In the study Walt’s playing Wagner not Grieg, the air is white lilac. Yesterday I cut two kinds of white flower, white fragrance, and brought them into the house: lily of the valley, lilac. The study smells of lilac, the dining room lily of the valley, but in the kitchen, the back door opened to […]
Contributors 75
Lindsey Gosma: Please Pass the Panacea
The last time I went to the meat market, to ask the butcher for a rack of llama he said to me, “You must be one sick man.” “Precisely,” I said and began to explain how llama are known for their analgesic properties, how much research has been devoted to the study of amputees who […]
Anne Boyer: Some Notes on Safety
Phosphorous (glo-ri-ous) the self hocks its first demand: don’t make me sing about this lump! In the hands of the skilled, the dull, the handless, handled, the handy picking at the plaster gape of the wall: that first intention Add acid (I-said) to water. Visor. Rubber gloves. Plastic apron. Necessary and hermetic To gnaw lungs, […]
Paul Bissa: Zolok, the Eater of Glass
It’s the kind of scene you’d expect to find in the stomach of a porcelain doll— molten sand blown out to vases, a nub of hamburger helper, a splash of digestive juice. But it’s all old hat to Zoloch. He grinds up year old coke bottles and sprinkles them on oatmeal, savors the flavorful scratchmarks […]
Stephanie Anderson: From The Archivist’s Log of Interpersonal Experiments
Thumb-Wrestling the Bureaucrat The only time I’ve won at sport, ever. We writhe, wince and I take home the dimes. He simply has no head for the small joust. Bickering with the Kiln-Stoker Fine, I know nothing of real heat and my clothes aren’t covered in coal-dust. But sometimes a girl needs to amble in […]
Samuel Amadon: Tourists
The poet told me she took a train through my state & that Connecticut was beautiful. She told me she loved the Cross on the hill over Bridgeport & I told her that she meant Waterbury, but she said it didn’t matter, it had to be the sound of Bridgeport, which was a real crock. […]