featured poetry
The great abundance and overlapping orbits of asteroids suggests that disruptive collisions*
Franziska Hofhanselare nothing like intimacy, ask only that we
speak in falsetto, learn to walk on knives,
hijack airplanes and also television sets
of former lovers, presidents, myths. In Catholic school,
the nuns told us we were tethered
to our loved ones with invisible string. I used to touch
the small of my back to see if I could feel
the coil of rope sticking out of my spine. Mom said I shouldn’t
listen to everything the nuns said, that even grownups
mistake words for meaning. You wish I would do the same, wish
I would allow for truth-telling and not
grounds for escape.
*The title is taken from John A. Woods “The Solar System
Towpath
Elisabetta CroceWhat follows August heat, the after
-train, unsparkling void that doesn’t
fill with holler but lets it bounce
off nothingness into night, night
a real thing you can hold—
both hands a marble slab,
an opal moon-fish, the weight
of accident. He’s laying face up
in the canal beneath the tracks,
maybe his neck is broken, maybe
it’s not. Beast of burden, how
the body still floats—even heavy.
And water? Water hardly takes
notice, just takes shape.
Featured images
Featured creative nonfiction
Unmatched
—after lacy M. Johnson
Erika RileyTELL ME HOW this is where I find myself; unmatched, cloaked, the grass of the baseball field surrounding me. As if this time I mean the words toppling out of my mouth, running down my face. As if meaning them was the only part ever missing. As if whispering and knowing, and meaning, and intending was the difference between—shouted to the sky, lies sparking in the back of my throat, popping out like firecrackers, fizzling.
Tell me again how it is morning, barely, 2 a.m., and I am alone, sleepless, and so, so sorry. To myself; I have sold myself short. How there is nothing here, and how I always knew there would be, how I always knew I would find myself here, talking to someone who I thought must matter, in a place I thought must matter.
It is November and snowing now, and everything looks different through the pinpricks of precipitation threatening to ruin me, me and the baseball field. Me, and me alone. I am not sorry for thinking that none of this is all that important: the grass engulfing me like it is calling me home, knowing all my secrets here spilled to the stars, with friends who could now turn me inside out if they wanted to, stomach lining and lungs and heart all exposed. But then why does it make sense? That I am still intact?
Tell me again how we walked these paths all the time, not crying, the possibility of the future not yet seeming so dark. How we planted roots in cinder block and refused to move. How we matched each other branch for branch. Like oaks with no intention of breaking.
Tell me again how we braved the cold, forgetting our jackets, running home laughing if we had to. Tell me again how I hopped the fence, landed on my back, and immediately sunk.