When baking something fluffy like divinity you always want to allow the eggs to get old first let them sit out of the fridge for a couple days Although I am sure there’s a reactive chemical explanation, I don’t understand the science of it, but it’s one of the few truths my mother told me … Read more
The people in the health food store don’t look healthy which is why they’re here. I’m here to get carrot chips, craving crunch, flavor, after visiting my mother at the home where flavor only appears in faint whiffs of memory, where people in wheelchairs suspiciously eye the applesauce on their trays delivered…
She sits on her bed all day every day, wearing nothing but a stained smock from yesterday’s closet. She holds a long white candle under her chin but never lights it. She is out of matches. No evidence of nourishment, she’s sustained by watching clouds hump like the oversized white cushions…
Get inside a sequined dream. Quiet girl on whose quiet back, on whose upright lips— a line to break open. Fissure of words against memory’s stone— a song in one ear.
You will soon cleave away from your night like a fish, in the direction of your father who has eaten from grief, who leapt inside his fish. And you forget your mother blue who feels in her kitchen, who prays for you. While you collect dust like an old figurine; your heart…
She starts with bookcases, ingenious designs that hinge on the shelves, the sides, ready to fold on a moment’s notice. Her lover holds disdain, like the shelves hold books she reads each night, and folds dreams in their pages. She covets a foam bed that folds into a couch. Even her…
Native to the bush are black boys, now called grass trees, that grow two centimeters a year. In private, my aunt still uses their old name. Inland, dust combusts. Fires preserve the continent’s aboriginal species: Australian bush, California brush. Oceans spew updrafts, too weak to hold accumulated weight of rain that pelts the … Read more
I imagine the Office of Signage within the Department of Public Works has a book of haiku lying open on a table with an interesting shape, and the Director, a thoughtful man of very few words, is steering a hot cup of tea with both hands up to his lips, staring meditatively out a window … Read more
There’s a girl in Mexico I’ve never met Who wears my clothes And I’m told cries with joy Each time the old man From her church Drives up her dirt road And delivers paper bags Filled with clothes From across the border We are the same Blouse and shoe size Same pant size too … Read more
As a myth worthy of belief, the dusk will do. A last glittering in the marsh where the wind has finally died and night stretches out like a long body breathing over the grassy water. In Milwaukee this afternoon, an old woman who had packed her only life in two plastic sacks screamed, … Read more
I drove into the wall just to feel something concrete. My sedan erupted into a darkening field, where purple loosestrife begged for wind. Paranoid drained of body, who else is there to stand on? I stand to agree with soil— We miss our wetness and are sick of waiting for beetles to come … Read more
I stand behind you My pelvis flush against your backside To hold unsteady legs in place The two of us squeezed in the can My hands, experienced at working in the dark, Unbutton your Wrangler jeans Faded from glory days long past Days when farmers didn’t wear sunscreen And a good day’s work paid all … Read more
Lungs, you say, are the unimagined house inside the body, the breathing universe with the breadth of snow and silence and the Trachea is a lonely brown thrasher singing the longest love song in history. We lie in bed, gaze at the phosphorescent stars stuck to the ceiling and wall, constellations collide with the dresser, … Read more
Lek Borja Seized lies my body in the latitude of her sex How her desire shines like luminescence in the sea as if the moon were inside it, as in every hour where we enter together Tenderly sink then float longingly so My eyes follow her journey down to its end With her tears I … Read more
Jordan Hartt (grass buckles in the newborn wind) (the cattle on a thousand hills are mine) (gravel settles behind wheels) (grain the color of nickel waves in dull sunlight) (worn overalls hang off the whitewashed porch railing) (with a farmhand he brands sullen calves) (weathered fences stagger … Read more
Sarah Long My body is an ever-changing clock— spastic springs and gears never settling, never keeping proper time. Bodies carry bodies in pockets, on chains like skin-scented heirlooms. When my grandmother died, she left me her first kiss, the ticking sound of summer asphalt and peach fuzzed legs. I see my mother’s handwriting on … Read more
Donnelle McGee for Seven i come from them smoggy nights in LA i come from the meeting of john and prostitute i come from the ohio players shouting fire i come from being told here take these food stamps to the market and get some milk for you and your brother i come from under the sound … Read more
Vivian Faith Prescott The muddy tide rising to shore should carry you downriver by now. But, I imagine your scow wedged between cottonwoods on the riverbank branches shoved through your chest motor revving. Maybe your skiff is jammed on the sandbar, and you’ve stumbled over the side, whirlpools sucking your rubber-booted feet. But here, … Read more
Stephen Page Last Night I Dreamed Rain The clouds quickened under a wax moon, then settled around plastic palm fronds. My truck stuck in river bed three, and just like the time it slipped into a ditch, I tried to push it out alone, putting it in gear, then straining under the … Read more
Nancy Long i. Harmony A fine Chinese meal my mother said is made of five flavors, a blending of elemental portions. What is sour, she said, if not the flesh of plum? To know sour is to taste green watering across your tongue, to feel the force of wood striking your open … Read more
Jane Cassady Is there anything we can go in and get for you before we board it up? Before the window plywood gets its eventual graffiti, before you wash the clothes in Pine Sol to get out the smell of smoke, before a loving friend helps fold those clothes, so specifically and kindly, … Read more
Jane Cassady But here it is. As we walk the summer camp kindergarten through third grade down the street to Pleasant Playground for their weekly swim, the kids are in their two quiet lines, listening for traffic and blue jays. The shutters are open, even though it's only been a week. "Poor Mr. Kim," … Read more
I judge myself deeply, harshly – don’t allow courtesy given others, thoughtless tortured by tumultuous thoughts, ticking driving negativity nails through, aching begging, the merciless obsession eradicated, relentless screaming behind frozen stare, scared floods back like recoiling toes from cold water, endless forgiveness, permission – breathe and be, redemption when … Read more
I cannot muster effort enough to show what is and unspoken there what little deserves and overly qualifies a human to which I am particular. There is a body: made of sinews, contrasting with elasticity – his rubberband arms and legs cinnamon facades made for over-ambiguity – preserving a heart perpetual pumped this … Read more
1. Phenomenon Outcome spirals Through my circuitry, moving To thought, I am Pale, mouthing I do what I am told I am built for something I raise my eyes To whatever draws near, someone Touches me With my own hands 2. The … Read more
