Handshake
From what black, pressured cavein the depths of commercedid you summon this five-tentacled thing presented as choice towardssham consent, flabby foldsand pink creases smiling sans lips or teeth?
Nice
Just thought I’d say— before we were separated and tortured, and I gave you up for what you hadn’t done— it was nice when you put your head on my shoulder as we slept in our seats on the plane.
Reset
I.I kill November daysin a beach town of retirees. I ridemy bike down boulevards and pretend I am someoneelse. I find hidden covesto read inside and eat every meal quietly,but like it is my last. I keepto myself though the strangers are kind.Heat warps the department store windows, but in them,I am new. I am kind. The whole month, I… Read more →
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
While I was soberas a nun I filledwhole journals;carved out my brainto pin that slickpulsing fruit & findthe weakness. InsteadI found tethers to eatme alive. I bargainedwith my circuitry; pokedaround my heatedseething heart. Anothermonth cracked open likea black new egg & I setalarms to be grateful:what a gift, to knowexactly what harmyour mind will do. Toknow what wrote you.
December Already
Overnight we’re in overdrivestretching plastic over aging windowsand pushing play on our imagined fightsDo I really have to be awakewhile the trees are playing deadIs it drag to dress myself in redwhen I’m blue as a stovetop flameOne morning I cross the cold floorsand watch the snow garnish uslike this life is a just another plateand our hands tremble in… Read more →
self ghost introduction
the worldbuilding is three stories Yongin pours rain sheets stained American on the enclosed balcony laundry hums a painting Western oils outside Korean brush indoors
Desiderium
After the funeral, I dipped out of my deadend street. I crisped in the glow of lawns buzz cut to the soil’s fur. As I spilled into the city veinsof weathered tar, I saw a cherried cig unfurling in the windy mouth of an intersection, but it was flamesof frayed wings as I trolled closer. I braked in flumes of… Read more →
Energy Processing is a Characteristic of Life
Every morning my partner eats a palmful of medication one hour before breakfast, then gazes into her empty coffee cup, forecasting, her body tricked into believing her thyroid exists, the emptiness of her belly aiding absorption. Potted cat grass grows on our apartment windowsill overlooking the dead lunar landscape of December in Maine. The cat grass photosynthesizes winter sunlight, weak… Read more →
An hour before sunset
Grumbling arrives as we workshop creative ideas in a volatile space. Better to cluster, align. Like a starling finding its place in an erratic sky dance that disrupts boredom and desire. We assimilate, murmurate. But if the near-dark sky calls, perhaps today a single bird can change the course and the dance, and maybe the wind itself will follow.
Doikayt
n. Hereness. n. Diaspora n. “the Yiddish concept… used to describe practices of political organizing and cultural activismamong Yiddishists and Jewish socialists especially during the interwar period.” Hershberg, from the German, meaning “deer hill”or “dear hill”, depending on animism’s sweetness.Moved eastward, sloped downward phoneticallyto Gershberg: Odessa, Baku, Syktyvkar, Brighton Beach. And the Auerbachs: St. Petersburg, Tarnow,Warsaw, Berlin, Krakow, Rzedzin, Plaszow,[Oswiecem], Toulouse, Haifa…. Read more →