One Story

Certain Days Can Never Be Recovered

Some of us are here because we don’t have a choice. Others of us are here because we want to be. And I’m definitely one of those two. Maybe even both, but I haven’t figured that part out yet and don’t know how.

200 feet underground the eels are writhing, never-ending loops of black, waiting for us in their vats. The elevator can fit two people at a time so me and Meira get inside the cage. The metal groans as Meira pushes the button dangling by her head, lowering us down into the depths.

“What did you do yesterday?” Meira wants to know. She is small in her silver suit. Big eyes and lots of hair, wadded up into a bun.

“Same thing you were doing, probably.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

I’m not looking at her but I can feel her smiling at me. The walls around us are a mosaic of purple and blue and white, the black light making the limestone come alive. It used to feel like something. The first time I came down here, years ago, I felt like maybe if I only saw this for the rest of my life that things could turn out okay. Now I can’t think of a worse place to be.

“Anyway,” Meira says. The elevator travels fast after the first 10 feet or so, and yet she doesn’t bother holding onto any of the handles. She’s even rocking back and forth on her heels, like she’s so relaxed she could start whistling even as we barrel down past the walls, all the colors melting into each other. “I’m wondering what you guys do for fun. After work and all of that.”

“You could talk to Darren if you want to have fun. Or Ada.”

“But I want to talk to you.”

I don’t know how to respond to that and don’t have to because as soon as she’s finished we’re at the bottom. The gates of the cage unlock and I lift the deadbolt. Around us is now the sound of dull sloshing, hollow and everywhere, inescapable.

I want to tell her to stop talking to me but instead I choose to ignore it, focus on the work. Meira’s footsteps are wet and stick to the ground behind me as we enter the Glacier.

The live map is waiting for us to make sense of it, help it do its job. I open the Glacier’s Head, tapping through the different vats lighting up its brain. “Group A and Z are ready to harvest. Group B needs 3 ml dopamine, Group D needs 2 ml domperidone.” I squint, swiping over to the tanks, where the newborns are. “We need to adjust the heat in the tank for Group C. And Group F…”

“I completed the light therapy earlier today.”

“You’re not supposed to do that. You have to follow the schedule.”

“I could tell they needed it.”

Meira smells like cloves, the scent permeating even through the suit. I try to stay calm, look away as I talk, but I can feel my arms shaking.

“You try to work outside of schedule one more time and I’ll make sure upstairs hears about it.”

“And what would they do to punish me? Send me to work down here?” She’s smug. Smiling because she knows I know she’s right.

“Just stay here and for the love of God don’t do anything stupid.”

I climb into a cart and it shuttles me through the maze of eels. The biggest ones gape at me, snapping at me through the glass. They’re the ones that fight the hardest when we pull them out, ten feet of flesh slapping against our bodies as we move them through the Glacier’s Digestive Tract. One of them follows me with its cloudy, blank eyes. A huge wave of electricity courses through the tank, and the cave is awash with light before it’s swallowed up through the wires.

Finally I reach the tanks located near the back. This is the sick group, the ones Ada’s been working with the past week. They don’t seem to be capable of producing anything. Don’t respond to treatment, either. Ada gets attached to the young ones especially. We’ve tried to take over for her, but she won’t let us. Sometimes, even after work hours she’ll come down here to talk to them. She doesn’t say as much but I can hear her, shuffling back into bed early in the morning right before our shifts start.

Around twenty babies are in there, shining like miniature ribbons made of glass ribbons. A couple of days ago we thought maybe we’d have to recycle them, tell the host’s families we’d have to start over. Little sores had started growing along their tails, like flecks of white mold. But now they’re all gone. They’re healthy, drawing toward my hand like magnets as I drop some pellets in the tank for them. They float for a second and I watch them sink before the eels devour them in an instant.

I think about what to say to Meira as I make my way back to the Glacier. Above me the white bones of the cave drip with water, plinking down into the cart. I think of frogs and rain in the springtime. Rainboots. Things like that. They’re nice enough images, but I can’t feel anything toward them, like they’re just scenes from someone else’s life. I look at my hands, want to look at my own skin. But I don’t see anything besides white gloves.

When I get back to the Glacier, Meira is playing with something inside of her hands. Knotting and unknotting, working quickly, but whatever it is I can’t see it. The sleeves of her suit are rolled up and I can see that there are burns stamped all over her forearms, welts shining like glazed fruit. She sees me looking, smiles.

“Guess which hand,” she says, closing them into fists.

I point to the right one.

She opens them. Meira’s skin is soft, her palm lines as deep as rivers. It might just be a trick of the lenses, but for some reason I can swear they’re glowing, mimicking the wet colors of the limestone.

“Nothing here,” she says, pulling her hands away from me. A familiar static forms in my head as she leans back in her chair, a live map of the babies I left pulled up in front of her. They carry on inside the water, endlessly circling the same four walls. In the cool glow of the screen she moves forward, extending a finger. Her hands are shaking, I realize, as she arches over their figures, tracing them. “Gotcha,” she whispers, then swallows, goes quiet.

*

There are two dreams that I have. The first is of me in a field with a bunch of other kids, holding a huge kite that joins with hundreds of other kites gathered in the air, butterflies and smiley faces and blue flowers. There’s a hand on my shoulder and I know its touch, but when I look up, I can’t make out her face. The second one is a conversation.

“You should know that the procedure’s changed in recent years,” the doctor says. Pink walls, pink uniform, pink little pills I swallow on command before I’m shuttered back off into my room, to have a light shined in my face.

How long have I been here? I ask when we line up for meds or when people came into my room, first a question then shouting.

That’s not important, everyone replies. What’s important is that you get better.

The brochure in my hand is for a version of therapy that involves electric shocks, sent up to your brain. For those who are unresponsive to “regular treatment”. I hand it back to her.

“I already said I’m not interested.”

She smiles, but I can tell there’s something underneath it, frustration and anger that I won’t just shut up and do what she tells me to.

“You’re considered one of the most eligible sub— patients that we have here. One of the ones for whom we consider this could be the most beneficial. And it’s all free.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Ely,” the doctor says, but her voice is different now. I feel something wet beneath my feet and see water seeping up from the floor, steadily climbing. When I look back toward the doctor her eyes are a milky white. Someone pounds violently at the door.

“Open it,” she commands. But the door swings open before I get there, a bouquet of eel heads bulging past, one after another, until I’m suffocating.

“You look like shit,” Darren says in the canteen. I woke up late, which I hate doing. You miss out on the good proteinkits and don’t have any time to yourself. The rest of the day is the same three people, the same eels. When I walked into the canteen earlier, Darren was just staring at the wall, proteinkit untouched before him. But I didn’t say anything about that, did I?

“I’m fine,” I say. I try to eat some of my proteinkit but it’s this muted yellow paste today. A smooth round shape sits in the middle, jiggles when I touch it. It won’t go down my throat and I know from past experiences I shouldn’t force it. He’s been here for longer than I have, Darren. Pretends to respect me but I know he’s just waiting for the right time. An image comes into my head of Darren gleefully harvesting diseased eels with a hammer, spreading their slime all over his arms and face as a trophy. I think we have a lot in common, Darren said the first time he ever saw me. We’ve both been through shit no one else has. I don’t want to know what he meant by that.

“I was reading through the notes for this week,” Darren says. “We got a new arrival scheduled for tomorrow. You see that?”

I blink. I tap into the Glacier’s Head, scan the schedule. But there’s nothing particularly exciting, just regular maintenance stuff and one or two harvests. I see the new arrival scheduled for tomorrow and zoom in, confused. Normally there’s only two of us, max, assigned to a tank, if the host is someone really important. Even then we’ve all been down here long enough to handle it ourselves. But for some reason, all four of us are assigned to this tank. I scroll through the notes but there’s nothing there about who the host is. It doesn’t even say their sizes. It makes me tired just looking at it.

I blink out of the Head. Darren’s got his hand on his knee, looking into my face as if he’s expecting me to explain. “Weird.”

He shrugs, goes back to picking around at his proteinkit. “You think it has anything to do with that Meira girl?” he asks, frowning. “She’s not like us, man.”

“I guess not.” I think about her intensity, trying so hard to get close to me. Almost demanding to be let in.

“I mean, how many years has it been since they added another person down here? Why now, all of the sudden? We don’t need her help. The three of us are just fine.”

He stops eating. A recycler wheels up, an old model that’s almost dead, lifting its arms to collect Darren’s proteinkit. Darren kicks it away. It lands in the corner, sparks emitting from its metal frame.

Darren places an arm on his thigh, leans in close.

“She’s sexy though. Yeah, I know you think so too. Don’t lie. Listen, if you don’t have dibs, maybe I could…”

“Ada’s having trouble with one of the eels in Group C,” a voice says and Darren pulls away. It’s Meira, standing by the door. Her voice is even, but as she looks at Darren I see a film of disgust forming on her face. “He won’t eat his pellets.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Darren says, and his body relaxes next to me a little but not enough. I push him away and he relents.

“I’ll come,” I say. I can feel Darren’s eyes on my back as Meira and I walk out of the canteen, until we hit the corner. Something moves in my vision and I see it’s Meira’s hands moving again, fingers twitching at her sides as we move past the Glacier, white and tomb-like and asleep until one of us walks in. We get into a cart.

“What are you doing?” I ask Meira.

“I’m counting out meters for sonnets,” she mumbles. She sees that I’m still confused and adds, “I memorized some, a while ago…” She stops talking. A deep rose color builds in her face and I realize I think that Meira is very pretty.

We get to Group C quickly. As we step out of the cart, I can smell there is something wrong. One of the eels is outside of the tank. Ada’s sitting on the ground, back against the glass, clutching an enormous eel to her chest. It isn’t resisting at all, coiled up around Ada’s body so that Ada looks like she’s floating inside of a black pool. As Meira and I get closer it ducks its face into Ada’s armpit, as if hiding from us.

“Shhh,” Ada says, petting its side, but it stays hidden. She looks up at us, annoyed. “What is it?”

“Meira told me that he wasn’t eating his pellets.”

“He’s doing fine,” Ada whines, and I know she’s lying. “He’s eating fine. Meira, why’d you tell him?”

Meira crouches down. It makes me confused, their closeness—like she already trusts her. She’s holding something in her hand, but they’re not pellets. She shakes the pink stuff around, places one on Ada’s leg. “Come on out, buddy,” she says. “I have something for you.”

A face, small and ugly as hell, ducks out. Tentatively, the eel’s head ducks down and begins to eat them up.

“You’re not supposed to feed them anything but pellets. It can mess up the transference process,” I say as Meira dusts her palms off on her suit legs.

“Ada’s been submitting falsified reports for two months now,” Meira says. I feel something cold shoot down my spine. Ada’s not paying attention, her black hair covering her face as she leans over, coochie-cooing at the eel as it wriggles around in her lap. “And you were the one who signed off on all of them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble. And then, childishly, “None of your business anyway.”

“I think you both are doing the right thing,” she says. She pulls out more of the pink flakes and upon looking closer I see they’re brine shrimp. The eel jumps out of Ada’s lap, mouth gaping at the shrimp. Ada squeals as Meira lets them go, falling like blossom petals onto the floor. “I wouldn’t want any of Edgar Convington's memories either. The guy who killed his kid, right?”

“Ethics aren’t part of this job,” I say, on autopilot all of a sudden. “Thinking about them will only make it harder.”

“You care, though.”

Before I can say anything, though, there’s a shriek from the floor. Ada is laughing as the eel rolls around on its back, back and forth, coiling up to form a curly que, circling around her head.

“I taught him some tricks,” she says. She puts a hand underneath of the eel’s chin, starts scratching. “Come on, Edgar, up!”

The eel starts swaying its neck in the air, like a snake. Meira’s laughing. From the ceiling the stalactites drip water down into the floor.

Meira is pretty. That’s a fact. But the rest of her, I’m not sure I like at all.

