Re: your lab results

by Hannah Grieco

 

Bilirubin like my heart used to
rise, code yellow despite these
worn-out thumps, these

elevated platelets, buttery
veins, weighted skin clinging
a depression of dermis.

When did I start feeling so old?
When did sleep become thin
become a test run

a preview, an old woman’s
afternoon nap, short and then
long, and then drugged, and then

hours of foggy wandering, when
did I start feeling so tired?
When did I stop looking

to you, looking for that
moment when the skin around
your eyes creased, your eye-smile

my love, those lines said: my
girl, that was me laughing
at your jokes, that was my

heart rising, red, an escalating
frequency of thumps pounding
yours/us, yours/us.

 

 

 


Hannah Grieco is a writer in Washington, DC. Find her online at hgrieco.com and on Instagram/Bluesky @writesloud.

2024-02-03T10:07:28-05:00February 3, 2024|

Oh luscious world,

by Andrew McCall

 

where have you been
this flame-tinged season?
A long drought
chewed wounds in the earth,
made you hole up, waiting
for another season.

I, too, stayed low,
choking on smoke from Canada –
particulate and savory, – caught
in the soft tissue of my tongue
leaving a tinge of barbecued
forests and singed duff.

After three days of rain
you remembered
yourself, rose and broke
open your hardpan
mantle; I smelled
the wringing out of your green
fronds and walked back into you.

I tripped over a cup fungus
still burrowing its way
from the underground, holding
new wetness in its mouth.

I stilled myself on a
ironwood branch,
moist and thick, like
my father’s bicep
after his work
in the fields.

I scattered the striders
flashing downstream
like thoughts
in a waking mind.

No big god cared
enough to clean up our ashes
and cinders.

Instead,
the swarming little ones
made the resurrection:
an old trickle in the woods,
ghost pipes
glistening and translucent,
the bold seed sprouting late
in summer’s hum.

 

 

 


Andy McCall as born in Missouri and teaches ecology, ecopoetics, and botany at Denison University in Ohio. Some of his work can be found in Canary, Lascaux Review, and 2River View.

2024-01-28T10:48:48-05:00January 28, 2024|

breathe but make it bearable

by Kristin Lueke

 

i’m anxious for the sky again,
for the bone-rich red dust of it,
untumbled gem-wounded & tangled
with sage, tortoise shell underfoot
& everywhere i’ve called home.
for cinnamon at sunset, burning.
coyote calls the mood.

for the peace whose name i knew
the night we laid on our backs
beside the piñon pile—days before
we saw a bullsnake press the breath
out of a woodrat—eyes like satellites,
even me quiet.

 

 

 


Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet living in northern New Mexico. She is the author of the chapbook (in)different math, published by Dancing Girl Press. Her work’s appeared in HAD, the Acentos Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hooligan Magazine, the Santa Fe Reporter and elsewhere. You can find her at theanimaleats.com and @klooky on Instagram, if you’d like.

2024-01-27T10:44:10-05:00January 27, 2024|

Reading the Leaves in My Palm,
I Casually Look Out the Window,
Waiting for the Other Shoe

by Sam Rasnake

“no thing, not any thing, not something,” Middle English, from Old English naþing, naðinc, from nan ‘not one’ (see none) + þing ‘thing’ (see thing). Meaning “insignificant thing” – Online Etymology“no thing, not any thing, not something,” Middle English, from Old English naþing, naðinc, from nan ‘not one’ (see none) + þing ‘thing’ (see thing). Meaning “insignificant thing”  – Online Etymology

 

Nothing happens No gains, no real setbacks
if you don’t count the sinus infection or cracked
tooth, but other than that, same as it ever was, or
so said David Byrne, and he was right The outer

reaches of there continue to slip away until one day
– not any day soon though – in the universal sense,
we’ll crash into Andromeda – another film for
Cronenberg if he’s still working then and all that

implies, since I’m sure he’s working even when he’s
not – we can’t see everything – but the crash will be
most unsettling to us and to Andromeda’s parents
who once again, because of beauty, will not be able

to withstand the destruction – but, in the meantime,
nothing happens, which certainly is something –
nothing but the slow crawl of what we say is living
and, of course, what we say is never what we mean

 

 

 


Sam Rasnake has published work in Wigleaf, The Drunken Boat, MiPOesias Companion, Southern Poetry Anthology, Bending Genres Anthology, and A Cluster of Lights. He has served as a judge for the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, University of California, Berkeley and is the author of Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press), and World within the World (Cyberwit).

2024-01-21T11:00:18-05:00January 21, 2024|

Autumn Redux

by Alan Perry

 

Don’t you mourn summer’s lapse
embedded in fuchsia leaves
that scuttle past you?
Don’t you feel the brush of hair
as wind dances around you, encircling
your body in fall’s pollen?
Naked trees stand firm, skin closing
tightly to repel brutish cold.
You’ve seen the turn that comes
with early sunsets, remember
what was only temporary shade.
Doesn’t it feel like the lover
who leaves you alone, memories piled
at your feet, rake in your hands
trying to collect what’s scattering?
There’s little you can do except
tie the scarf she made for you
tighter against the loss.
Your coat thickens, air fills with flakes,
ground hardens beneath your step,
animals find their shelter.
You know the cycles, recognize
temperatures and barometers of pressure,
understand their liquids when they fall.
You feel the chill of absence,
a tease in tomorrow,
the empty space of I’m leaving now.

 

 

 


Alan Perry is a poet and editor whose debut poetry chapbook, Clerk of the Dead, was released by Main Street Rag Press in 2020. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, River and South Review, Ocotillo Review, ONE ART, and elsewhere. He is a founder and Co-Managing Editor of RockPaperPoem, a Senior Poetry Editor for Typehouse Magazine, and a Best of the Net nominee. Alan holds a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, and he and his wife divide their time between a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota and Tucson, Arizona. More at alanperrypoetry.com

2024-01-20T10:13:58-05:00January 20, 2024|
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