February 2012
3 posts
2 tags
The Hunt - Linda Liang
The rabbit on your plate seems to be writhing, but it’s the sauce, (boiled in it’s own innards, poor rabbit) that is truly alive, air rising towards the surface as it undulates, moves in perfect currents. The rabbit’s blood congeals around the curves of your fingers. You peer at it, such a strange and prostrate casualty - pupils like shattered compasses, directionless relics staring straight...
1 tag
Imagining Retreat - Joey Chin
10. You admit nothing, I deny everything. You are a man. I am just pretending. 9. What were those drawings? Is that your form of communication with me? Or is that how you make sense? 8. Your pencil lines are precise but scaled to your terms, I am lost in them. 7. It was in the early 2000s. Our concerns were parallel. We were worried; you about a promotion, I about graduation, both which happened....
2 tags
Paradox - Michael Soltero
it’s better to make lists, you told me, citing those old poems about the end of numbers, the beginning of time, the tall oaks- white bearded and drunk, gazing at the stars. i pointed out the troublesome hum of machinery which haunts all houses (previously we had only heard the mad howling of ink on paper and the wind outside growling) you said it’s the furnace’s fire dying out,...
November 2011
1 post
2 tags
i am certain this is something you do not know -...
the symbol for cat is two hands behind your back the symbol for too much sugar in the coffee is one step slowly to the right the symbol for i want to spend the rest of my life with you starts in the collection of favorite cowboys of the old west and i nearly lost myself there i fell behind a tumbleweed i think that’s what they call them the symbol for help is more complicated and...
October 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Love is All - Suzanne Highland
From buildings painted grey and blue like wedding spoons,
we fell out like teeth. How desperate of it to stick, to become the aftertaste of itself, this love. The dog wags himself out of your daughter’s arms. We holed up with boxes, without hangups, putting the animal down. We let eyelet curtains turn to ghosts. In the old movies, someone smiled wide through their tears
and was received like...
2 tags
The Last - Riley Richards
Color is critical. It fades in and out. Arms lose their strength. Bodies lose body. I crack my teeth on stones and draw blood. I hear voices burn. The city hunts us. We fight it with noise. My nerves howl and rattle their bars. Bravery screams, “Where did the world go when our fathers lost their youth? I will not give it up. Not until my hands rot from wanting.”
***
Riley is a...
2 tags
I Would Like to Have a Bird in My Throat - Beth...
I would like to have a bird in my throat. Perhaps a dove, or a robin, one with that rusty orange chest. It would sing you the words; tell you we are pretty little accidents, like when your stubble scraped against my cheek when you leaned in to say happy New Year. Like the apology that followed for the clumsiness. Like the curtains that didn’t keep morning out; the leg that pulled all the...
2 tags
That One Time - Rayven
that one time you asked me to come home with you because you were going to the hospital the next day and you didn’t want to be alone and i didn’t want to see you cry one more time so i let you go and i hope that you were okay but i don’t think so and the summer that you melted away your room full of smoke but no noise and i ate my sardines and rehearsed my eulogy to you llittle...
2 tags
Waves by Caroline Gormley
I have fused my many lives into one; (for all deaths are one death)
the shadows of ships are not a ship.
I said that nothing should be irrelevant.
My past is cut from what poses shall not destroy me.
For this moment, this one rare glance, we are together.
I press you to me. I indent my name.
The rooms where we sat stream away like leaves,
water running down gutters, green depths facing me...
2 tags
You Are Welcome - Tracy Wan
For you are diaphanous, your eyes translucent and your pages thin the body smoothed between you and the cold stone, saying come and come again
For the day is open, wide avenues still in the recreation of dawn, a cell of light blossoming manhattan into a island myth
For I am ragged against the current kicking less with each breath not bending my legs
For this silence is a shroud and the...
1 tag
Things Are Always Being Destroyed Very Slowly -...
Things are always being destroyed very slowly Yes, even you,
those soft lines forming where you smile or squint The fruit isn’t left out, but still it rots: the apple browns and sours, loses crispness The fallen leaves lose crispness, too, from the days of rain forever in front of us now that summer seems like an impossible memory There is no hope for us if even the streets flood in this ...