Candace Pearson – Invisible
Invisible I come from the body of no body A body that declines to see itself in the mirror understands self-protection Fade is to fading is to faded I am fluid margins shifting alliances Solid matter an illusion a pencil sketch that erases itself outlines drawn in breath or ghost ink * I come […]
Gregory W. Randall – Alba
Alba Now the showerhead sprays my chest with that first blast of cold water sitting in pipes, now too hot, now just right and now I turn my body in this small space between your shower chair and aboriginal chieftain, elephant seal, mountain gorilla thumping his chest to watch your body emerge out of stone— […]
Christopher Buckley – Know-nothing
Know-nothing. . . y entre los que menos sabian yo siempre supe un poco menos —Neruda Among those who knew what they were talking about, I invariably knew less . . . for years I was a dangerous young man . . . . In college, I put in the […]
Samuel Prince – Fer-de-Lance Trafficker
Fer-de-Lance Trafficker Coco was a teenage biopirate, carrier for black market pharma — exotic molluscs, translucent frogs, baby anacondas — or some faceless collector’s grim menagerie. By nightfall she’d wait for the three-tiered bus to the airstrip, her booty bag slung, bulged with critters, and the condors mooning over the canopy, the still-warm roads. […]
Maria Rouphail – Pandemic, 1918
Pandemic, 1918 (for MR, who lived and died in another century) 1. Wind-waft and a brown leaf lofted from a dry forest floor. Bone-scrabble of dry dirt— a forewarning, and the story two generations told again and again about the microbes’ fatal power, and the grief of the young mother whose sibylline brain […]
