by Jac Shihadeh On the way to the city yesterday, I thought I was going to die in the tunnel with a Bible open in the backseat. I looked out the rearview to gauge how much time we had left, Mom talked about the apocalypse, and suddenly we’re spit out on a Manhattan street.It’s funny how that happens. How I’m here again and I’m me whoever that is these days. These days I drive fast down suburban streets and scream because no one can hear me. I said, drop me off on Canal Street …
by Christopher R. Vaugha and it remains scrawled on her cheeks in red, as if having scratched her there. Giggles, I have a plum beard! I ask, Will you have to shave? She shivers her head twice, We’d never do that, that is so silly! In this house, there’s no word for cleanse, or pit, or blade. We only sense things, the words for them are birds concealed and chafing against branches. Fruit perishes twice—first stem-snapped, again when …
by Paul Vermeersch In the end, the Reverse Wolf enters another body. Firstit coalesces in the compost of leaf litter, from mossesand fruiting bodies, from masses of fungal filaments knitting subterranean threads, flowing now into its wolf form. The coat of the Reverse Wolf sprouts outside its body and grows inward, piercing its hide like five million fine needles. The Reverse Wolf regurgitates little girls wearing red outerwear and sees them safely home where it is killed and …
by Sarah Cavar ( top : scar ) At this most excellent brink where the body meets the flesh of stirred Air a leaf drifting Turns waning moons against my gaze –– We diagonal dance I, a small pupil child by ær crackling hood rocked by the gentle cradle of wind a muscle Flexing relaxing A project of vocal …
by Susan Cronin Let’s imagine a liver lives forever. 15-year, no-nonsense proof.Bite of orange, a caramel on toast—on the nose, as one expects—beforea sip slips a hintof hummingbird tearsharvested with care andexquisitely measured. No reason why she hadn’t sleptwith the hot crew teamguy across the hall in college,the one with a Raggedy Annand Andy pillowcase.In his dorm room they wouldlie on the …
All the way from poppy seed to jackfruit, we are told to measure each week, each stumble and kick. From produce to blood levels we weigh chances the way we weigh ourselves, breath held, fear crawling up our naked skin. We don’t budget for peaches and avocado; grapefruit and corn. We don’t expect time to lapse with soap scrubs reaching beyond the elbow, under nail beds scrubbing our lifelines down to broken. The smell of unsullied skin, how it lingers, sticks fast to the nose, …