tell me what you loved, touched, wondered:did you dream?did you stare at your own reflection?an aching to sliver between the fluttering colors of her consciousness,the human of her, to know her ripest and most shiny parts,for her to hold my face close, spill her metallic language into meuntil i recognize that i am of her,… Continue reading Lucy Seward
Say goodbye to black-eyed Susans, long seagrasses. Late-evening barbecues, childrendigging in the sand, the praying mantis.Put away your binoculars. Eventhe birds are hiding for a betterseason. One of us joined a support groupor is leaving the marriage. Anotherneeds to change meds. Teenagers are virtual-dating. No need for soliloquy. We’vemastered the grand art of text. I’m… Continue reading Jill Bialosky
I promise I’ll love you foreverif you please just don’t make mestart now. What I mean is, on some nights I miss you so muchthat I never want to see you again. — Ali Shapiro, from “If I Leave You Then Maybe I Won’t Have To Miss You So Much,” [pank]7.07 / July 2012
I forgot the prairie because it stoodso still. I forgot the clouds becausethey were always moving. I forgotthe taste of water because it lay quietlyinside the taste of everything. I forgot a childhood when it disappearedthrough a hole in itself. — Jenny George, opening lines to “Mnemonic,” Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine… Continue reading Jenny George
Over the currents of memory, arcs: threads between the vertices. Thelight viscosity that mediates between your palate and your ears, sonorousand remaining so weightless. It pulses outward. Like cells replicating:the air metastasizing. To be dreamed up by eyes that have dreamed ofyou dreaming. It is swiftness. Desire opens up again, like a basin. It hasextinguished… Continue reading Ana Gorría
From the Desire Field I don’t call it sleep anymore. I’ll risk losing something new instead— like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose. But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined fruit to unfasten from, despite my trembling.… Continue reading Natalie Díaz
As our lives, nudged by the coming of spring,Shrink butterfly-small, butterfly-frail …Though we may last a second or twoLonger than Brimstone, will anyone thinkUs a green-gold reflection of paleSunlight, as we’re glimpsed, passing through? — Leo Aylen, from “The First Sight of a Brimstone Butterfly, Sign of English Spring,” Amethyst Review (2022)
What if each would become a part of a wholeand she’d say, you have touched my soul,and meant it though she didn’t have a clueas to what a soul was, just sensedthe tip of an invisible blue flame burning along her spine as his skinunraveled under her fingertips? — Hedy Habra, from “Or What If… Continue reading Hedy Habra
the stars above //// speaking so //////// softly until it’s time to go inside again ////////////////////////////// and dream //////// of when you swung close to the moon,your shadow bursting //////////////////// with such lovely light — Joanna Clearly, from “Blank Star Sonnet,” L’Éphémère Review (no. 13: Dulcet, Summer 2019)
at dusk, as dusk deepens, the interior darkness expands to meet the exterior, and there is a breathless moment when both are equal— — Joyce Carol Oates, from “Don’t Bare Your Soul,” AGNI Magazine: 56 (Boston University 2002)
The Vale of Soul-Making 