*

The kite I’m holding is shaped like an enormous octopus. It has large purple and white tentacles that flutter behind its head, way up in the sky. The sun inserts itself directly into the middle of its head, so that there’s a huge light-shaped brain in the middle. I have no shoes on, just trailing around my kite in bare feet. Someone comes up behind me and I turn around, but inside of her face is the doctor’s face. When I turn back to the sky, the sky is alive with eels, black squiggles in the air.

Ever since the incident with Ada I start watching them in the canteen. Darren and I are more likely to be eating by ourselves, taking our breaks only when we absolutely need to or else risk collapsing. But Meira and Ada take their breaks together, at 2 PM every day.

I finish administering the dopamine to Group B and follow behind them into the canteen, taking my time selecting my proteinkit, listening to them.

“I’ve always loved eels,” Ada is saying. “All marine creatures, really. I think they’re awesome.”

Ada waves her hands around, talking about eels and anglerfish and shrimp, her eyes shining as she talks about the different eels’ personalities. I try not to indulge her in these conversations. I figure it’ll only make things harder if I feed into it. But Meira eats it all up. Bits of protein get smeared on Ada’s face as she talks and eats at the same time. A piece of her hair catches on her lip and Meira leans over to pull it away.

“I mean, I don’t like the job. Because of the stuff we have to do to them,” Ada says. She frowns. “But if I just got to hang out with them forever I’d be super happy.”

“What was your job before you got here?” Meira asks.

Ada’s face caves. Inside of the void, Ada is trying to search for an answer. The more she thinks she starts clenching up, her body burrowing into itself. Where’s the answer? There has to be one, I know she’s thinking. What was I doing…

“Come on, Ada, you can tell me,” Meira says, reaching out to hold her hand, but Ada just keeps staring at the table. I can’t take it anymore and walk over, making a big deal of slamming the proteinkit on the table. Neither of them bother looking at me.

“Ada, you were a veterinarian. Remember?” I say, keeping my voice calm.

Ada blinks. A smoothness comes over her features but there’s some hollowness there, pressing up against her skull. She shakes her head, suddenly closed off.

“I think it’s time for my shift. I’ll talk to you later, guys,” she says. Before she leaves she gently passes her kit down to the recycler, gives it a kiss on the top of its head.

It’s not like it knows what a kiss means, it’s not like it understands the sentiment, I want to say. Just give up. I turn back to Meira, one eyebrow raised as she waits for me to speak.

“It’s cruel,” I say.

“What’s cruel? I was just making conversation.” She shrugs.

“Stop.”

“So it wasn’t true. Being a veterinarian.”

“She can’t handle it. Look, I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to do but just leave Ada out of it.”

Meira shrugs again. “She could’ve gotten there. She was getting close. You can, too. With or without the eels.”

The static gets greedy inside my head, spreading over my thoughts.

“Maybe you just don’t want to,” she calls behind me, even though I’m running now, trying not to hear her. The sound of her voice echoes through the caves, mixing with a hundred eels going against their nature, doing all that humans want them to do.

*

This is what happens in the rest of the first dream. “You’re one of the most eligible subjects here,” the doctor says. “Ely, are you listening to me?”

Outside of the window there are blossoms on the trees, clotting with rain and falling down onto the ground in clumps. Below patients roam around the enclosed lawn, and the grass does feel good underneath your toes even when you know it’s fake. They even let you take your socks off during outside time.

The doctor finishes the yogurt that’s been sitting on her desk for an hour now, sucking on the spoon with lipstick-stained teeth. She pats her lips, then starts talking again. “Ely, you don’t have any family members waiting for you, do you? This hospital is quite an expensive stay.”

I’ve been hospitalized for four months. I fill out the forms right. I am not feeling suicidal, I am not having thoughts of hurting myself or others, I have a plan in place for ways to stay healthy upon release. But they won’t let me out. People come and go but I stay right here.

“What are you trying to say?” I finally ask.

She smiles. “You have the opportunity to be a part of a very exciting experiment. It could help us cure a myriad of different diseases. Depression, that’s one of them. But most importantly, it could—if it works—even cure dementia,” she says, and waits.

“I don’t have dementia,” I say.

She smiles again. Wan, cold, unfeeling. “Yes, I know that. I also know that you’re unable to pay for your stay here, correct?”

            On her desk, there’s a plaque that reads MARTHA KÖNING, DIRECTOR OF PRISM HEALTH.

“Luckily, we offer a work program available for those who are unable to afford their hospital visits. All we need is your memories, and only for a short time. You get them back unscathed after your work with us is complete.”

The patients outside on the lawn are now gathering up, lining up in the courtyard to go back inside. There’s a bald man with a bad sense of temper and a scar on his head, always looks like he’s mad at someone. Then a smaller woman with long black hair, so shy she starts crying when we line up for lunch. The only time she opens up is when she talks about animals. She’s like a child.

I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up, she said the other day, despite the fact she’s 30, despite the fact that growing up has already occurred: and you’re living in hell, honey, there are no dreams left for you out there. We were walking around the gym, a huge space filled with old, flat footballs and worn yoga mats. Besides us, the bald, angry guy was the only other patient in the room. It seemed that this had been happening a lot recently, the three of us getting grouped together, though I didn’t know why. Near the entrance, nurses observed us and jotted things down in their notepads from where they sat. What do you want to be when you grow up?

What do I want to be? Tell me, Ada, how do I find out?

“Sure,” I hear myself say. “Out of curiosity, how am I going to get them back though? My memories?”

“Oh, easily. Or maybe a little hard.” Director Köning smiles. There’s a fish tank behind her, with a couple of baby tadpoles in it, it looks like; long ones that shine underneath the light. She grabs some flakes from her desk and shakes them into their tank. “Tell me,” she says, and then here they come, the bouquet of eel heads blossoming out of the door, coming to swallow me whole. “How do you feel about seafood?”

*

The next day Darren, Ada, and Meira are all down in the cave below me. The Glacier murmurs as we gather inside, and we watch different parts of its brain flicker on.

The eels are assigned to three people. Like everything else down here they’re writhing, neverending lines that won’t go quiet. They look like they’re in pain, they look like they have no souls: just beasts like the rest of us are beasts. But oiled and scaled and with eyes that want you just as empty as they are.

Most of all, these ones in particular are enormous. Beside me, Ada gasps.

“How the fuck did they get so big?”

Twenty feet, maybe even larger. And instead of the normal clouded, blue eyes, these ones can see—their pupils dilate as electricity courses around them from the other groups. The Brain lights up our names, traveling behind the respective eel. The nervous-seeming one flitting toward the top is Ada’s. Darren’s lurks below, coiling around itself, weary and dangerous.

Mine is surprising. Flat-faced, like both of the others, spotted, but it looks lonelier. It keeps getting close to Darren’s before it pushes it away. It floats up to where Ada’s is, but she’s too anxious to pay attention. It can’t seem to understand that aloneness is its only option. It goes back and forth, over and over again, hoping that someone will let it in.

            Ten years pass by so quickly, down here in the dark. And Meira is the light that will set us all free.

            She’s turned around. Is she ashamed? Is she sorry for us? In her own way, I guess she was trying to avoid the inevitable. If only we could remember before this part, we could be free, but at the end of the day she has her job and we have ours. I’d like to admit this much: It feels nice to look at you, Meira, think maybe you liked me, even if I know you’re only doing this to relieve yourself of some of the grief. I watch her slowly pull up the schedules, brushing her tears away. And now we begin the slow process of transference with someone who we knew, one day would come.

I close my eyes, close out the condensation and dark to search again for the warm sun and the hand that knew me, cradling my shoulder. Soon, perhaps, I’ll know the rest of the day, surrounding the kite in the sky. The woman’s face is inside of it, that large and increasingly sad eel, flitting from one part of the tank into the other. But even when I go inside, digest its flesh, I know that something will still be missing. No one will be there as I knew them. I open my eyes again and see the eel is staring straight at me with something like pity; the knowledge that both of us will soon be swallowed up by the great mirage of time.

∩

Daisuke Shen is the author of the short story collection Vague Predictions and Prophecies (CLASH Books, 2024), and the novella Funeral (with Vi Khi Nao, KERNPUNKT Press, 2023). They live in New York City.

from I’m I’m

If the rules say “Say
I’m I’m twice” do you

do that, do you say
I’m I’m twice? Rules can’t

tell people not to say
what can’t be said clearly

and expect them to obey;

obedience isn’t just careful tread,
expectation isn’t just careful tread.

I’m following one rule (the
one rule that encompasses the

others), therefore I’m following all
the rules. The one says

incompleteness is it. Just say
tautology after tautology until context

comes true around you. Just
put “The End” at the

end (where it stands in
for the incompleteness) and be

done with it. Whatever. “Whatever
I can’t speak about, I

can’t speak about.” That’s okay,
this isn’t speech. The End.

I’m I’m. It’s not something.
I’m saying it too clearly.

I wield the flashlight of
consciousness, illuminating the beam of

consciousness shining forth. The visual
analogy’s bad because the brain’s

using words to resemble it,
not unlike how like I’m

I’m isn’t to the swan,
spotlit (or not) in silhouette.

What would it mean that
love is far from mind

if incompleteness were everywhere and
mind were contained inside it,

a wasp rasping around inside
the inside of a balloon?

I’m I’m. Mind seems to
know words in order, or

to know words in order
to know words in order.

This is going in circles;
you want what you have

named love to encircle you
in ceaseless animal parade fashion;

there is no end of
circling, circumambulating, the end; always

the bluebird isn’t truly blue;
the shipworm (which is not

a worm) outlasts the age
of ships; everything gets named

away in one punishing push;
the creation, betrayed, presses on;

you never give my name;

love persists within a lack
of love, bound up in

a real and solid world
in a perfectly transparent language;

one goes way out of
one’s way, yes spouting commonplaces

but what else is it
for, the going out of

one’s way? But I watched
you, I wanted you! Why

did that happen? A commonplace
happened, and all creation went

way out of our way;

I’m I’m is a chapbook from The Economy Press.

∩

Jon Woodward’s books include Rain, Uncanny Valley and The Amber in Ambrose. He is the author of the chapbooks I’m I’m, POOLGOER and SPELEOGRAPHER, and a collection of translations of Brazilian poet Nicolas Behr entitled mirror-city, all published by The Economy Press. A handful of web projects and videogame-adjacent prototypes can be found on his website, jonwoodward.net. He lives in the Boston area with his wife Sam, and works at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.

