TWO POEMS by emet ezell

/ / ISSUE 26, Poetry

SOUTHWEST OF BABYLON


surely the ewe lambs, ramming their heads into their mothers’ tits, can show me how to pray.

i have been following their belched bleating across hilltops, me and my diet of dates. walking. stopping. grazing beneath an olive tree. stone by stone we make our way.

i wanted to know where home was— i pulled the hot sand through my fists. vanity, vanity. desperation in the belly, mint leaves in the teeth.


i have been obedient and god has taken from me. sparks sent out with the green thrum of spring. baa baa the sheep.


what i couldn’t predict: death’s hovering flies in ordinary heat. radiation leaked into rivers of meat. and the rivers, unswimmable, but for the swans. scream in my mother’s voice. my spit, drooling. oil in the water. soldiers in the streets.

 

 

 

FOLLICULAR PHASE OF A SNAKE

each day the maude colored turtledove comes to her nest. divot of twigs and stone. around her eyes are rings of dark, red flesh.

 

i lay the swollen meat of my body in the sun and pray for a woman to bury me. she will not come. 

 

only crows and their beady beaks. it was a past life, one of empty tombs and resurrections. 

 

here, amidst seasons of exile, i mother god. desperate, dependent— a howling newborn strapped to my back. 


we are in a field of mustard. green and yellow stems. i nurse god with four cups of wrath and three types of blood: the same way that god nursed me. 

 

unravel the snake from within my jaw. the snake clumps out my mouth. the price of cruelty, the thrill of my god-broken ribs. 


i send the snake out for the eggs in the nest, the same way my mother taught me.

ISSUE 26

POETRY

TWO POEMS by Sasha Burshteyn
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT UNSONNET by Dante Di Stefano
TWO POEMS by emet ezell
TWO POEMS by Sebastian Merrill
SO MANY by Robin LaMer Rahija
WHY HAVE CHILDREN WHEN THE WORLD IS ENDING by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach
TWO POEMS by Tana Jean Welch
ELEPHANT by Julien Strong
WHEN BILLIE HOLIDAY SANG by Grace Kwan
FABLE IN WHICH YOU ARE A BARN ANIMAL AND I AM A CARNIVORE by Hannah Marshall
JUNCTURE LOSS by Liane Tyrell
TWO POEMS by Julia Thacker


FICTION

WET OR DRY by Naomi Silverman
BLOODY AVENUE by Isabella Jetten


TRANSLATION

ANCIENT MOSQUE by Xiao Shui trans. Judith Huang
THREE POEMS by Sandra Moussempès trans. Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy
THROUGH THE LAKE, THROUGH THE WATER by Johannes Anyuru trans. Brad Harmon
THREE POEMS by Álvaro Fausto Taruma trans. Grant Schutzman
THE GARDEN IS THIS GARDEN by Hélène Cixous trans. Beverley Bie Brahic
CHEWING BETEL NUT by Mark Dorado trans. Eric Abalajon and Mark Dorado
THREE POEMS by Anne Vegter trans. Astrid Alben


INTERVIEW

with Carrie Chappell and Amanda Murphy


ART

by Omneia Naguib

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