to the chest hit the beach with his heart to say nothing of the one whose only breath was broken water because I believe the hand, the wound, the moon is how I show you where I fell through the […]
Issue 103
Karl Meade: Christmas break
The earth heaves, the ice cleaves. Erosion cuts the heart from every stone, while every night I watch you drive your family past a starving glacier, turn from a truck laden with salt. You head off the head on, take the bumper to the heart, leave your family straining your lungs’ last words from the […]
Kristi Maxwell: Pray
It’s consensual—don’t worry—the garden getting fucked by rain. We had all asked for it, begged for it, prayed. And, after, again: may “grow” not be lost as a verb. The storm was an unethical doctor, sharing with us the sky’s own ephemeral x-ray. We needed to see it. We needed to project our own bones […]
Kristi Maxwell: Glance
You can put your hand on a familiar tree and say, “hello, tree,” and claim your tear as the sap of you, desperate to be identified as tree-like, seasoned, with little thought of not lasting through the year, the decade, the decades. We are not fossils—we are not still enough to become this land’s keepsakes. […]
Kristi Maxwell: Swarm
Nothing is sleeping near me. The swarm is daylight wadding up the dark construction paper of night. The swarm is pointillist, is paint-by-numbers moved before drying. Continuous drip. Swarms remind me of poets and my country folk announcing on a hot day their assessment: ‘s’warm. The last swarm I saw was of locusts, duh, charring […]
Hillary Adler: Letter to Erika from a Bench on Christopher St
I’m hungover today Erika this Big Gay Ice Cream isn’t doing anything good for me really I’ve gagged twice but spent $10 on a single cone so why throw it away what a waste it’s pride in the city & there’s glitter everywhere on the streets even in my bra there was no pride growing […]