Issue: 2017

I gather elderberries by the river. Last year, these purple-black fruits rotted on my counter – I was in the ER, clenched with pain and cold under ten blankets and by the time they opened me there was a liter of blood to take, one slender branch and th … Continue Reading

A terrible blessing – to be laid open to the bone, where the marrow trembles and sings with all the griefs, known and unknown, mine and yours. I have wanted a field where animals could graze, where I could lay down in the long grasses. If this careful … Continue Reading

            In conversation with Rilke and Ocean Vuong What if getting old is traveling backward, regaining your first eyes, your portion of blood and bone no longer scaled with wound. Suppose you awake without your skin, all your senses felled by slee … Continue Reading

                                     for Les The wood is entered from a settled place, its darkness a murmur that hangs like threads of time, vines indescribably local yet never seen before. A pond, perhaps vernal, seems to hold everything I do not kno … Continue Reading

Cowpokes spun lasso diction across a white girl’s youth. Storefronts seemed larger than they were just as what I presented was flat. A mustache on one man’s lip stood for passion, on another’s meant death. What was I to do with the heavy weight of skir … Continue Reading

Cool like the Virginia waterfalls his eyes undressed her and yet, his stiff smile demanded such reverence from her. Rust-gold like the hawkweeds of summer, his eyelashes, cast fringed shadows on his cheeks whenever he closed his eyes… freckles floati … Continue Reading