fall 2017
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageWhat It Is About to Do Le Mouton Noir Dessa Bayrock
cold bright waves for sorrow leaf kotasek
Ecstasy Like Water to Soften Leather Jasmine Sky
qualifications
for your consideration
Laura Yan
* (It was a lake, used to bodies :islands) * (Arm over arm you expect) Simon Perchik
The Malice in My Footsteps
Conyer Clayton
The Travel Section Ghost Train Christopher Levenson
Unsolicited Relationship Advice
Erin Kirsh
Rebelling Unrest Errata Dani Spinosa
Pamplemousse Dominique Bernier-Cormier
Ode to a Desiccated Olive
(Love is easier the headless way)
James Cagney
Limits
New York
Brian Jerrold Koester
Persuasion
Freedom of Speech
Emma Winsor Wood
Somebody Else's Heroes
Small Change
Jocko Benoit
Stereotypes like like i love you Andrew Warner
Familiar
Pianissimo
Jennifer van Alstyne
(Love is easier the headless way)
-after René Magritte’s Duo/ The Lovers, 1928
Love is easier the headless way
What good is desire in a world
where there is only a thriving darkness
Your mouth is a gate
opening to any place away from here—
the crumbling mansion of my nothing heart
With this form-fitting cloth
I do wed
Let us spill into one another
like waves of agitated milk
placing our thoughts elsewhere
onto unavailable others
while our useless arms
disappear into what frames us:
bench/ bed/ brothel of the mind
Everywhere we turn
winter remains unfinished
You don’t trust your mouth
and I don’t trust anyone
who says they love me
What are we willing to emotionally
barter for when all we have
is the simple meat of ourselves
And who can say what color the world
was before the earth’s canvas
began flowering paint
I have this recurring dream
where we live nameless as mushrooms
in their shadow of primeval birds—
birds who eluded anthropologists
and didn’t want the press
But who agreed to soar forever
without landing
and seed the earth with minerals of light
I awake usually in a choking grief
How we’ve agreed to love one another
without ever opening our eyes
to the truth