Muggy night— we can’t sleep. She gets out of bed to paint: scents of turpentine and Chanel No 5 roll me out of bed to write. We work in the same space drawn together by something funky on the radio—horns, piano, then Norah Jones. She reads over my shoulder, steals some words for her canvas, … Continue reading
Category Archives: Fall 2016
Madalena Castillo at the Feria de Sevilla–Tobi Alfier
She can draw a perfect cat’s eye without a mirror, her liner almost touching the waxy black of her hair, razor-parted and plastered down the middle, the dare of a crescent moon on each powdered cheek, explosive chrysanthemum at her nape, matching the flared ruffle of a dress she wears once a year. Nine at … Continue reading
For Myself–Katie Rejsek
I took my mind out for dinner It ditched after shitting in the bathroom Stupidly looking in a cup of microwave dinner water without mind without brains They say Hemingway splattered his like Van Gogh against the wall A coward’s art They are all afraid I do not want to want to die I am … Continue reading
Blog Post / Fall 2016 / Issues / Poetry / Poetry 2016
Binding the Strong Man–David Tuvell
Protagonists came, telltale sails on the horizon, and brought a map of a plot for the Hawaiians: an argument disguised as song, a margin account their brokers could negotiate. Each native sound a tax of luxury, they, cure by cure, began to incorporate. Immersion schools preserve their tapestry, and plainsong tourists love that old-time … Continue reading
1998, Twilight–David Tuvell
October, but no static, staccato, crinkle, crescendo. Tulips have long since chimed; an evergreen won’t lose its leaf. I watch the sun deflate with a hiss into the pond, sending ripples under green algae like the “S” vibration of a plucked guitar string—or waves on the skin of a beat drum (or maybe an electron’s … Continue reading
Fall 2016 / Issues / Poetry / Poetry 2016 / Volume 47
Signals/Bottles–John Thornburg
for Carol when you go, leave the stones unturned and stoic on the lawn laugh the leaves dry and tune to stars obscured by snow, no sibylline parallax interests me anyway, no cairn can lure me into the woods this time except maybe the scent of gin, the silhouette of a hawk on a fencepost, … Continue reading
Your Loneliness It Does Not Become You–John Thornburg
for September 2016 meet me at the dead end of the road when there is nowhere left to call home when there is no one left to forgive you, when your eyes are half closed and so drunk you don’t remember, who are you? this truck stop bar will be your tomb and your ghost … Continue reading
Intelligent Design–Kelsey Gutierrez
It starts with a dead animal: a slack-jawed sawdust-stuffed Grouper mounted over the sixty-inch screen. Its glassy eyes fix on the ink-riddled paper in the man’s hands, counting the empty squares. The formaldehyde preserved former swimmer longs for a time when its gills were saturated with sea water instead of mottled paint. It uses every … Continue reading
Haunted House Attractions–Jeffrey H. MacLachlan
The same October fifth classmate died in cider crypt I took a grunt job back home event company haunted houses country club tweens construct Halloween season Finger Lakes dusk slit rushing arteries into the earth told by boss make extra scary this year parents pay good money so rooms roaming shadows eye dots I hosed … Continue reading
Gentleman’s Club Garden–Jeffrey H. MacLachlan
One humid night, Jeffrey went to a bachelor party at a strip club next to an electrical substation. Tiffany’s Cabaret in Buffalo, NY. After about forty minutes, he went outside with a gay groomsman and drank Molson Ice in the garden. The flowers were infested with swallowwort — neon petals blinked around stems, dangling to … Continue reading
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