Such an adrenaline rush to find
myself alive
this seventh time, injected
with glee on the stretcher,
making my usual “I’m o.k.” calls,
Here are the steps leading down to the lake
choked with water hyacinths crowding
out the lilies, and algae thick as serum.
By: ALISON PRINE
The opposite of losing you
was watching you across the purple light
of the dance floor in the local gay bar
while the salt trucks dragged through the streets.
by JAMES HOCH
[Field Manual]
Sunday, there she goes again, toddling
out the door, off the back deck, tumbling
in her church dress, a field of hand-
painted green stems and yellow flowers,
In a dark, wood-paneled studio, I’ve sat
for three full days, an eremite with neither
cup nor cause. As hours accumulate,
Not a place to take flight but where downy-skinned
children can sometimes heal like fallen sparrows
in a shoe box, a place I found myself at nine,
concussed. The child in the rail-rimmed bed
By ALBERTO DE LACERDA
Translated by SCOTT LAUGHLIN
The soft whisper of a river
Mingling slowly
With another river: a force
Surging around us
The profound peace
Of this natural rhythm
A flock of Aratinga nenday in the park today—
Green parakeets, so exactly the color of the grass
The grass itself seemed to shriek.
And all at once fly away.
By MATT SALYER
Check me on fleek like the night
kitchen mothers, pucker and hum some; come,
I like to liquor louche; let’s watch the flock
of spring-heeled bound as borough cabs
exhaust their carbon phantoms like a gauche
of fuck. Do you unzoo, unrouge
to rat as white, what roughshod? Do.
I want the carnal as straight metacognition,
By DANIEL TOBIN
For Bella Bond
Slowly as soundlessly in its unknowing,
what the driven thing must hunger for
is love’s white noise—a latent faring
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