from The Best Kind of Love

I’m high on Tylenol PM I’m 

digging frantically through my 

purse I’m chewing on your right 

nipple hair I’m ordering fried 

chicken and mashed potatoes 

I’m rehearsing for a sudden 

break in time I’m trying to remember the 

bright spot of 

light reflected off the bathroom mirror 

that first time I took your 

cock out of your pants I named it 

a river a cheap plastic vase I rubbed it 

all over with sugar some leavening powder its knowingness 

drenched my skin I was teething I was wearing all 

corduroy I was watching from a distance as my 

cicada wings finally became translucent 

what after all

is the purpose of a cock an

unforeseen conjuring 

a short chain of frantic islands anything 

that can easily be set in aspic 

I should have known it was just a matter of time

before you’d get up and

smooth the bedspread the old

fashioned way 

split 

ends of my wish to 

someday live under the elms 

without knowing 

whether or not it is safe I sit

down and make a list of all my

favorite winter sports

all of the reasons why 

you still won’t let me

watch you pee this

room and its whorish 

economy is making me a hybrid

thing a monster of day old vanilla frosting piss

and apricot jam trembling where even my

lust will no longer perfume my 

pubic hair I’m afraid I’ve never really

deserved it the only 

funeral song I remember

from my childhood

goes something like this 

the first three inches up

inside of me that’s

where you’ll find that the

horses are most

generous I know a

little bit of of nothingness 

always turns you on so I sit

down in my underwear and 

write you a series of

poems about the

tenderness of

paternal sequestering the goat

herd we 

saw the other day in the

Macy’s parking lot even

after four and half weeks of

steadily ignoring the 

mucus built up on the

kitchen counter your crotch somehow 

stills smells like stale beer

dieseled to a perfectly

mirrored sheen I take off my

underwear and throw

them in the kitchen sink 

will they bloom 

a body depends on many

things for survival one of 

which can only be described as the exact

opposite of music I’m whispering all of my

disgusting thoughts into your ear the

Empress Regnant Irene of

Athens was the mother of Constantine VI  

that was the year when I

mated from dawn to dusk until I became a more

necessary planet this sticky

discharge on my

fingers the one thing that

alphabets are actually good for 

no way I’m going to be able to

make dinner tonight so I

rush into the bathroom

and text you the photo I 

took this morning the one

where I am totally uncircumscribable

someday

my soft side will only be

matched by the violence of old milk 

boiling on your extra large

camp stove I drove three

hundred and eighty seven miles 

on the spare the one you

gave me for Christmas the

tall grasses they’re on fire today they are the 

only reason why I haven’t

nectared since noon I know you are

absolutely desperate to wrap your hands

around the fattest part of my thigh

because it’s no secret that 

the syntax of a thing can

sometimes be more dangerous than the thing itself 

was that me breaking up with you just now

or was it my memory of the

wildflowers that only three hours ago

finally reached my waist

our fucking has never involved blood only

a theory to justify the existence of blood in the veins

I cum after fifty seven

minutes down on all fours

my breasts and cunt linoleumed to a fault

reminds me of mildew and meat 

eventually after we’ve

gotten to know each other a bit better I’ll show you my 

rocky shoreline that’s where the

milkweed begins have you

ever really monarched a

woman before or were you just teasing

me most things made of butter can easily 

turn into the ugliest kind of

romance except for that one winter I was 

in the garage I was making a collect call

to Rome when especially the cream

and the Safeway in the distance someone 

just set it on fire and in the

lobby both of us crying because

we haven’t yet found a way to replace 

the sun with something more

grammatically predictable down

on my knees fellating you like a symptom

any false etymology is reason enough for me to 

get out of bed in the morning

brush my teeth wash my face up from the flower of it

I still think way too much

about the ants coming in from under the 

kitchen sink I still think way too

much about submissiveness 

there are seismic cracks up and down all 

over California and yet even now the

only real way to begin is with desire 

∩

Ann Pedone’s books include The Medea Notebooks and The Italian Professor’s Wife. Her poetry, non-fiction, and reviews have been published widely. Ann’s project “Liz” was a finalist for the 2024 Levis Prize. She has been nominated for Best of Net and the Pushcart multiple times. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal and small press, αntiphony.

Four Poems

Most

a song cuts like diamonds

should I hold this in

abandonment             sing/s like it hurts

dreg of ornament       started up

sifter    hope of a capsule

spunk in turmoil          pop in

aspens             ashes wished for everything

Host  

a welcome cuts like weathering

should I fixture this bible

quintessence               sing/s like a face

status of ash    cuts up

calling hope of a turmoil

fall in abandonment   bare in

green   spunk wished for fiction

Post

a single cut like status

should I knell this season

calling              sing/s like a dreg

opus of ash     tide up

calling night of an apple

fall in cross      bare in

hand    tie wished for face

Dialectical Grease

from Type Man Type

without nation            long very while still     could move the little through             also so see very           head must a need but think               nation man make both           many now keep will out she then                   head life see house                 any plan out open       move get play same interest not down where can should set own up             the plan           order public                first do with state        should write             other most number       think this consider keep day work few                     she off then face                     this like do any use which change general last those these          no order          or lead we then hand thing all would from       long

Successful Action = Y or N ?

picking a swarm of lint off the towel

one monkey

grooming another

a man killed by the bears he loved

if I’m not exploiting experience, then am I

exploiting language? is it possible to exploit

language without exploiting experience?

= let animals eat you

= the feeling of never enough

long from        would all thing hand               then we lead               or order no these        those last general change which use any do like this             face then         off she few work         day keep consider       this think         number most other                 write should state with do first                         public order plan        the up own      set should can where down not interest same           play get move open                out plan any house       see life head then she out will keep               now many both make man                 nation think but need a must lead     very see so also through   little the move could               still while very long nation without

∩

Dominic Dulin is a poet and musician out of Cleveland, Ohio. They are a graduate of the NEOMFA program at Cleveland State University. He has had poetry published by Iterant, Yum! Lit, and Surreal Poetics, among others.

from Muminent

in the manuscript of Hollingsworth’s
Mancuniensis at Chetham’s Library
a blank page before the frontispiece
bears the graphite inscription Mum. A.6 .51
a corruption of Mun
used to signifying filing
in the muniments room
of Manchester Cathedral

*

since its foundation in fourteen twenty-one
the capitular archives
have been misplaced, displaced and replaced
as frequently as the collegiate
church was dissolved and reformed
 

the missing archives
of the late sixteenth century
led to erroneous accounts
that nothing remarkable occurred
relating to the church in the fifteen sixties

*

I prefer to think the title a neologism
of Manchester and amanuensis
although the suffix
-ensis transforms toponym
into adjective

*

in No Archive Will Restore You Julietta Singh

references Derrida’s Archive Fever

noting that etymologically

‘arkhē is the place from which everything

emerges, the location from which the thoughts

and things of the world spring forth’

it is also the ‘place of authoritative law’

Arkhē is the womb and matriarch  

*

where would I begin to unravel
her body archive
I was gestating while capital
punishment was abolished

completely in the United Kingdom
excluding the nightly
demolitions of self by self
in a process of becoming

when the towers fell
I was pre-symbolic, entire
toddling to harvest tears
wept for the televised disaster

setting the precedent
for a lifetime
of crises
make me a channel of your fears

*

Hollingsworth had an almost modern
preoccupation with the weather
his meteorological entries were disregarded
as irrelevant, lacking weft
yet who can dampen the significance
of weather in the rainy city
atmosphere awash with rivers

moist conditions were supposedly
conducive to the cotton trade as fibres
become brittle in dry air, yet stay

strong and stretchy with the correct
humidity, perfect for spinning into yarn
during the Lancashire Cotton Famine

after years of unprecedented growth
and surplus production, impoverished
mill workers refused to touch raw

cotton picked by enslaved Africans
on plantations in Southern states
Abraham Lincoln expressed his gratitude

to ‘the workingmen at Manchester’
praising their ‘sublime Christian heroism’
in facilitating the foul blot’s erasure

*

my mum has been signed off
sick with work-related stress
the past year her eyes carried
panniers like a packhorse
she was not listening to the body
disavowing its biological responses
as if they were gadflies
swarming around the pain

I have been writing
about her illness since a diagnosis
of hemochromatosis
collecting loose leaves of notes
in a mumorandum
the blood condition is hereditary
it likely occupies my iron-bound chest

what further information is helixed
away inside the only son
the ‘destroying Angell’ of blood

∩

Tom Branfoot is a poet and critic from Bradford, and the writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral. He won a Northern Debut Award for Poetry in 2024 and the New Poets Prize 2022. He organises the poetry reading series More Song in Bradford. Tom is the author of This Is Not an Epiphany (Smith|Doorstop) and boar (Broken Sleep Books), both published in 2023.

Three Poems

Collector

*

the first one is a coincidence          
the first one in a collection is not         

having crossed the threshold  
the practice commits

(it seems) it only

makes sense

*

the first encounter      
being a singularity

an impulsion
untimely    

a word
of caution               

a river that cannot be
crossed twice

has stones all over its banks

*                                  

I weigh stones
in palm

like all texts  
my palm convinces

to throw the cold
stones back

to the river

until the next virtue
finds its route

back to the palm                            

with damning intentions         
holding instants

& long

long evaporates

a plea
the palm is

for the mercy
of intents please

I throw

the cold stones away again  

*

in front of the court
I admit
I collect

other people’s pain

in front of the mirror
I admit
I collect

other people’s pain

in front of the mountains
I admit
I collect

other people’s pain    

in front of you I press
the illusory wounds
I admit

*

I collect

other people  

the warm oval

the sharp drone

the habitual    

human action

fail vail                                   

Speculative fiction #1

-

I saw the deer
Among many deers alive

Trees are
Rabbit seconds

Ruby speed; tech
Knee at auto dawn

Arrival is an
Ambush unenviable

All anus labored
A sloth

Cars eventual

-

A table grows sons

Mothers, unclaimed
Daughter cry over

Sugar in air; sugar
Nose - bless you

Crystal, mine kin
Not, job me

A swarm, swam,
Am

-

Miss American, missing
A spleen

Rather a warm
Day it is

Landlord

my landlord said: let there be love
so was love made, snitched

by an ark of comrades
hating life, feet in boiler

eating fecund, tail deep
in teeth, while fire caves

a sun purple, pointing
the rumble of daylight fright

the waste of it all,
the dawn cedes,

that’s when a lover comes -
as my landlord allows -

a rat or raccoon, their face
adjacent to a dancing

heart in dark, mooning
buddha’s eye. slasher

or prophecies, in cruelty
we depend on lamb -

like your arm, fragility is
in this house the only

thing i possess. so said
the land, the lord, the lover

governs this law - in this house

like hell
let there be love. 

∩

Yuyi Chen (they/them) is from Sichuan, China. They are now in a PhD program in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. They are the author of the chapbook EROTIC CONTINENT (Discount Guillotine, 2025) and their poems are published or forthcoming in Nat. Brut, αntiphony, Landfill, and Pile Press. They go by Echo.

from A Field of Telephones

HUGO SCENE, 1

the ventriloquist requests a volunteer...

no, no: he insists...you in the front...let’s see what you have to say for yourself...what’s your name...

Brad...let’s hear it for Brad...

now Brad put this on...yes the straps and...you can still see his eyes folks but what can his eyes see...the less the better he’ll probably be thinking...

the nose over the nose...cheeks over his cheeks...

I’d say you’re looking pretty presidential Brad... maybe even professorial...

(strokes Brad’s head)...I’ve always thought education should be about making energy intellectual...that’s different from making intellectuality intellectual...

and yes the mouth over the mouth...dangling...it talks when I pump it like this...

how ya feeling Brad...

(Brad voice, ventriloquized, the mouth of the mask flapping as the ventriloquist talks for Brad and pumps) at last I can live like a human...

what were you before...

(Brad voice, deflatingly but also a little to-be-so-bold) I couldn’t say...

HUGO SCENE, 3

this is our critical pageant...a variety show...little scummy...starting any minute now...consider the mask Brad’s fellowship...a real honor...

our subject tonight is Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town...our title is “The Triggering Town: Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town at Forty”...snappy right...

forty refers to me...I’m about to turn...the book’s a little older, a classic...if forty is old enough for that...I read it first...who cares when...I lived in towns he knew...the wind bled coupons into earth... and the milk ran out with the spoon...Aberdeen, La Push...

it’s just that easy folks...poetry is mostly tone...a dial tone...pretending to be speech...like how you used to be able to record payphones...certain tones... and there was this one sequence you could record then hold up to the copy machines at Kinko’s...a hack...boop boop beep beep beep boop...and then print your zine for free...

I chaperoned the prom...I bought asparagus in the rain...this is Methodist and there is no air...art is what keeps you...I won’t say whole...art is what keeps you...perishable...and the trout ran out...it’s all right to applaud...

our sponsor tonight is the new university run by firefighters...mostly calendars...safe for work... they’re great...they have this new firesuit we’ll be showing off tonight...it’s not just for firefighters... little girl, would you like one...

the new firesuit also helps when we need Brad to go to sleep...do you all think Brad would like to go to sleep...

audience: NAP! THAT! BRAD!

OK Brad get ready...here comes the firesuit...

