Outside is the rain half the world waits for as much as we hate it at times; it gives us whatever we can gather from the energy that is frozen and makes up the world I swore I’d never live in. But like everything else it passes on its way to teaching me which way to turn. In the meantime, left with nothing but dreams and memory, I’m practicing for the death we all know is coming, that none of us know how to face. I keep trying the prayers and other means as if each could be a plot twist in the novel I keep wishing I could write. All I want to end with is the person who points down the street.
Directions
Further Reading
On Introspection
by Merridawn Duckler
Surprising how much of it is song. Much is lyric. Under that, admonition, calling yourself names before someone does. Open question who someone else consists of. Thinking how often it all ends in a dangling participle. Why is it bad. Or, to put it another way, what does this world consist of. Manufactured conversations. Some […]
I SEE THE ATTIC
by Charlene Fix
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -Oscar Wilde It was the habitat of ghosts, and a black suitcase stenciled AKC for my mother, Anne Kobrinsky Cohen, who is a spirit now. There was writing on the walls, some ours, some scrawled before our parents ever […]
The Tulip by Ghalib
(Translated from Urdu by Tony Barnstone and Bilal Shaw)
In the inner workings of the tulip, a red scar burns hot. The farmer’s blood sears him; he’s relieved when lightning burns the crop. Here’s the thing: until the bud blooms it feels secure. Despite its collected heart, the flower’s dream is torn apart. I’m too weak to bear this impatient grief —a straw in […]
