SELF PORTRAIT AS MINOTAUR by Kiyoko Reidy

/ / Issue 23

Years between these long
                                 thin rooms. Life
of corridors, doorway
                                 to a doorway. Along
one wall: onions line
                                 a shelf, white bulbs
bright as bone in the cool
                                 dark. Potatoes

heaped like golden
                                 fists. Beneath the jaw’s
cusp: no rhythm. Denied
                                 even the body’s
metronome. Here,
                                 nothing rots:
root-home, wine-
                                 keep. Always the bitter

edge of arrival, the mind’s
                                 talent for suspension.
From above: whorl of these
                                 walls, print of God’s
own massive finger, swirl
                                 of his eye—and its center: me,
the pupil, black chasm,
                                 lightless hallway.

This stagnancy: its own kind
                                 of decay. I am the tunnel
into the mountain. I am more
                                 beast every day. 

ISSUE 23

POETRY

SELF PORTRAIT AS MINOTAUR by Kiyoko Reidy

 

AN ORDINARY WEAKNESS by Mikko Harvey

 

TWO POEMS by Xochiquetzal Candelaria

 

DER KLEINE KATECHISMUS by Constance Hansen

 

CALLS TO ORDER by Stephanie Kaylor

 

& LORD KNOWS by Kwame Opoku-Duku

 

TWO SECTIONS FROM “THE BREAKUP” by Mag Gabbert

 

THE STATE BIRD OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE by Matthew Tuckner

 

CENTO FOR LONGING by Rage Hezekiah

 

ARS MORIENDI (FOR JEFF BEZOS & ELON MUSK) by Benjamin Aleshire

 

TWO POEMS by Perry Janes

 

FALL by Joshua Garcia

 

MOVEMENT by Brett Hanley

 

FICTION

THE GAIN by Jennifer Solheim

 

THE APPARENT PATH by Casey Guerin

 

ART

by Anna Beth Lee

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