(pale blue sheet put over Brad, mouth pucker/suckle effect comedically visible through the sheet, cartoon snoring sounds, Brad acting like a parrot being put to sleep, a sheet over its cage, which counteracts any more sinister associations though not enough)

speaking of turning forty...you know that poem by Donald Justice, “Men at Forty”...you know it, don’t you Brad...

(Brad wakes, suckles/puckers mouth until sheet chomps off)

(Brad voice, reciting) Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be Coming back to

is it just me or is the changing understanding of great literature over the course of one’s life absolutely amazing...a round of applause...I guess my philosophy is you run until you feel the leash and then you hope your head is smaller than your neck...slip through...that’s why we need to be careful about learning...hey, Brad...do you ever wonder if it’s easier to make your head smaller or your neck larger...

(Brad voice) why not both...
do you ever feel like you’re at the end of your rope...

(Brad voice) think how the rope feels...

HUGO SCENE, 5

Hugo’s problem, I think, in The Triggering Town, is he’s trying to explain...should I stop there...

(Brad nods bigly)

Hugo’s problem is he’s trying to explain...period...

Hugo’s problem is he’s trying to explain a feeling he must have felt enough to feel he should explain it...but having felt it so much he knows...he can’t... that is, why’d he spend his life on poems...what’s wrong with him...what was he hoping for...why’d he feel like that was the best or only thing to do...and to keep doing...he doesn’t know why...his explaining doesn’t get it...he knows that...so why is he trying...I don’t think birds particularly like their nests...they just live there...they make them...it’s no critique of the nest if...the bird doesn’t like it and...it fits the bird...

like Hugo says...a writer can feel bad when they’re not writing...so then they think whenever they feel bad...it’s from not writing...here’s a drug that can cause madness or...if you are currently mad...cures it...

his title’s “triggering” isn’t triggering in the contemporary sense...like a trigger warning...he means things that catalyze, inspire...for him, a “small town that has seen better days often works”...but anything can do...“our triggering subjects, like our words, come from obsessions we must submit to”...and I thought poets mostly submitted to magazines...

yet Hugo seems to mean most...he’s talking about any subject seen as though it’s a town...move around your subject, he says...see who’s up...you can show them around...you could have any triggering subject, as he says...but he’s also asking you to look at any subject like it’s a town...a locus of lives, real or imagined or our own...a triggering town, a brigadier clown, a Frigidaire swan...therefore, and this is the real critical thing...however private he claims his poems are, ideally, their craft’s a civic vision...you can find plenty of essays about it I’m sure...

tourists in a non-tourist spot...Hawthorne’s “Wakefield”...Whitman after manifest destiny has passed him by...cohesive regionalism of the defunct...loading docks...Panera now has fried chicken and cheap pizza and there’s this hack where you put the hashbrowns from McDonald’s and the fish from Wendy’s on the pizza from Panera...Tom Petty on every station...the team apparel just shows us what was in the donation box...the accent is dental...two hot dogs for a dollar no matter what you might be about to do...say what you will...

A Field of Telephones is forthcoming from 53rd State Press.

∩

Zach Savich is the author of seven collections of poetry, including Momently (Black Ocean, 2024), and several chapbooks, limited-edition volumes, and books of prose. His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, the CSU Poetry Center’s Open Book Award, and other honors, including residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, ArtPark, and the Chautauqua Institution. His writing has appeared in journals and anthologies including American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Boston Review, Georgia Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Savich teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art and serves as co-editor of Rescue Press’s Open Prose Series.

One Poem

FIRE WALK WITH ME

Day 7 (morning):

In this dream, I remember having the dream before.

When I wake, I attempt to record the dream in my diary, but
all of the pages are missing. Edges torn, tattered.

The still images of the dream collect and the future reels
flicker through me with a delicate balance between pleasure
and violence.

I’m a blonde girl;
I’ve always know how to ride it.

Day 7 (night):

I’m beginning to realize that it’s a different kind of world with this fire in it—
I leave the window open at night for you to crawl through and tuck me in.

Our empty language coalesces into touch, the not-speak crosses dimensions
before I catch its embrace.

The sensation of your fingers as they run delicately over my body—

Our alchemy is chemical;
this ancestral chemistry.

Day 6 (morning:)

The portrait I hung up on my wall changes, but I only notice after
my favorite color in it has disappeared.

The woman becomes transparent, an empty shape.
The most relentless part of grief is all that it disappears.

I’m not surprised;
The riddle of gender repeats itself each time.

Day 6 (night):

This bliss you leave behind in me is nuclear.

Day 5 (morning):

I suppose that when you look up from the bottom, anything could be God.

Maybe there, in Heaven, it’s always curtain call—always a pageant—
but never quite showtime.

Day 5 (night).

Wandering violets, wondering violents.

In this crisp autumn evening I understand their delights.

Day 4 (morning):

The truth is, I live for the pageantry—

when you’ve been in an eternal dark,
your eyes must eventually adjust.

At least somewhat.

Day 4 (night):

I’m rocking with D, I mean she followed me
all the way to the pink room.

In the pink room, anything could be love.

Topless on the billiard balls, the men deploy their sticks with their blue chalk tips
against my body.

No one can see the wreckage,
not even after the game has been won.

Day 3:

Omission.

.noissimO

O—
mission,

Oh.

Oh,

Oooh!—

Day 2 (morning):

I am child until this dawn, and then
I’m immortal, this half-heart of fire and gold.

This skin; this fear; this kin.

The moth that’s been resting on my hand flutters away, offering
a burn. Its circular shape, our twin flame, blistering.

Day 2 (night):

Salt and pepper; I season all my meals.

This night I give up, I mean this light—

I only understand pink once it deepens into red, like blood.

Men chase around the chalice until it becomes a chase until what
I’m willing to give everything up apart from the corruption of you.

The way light makes every image it flashes over into something new.

Christmas in July.

What is it you (or I) have to prove?

Day 1 (morning)

Drop me off by the green light, you better go fast, real

hard on red. You better go before I scream

or else the snow circle will reveal its entrance

and you, a punk your whole life, bad to the bone,

will try to make sense of its code. Honey,

life is a vortex of shifting dynamics;

The way we survive is not a pushing through
but a constant adjustment to its changing weathers.

I put on my little bikini,
I dance in the snow storm.

I laugh hysterically all coked up
cocking a pistol in my hand.

When you inevitably go,

I’ll give up my shape;
I’ll take on a new form.

Day 1 (night):

Black cup of joe. The mug will maintain the tar’s imprint.

Me and R on the train tracks, only my spirit is with her—a piece of it, anyway.

What’s difficult about being glamorous is that they portray us as trinkets.

Me with the ring, the cold Mermaid sing
that leads my body to the mill.

What else is there to give?
Is it my body, or is it the plastic?

What’s the difference;

The black lodge holds my heart.

I beg you to free me from this dream.

I beckon your manly body to come and take me.

Here, my moans ripple in reverse.

Hear, my moans slip and transverse a former landscape.

My mother will make dew with the former met,

eventually. I’ve spent it; I’ve used all my life force

and I reside in the red room perpetually.

What have I invited in?

You may as well have asked for it.

Oh, that’s right.

I did, diD, diD.

∩

Caelan Ernest is a poet living in Brooklyn, New York. They are a publicist at Graywolf Press.

Three Poems

HOLLYWOOD  

Your word at dawn…
there was a guilty hunt… in your lugubrious past…

twitch twitch… like a rabbit…
death and destruction… I was a brilliant actress…

renowned for the lilt of my eyes…
hothouse orchids know the bonedry…

what a riot… seldom ever such a fringed hand…
young men… on the terrace in the moonlight…

second mistress… for the firing squad…
what did you see… in the spill of the ink… misery…

we didn’t have it… the radiant gas…
songbirds scattered… ornamentally the knot in my hair…

crack… it could be anyone… fermenting…
milk and tea leaves… I have something to say to you…

in a trance-state… orange and red…
that was a day for victors… I didn’t care…

heavy scent… heavy… resplendent…
tomorrow another… dank interior… your tactical vehicle…



FANTASY VALLEY

Running… through sharp brambles and talons…
obliquely… I swallowed gallons of sea water…

he said if I’d only bleach my asshole… then we’d really be…
ooh… a little something lascivious…

a martyr for the girls girls girls… sir… I know fairies…
as coy as oysters… sorrowful maidens… a tear-filled lagoon…

my nightgown so fatal… like picking a scab…
my nightingale so feral… a scratch-off redeemed…

we were uncertain… of how to make it last… silver…
I just thought you looked so beautiful…

there were mermaids… wingspans lined with glued-on feathers…
dangerous… was it the pink salt… the acids…

I have done nothing original… I stared at the mirror…
last April… ballroom plumed… for mating season…

there could be kissing… stars I threw rocks at…
not anymore sir… I left my secret…

in your backseat… lip gloss spilling… scales…
pulled-out… rust-stained… a little something… vicious…



HOUSE ON THE FROZEN LAKE

I was widely considered a young woman of virile appetite…
the charitable practice… of licking top lip…

pleasure… carrying me in your big strong arms…
decomposition… didn’t you know…

blossoming peach with its throat slit… lubricious…
diamonds… and other bovine delicacies…

I believed wholeheartedly in pasteurization…
crucible… nocturnal emission… always something…

something glowing… just outside your bedroom window…
seditious pinkness… hid my cheeks behind my fan…

beautiful… to sacrifice the naked children…
rot… white-powdered… something… atomic…

a birthday cake… for all the officers… always something…
something pulsing… just far enough away that…

slip a sleep mask… untie the silk bow of my robe…
smelling… spoiled… elegant… in her enucleation…

I appeared frequently in the pages for my parties…
sows and nannies… a fetid trough… the pure blank snow….

∩

Madeleine Scott is a doctoral student at Harvard working on gender, psychoanalysis, and the history of Christianity.

Three Stories

(i)

We sit in the yard beside the wrought iron tree with burnt-out bulbs, with bird shit on its limbs, and wait for the coroner. It’s the week after Christmas, before the New Year, and the cops can’t reach the man on his phone. He is probably with his family, we are told, like they should be. We can see it on their faces. It could be a while. We apologize. We are told we should not go in the house. It’s been six hours, but we can’t leave, either. We don’t want to. We piss in the rocks. Where else could we go, in this state? The gas station, where he used to buy beer? They might recognize him in our faces, ask how he is. His cellphone is ringing through the open window, has been for as long as we’ve been here. Whoever’s calling doesn’t know. We envy and pity them. The dogs are crying, clawing at the back door. They can smell him, we think but don’t say. We apologize again. Neighbors stop, ask us, ask the police, Is someone dead? What do you think? we want to say. Fuck you and your families, we want to say, Keep walking. We hide in the back. His ex-wife comes by, brings coffee. It gets cold in our hands. We haven’t seen her in a decade, more. She asks how she can help. We tell her to make the ringing stop. She leaves to talk to the cops. It gets quiet except for the dogs, except for the neighbors who keep coming. The ex comes back to find us with our heads in our hands, our fingers in our ears and asks, Is it too early to start telling stories?

