Autumn 2022

tomorrow we will decide to get out of bed and return to our bodies, to admit to lovelessness the rotting disease, to pour a cup of warm coffee and greet our grief like old friends.

What are you going to do with your life? We questioned the newborn rabbits in their warm home of earth, black eyes glazed from first sun What’s your plan? We demanded of the crabapple tree as it granted its annual gift to the ground and stood stripped and silent of...

Morning came again today, and again I must rise. I must wear my garment. I must clasp gold around my neck, and press my feet on the floor, and meet the eyes of others. How will I swallow the acid in my throat? How will I sweep my disgust into the corner? I will set my...

my desk is littered with dead leaves and flower petals. things i cannot throw away because you picked them up and said here, for you. i know i will keep your old grocery receipts, dryer lint, the stickers from the fruit you eat. i kiss your face as it’s taped all over...

You taste like maraschino cherries Soaked in a bright red womb Lips smack loudly around the room Eager for you to come soon Fellas impatiently wait their turn To nurse on the tip of a sundae spoon You died to become too sweet Crushed between bitter teeth Gone to make...

Let me be small One small speck on an eternal blue vastness To sink within your teeth, skin Let me grow and unfold and decay and grow and unfold and decay again. I can sit on the edges of your sentences A series of interruptions of thoughts Or be home to all your...

a girl is a caterpillar a prelude wrapped in a delicate green cocoon the opening chord of a song that has yet to be sung or maybe a girl is a butterfly a hand-painted canvas of sinew and membrane naked and cold as she emerges from folded wings maybe a girl is a fly on...

This could be the middle of your life or the middle-month of summer a shape with a soft husk What will emerge? Maybe those who got lost in her long hair, while the old angel’s clothes hung on the roof. I heard the swishing at the altar. I was empty-handed, waiting for...

I will begin my singing at vespers1 With pen pressed to paper till it burst Into stumbling verse of autumn-cursed colors Yellows and reds Within these leaves I will immerse My head Claiming acorns for my brothers They never got the chance to split their heads But are...

tomorrow will be january in seven days it will be two years. I step onto the plane, enveloped by thick nauseating sweet perfume, rows of honey spelled skin like mine, our tongues dance to the same rhythm. tight blonde ponytails wrapped in silk cloths swing like...

peanut butter toast tastes the same as it used to i wish i was singing along to diamonds and rust because it always made you laugh and i love that song but bob dylan was so condescending about it he called her “joanie” and he said “it still impresses me” and this is...

Or A letter to myself on my 39th birthday Gather all the bowls—you’re going to need more of them in fact.Maybe a couple baskets too.And the jars you left in the pantry.Unclench your jaw. Unclench. Prepare your catcher’s mittBe certain your fingers are unfurledPosture...

All the gray trees Dead Deer- Road Kill. Pop a Hyat in the middle! All the green Now Red- Now Plastic. But at least there’s a new shake shack! No reflect- ion. None. Just microfibers just tainted green suns on old fields with grass? Dividing lines on black billboard...

The way a lad Sarah shifted Pointed at her during Mr. Brightside On the dancefloor at Garage “It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss” And she was flabbergasted Still dancing beside him Is the same way Mom pays a euro to light a candle for Oma At all the cathedrals we...

presa de recuerdos Soy, el que se fue pero no logró irse, la duda que no duerme el sueño de los justos. Soy, el candil de la calle y la oscuridad de casa, el vicio de mis abuelos y tatarabuelos. Soy, la pobreza de las calles empedradas de Castaños. Soy, los tonos...

today, i cut your hair again, i grazed my hands through your mop enveloped my finger tips lingered on the familiar tender touchof your soft locks,folded over your ear,holding your beauty,our wholeness, i held a piece gingerlyand felt its weight,yearning for the...

I.I am a butterfly pinned by a single sentenceSpoken from the driver’s seat of a stuffy, two-door car idling in the school parking lot after soccer practice sophomore yearShin pads sticking to my sweaty legsMy practice ended much later than his; he is a senior held up...

In the dark, Where sinners and hedonists go to play, That’s where I find my wanting. I wish I could find it in the sun, that the world’s arms were open to a body like mine. Alas, I’m only a woman when the lights are off. My sex lives and dies under the stars, in...

I. Starvation Cold metal clasps pinch the skin on my wrist A mechanism designed to protect myself from you. Black dust swirling beneath my feet in an opaque box A space for my heart to exist as it closes the blinds. Gray meat within my skull pulses; ba-dum, ba-dum A...

The birch grove unsettles me Walking through the breast of a chickadee Buried deep, maybe even in flight? Each plume of whiteFeathered bark bursting seamsI’m lost in a down pillow, a snow sceneIn August These uncanny birches seemTo blister from within, obsceneBegotten...

she speaks. her voicelike water drippingthrough the cracksof my hands. she points to the sky, but her eyes don’t leave my face. she is looking inside me. she is biting into my neck. she is stabbing me in the heart. she is killing, mourning, dying beside me in...

You spent Sunday like Christ Licking wounds and tears Falling limbs of an apple tree Spoiled fruit, rotten cores Trite little blights Trickling sours And munching, unfrightened deer You were angry we made love Crossing antlers and your frown Heavy like a winter coat...

Frame by frame, Lenses heed my desire. May phantom touch fill my lungs And my fingertips yearn for the outline of your eyes The valley of forearm Where heavenly length meets the joint of your elbow.

it is time for you to go home. you kiss me by the buses. the caress of your cheek is a palm full of water. you say, see you later. i will never grow old of this feeling. it sprouts up like flowers between slabs of cement and lingers, even in the snow. when you get on,...