Despite opening all the windows; despite sitting at opposite ends of a long couch; despite wearing face shields, masks, and latex gloves; I can still smell the alcohol in my date’s hand sanitizer. While we two strangers struggle with this biographical back-and-forth, I can’t stop staring at you: sky-blue surgical mask. Rough three-day scruff rubs […]
Poetry 102
Brittany Mishra: The Living
A home is a home to stay at home. Brick and mortar. Carpets, wood, varnish, and vinyl. We lounge on our floors, cradle our heads in our hands, and look up at the popcorn ceilings as if we are relaxing in blue grass. We have time to discover the images of our desires in the […]
Jennifer Martelli: Succulent
I want to fill a bay window with fifteen jade plants in terra cotta pots until they grow thick and knotted as snakes tangling in the hair of a woman raped by a god and punished by a woman. I want to tease rubbery pearl beads of asterids into a rosary string, finger them, pray […]
Katharyn Howd Machan: Smelling of Ginger
Linda Jaffe: Elegy for a Misfit
James Harms: Make Muffins
Well, you could make muffins, I guess, from the contents of your medicine cabinet. No, don’t do that. But stay inside, it’s safer in here— the air is swarming out there, heavy with breath: Listen! You can hear the tick-tick of it, the thick air against the windows. Or clean your stove, or eat something, […]