By MYRONN HARDY
I’m afraid of your elation.
The way you arrive masked.
The way the mask is removed
On Wariness
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
Issue 25 Poetry
Nina and Frida Enter the Chat
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
By FELICE BELLE
these biddies with their deadbolt backs/ take naps
while i construct/ canvas from corset cast
art does not wait until you are well
what they did not understand—the training was classical
Aphorism 57: You Cannot Fail at Being You
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Issues, Poetry
By JOHN BLAIR
We cherish ourselves even to the bones
which like some mother’s rigid hangers
hold us to our lacquered shapes in the smug
dialetheia of am and briefly was until
we come to our raveled ends everyone
just taking up space until space takes us back
one washed-out moment at a time like tea
leaves steeping in a cup until we’re ready
for someone to bow in close and take
a quick ceremonial sip then turn the cup
wipe clean the rim and hand it carefully
to yet another honored guest who mindful
of what we might let go to waste will not
leave until every drop is drunk.
For Acedia
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
Thomas Aquinas prescribed fervent prayer,
and I do pray, but, oddly, a bird has been
my best medicine when I find myself shrunken
and absent, as I do each year as the anniversary
of my son’s death approaches. And so I turn again
to this: a dipper I watched in Zion’s Virgin River.
Jack Benny
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Issues, Poetry
John Ashbery called me after he died
So you can imagine my excitement
When in his droll hyper-nasalated
Timbre quite undiminished by death
He chatted on about the bowls of
Pitted cherries provided as snack-food
In the upper worlds and of afternoons
Climbing trees with Edna Millay to read
Comic books with her in the branches.
Then his voice dropped two octaves
And he spoke solemnly of Jack Benny:
‘You can say funny things or say things
Funny but silence was the punchline
For Jack Benny.’ And he was gone.
A Minor History of Potato Chips
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Issues, Poetry
By TINA CANE
Ray Liotta was listening to tapes of Henry Hill talking through a mouth
full of potato chips to the FBI around the same time I high and hunched
over a bowl of Lucky Charms was listening to my father lecture me on sex
After the Last Calorie of the Apocalypse / Prayer for the Clinically Obese
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
On the last day, let there be a fat inhalation
of delight between the lap of our sunrise.
As the tongue separates the doubt from the cream,
let pleasure sift through the metal strainer of time. Only
Walden
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
Whatever Walden is to me—we swam there two Julys—
I hope to skirt that never-ending trope,
Drowning like a pilgrim in that pond.
We pushed past mothers and their kids,
Cedared summers in Wellfleet cottages,
Past foreign languages that hummed across
The narrow circle of that one dirt path
Moving Sale
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
Duluth, we said when a browser asked.
Omaha, we said to another.
Omaha? they said. What’s in Omaha?
It was a good question, but in truth
we weren’t moving, just using
the drama to draw shoppers.
Spa Days
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
I drive through the yellow ribcage of maples
arching the road, past the butch woman I want
to be, raking leaves in her front yard, hair
slicked back at the sides. Yesterday, searching
the internet for winter tights, I found crotchless ones,
a model’s diffident fingertips barely obscuring
the hairless glow of her pussy, and remembered
the years I spent lying on a table in a quiet room,
piped sound of harps descending from the ceiling,
while some other woman carefully made my body
as smooth and unthreatening as a child’s.
