By JOHN POCH
The youngest deconstructionists among us
are proud at first to spend their days breaking up
great slabs of fired tile every shade of wine
while the masters climb the scaffolds
with their gold pride, their gilt, reaching for
a sandal buckle or the heights of a halo.
Despite barriers of rat screen, parge, and tar,
despite blustering wind in the chimney,
I think I hear something setting up house
in the cellar. It’s a night to come in
By LAUREN CAMP
If I won’t remember that I was in Virginia last year without praise
of darkness, or the autumn drift I spent in Wisconsin watching a cardinal
nip the oak, if I see and forget field thick over field, the stalks
cut against green—how will I fetch forth the half-dead
By RALPH BURNS
We had to leave because someone saw my
father set his bottle down. Because
of something in us we leaned into one another
By TINA CANE
I woke up in a panic this morning thinking what if my love language
is granola? I found a quiz online but was too chicken to take it having had
Russian bots once read my face and place me alongside a woman holding a mango
or some bullshit in Gaugin
nothing exotic for me today
I’m halfway home to Bed-Stuy
when I feel the cervical cramp.
I was told they’d be getting worse
I came when you were born,
but soon the flying stopped.
By the time I came again,
we drove in private cars
By ALDO AMPARÁN
Is he a saguaro burning in the desert’s shadow—or a sidewinder’s tracks on sand—
Have I left footprints in the snow of his dreaming—
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