After “Here I Am” by Martin Espada She slides into the Hammerstein Ballroom, gorgon at a monster’s bash, styling and profiling.Brass hands like Isotoner gloves clawed with brass tacks.The vamps vaping vixen necks ease off, mad scientistsmathing at stray ears ease off, the organ stops grinding the way faithdies in a Catholic church when the …
Gorgon. Chemotherapy. Party Time., by David Arroyo Keep Reading »
Among the strange happenstances and peculiar mischances of ancient times is the story of a dervish in Ghazni who dwelt only among the dead.
for Aunt N— My dear ant comes to me in dreams. Because she’s so small, she can make a tiny hole in my cerebrum. My dear ant offers me a glass of water. She thinks I need to be softer than bones to breathe. My dear ant is learning to exhale—it is this close to surrender. My dear ant asks me to sing …
Across my father’s death there is a curtainpast which I can’t write, my own wordscan’t carry and I must rely on others’ I believe in the graves of those I’ve buried.They are the doors I’ve walked throughinto greater bravery, into fury. Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner living with Long Covid. Their writing has …
(prelude 3.1) He wasn’t socruelas to namethe dog. (first day 1.1) I live in the same house I grew up in. Each day I walk my dog up and down the same streets and through the same parks. I make the same observations about the same landmarks —the dilapidated fence by the cycling path behind …
When you dieregret becomes permanentso imagine my surprise when Isaw the stallions thererunning as if forever were made of switchgrassand cloveras if eternity were grounded in the quartz and silica of hoof-marked sandsdestined to dance with sweat-sweetened necks and nudging noses endlesslyI toss soft reins across my own bare armsand suddenly my limbs areneither ash nor wind-bound (as I had planned)but powerfululnaradiuscarpus …
Fluid Dynamics What did you get sprayed with tonight? My partner has taken to asking me this after a particularly eventful work week. I’ve mentioned aspiration before—when we suck out fluids and gas out of the visceral organs. We use hydro-aspirators at my embalming center, which have the benefit of not making us scrub drains …
You wash ashore, cheeks sun-bleached,half-obscured by a burst of barnacles as brine rushes in the gash of your neck, and out. Unbodiedmust feel like living anew. If I pry the shells open, is there anythingbeneath the undulations on your eye? But there is nothingto worry about; ugliness is not a fault—to exist, undesired, unbothered. Within, let go of your needto squelch through folds among folds for the algae bloom.How many nights have you longed for a body of land never claimed, oncethe wasting flesh of the old had drowned? Was it ever a dream that youwould be a muse,sprawled over a beach towel; a beloved,bikini untied in the heat of summer; an image,couched between horizon and shore.You would have been unharbored elsewhere. Of course, let us be honest, you are regurgitatedby the ocean herself, a skull of what remainsof a siren’s call. Here you are, and here I am, lured by how appalling you are. Rayji de Guia is a fictionist, poet, and illustrator. Her work can be found in Asian Cha, harana poetry, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She was a poet resident at Sangam House in 2019 and a fellow for fiction in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2021. Later this year, she will be a …
WE, with base of Ornithischia, machine-molded and encasing intelligence, run to keep the beloved ones alive WE: bird-hipped, yes, bird-fierce, mottle-fleshed, streaks on strips of whirling rubber that are the million treadmills that power this place, a place they thread the words “end-of-life care” through WE, who run for those above, with the hope that …
Let X be a gash in the fabricof time that splits to showthings sixty-six million yearspast. Let Y be the sea, risingand dipping, sloshing sedimentand skeleton alike into chalk.Let the chalk scry a spell of protectioninto stone, surpassing all elixirs concoctedby modern man. Let Z be the asteroid slippinginto sleeve of space – dark tunneltowards …
