The culvert preserves the stream, the path, the traffic of people crossing here, where tiny Lupine attract a certain species of butterfly, where early Cambrian sand can’t be farmed, not well. As kids, we called it sugar sand. As kids, we Adams soured on power: the water smells like water smells. Metallic tang, mud […]
Poetry 101
Reilly Cox: Widow Buries a Good Man
Rasha Alduwaisan: Diving for Pearls
My body is a sack of bones, feet bound, heavy with stone, I plunge and sand shatters without a sound, tongue- tied, this sea is breathless, rope & leather & lead, I grasp what I can see, rough shells, round shells, hollow shells, I mouth your name and something stirs – I pry myself […]
Rasha Alduwaisan: Agarwood
I dab oud on my wrists, my neck, the gap between my breasts, the way the Agar pours sap into its wounds, the tender scent filling the room. In Cambodia, they strip down trees to find it, the infected bark, the salve. My throat is dry from shouting, this […]
Rasha Alduwaisan: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
Marie, I drove to the landfill yesterday ㅤto find my wedding dress ㅤthe one I couldn’t bear to give to anyone else ㅤI know I shouldn’t have ㅤbut I followed the truck down the beach road and into the desert ㅤtried to plead at the gates you know ㅤthe way they do in the movies […]
July Westhale: American Literature
for Joey “the silver lamp,–the ravishment, –the wonder–the darkness,–loneliness, the fearful thunder” John Keats There’s a billboard with the route 66’s version of June Cleaver, holding a pie underneath block letters HO-MADE PIES, which is how dry towns get their jollies, I guess. We buy coffee in cups so thin the joe […]