(ii)

We pull up to the house with the truck’s windows down, with the cab already full.
            I hate it, my brother says, I hate all this goddamn air.
            The house is smaller than before, the rocks on its gravel path sharper. The flag and the worn truck are gone. We enter with shoes on, and the sun comes in sideways.
            Jesus, I say, Will you hit that fan?
            We didn’t pay the bill that makes the fan move, my brother says, And my name isn’t Jesus.
            He is so much of our father: square jaw, eyes like soil, can’t see straight when told to and only does what needs doing when it needs done or after. He comes on his own—to work, he says—but leaves once he hides the booze, once he cleans the blood. Always before dark, never what I ask. I catch him sitting on the couch, staring at the wall, at the holes we still need to patch. I catch him on his phone, scrolling, scrolling.
            We work without the fan. My brother picks up the gun by the bed, clears it and puts it with the gun from the closet, the gun from the kitchen under the sink, the guns from the car, the desk, the dresser. He has no need for these, needs less heat and recoil.
            What are you going to do with those? I ask.
            I don’t know, my brother says, Why do I have to know what to do all the time?
            We work in silence in the heat with no fan. We find the safe, a wooden box without a lock, full of two-dollar bills and no will. We search the light fixture, come back with a few silver coins. I look behind the painting of the Superstitions. My brother watches the hawk on the telephone pole and smokes a joint. We take apart the iron Christmas tree in the yard, burn our hands on the metal, find some gloves for the rest of the job. We empty the garage, dust the blinds until it’s the right time of day.
            On the table by the guns the mail sits in a high pile. The pile is so high it could be the mountain we were meant to climb that morning we found him, that mountain of perlite we meant to smash and crumble until we found them, the Apache Tears, that clear obsidian. We can toss it all—the mail, the rodeo posters, the Hillermans and their cracked spines—throw it all in the landfill with the dog shit. It would be easier that way, I think. There is so much, and we are only two. There is so much and still somehow not enough.
            Grab me a water? I say, but there is none. There is only a Modelo and condiments in the fridge, and the desert tap tastes of dirt. I could go to the store, buy us a gallon, but instead count the times my brother begged me not to leave him with our father, with all that responsibility, and I ran off anyway—to the creek bed all dried up, to the deep scar carved by water and time to make a canyon, to the shallow cave where I imagined I could live if no one looked for me. More than a handful.
            I stay. There is too much to do. We share the warm Modelo and work. My brother pulls weeds while I sift through the mail.
            We need the tax forms, I say, The bills. Have you seen them?
            My brother shrugs, says he wants to live in the house like our father wanted. There is not enough money for more than a week or two of living. A month if the sale takes a while. There’s no way to know, our realtor says, No one wants to buy in the heat. He works for cheap, the orphans’ commission.
            I fold the shirts I’ll have made into quilts for us. My brother digs through the boots, finds a pair that fits. I pick a hat to hang on my wall, pull up clay from the yard for an ashtray. Outside the sun sets the deep orange of dust and pollution. I flip a switch and remember the bills. I put the Apache Tears in my pocket, they clack together, and my brother dons an old cap. We leave when the light is gone.

(iii)

I hate your guts sometimes. That’s the evil in me.
            My brother says it. He pulls out of the gas station, and I pull from my bag a Red Bull, a vape cartridge, a bag of sour worms to share. I hold it all in my lap, wait for him to ask for something.
            I don’t say that to hurt your feelings, he says, But it’s the truth. 
            Then he adds, Only sometimes.
            We drive to see family who didn’t call when it happened, called instead about their new basement bar. We can’t wait for you to see it, they said across radio waves I couldn’t see, no evidence—We think of your dad sometimes.
            We should go, I tell my brother anyway, explaining that they didn’t get it, had never lost someone. We couldn’t hold that against them.
            The drive is an hour through the mountains. A piss break, a smoke break. My brother talks about quitting, wants to quit it all—the nicotine, the weed, the booze, his job, feeling sorry. It’s between Dad and me, he says, It’s between good and evil. I try to say that there is more than that, that there is a frustrating in-between and nothing is so black and white, and he tells me to shut up.
            You don’t know everything, he says. It’s life or death, he says, and it is. We have seen what not quitting can do. I nod because my softening of the truth comes out as condescension, I know. It has for all my life.
            Has the car always made this sound? I ask. It has for as long as I’ve had it.
            Fuck a basement bar, my brother says. Fuck people who have bars in their basements.

∩

Alexandra Salata is from Tempe, Arizona. Her stories appear in Black Warrior Review, Puerto del Sol, and Bellingham Review, among other journals, and she was named a finalist for the 2024 Salamander Fiction Prize. She holds degrees from John Carroll University and the Northeast Ohio MFA program.

from Terracotta Fragments

XLVIII

a dowry of dairy for the milkmaid’s hand in marriage
Captain Beefheart covers at the Sleepy Hollow bacchanal
crab apples roll down vales of thyme and timothy
my first epistemological panic watching Purple Rain
yakuza bodysuits throughout the gastropubs of Oregon
Pistol Pete sweeps a defense out of their Knickerbockers
my first sexual awakening to Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2
Raskolnikov’s terror flagellated by platza
urbane usurer expects interest on every eucharist
tubercular garrets of the Counter-Enlightenment
my first illness came in couplets, clad in thunder

XLIX

Celan bears witness through neologism
cherry blossoms divorced of meaning
divorces still cherried with mourning
hammer as a tool and synecdoche
Luddites dismember the automation
Bolshevik materialists with a dead tsar
Mishima’s reactionary body of seppuku
mezzo-soprano of an orientalist Egypt
metallurgist kisses the casing of every bullet
whispers of breath from the end of the flute
my hand forgets everything it touches

L

all cherry cola and Lexapro libido
all Don Juans and Dorothies in dungarees
all grubworms and gibbons ex machina
all saline and syntax as salubrious strategies
all knaves with knives at the end of a chord
all proselytes performing the seminary sex sequence
all droughts in Hollywood, all draughts in Dublin
all darling derrières doomed to effluvia 
all of us fetishists when faced with the eternal
all prosody an imprudent and palliative pursuit
all eleven liars hang the jury to heaven

LI

Buddhist penises weaponized as warplanes
guerilla ambush of coffee through the colon
my fugitive alias rendered through la petite mort
grief counselor texting me on Giving Tuesday
described my political struggle as mankini Marxism
the love of my life doomsday prepping in the underwear department
Arthur Russell’s warped cello ironizes the KMart
purple rabbits on cousin’s lawn, a premature shotgun
my second circumcision scars a circumflex
my domestic migraine colors the sunrise Coors Light
the IRS rejects my appeasement of Negative Dialectics

LII

sycophants julienne their fingers into mise en place
bitumen and blood still left from the Bugatti collision
fast food workers narcing from the drive-thru
stubborn Hegelians incapable of mirth
no matter which side of the squirt-pee dialectic
Bosniak nationalists struggle to supplant the Serb
my Croatian father’s cushy job installing sheetrock
and his father’s lazy ass hogging the intubation
all of my dalliances in a diseased denouement
my fresh set of lavender linens ruined
by modern life’s happy, inevitable sodomy

LIII

dialogist dependency on diacritics and diuretics
toxic adhesives of the hackneyed endodontist
Hippocratic Oaths under coercion of the casting couch
falafel debates bombed by the IDF, forensics obliterated
hip replacements exacerbated by Steely Dan
bacon egg and cheese salt pepper ketchup
the waiter’s cruising wink bespirits my largesse
wasp after wasp embalmed in fuck of the fig
even Joey Chestnut on hunger strike
barefoot on Brighton Beach, one with the soft metals
nobody, not even the rain, knows it’s my birthday

∩

Eric Tyler Benick wrote the fox hunts (Beautiful Days, 2023) and Memory Field; A Travelogue of Forgetting (Long Day, 2024). With Nick Rossi, he runs Ursus Americanus Press, a publisher of shorter poetics. His recent work has appeared in Bennington Review, Brooklyn Review, Copper Nickel, Harvard Advocate, NOIR SAUNA, and Puerto Del Sol. His most recent chapbook, Solip Schism, is now available from Blue Bag Press. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches postcolonial and anti-carceral literatures at Wagner College where he is criminally adjunct. 

from CARTOON

I see a roadrunner and its shadow
on the cel, on the mesa—meep meeping,
probably going back
to its nest made of sticks,
snakeskins, and dung.

Buyers in the stairwell
of the building where I rent are
practically screaming:
Are all the units currently occupied?
They let the front door slam.
I did not know it was for sale.

A realtor showing my building asks
Is this a nice neighborhood?
waiting for buyers to come see.
I pretend I can’t hear her
I fucking live here, don’t I?

Some crow hovering, pinned
between two drafts
above torn rhododendron, cold schist
If he wanted, he could
break his body from that pose.
Does he like it, holding
his wings so still and unnatural?

∩

Miri Karraker lives and works in Minneapolis.

from the green notebook

When posting new entries in my ‘12 or 20 questions’ interview series, I’m continually reminded of the wide array of reading and writing influence possible, well beyond anything I could have imagined. Writers cite lists of works and artists I’ve never heard of as foundational for their own work, providing whole worlds of possibility—although you’d be amazed at the number of times I have to correct the spellings of names. Is it wrong to expect writers to know how to spell the names of their heroes? Either way: there are so very many ways to approach writing, thinking and publishing, and the reminders of so many of these names, many of whom are previously unknown to me, are entirely welcome.

I’d originally begun the ‘12 or 20 questions’ interview series in September 2007, at the beginning of my University of Alberta writer-in-residence year, thinking that if I could send the same rough grouping of questions to an array of writers and post on my blog every couple of days, it would allow my blog to appear productive, while allowing my attentions to focus deeper into my actual writing. Through my office in the Department of English and Film Studies, I was quite literally living with unlimited internet access for the first time, not having to rely on spending money at internet cafés, rushing to get as much work done in either one or two half-hour sessions before my change ran out. I think I began to craft the questions on the plane heading west, which is entirely possible. It took three days to properly craft that first round, and a few days more to start soliciting responses. This was a project prompted through access, and it opened up glorious possibility. Since September 2007, I’ve posted nearly 1,700 interviews, with only one or two accidental repeats of authors, posting a new interview every three days. Just how far might this go? Just how far might this go before I finally decide to deliberately repeat authors from, say, the first half decade or decade of this ongoing project?

*

The site formerly known as Twitter provides a link to a new interview, “On Agency and Writing a Life Lost: A Conversation with Sarah Gerard” conducted by Afton Montgomery for Chicago Review of Books. The interview focuses on Gerard’s book Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable (2024), a book written about and around the tragedy of a friend’s murder, attempting to provide some kind of answers, and, for her friend, a kind of agency.

I was never a reader of true crime, although I did catch elements during my eventual ex-wife’s teenaged years (simultaneous to my own), as she read through stacks of same, what our daughter eventually read on her own during her own teenaged years. Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders (1974), for example, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry. Twenty years after her mother went through them, our daughter, reading through her mother’s library, her mother’s volumes. From what the interview provides, I can appreciate Gerard wishing to focus her questions around her late friend, allowing her some space for her story:

I still don’t know, with a hundred percent certainty, why this happened, but seeking a “why” gives meaning to an event that otherwise seems totally random and is even more frightening in that regard.

I also think every story worth telling has an unanswerable “why” at the center. Right away everybody who knew Carolyn was asking, “Why this person? She’s a good person. There’s nothing she did to deserve this, so why?” Within twenty-four hours, Render was giving an interview in which he said it wasn’t her fault. So why?

*

I’m moving through LEX ICON (2024), the last poetry title by the late Portuguese writer, poet and essayist Salette Tavares (1922-1994), translated by Massachusetts-based poet and translator Isabel Sobral Campos and Kristofer Petersen-Overton and available in English for the first time. Campos was good enough to send me a copy recently for potential review, and then, a week or two later, a package arrived from Brooklyn’s ugly duckling presse, with a further copy along. What might I do with the spare?

All these rich worlds                of expression
all this an inverse position of terms.

With the volume of books that land daily on our doorstep, I do tend to receive duplicates fairly regularly, and keep a running stack by my office door of books for give-away, whether hand-gifted at an event, or slipped into an envelope or package to be mailed further afield. Who might be the best reader for this, who might appreciate what is going on with this particular book? There are certain publishers that run banners across covers that scream NOT FOR RESALE – REVIEW COPY ONLY or print as a stamp on the title page, which I consider rather obnoxious. I haven’t even opened the book for review consideration yet, and already I’m branded a thief. I’m already reviewing sans compensation, and you accuse me of this? Do I not at least deserve a proper copy of the book for the work that I’m doing? With the charming production of ugly duckling, I appreciate that they understood not to damage their own books going out.

