How to say that we are all / of these stars, that I want / the suffering I cause to be less / than the raindrops on the fern fronds / outside their fog-blurred windows
Poetry
Scaffold
Record of Demolition
by Nianxi Chen, translated from the Chinese by L. B. Tsau
Morning headaches are set to blow up my brain / The extra gift of great machines
What the Wire Hangers Say
by Kate Peper
Over and over / our thin necks / hang the likeness / of your unfilled / body // We’ve known you for so long / We just want // to get closer
At Once Sealed and Soluble
by Will Russo
Evergreen is bone and pigment. Grows projectile out of ground. / Boughs snapped for thick blood. Resin drains from once-limbs / like beads of paint—is this rumor?
Soliloquy For You If You Ever Heal
by Abigail Chang
You shear coconut until it glistens translucent. / I Barbie your limbs & think about barbecuing ribs. I nurse // tender childhoods & drizzle ketchup on pizza. You are you and I am misguided.
As Light
by Lucian Mattison
Flecks of starlings peck pieces from a fried wing / on the asphalt by the driver’s side door.
3 Poems
by Cho Ji Hoon, translated from the Korean by Sekyo Nam Haines
I am afraid / no one understands // the gentle mind of someone / living like a hermit
Jig
by Robert Lunday
Make me / a lily, paint my petals neon, toss them on the dance floor / one by one. Give me a frilly shirt, too-tight shoes, / glitter-brows and girls who call me Girl.
half-life of a different country
by John Sibley Williams
the father they invent // every day to give themselves something / to look up to must still be here : inside me // a half-believed-in faith that for every / action an equal & opposite : that the un- //stable core of us decays a bit less violently / than it used to :
Index of Unfinished Things
by John Sibley Williams
a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished — Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb” not far off / a refinery flares methane. targets scatter at a rifle’s clap & clamor. another empty silo at dusk & nothing / to be done about it. tonight the night dismantles / into its constitutional elements. white […]
