A story is an offering—
something with a bright, burstable skin and tender flesh.
Whenever my mother gives me one of her stories, I watch her cut into it, lay it out for me in a way I can consume, in a way she can bear.
Our hour at the clinic, test
results and what the doctor guessed.
Then the bright intensity
out on Industrial Boulevard,
the late October sun so hard
and air so crisp that everything
felt close and brash and nearly stung.
When Nayana came out of the garbing room, Noah forgot all about the pinworms. He forgot about the perianal tape test he’d just done on the sentinel mouse in Room 8, and he forgot about the disinfecting he’d have to do for the rest of the week. He forgot about the yellow paper gown, elastic hair bonnet, and rubber gloves he was wearing. He knew only the ray of Nayana’s smile, her scent of lemon and ginger.
“There’s a pinworm issue in Room 8,” he said, floating down the hall behind her. “But don’t worry—your mouseys are fine.”
for Ange Mlinko
Of C. H. Krumm—Charles Harrison, or Harry—
a single trace remains on Catalina,
so oxidized, so salt-worn I could barely
make out the name. How many must have seen it
while rambling from or trudging to the ferry
and given it no mind, no second look?
Despite the brief streaks of self-
belief, a stubborn defeat pervades.
Absent a job, absent a title.
I want to declare: a great undoing has taken place.
And I don’t know where to search for the bricks
that once made up the house of who I used to be.
Empty streets, even our taxi
is missing, but the train station
is crowded. I comb
my hair, looking at
the reflection
in the ticket window.
By LIZ DEWOLF
The buzzer rattles the empty room. Nearly empty—there’s the bed behind the wooden screen, the couch where Laurel sits in her underwear. Since Arda’s text that afternoon, she’s waited restlessly for him to arrive, imagining his route from where she lived with him on the Asian side of Istanbul to her new apartment on the European side: the narrow streets down to the ferry station, the boat churning through silver water, the near-vertical climb to her sixth-floor walkup in Beyoğlu. She presses the button that unlocks the building’s entrance and decides not to get dressed.
Arda enters her apartment without knocking. “Mutlu yıllar,” he says, though it’s now several weeks into 2013. For the first time since Laurel’s lived in Turkey, they didn’t celebrate the New Year together.
April brings new poems by our contributors: SHARON DOLIN, KERRY JAMES EVANS, ANDREW HUDGINS, AND MARIA TERRONE!
Sharon Dolin, Kerry James Evans, Andrew Hudgins, Maria Terrone (from left to right)
Table of Contents:
—Sharon Dolin, “Savor”
—Kerry James Evans, “Smoky”
—Andrew Hudgins, “After Death”
—Maria Terrone, “Alchemy”
April is poetry month! To kick it off, we have new poems by our contributors, CARSON WOLFE, BENJAMIN PALOFF, and JEHANNE DUBROW!
Jehanne Dubrow (left), Carson Wolfe (center), and Benjamin Paloff (right)
Table of Contents:
—Jehanne Dubrow, “Encounter” and “Winter Rye”
—Benjamin Paloff, “Of the Art of Conferring”
—Carson Wolfe, “I Rank Places by How Much They Charge for Pringles”
Art by Jonathan Ehrenberg
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