Spending the 1990s and further scouring used bookstores, I at least understand the concern: repeated fresh titles on used bookstore shelves, most of which include press release. If I’m gifted a book, I always make a point of passing it on, re-selling only that which I’ve purchased. One doesn’t see much in the way of money from resale, either, so it just seems easier to pass it along. Here, read this. This is interesting. And, given any gifted book presumes a recommendation? Any book I don’t like, I tend to hide in a box in our storage, or slip into a local free library when no-one is looking.

Tavares was primarily known as a visual poet, and exploring her visual work online, I can see an affinity with the work of Burlington poet Sacha Archer, which is rather interesting. I like the description the translators offer in their note at the end of this particular collection: “Tavares splits words apart and, in doing so, draws out other words nesting within, words that lie in hiding.”

I know my pal Lea Graham down in New York State has been working on English translations of poetry from Spanish for a while now; maybe I’ll send this to her. I’m already building her a package of other things, I can slip into there. What might Tavares have said of such beneficience?

And so             art
made everything pass through the bathroom.

*

Apparently the Summer Olympics have begun, but I so rarely pay attention to such things. Snoop Dogg as torch-bearer amuses me, nonetheless. No one in the game like him.

*

I’m gearing up for a Toronto overnight in a few days, to read as part of Bänoo Zan’s Shab-e She’r series. A train in, with university residence accommodation, and a train home the following morning. I spent half of yesterday incorporating my edits on the short story manuscript from our Picton jaunt for the sake of a fresh manuscript to dig through, while speeding across that Ontario countryside. The lip of Lake Ontario. I’m not quite at packing reading material as yet, but I’ve my eye on some recent uncorrected proofs that landed, neither of which I’ve had a chance to open: Stuart Ross’ The Sky is a Sky in the Sky (2024) and JoAnna Novak’s Domestirexia (2024). There’s also Samuel Ace’s I want to start by saying (2024), as well as Jane Huffman’s Public Abstract (2023). I’m still in the midst of my Sheila Heti essay, and my Lydia Davis essay. I’m still in the midst of a handful of other reviews.

I’ve at least one Jacob Wren title on my shelf I’ve been wanting to go through. I should probably bring that as well.

*

“Writing,” she says, “is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.” – Edna O’Brien, Paris Review

I’m reading Irish writer Edna O’Brien’s Paris Review interview, conducted by Shusha Guppy for issue 92, summer 1984. The piece has been unlocked from the journal’s digital archive, prompted by the announcement of the author’s death. I’m aware abstractly of O’Brien (1930-2024), but haven’t read any of her work. I recall that my maternal grandmother had a paperback copy of O’Brien’s short stories, A Scandalous Woman (1976) on the bookshelf in her family room. Between the history, non-fiction and cookbooks, it was one of the few works of fiction on my grandmother’s shelf, which itself was worth noting.

I find it interesting, as part of this particular interview, O’Brien’s take suggests that one needs to be removed from the world to write, instead of directly inside it:

So writing, I think, is an interestingly perverse occupation. It is quite sick in the sense of normal human enjoyment of life, because the writer is always removed, the way an actor never is. An actor is with the audience, a writer is not with his readers, and by the time the work appears, he or she is again incarcerated in the next book—or in barrenness.

This is a curious consideration, entirely different from my own approach. In my mind, writing is a way through which to articulate, argue, document and process, none of which require to be specifically removed from action, yet requiring an amount of distance. The interview suggests her comments come from a far deeper complexity than this particular excerpt might provide. There is a darkness, one O’Brien’s responses exist with in tandem, and occasionally, in conflict; and still, here’s a slow moving, serious consideration of art and the writing life. “Nowadays there are too many writers,” she offers:

and I think one of the reasons for the deterioration of language and literature in the last forty years has been the spawning of inferior novels. Everybody writes novels—journalists, broadcasters, tv announcers . . . it is a free-for-all! But writing is a vocation, like being a nun or a priest. I work at my writing as an athlete does at his training, taking it very seriously. Whether a novel is autobiographical or not does not matter. What is important is the truth in it and the way that truth is expressed. I think a casual or frivolous attitude is pernicious.

Had I remained on the farm I would most likely not have written at all, and hold the irony of being able to articulate that loss of the family farm, a loss prompted in part through my own choice to leave, and to write. Had I simply done as I was told, the farm might still be there. It might not, also. Either way, I was never quite good at doing what I was told.

Someone on social media posts a translation of a quote from the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony: “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

*

Last night, one of Aoife’s baby teeth fell out. We folded it into a Kleenex for her to slip into a drawer for safekeeping. Today, Rose prompts one of her own wiggly teeth out, staunching the bleeding with toilet paper. These two, in constant competition.

∩

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). His next poetry collections, Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil) and the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press) appear in 2025. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

Five Poems

mill at

arm and ham

an inter linen

backer to run

toward mason

arm worsened

do not get bad  

crayon box to

cheese replace

flightless elbow

when the back went

out and we were

told to I hung

my coat up but

knew my skin would

char but did not

know my neck

would my back

impressed

depress

rise for

backswing toward the totem mouth. it has snowed outside of    

the atrium I have never been invited to enter.

when I learn how to move the earth I fear     

I will be deprogrammed. by then    

the sun is up. I am praying the way I know   

how to dive. pyramid first into a glass jar. I am      

prey to reticulum shards.

watch this weight bloom. OG all. steep.

ear to wall. hand to God. wait for the chime to tell yourself it is wrong.

wait for the cabinet to open and get in even     

if it does not feel right to be doing. take a bike ride    

in your car. middle finger. from worry

I fear. structure      a remarkable fumble   .   go on

to do everything. go to sleep

I dare you to coat the skin good     mister you       

can’t tell the difference from a foot and a high horse. structure      

an incredible feat. did you get your gf to stay

with the kids to get into the respectful aftermarket of the Walmart skateboard

did you hear about the one where     the mailman gets robbed. 

this is a hold up      gimme all your birthday cards.

did you realize that you have     said that     before how about

that one where the head is torn open and you are born again

without taking probiotics.    did you focus yet today

the yoga mat is bound    .    it is not wrong to     .

kiss yourself to unwind      incandescent

heavens      remind me of my cause   

equate on

It is me call.

Which will we wore the grate.

This is my need.

X to operate.

It is weighted wham.

Egg smoked youth.

On a scale.

Like a clock when it.

Goes on for.

Like a calling.

Goes on for.

great and

I know what I will do it will be something great. I am something great. I will be great. America again.

In a land I was running and a bucket there I came across one. It was a green there and everybody knew that about it.

A tile in the backyard told me to stay. As if the tools had been protected outside the of the garage I remember inside of a large can. Behind the wood were a pile of boxes. Twins told me to stay still. I did not and so instead began to rock back and forth.

What is it I am good at it. To go pleeaassee and point to my brain.

What is the name of that commercial where that happens. Where they put it directly on the forehead. Do you know it you do.

Consider beating the carpet over the balcony while you are holding it with one hand. Apply it head on. Do you know the security questions. My mother’s third pet saved our life.

Boy oh boy I am over it. Not the moon but the dark. It is too bright.

Guck. A big truck. A red red room z. A broom xe. How fast does it go into a through. A wall of it.

I have not. Or in a when. A whirl went and left.

Today I listen to a song and cried but it was not a sad song. Or because it was even if it was. I remember he thing I was? Am?

I am not over it. I am not it. Wait. What is it that I am in.

A big whole. A big whole break down I crawl into. Watch you melt or.

Head on again. It is Ash Wednesday. Apply directly.

jerk off

to do the dishes I have to.

take my socks off first.

what is it late. I am late

I believe.

I am make believe.

∩

Angelo Maneage lives in northeast Ohio next to Texas Roadhouse. He can be found there.

from [hail]

[04]

The turmoil you’ve described so beautifully.
As in a table.
But your white leather satchel has been emptied.
Of contents.
This is unusual navigation. It works like this:
Despite its salutary effects.
There was a problem with the buffering.
Really just a diary.
A non-chromium oxidizing agent.
In other words, sanctity is gradated.
In adjacent lines or clauses.
Of my inflamed throat, which is itself.
Or less. Or more.
This is unusual turmoil. It works.
It’s buffering.
Like this: we shall live above neighbors.
And never pay.
Our diaries are plagued by tables of contents.
For heat again, which rises.
There was a cell found in your satchel.
We’ve already fracked a confession.
New user, there was a problem loading your avatar.

[22]

New user, we’re good now.
The right channel predominates.
We’re going to have a word with them.
From time to time.
About their making so much sense.
I think I’m going to begin.
When they metasignify.
To distance myself.
For the purposes of song.
From the derangement of my senses.
But is there a third.
My early influences included everything.
Can we talk about your time in prison.
I couldn’t see but heard.
Studies show that human ears can detect.
Through walls.
Rhymes of syntax and logic at least four.
Is it okay if I call it “your time in prison.”
Time zones away.
I think I’m just going to triplespeak.
How does one even begin to revise.
My afternoons from now on.
Specifically, the way it reinscribes memory.
We have safeguards in place.
It doesn’t even matter the order in which.
To account for the fact that I am not a performance artist.
Spiders hatch in the computer tower.
Can you teach me how to be a performance artist.
I need you to dampen my vision.
Is it okay if I call you “Your Time In Prison.”

[25]

You must come to the film as though a baby.
Even though we’ve been salooned.
But a cop or ruffian followed you there.
With great pomp and pipe smoke.
And we can hear “Mack the Knife.”
As of something futurist.
Sounding from the toddler’s iPad.
Which tilts fascistically.
You’re just going to have to drink more of it.
I promise there will be at least one.
Lurid staircase upon.
Luminary with slapback applied to their ideology.
Which all angles of approach are possible.
Like two blue lines beneath our clauses.
My face is already numb in the face.
Implying that something may be wrong.
Of newscast and calamity.
With our grammar or clarity.
New user, a new update is available.
Please note that I never implied or promised.
In which we allow for figurative language.
That metastasis would proceed in a coherent manner.
And when I heard him sing the song at the party.
I did not know that one day I would have to choose.
Everyone stood and wept in their shoes.
Between today and feelgood.
Take your goddamned hat off.
I think your sheep just leaked into my poem.
When I’m talking to you.
Even though we’ve been marooned.
Sometimes days are born from incoherence.
Then tilt fascistically.
It's a sign of disrespect.
But begin to make more sense.
I like to count sheep over the fence.

[37]

Let’s go into “the city.”
A shadow passing over the receiver.
And get dolled up to go nowhere.
I like to watch you move.
Corporations pay me to incorporate.
Toward the rotary telephone (we painted it “Windsor Cream”).
Ten, plus or minus, references to the keyword.
Because my mind feels cleaner.
Into immaculate copy.
If you begin to hear smoke.
The text gets smaller and smaller.
You know you’ve gone too far.
As the footnotes beget more footnotes.
When smoke becomes audible.
How many times do I have to tell you.
And in the good years we nurtured a correspondence.
That my psychosis was politically motivated.
Our mothers would call “unreadable.”
Everyone knows what we mean.
By which they meant that we do not wish.
When we say, “the city.”
To be understood.
As if it were the present—green rooms and seizures.
By logging into your system.
I think I’m going to live a little.
In order to foresee all possible valences.
Less long, or at least less concerned with endurance.
By smoking one cigarette a week.
Come here, contrarian.
The new intelligences promised to us.
There is a red or blue or green daub.
Are secure, hallucination-free.
In your eye. You need to know: after you called me strange.
And it’s okay if it can’t be recreated.
I disappeared for thirteen years.
Especially as it impacts the United States.
And got dolled up to go nowhere.
Seeking to damage the people and infrastructure.
I read Rimbaud to the open window.
I would have had to have had.
And the Library Tower harmonized phallically.
A few more years in institutions.
Overwhelmed me.
And in the bad years we spoke of the past.

