lit by her fire, I was the scorched
tree Clare West found
direction by; a swiftly drawn arrow
became a drawn hood; an era gone
By LOGAN LANE
FROM: Tracy Burks <dreamcatcher@archcorp.com>
TO: Office of Coordination <officeofcoordination@archcorp.com>
SUBJECT: How the Cookie Crumbles
DATE: August 3, 2043
FROM THE DESK OF TRACY BURKS
Dear Interns,
I will make this short but not sweet, unlike the chocolate delicacy at the center of this blunder:
Whoever is eating cookies in The Loomery, cease. Did you not see the signs in the hall outside? Did you not read the pamphlets on initiation day? Surely not, because you would’ve noticed they read in large Impact font: DO NOT EAT INSIDE THE LOOMERY.
By SARA MUNJACK
Ascención
I’ve fallen into an ant pile.
I fight to stand up and shake off
a million legs whispering
across my skin.
I keep dreaming of Chon
before he was my grandfather. A boy
hiding in the desert for days surviving
on nopales y ardillas.
By TERRI WITEK
I ask my sons what they want from St. Hieronymos, too old to befriend. Red hat, my dead son says. Fat book, my live son requests. No one mentions a lion, meandered in.
The lion asks for an edit= do these sons mark jars filled with body parts? Baboon son, jackal son? They flatten to black-rimmed eyes. No.
I climb through mountain sons. They are finding how far blue takes them. They are learning the ropy muscles of a man (higher animus/ they r anonymous) becalmed in a cave mouth. His red hat and book, the little fire.
By TARA SKURTU
We pass a lighthouse and you tell me the legend—
a seer, an emperor, his daughter, the snakebite;
the tower he built to keep her at the edge of the sea—
when an old woman passes us on the ferry,
sniffs us twice, You are in love, I smelled it!
and last night on the island, over fresh fish
and a pitcher of ice-cloudy raki, I asked how
many words for love in your language:
By TOM PAINE
When I first became a bee I was just so nectar naïve.
I tumbled over petals waving my antennae frantically.
Then, when I was living life as a flower and not a bee,
well, to back up: this is tragic: I didn’t identify as flower
By DANIEL TOBIN
Or else swoon to death, the young poet wrote,
though these in the seminar’s steadfast room
appear to want little or none of it,
however coddlingly the professor prods.
They are the poet’s age at death, or almost,
but do not find “relatable” these words
composed by one who knew his passion hopeless—
especially the sleepless Eremite,
belonging to another world and time,
and even his fair love’s ripening breast
conjures only suspect looks, withering stares,
or now and then a tolerating nod.
Of course, they must assume their own bright stars
will rise aloft some digital empyrean
By JOHN FREEMAN
Sundays I’d walk down the hill toward the green four o’clock
dark beginning like a rumor—
always she was leaning over the counter, head tipped toward
a tiny phone,
her husband turning the pages of a
Daily Mail like a man
whose suspicions of human nature were
being fed fresh evidence.
Stale fryer fat, ale, black and tans in the fridge.
They knew I’d be there before the match started.
You alright yeah
Every Sunday a matinee I attended for three years
as volcanoes exploded
and she died,
white slipped into my beard
wars began and others ended.
Each Sunday the words gathering new weight
strangeness
as words do when you repeat them.
You alright
I didn’t know but by halftime if I wasn’t too pissed
I’d walk home in the furred darkness before the beer wore off
and a sudden gust of wind could blow cold air on my heart.
“Made of cotton Jeans, red cotton cord
and one cotton tassel. Price, each $5.00″
—from Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Inside the discourse, our course—the walk
in the tattle, the footwork goose stepped
Dedicated to Reina Yolanda Burdie
I was in Egypt nine months before the towers fell.
The people spoke to me in Arabic Roh Rohi
but I spoke back in English so they called me “American”
/I never called myself American.
America never called me American – not without a hyphen.
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