Apple

By L. S. KLATT 

You don’t fall far from the tree. Is that because you are adamant? In Adam’s fall/ we fell all, bruised? Software? What keeps us processing even if besotted? Knowledge? What’s the big idea? Is it my soul in your interface? Me? Little i? My jot is a worm, my dot a wormhole. This hole attend/ my life to mend, for out of the chip the graphics grow? Or by trusting type, may I increase the font? No. The № 1 product of malfeasance is mindset. Folded. Blindfolded. “How do I know what I know?” I’m glad you asked; I’ll get to that. Consider the letters which serve the ready finding. They do not sow; they migrate. Yet always return to the same place. A is for Apple. No one has ever hated candy flesh. Touch, & touch again, the corporation.

New poems from L. S. Klatt have appeared or will appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Carolina Quarterly, Crazyhorse, and Denver Quarterly. His collection of prose poems, The Wilderness After Which, is due out from Otis Books (Seismicity Editions) in 2017. 

Listen to L. S. Klatt and Oliver de la Paz discuss “Apples” on our podcast, Contributors in Conversation.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 06 here]

Apple

Related Posts

Chinese Palace

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature I

LI ZHUANG
In your fantasy, the gilded eaves of Tang poked at the sun. / In their shadow, a phoenix rose. / Amid the smoke of burned pepper and orchids, / the emperor’s favorite consort twirled her long sleeves. / Once, in Luo Yang, the moon and the sun shone together.

Xu sits with Grandma He, the last natural heir of Nüshu, and her two friends next to her home in Jiangyong. Still from Xu’s documentary film, “Outside Women’s Café (2023)”. Image courtesy of the artist.

Against This Earth, We Knock

JINJIN XU
The script takes the form of a willow-like text, distinctive from traditional Chinese text in its thin shape and elegance. Whenever Grandma He’s grandmother taught her to write the script, she would cry, as if the physical act of writing the script is an act of confession.

a photo of raindrops on blue window glass

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature II

YUN QIN WANG 
June rain draws a cross on the glass.  / Alcohol evaporates.  / If I come back to you,  / I can write. My time in China  / is an unending funeral.  / Nobody cried. The notebook is wet.