∩

Alex Tretbar is the author of the chapbook Kansas City Gothic (Broken Sleep, 2025). As a Writers for Readers Fellow with the Kansas City Public Library, he teaches free writing classes to the community. His poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in APARTMENT, The Cincinnati Review, Iterant, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Protean, The Rumpus, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.

from The Vallejo Cycle

IX

A book at the border of aging,
A book was folded at the jean lip of the skin, at forty.
They took away our heroes,
and we consumed the death of their abilities;
we sweaty with the wait of our bags;
the moon sweat like a beer can;
the dead sweat like the moon.

A book in the Era of Israel,
book, after book, upon book, like dead people.

Poetry of the entry wound, whisper
of the blood as the bullet swims,
Poetry in the user guide
for your fucking heart, mom.
Remainéd the book in its sepulchral mind,
as the earth the earth’s womb,
It got stuck in the collar gap and went
totally infinite. You got married.

Book that sweats its letters while we wait,
the dead sweating letters to sweetheart
sediments in public parks.
Book after book, atop book
in the public park, burning.

*

There was another

In the last one I’d said Vallejo
Had given me a book to translate

From a language only I could speak
Saying everything you needed to hear
To believe everything that I did

In the one before that I said
It’s all the same book anyway
To protect it you must throw it all away:
The poetics of the family annihilator

Like your favorite writer’s favorite athlete
I will leave it all on the field
I will not talk about the Knicks at dinner
I said I will not talk about the Knicks at dinner

Roth said it’s the same book anyway
Pound said “we must remember as he remembered”
And you hated that I said that
I can’t even find where he said it
I said it for nothing, got Put in the Dog House

There was a version where I said something
Unmistakeable, I swear, so unmistakeable
I cannot even hope to say it now; it is impossible
To say it mistakenly, so you’ll just have to trust me

*

XIV

Ojo the eye phone maker of the forgotten bondi
Ojo the poster without PFP
Ojo the evil eye, tattooed on the Australian’s shoulder
Ojo the victim who wants to renew himself
the hobbyist corrections officer
the corrections
Ojo the time on the beach and what it means
the view from the Wonder Wheel
the little critters collected, the leftover tickets
Ojo the science of wrist bones
the carpology of gendered yearning
Ojo the poster that says bring home the hostages
Ojo the eyes blown out on your phone screen
the miraculous advent of new injury
Ojo the loyalty oath you’re asking of me
Ojo they make you pay to see many churches
in Europe too, it’s not some Jew thing just for synagogues
Ojo fallen into dark
Ojo the Atacama
Ojo the country loves you
Ojo don’t let it
Ojo like a deep well we all want to die in

*

Poem with the voice in off
Book with another book voiced over
Life with other life pasted over

Vallejo was in the trees
Watching me

An annoying poet was claiming kinship with a dead guy
He was watching Celan with binoculars
He was learning bad German, not even German
Badly, I did want things rectilinear, I offered
An experience in a verso-recto style
I offered a verso in the recto’s style

This book was once called
Sonnets from the Brazilian Portuguese
Now it is called Altazor

Now they call me Yankee
Call me Andrew
They call me AJ in what we call America
I call you in America from my Spanish sim card
I call you in América from my Argentine sim card
I call it a chip now, I call it a pileta, a remera, a luca, milanga, guita, mina, mango
I don’t call you ———— anymore
I don’t call you at all

*

The Disappeared

I

The blood just wants to talk.
Steeled in the night.
We know that missing girl is naked.
Unplucked from delirium.
Take the Heschel off the shelf.
Take off your clothes.

II

In the salted light,
They dumped the bodies like ashes

In the salted light,
The sea was like the Atacama
I beg myself for fervor
Imagining them in midtown windows

III

I promised you I wouldn’t make things up
They promised he would be right back
I promised I wouldn’t make any art
About the desaparecidos

IV

I interrogate myself
Into sense-making
The men I once wanted
To impress are bathed
In the salted light of the gas fields
The helicopters whirring
Like the moans of the dying; they say
Let’s use his penis as bait
And fish dreams from beneath
The arena

They say
Make art about this
Take off your clothes

*

Poem where that wasn’t how it was
That was how it was
A book project the length of a sentence
A silence as long as your body

So close to preparations
For the next life
I wanted a kitchen you could fit a table in
I wanted to stop mispronouncing dólar as dolor

I wanted to write a book where I interviewed
César Vallejo’s family, and they said everything
You might say to me; I wanted to write a book

I wanted to sound out the words at my own speed,
I wanted to sound out, like I couldn’t see, a kind of
sonar for memory, see if the pink bedspread
was as real as the pink bedspread

Poem where the pink bedspread
Poem where I don’t say your name
Poem where you say I can’t speak
for you, and book where I say
I won’t publish the book then

I wanted a poem that could pay for my kitchen
A poem without detail, with room for all detail
I wanted a book as long as a life sentence

I wanted you to leave so I could write
I wanted you to leave so I could write a book about it
So I could remember you

∩

Andrew Judson Stoughton is the U.S. editor of New Mundo Press. He is the author of En Un Auto Arteriado, available from Not Nothing Press. You can find his work in Works and Days and Jacobin. He splits his time between Jackson Heights, Queens and Buenos Aires.

Five Poems

memory from before you lost your mind

I learned the word anvil
from Bugs Bunny.
Grandma’s parlor TV
tray lunch, mailman
uncle asleep upstairs.
we all work nights
in this family. Boxed
steamship photos
Beetlejuice figurines
fake wood paneling.
My dad made it out
so he knows what webinar
means. converter cable
neighbors work in silence
they don’t have a dad
anymore.
me,
I am waiting for the foam ceiling
to drop

tap dancing

I care a lot
about being irrelevant
in case of freak
accidents like
a car driving into my
house. I know
some girls carry
ibuprofen
and I envy that,
having the backseat
illness.
life is all the time
gym class
to grave but
I resist putting
shit in the mailbox
because it’s illegal.
mister morse code
voice in my head says
beep beep
beep
mailboxes are
trashcans if
you have nothing
good
to say

undisclosure

reading your cause of death
in a rented car
high’s coming up
men say the damndest things

backseat manifesto
everybody’s got one
I’ll keep quiet if you
drop me off at home

me and the dog get real sad
after having a little treat
like we both know
nothing else is coming

could have done without

tried being a social climber
was too honest
you fancied yourself
a Futurist turned
out to be just
Italian
as I
get
old
-er
there
is less
of my
life to
lose

partners stick together

on our tongues
is cum fused like hot
honey

the dog eats
a pen we’re busy
ink all over his
snout

learned my lesson
words are feces
of the mouth

∩

L Scully (they) is a living writer. L cofounded Stone of Madness Press and now writes books in an attic. Their second collection, self-romancing, comes out with Michelle Tea’s DOPAMINE Books in autumn 2025. They are a lover.

Three Poems

ETERNAL PRESENT

What’s a meal, I wonder, eating fistfuls of peanut butter pretzels
alone in my office. I have an office, can afford fried foods just barely,
too tender cookies much like me lacking all utility falling apart
before they reach the mouth. I get distracted. I read so slowly
in the sense of not at all then all at once, occasionally. A similar
principle holds for everything else. Love especially. I do nothing at all 
by degrees. Accomplishments come on like calamities, whole days 
buried under sudden ash. Like this boy I fell into bed with once, 
twice, inappropriately, one of many only distinct when backlit 
in retrospect. He wasn’t then but he’s a poet now, younger and more 
famous than me. Jealousy wouldn’t quite be accurate, though my opinion
is hardly impartial. I wish we’d stayed in touch, he didn’t write, he loved me not,
we spewed away. I still have the cheap IKEA bed we didn’t fuck in, actually.
Warping in my mother’s garage, in the eternal present tense of art.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

1.
Acute hexagonal longing in the shape
of a scullery maid, hands tanned and
mouse-bitten, frock, flaxen, checked
by emptied chamber pots, sooted, boiled,
thready at the knees, pockets full
of carrot and potato peels, hair the color
of blanched acorn caps and regret
proceeding, contrapuntal, along
coplanar axes, by dissonance
of the counterfactual, bonneted, not cossetted,
cossetted, verklempt, donning now that coveted
corsetry, mealy-mouthed, the fine china, the silver,
the slivered ahistorical bridges of aquiline noses,
up in airs put-on and chilled by perfect ignorance.

2.
Little bunny froufrou, hopping through
the forest of unrequited affections
lands on a rusty nail, gets lockjaw,

goes slow. Here lies her maggoty body
where wolves who cry boy are beaten
at craps by shoes who live on old ladies

like fleas, unhappy since the advent
of the telephone, wont to send, instead
of birthday cards, past-due notices,

parking tickets, shit sandwiches,
rent increases, process servers, bad horoscopes,
while all the while bedecked heirs apparent fret

over cheese curds and whey protein, hypodermic needles
nectared with anabolic steroids, their backs
raging with acne, their windpipes pinched by trapezius.

3.
May all your mountains be subalpine,
pocketed by moss and evergreen, rompable,

the jaundiced hysteria of canola fields
held in abeyance, wistful in their

self-congratulations, set off against
a toothless network, affected, enshittified

to the glory of scoured-out hall monitors,
crossing guards, choirboys, Saran Wrapped

by upstandingness, the toast
of profit margins everywhere,

caressed by fragrant circumstances
spritzed with canapés, bonbons, options.

4.
If you give a bro a blowjob
he’ll just want another.

If you ask a rich man for money
he’ll block your number.

If the palace catches fire [if you’ve chosen violence, if you’ve laid the gasoline, if you’ve lit the
            match]
let it burn.

MOUTHFEEL

The bearings I can’t get
are ball, burnished
to convex mirrors, lubed
to rubber out the idioms
of friction, if imperfectly,
with consonant precision.

All those small bore, boring
actualities pressed waferly,
fit to thimblefuls.

                            Appeasements
of the fleshly, of the flatulent,
of the of and of the oval, laid out
come- and lozengely. Pulled
to the point

                        of purpling.

I can’t say for sure
            that meaning surely matters,
                        though it needles at me
needlessly, it seems,
slouched in arbitrary corners
of shabby-chic rooms scooped
in neat rows in vast constructions
beset by differential settlement.

So.

I am either cracking up or cracking open
at this and every other moment,
lined up as if in order,
                                    momentous
only intrinsically,
intransigent only habitually,


and what, after all, is the difference?

