Contributed By: Paul Adler
The blurred cypress
has its own quiet math
as you speed divine
with the white tongue
of a cloud descending
to lick a strip mall.
Motion is a means
to forget, so that each
fluorescent burst
of brush is erased,
so that all night cities
are replaced by brighter
versions of themselves.
A small benevolence,
like the song of a bird
just before it alights.
Look, the lake hurries
to erase our image.
Return to table of contents for Issue 9 Summer 2015.
Pretend we are not dying and that the rocking horse remembers all our laughter as if to love were always to be recorded. Families of stars separate in the sky and holding you I remember…
When we decided to co-edit an issue of MAYDAY Magazine dedicated to nonfiction, we knew we wanted to see as wide a range as possible. We were particularly interested in work that pushes or blurs the boundaries…
I heard my hands were yellow, and in the lines I could feel deeper, like tea I never knew what any of that means if colors have smells then yellow lingered in front of my…
this dangerous habitual criminal, I fingered soles & pounded leather, shaping shoes by smell as much as by the shapes my hands rested in when their force reached the limit set by material resistance my resistance…
The doctors had no answer for me, something wrong with her heart—that’s all that I heard, all they could hint at with their stone faces and cold hands, constantly checking their watches, places they needed to be. Except, now that Jessica was gone, there was nowhere I needed to be and nowhere I wanted to […]
Look at this painting squared by light of a certain afternoon hour, hung on the wall out of reach of the dead, who were to blame. See the red roofs and the boxes, spared by his new infinity? Cezanne lost his sight to oceans, repetition, the impossible wave. The ocean was an idea mounting the […]
There was a crack in the wooden floor underneath the living room table. In fact, it had always been there. The split was barely noticeable, widening in the middle to form an oval, almost like an almond. Sara had looked at it many times but that day was different: the light touched it differently so […]
