spring 2020
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageSix Gray Moons on a Screen Eleanor Kedney
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Nachos Jessica Covil
blue light Stephanie Yue Duhem
Tchaikovsky, Age 52, Finds His Inspiration John Barton
Breathturning Chris Checkwitch
A Symptom of Resignation The Gee Whiz Element of Tropical Storms and Symphonies Jen Karetnick
Stem of Old French Creistre, To Grow Of Stinging Nettle Page Hill Starzinger
sold separately Lesley Battler
Supermarket Lobsters Robbie Gamble
Monologue of a Fly's Shadow Monologue of a Cow's Shadow Danielle Hanson
Moon Turned Her Half Face From Me Lawrence Feuchtwanger
Communion of Tongues Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri
Humid Weather Me of Me Catherine Strisik
There Is No Substitute for Good Planning Erin Kirsh
Another Vision Patricia Nelson
Family Dinner In Which I Re-name My Father Poem Containing Only Words I Hate griffin epstein
Like the best myths Medusozoa Sarah Lyons-Lin
she is in the kitchen now Nora Pace
A Twohanded Cut The Tornado Cut The Pandora Cut Torben Robertson
Stem of Old French Creistre, To Grow
To climb out of
the crease—you see it here?
Crumbled, folded-in-on-itself
welter of wrinkles, shadow slices,
light wells and pin pricks, knife
edges.
I would say fasten
fingers on ridges; crimp or open grip.
Chalk your digits and scramble
up the scarp—
look for deep indents
but shallow will do.
Just feel the floor, dimples
and lips along the way—you see,
this takes the whole
torso; the pupil
is only a hole, an entry
before we
recalibrate the upside-downness of it.
Cy Twombly practices drawing
in the dark
to make lines less
purposeful. I passed a playground in slant,
late charcoal-silver light,
heard children’s high-pitched cries—
they took me
back through my mind’s eye,
somewhere I can’t place—
it’s
beyond repatriation.
Woooooooo-
hooooooo:
that’s how
Ali Smith falls
into the
elevator shaft,
counting one elephant
two eleph-ahh.
I clamber
up
again,
clasping refractive calcite crystals
to steer me past fog and clouds of any tropospheric form
and at the top I step through old white oak forests
rooted with fluted golden chanterelles
ridged with gills like sea creatures.
Paths lead to a city
paved with anidolic prisms,
glowing hexagons
doubling as glass-coffered ceilings of
deep-down basements,
belly and earth chambers—
throwing sun and moon beams
downward and sideways
where we try
—but are forbidden—
to see.