CLARICE
All his victims are women…
His obsession is women, he lives to hunt women.
But not one woman is hunting him—except me.
I can walk into a woman’s room
and know three times as much about her as a man would.
A starling catches me in a dress
and pierces my chest two times,
deeply, and I cannot blame her.
I have read the report—inconclusive.
Yet, I know how much your brain weighs,
your liver, your heart. Your ordinary,
damaged heart. I know it by the gram.
It is so late
it is early, and there, once again,
is that thrilling and disturbing bird
of dawn, its four notes,
one two THREE, four climbing
a little way up into the future
and back down, and once again
everything that’s mine is in a rental truck
or in the future.
I smell her—
she is in the bed sheets
conjuring aged summers
when popsicles stained
our mouths red,
and the sun colored
our noses black.
By SARA ELKAMEL
I am beginning to think about the middle,
and how we should behave in it.
When I say you held me closer than clouds hold birds
you tell me it was coincidence we slept at all.
Of course I want it to stop. I dream every night of a man
with the head of a man and the body of a scary sea creature.
I dream the man is lost so I carry him home. Of course
I mistake water for home and home for water but at least, I try.
Memory: a man cradles his son onshore,
pressing warm sea breeze on his tiny rebellion.
If men gave birth, what would become of gods?
By RON WELBURN
Life knows no embarrassment
than being unprepared,
caught in the rain flatfooted
before ceremonies,
nabbed in the seat of the pants
by the stealth of Coyote.
When she sheds
her last moony
red potential
a woman sheds
also obligation
(insert obligation
elsewhere)
fading from
lure to lore.
By DON SHARE and JOHN KINSELLA
17.
The cicadas come every…
How many years? The cycles
Are all fucked up now. Even
Insects know the end is near.
The emerald ash borer looks
Like a jewel; its value
Lies in destructiveness to
Species—ours—that feed on ash.
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