Category: Issue 22

  Unnamed, with unfortunate affection What if I drew your face on the mirror with sea saltusing a moistened boar bristle paintbrush, and after singing Harry Style’s latest, I licked it off? Would that be enough? I mean, for me.  If I rode the tangerine Lotus Elise of an ideaacross the Rockies, carried this pining obsession into swaying…

I don’t want a day when I never think of you,but I would like more in the morning newsthan another briefing on your absence. I miss hearing my name as summons to a kiss. If we can’t step into the same river twice,with the past it’s not even once. Memories are hot watches, knockoffspinned to…

Unknown, wind-blown, the night requests your presence. The world burns at the oven door of your blank page.  An offering moves from one hand to another, just as in Christ’s time—rewinding and grieving, rewinding  and grieving. Take a bite of the onion. Do you know where you are?Here is a box of ashes and a handshake.   The rest is…

Spring Equinox  Far off, a kid’s high voice seesaws the wind,then stops. Snowfall of bloom on the azaleas,two small cardinals angled at the feeder— the earth has tilted toward the sun and strikes  a perfect equilibrium for a day. And I’m there myself, in my backyard, on the sheer seam where soul and body breathe in unison, sweetness sifting…

After my parents fought, my mother would put on her Johnny Mathis records, loud, as if she was her teenage daughters acting out. My father would go to the finished basement and turn on the TV though I have no idea how he could hear it or if he was even listening. My mother would…