∩

Cameron McLeod Martin is a queer and trans essayist and poet. They hold an MFA from the University of Idaho and their work has appeared in Fence, Black Warrior Review, The Journal, Atmospheric Quarterly, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere. They currently live in Clawson, Michigan.

from demonstration forest

∩

Kelly Clare is an artist, writer, and curator based in Western Massachusetts. Author of the chapbook NEARLY EARLY ARTLY NEVER (Greying Ghost, 2024), their multidisciplinary work can be found in FENCE, Annulet, mercury firs, TAGVVERK, and Second Factory. They are an editor at Ghost Proposal.

from The Cunt

1

“Sir, it is simple,” I said. When I told people it was simple their ears perked up — we loved solutions that were simple.
“Son, I don’t understand what you are saying to me.” Ah, I knew I would have to practice patience with this man. It was important that he understand me — it was important that everyone understand me.
I restarted, “You know how the world is so overwhelming,” he nodded with vigor, such vigor, I knew he was listening. I had his attention at last and you could never have enough attention. “Well, what if we could close ourselves off? And, by our own hand.
“It wouldn’t cost a dime, just a bit of string and a needle.” He nodded, and not just polite, he sincerely wanted my simple solution. A kind, good, God-fearing man, he had seen enough to know that whatever it was I was about to say might in fact be worth trusting — a good man, yes sir good sir — he was willing to try anything once.
“I will close myself off from the world, one part of my body at a time. Now, we have noses, but all those bad odors; I know to start there. I have a perfectly good mouth that will do all my breathing for me.” He didn’t mind this very much — okay, sure — the nose, whatever about the nose — it was ugly, it jutted, no one had a nice one.
I had him and I was sure I should continue, “Well the nose has two compartments, left nostril and right nostril. God has put them there for us to close them tight.
“I know how much we dislike mouth breathers — all the noise — but, yes sir good sir, I am above the noise.”
“Okay, son,” expressing impatience, “You have my attention. Stop beating around the bush.” It was true. Attention was nice but getting to the point — necessary. I apologized to the man, as the food arrived. He’d got a burger, and I’d got the same burger, medium rare, just how I liked it. Liked it as much as a clear blue sky. We sat at the counter looking out at the clear blue sky.
I wrapped up, “Well, I’ll do a nostril a day. “Then, I’ll do the eyes.
“Then, I’ll do the ears.
“Then, the mouth.
“That’s seven good, God-willing days. At that point, my face will be useless, but I will still have the mind. And, you know — I’m sure I won’t mind.” This got a chuckle. The man was scarfing his burger but still willing to chuckle — grease running down his face God bless him.
“Without the face, the guts stop doing their thing. Well, I’ll have one last good piss. One nice shit too I’m sure.” The man did not like this. His nose crinkled at the word shit, which was natural, but nature was only custom; and all after all, I was tailor-made. “After that last good piss, I’ll take the needle and the string and close up my foreskin. The next day I’ll take the needle and close up my ass too. It will take nine days for me to close all my cunts.
“What do you think?”
This man was extremely kind, a very willing participant in conversation, a truly good man yes sir good sir, he said, “Well, what happens after?”
“After?”

*

I had no string and I had no needle so I went to the appliance store on the other side of town.
I walked under that brightest blue sky I had ever seen.
See, I was stubborn, stubborner than a fighter — or a mule — though I had never seen one of those in real life, but I had seen a fight in real life. And also, if I didn’t have my stubbornness, then I didn’t have a very important part of myself, and I refused to not have all the most important parts of myself. Emotion, grit, assuredness of belief — this was what made a man.
I was saying as much to the cashier, “See this string is for my nose.” My enthusiasm was unkempt but as I was attractive she listened of course. The cashier was also attractive which made me want to talk to her. She had her own piercings, many piercings, septum and nose and ears.
She asked me what I meant.
I went on and on the way that I went on and on with the man with the burger; rather, I would have liked to have gone on and on the way that I went on and on with the man with the burger, but a big man in sweaty clothes arrived just then. Ah, ’twas her responsibility to treat us as equals, so please, she insisted. So please, and rushed me along.

*

When I talked to my friends — that is, when I used to talk to my friends — I would try to infuse them with my energy. That’s what I’d exclaim as they’d yawn, “I’m trying to infuse you with my energy!” They’d laugh, then they’d say, You’re funny, though they never said what was so funny. Didn’t say a thing after they laughed. But anyways then I knew I was funny, and I liked to be funny. This was how it went with my friends.
I had so many. For a while I had lots! I talked until they yawned. I’d always tell them, “I am infusing you with my energy!”
Ah, but I tried to never ever say the same thing. With so much to say, it was easy to do, but I tried not to, well that’s not totally true. I couldn’t help but tell them all about thunder. That there were ions on the grounds and ions in the clouds. That when ions needed a balance there were these tiny parts that went racing to meet each other, maybe billions of these ions of the skies and ions of the grounds. That they had this need that they were made with.
And when they met that need they went boom!
And that was thunder!
I could hardly believe it, I told my friend, every friend in fact, because I didn’t see those small parts, no one could see them, and I didn’t hear those small parts, no one could hear them, I just felt them when they met, a massive hug at the particulate level. I’d tell them I really liked that word, particulate, and they’d suck their face like a fish, then they’d slink and wait for me to stop — I’d take a breath and in that breath they’d say that they just had to get going — okay, yeah, that’s fine, I’d say.
But one more thing — just let me tell you one more thing! I couldn’t know if my friend was listening to me or to their insides, where they had slunk, which I didn’t mind. No, but I did think it was maybe their loss.
What I was saying was so full of life. And friends wouldn’t go to a place that was less full of life. That’d be dumb.
My friends were always doing things that I was no good at, like tossing and catching and flirting. So maybe what’d I know? So it must have been that I and all my talking were not a thing compared to that place inside. This was a big, big part of why I wanted to slink inside. But when I did it, it wouldn’t be a slink. I was so proud to finally do a thing that all my friends liked to do with me, slink. When I got to doing my cunt closing, I couldn’t find a friend to tell.

*

I had always had this lovable quality and I wouldn’t have known it was such a lovable quality if people hadn’t told me all the time how lovable a quality it was — I liked to talk to strangers. It was, apparently, not common. Well, people tried to explain, it was common; but, but it was a bit too complex to explain over dinner.
If only it was as simple as a smile.
Smiling, I simply couldn’t help but talk to everyone on the street who smiled. We all smiled in the same language — I heard that in a song once. Plus, once we got to smiling, people never told me to go away; they adored how supple my skin was and how lush my hair. My teeth were straight, my cheeks sharp and dimpled too. Plus, all these ideas! Ah, I had everyone’s eye.
It was important to have everyone’s eye.
Where we looked was where we went, and I wanted to go inside.
“That is why I will shut my first eye on the third day,” I exclaimed at the woman on the street with a beautiful dress. She had her child close and her child also had on a beautiful dress and she brought her child closer. The child was enchanted by my presence, so the mother brought her closer to warm her ears.
But, “The ears and the eyes I will do in sync. First the left eye, then the left ear. Second the right eye, second the right ear.” The mother, so so polite. She inched away. This frustrated me: conversation’s a single odd dash away from turning to ash.
She inched further — and further, nodding bye-bye — she just had to get on with her day. I waved sweetly goodbye! The child who smelled of a lavender field waved sweetly goodbye in return.

*

I looked in the mirror, and I promised myself I would, I needed, to complete my mission. I had run into money, and people with money came up with the craziest needs. I shooed away the thought that I was crazy. If I was crazy, I would know!
It was time to close my first cunt.
I looked at myself in the mirror — the sky blue string in one hand, the needle in the other, and my phone on the counter — my phone on the counter showed me how to put the string through the needle. It took being nimble but was in fact very simple, like all good things. Just fold the string into two then pull it through. Ah, that felt the same as folding my nose.
Slid the string together; slid the side of the nose together. A bit of pain then eternal bliss. I wanted to begin. I took a deep breath. I looked at myself in the mirror — the blood in my brain beat and the blood in my heart beat — and quickly I slashed the string through. There was no dripping yet. Without a single breath more, I slashed the string the other way through. Great satisfaction! I saw that the cusp of the nose was sealed. Then red slipped toward my mouth and I huffed it away. I pushed my lips like pff.
Pff, ignoring pain like the good monk preached, pff. Pff, I kept going.

2

I said to my dad, “It’s my new look.”
“Looks bad,” my dad said. And it did look bad. Infected, I thought. But infections went away, and — anyways anyways — what did it matter? I was learning.
All my teachers liked to say, learning is infectious. They’d point at the board and droll dully along, no one a’listening at all. So I learned learning was not infectious, no but truth was infectious. And I was living my truth.
Truth was like looks. We all had looks. Looks mattered.
And anyone saying otherwise probably wasn’t too raggedy. Anyone saying otherwise had probably been beaten in too many fights, which would make them right — looks didn’t matter in a fight.
Well I didn’t want to fight with my dad, yes sir good sir, so we stayed silent for the rest of our food. I’d assumed he’d want to hear the next bits of my plan. But when you assume, supposedly, you made an ass out of you and me. But see, I didn’t believe anything could make an ass out of — both — you and me.
My mom stayed silent too. She just looked at her plate and flicked at her food, but I wanted her to look at my face. I wanted her to gleam for me like the crunchy yellow goo on my nose. But to gleam with pride! Her boy, no, her sir yes sir good sir, was doing what he set out to do. And wasn’t that what a mom always wanted? I didn’t want my mom to worry. Worrying got her warts, worrying got her ulcers. To keep the worries away, she learned to plan ahead.
Still, she couldn’t help but worry for me. I have no idea why. She never really said. All of her worrying lied deep, deep in her head. Ah, and what good was that?

*

When I’d closed my first cunt, I thought I’d chosen the color of the string at random — I loved random — “Random, random, random,” I would sometimes say. But, no, no, no. ’Twas not random.
That clear blue sky was what I’d chose. That clear blue sky was above. Then, that clear blue sky was within. Then, I couldn’t stitch any other color whatsoever. I had to stitch the sky which was deep deep deep inside.
I returned to the store, whooshing through the doors automatic as fate, to locate more colors. The girl with the piercings, septum and nose and ears, found me grabbing handfuls and handfuls of string.
I turned to her. Her eyes went big and her shoulders went back.
One eye, I couldn’t track. It buzzed about like a fly.
The other eye slack, “Ahem,” she asked in the form of a say, “This must be your new look.” She understood! Forever rare and forever good to have a person who understood!
I was hooked, “I’m a man on a mission and my mission is clear. A cunt every day for nine days. There’s nothing to fear.”
She nodded polite.
“I’d thought I’d chosen this sky blue at random. Random, random, random, I like to say, yet it wasn’t, yes yes yes, there was a why.
“But you can’t say why the way I say random — why, why, why — sounds like a bug in your ear.
“See, the sky was up over my head. Now, the sky’s here plum through my nose. I have to get every color today to be ready. Ah, after the nose, it’s the eyes and the ears and the ass.
“Then who nose,” I winked and pointed at my nose to show her that I knew that she knew that I knew that my joke was bleh.
She flicked her finger. She motioned me to follow a few aisles down. “Disinfectant for the pus. Finer needles for the sutures. And a book on how to knit.”
“I don’t know,” I moaned, “What good is a book?”
“You can knit blind,” she said.
Real supportive, “And you’ll be blind for three days or so.”
“Ah,” I said in the form of an ask, “So it’s something to do?”
At the register, ding, ding, ding. I continued, “I do what I do to keep away, away my blues. Speaking of which — left nostril, sky blue; right nostril, who knows — maybe the color of your eyeshadow or maybe the color of your nails or maybe the color of your blush?
“Or — maybe, maybe, maybe — the color of your chandelier heart.” She smiled, “Toodaloo.”

*

A smart man said, so my dad liked to say, though he wasn’t the smart man, he just really liked to say — if it cannot be said in three words or less it must not be said!
Always waxing wisdom — spoke like this — my dad did. He said once — purpose is special.
He added — this his trick for speaking in bigger than threes — appreciate what’s special.
So no sir he simply wouldn’t have my long long tale but if he had had my long long tale I think things might have ended differently. Anyway about that!
I was looking hard in the mirror — not to reflect — but to clean up my leaky, creamy nostril. It hurt to the touch. My friend-girl from the store had advised me to only proceed once I had looked up some tips. So wise. She provided me websites where I learned about surgeons stabbing ladies up through the nose till their brains went to slush.
Interrupted! My phone’s ringtone — me sing’a’linging ’a’linging along — sang-a-lang-a-lang a’ring-a-ding-a-ding, a’ring-a-ding-a-dong, until I answered the phone the way I always answered the phone, “Hello hello hello hello hello helloooo.”
The phone person asked if this was me. “Yes,” I said, “This is he.”
They were the local news and asked if I agreed to an interview. They called me a ‘human interest story.’ Ah, not only was I human, but of course, I was also interesting.
“Yee,” I said nicely, “How’s three?”

*

∩

Emiliano Gomez attends the MFA for Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, is a contributing writer at the Cleveland Review of Books, and has received support from the California Arts Council. A chapbook of Townies was a finalist for the DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press chapbook contest. His work has been published in or is forthcoming from Acentos Review, ballast, Barzakh, Breakbread, Broadkill Review, Indolent Books, and mercuryfirs.