Did you know that a leech isn’t felt by the hairs of your leg because it spits anesthetic when making its incision? And the host gets a dose of anticoagulant to keep blood flowing, stimulating circulation… Sometimes when you kiss me, digging your heels into the Earth, licking the spit off my face, serenading the […]
Poetry 89
Joddy Murray: Sentinel
Small stones in a cobalt bird feeder— two eyes in a sanguine café, each pushing each right and forward, the scratch of heavy clouds, heavy air, and haloed light, one per light pole. Eyes digging as they scan—scarring, shoveling as they go like a claw-loader picking out its own oil-drenched soil, its own footing, and […]
H.M. Merjian: Father Phantom
“I desperately tried to shake him off, but the monster pressed his thighs tighter and tighter around my throat until I could no longer breathe.” Sinbad: “Thousand and One Nights” When I grew older the other creature appeared, The second father formed, a putrid pisachee He carried on his back, its nails knived into his […]
H.M. Merjian: Aleppo: 1915
“You eat the eyes first. Do you understand?” In the large dish a boiled lamb’s head In broth, “patcha” —lamb’s head soup. The feast of Easter; Paschal Anatolia. I dreaded the festival of the head, This ritual of eating the lamb of god, Leaving what simple sins my childhood Offered, the mouth, the hot white […]
Lisa McCool-Grime: Daphne’s Razor
Daphne used the razor to sculpt her pubic hair into hearts and arrowheads pointing down or on special occasions a star, or stars and stripes, or The Star hanging above the nativity. For Halloween a scaredy cat, even though I rolled my eyes. For my birthday, a peacock and rivers, my red fingernails like coho […]
Judith Ann Levison: Slipping Through a Life
The walk-in closet has its say of early dates Gone awry with a tiny brown silk, its column Shrivels upon the floor to reveal the transparencies Of violet, white veins on hands reaching for After dinner drinks, crackers with olive placed hats You later sit wilted upon wrinkled sheets, Unalarmed your thin straps keep falling […]