Hyperosmia
Three steps beyond the doorsill, I’m horselike, my nostrils flick; bearlike, snout to sky. To sun-mellowed cement, I carry the scent of morning toast unburnt, coffee uncreamed. I put my nose to slug slime, to aphid lace and fresh spider silk. Test my super- (or sub-) human olfactory skills. The …
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So Many Dead
Bottles with the cap on, drifting on a sea where nothing sinks and nothing opens. Oceans, poisoned by a drink of water. Press-on fingernails dance in curls along the shore. Plastic swirls in eddies of Pacific vast, muzzled phantoms in a pulp, bobbing clear and blue and winking in the …
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Until All the Matches Are Burnt
I am driving to the Grand Canyon on a chilled, moonless night. My headlights catch a small structure on a spit of land fronting a dormant volcano. It is the Chapel of the Holy Dove, an isolated sanctuary amidst a woodland of ponderosa pines. * I wrench the door open, …
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A Catalog of Forgotten Joys
By mid-January of 2021, winter already felt tedious and draining. I wondered if I’d suddenly become a person who hates winter. What had I ever loved about that soggy-socked, dry-aired, and brutal season? But I was still dragging myself out of the house for my daily pandemic walks, begrudgingly pep-talking …
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Mofe
Mofe carries the weight of his son’s death the way a madman carries dreadlocks on his head; specks of dust caught between tangled strands, crazy knots bludgeoned by the pains of this world. Grief. Mofe holds this grief with all of his brown fur that was once white, standing …
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Ten Griefs, Ten Breaths
1. The nurses liked her; she liked them. She had that elder wisdom smile. Maybe that’s why they did what was forbidden. Or maybe because I cried so hard after they called. “Can I see her?” I’d sobbed. We had promised to be with her. 2. The day …
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sleeping bags
in a silent house, wakefulness is our cloak of invisibility so we listen to the gossamer touch of our feet on the linoleum floor echo like a shared secret and we step out into the lavender haze of 2 AM. i once wanted to tell the future but every prophecy …
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Radicle: An Interview with Kerri Arsenault
The impetus for creation is often thought to be love: divine love, parental love, the blessings of cheerful muses. However, love, in all its squidgy warmth, was not the radicle of Kerri Arsenault’s premier book, Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Arsenault grew up in rural Mexico, Maine in the …
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Orhionmwon
there we were, within reach of the river’s grasp, discarding our clothes on the bank adjacent to our clay pots. PUT_CH_HERour well water had receded into the earth, compelling us to P_C_Hstretch across the woods for waters, & on discovery of Orhionmwon, our first thought was to dive— frolic in …
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The Sea Beyond
Rosie was on her knees, scrubbing the bedroom floor when the news about Jimmy came. They sent Willie, Ellen’s husband, to tell her. She didn’t get up when he came in, but sat back on her heels, waiting for him to say what she already knew. “Where did they …
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