issue 2: repetition
Untitled
By Jade Ting
every day after work hundreds of geese fly home
above my head, tiny dots in lines and Vs
move slowly across the sky to a place I don’t know
every day after work I get on the bus at the same time
and look back on a day I’ve already forgotten
and I sit next to a stranger I see every day
every day after work I get ready for the next day of work
this is life but I’m not living it
I’m nothing but a pair of eyes
anyone who sees me, sees through
Field Notes 00
By PJ Carmichael
Starting the day with a substantial breakfast:
fresh bread, local ham and cheeses, tomato, cucumber,
sausage, butter, coffee, and tea. Weather for ducks.
Rain over Warsaw; a line of umbrellas. The
Royal Castle - a storied history, ornate chambers,
and a busy coatroom. We spend hours in the museum.
In a tearoom beneath the city, we sip aromatic
herbal brews, accompanied by sweet cherry
liqueur. Mismatched porcelain cups on a glowing
tabletop, a candle lit by a gracious hostess. Golden
crystals of raw sugar to sweeten the potion. Our
souls revisiting a forgotten era, the rain softening
as time slowly dissipates. The hands of a clock.
This cavern of brick and wood. Conversation,
consideration, contemplation. Light laughter as
we eat and drink. After detailed discussion, we rise from
the underground.
A warm buzz on a cold afternoon.
I Fall
By Anna Zarra Aldrich
The smallest (eye) of the world is swallowed
into a heap of soft
The optic nerve transforms into a (series of) veins;
and as I descend into decomposure, halfway begun
halfway undone,
and my body becomes a poem,
as I consider other acts of creation,
and know it is (is it?) dust,
as I am remade by the ‘Not-I’
I plug myself up with the waste of the world.
Dirt in the Ground
By Jason Ryberg
To think that even
if we do somehow make it
all (or most of) the
way to some kind of (quasi-)
logical and/or
vaguely satisfying end,
through whatever dark
valleys and forests, over
whatever hurdles
and mountains, we still only
wind up as dirt in the ground.
Veins
-A duplex, after Jericho Brown
By Mara Lovelock
The nurse admits needles take a toll
My third stick of the day throbs
My son collects three sticks, heart throbbing
Makes them sing against a live oak tree
The live oak tree where the thrasher sings
Exists only sometimes in my dreams
My dreams sometimes exist to warn
My body holds the grief of the unknown
Some don’t know how grief takes hold
How cancer cells eat you from within
Cells reproduced a life within me
When he was born he fed through a tube
I pumped through tubes to feed my son
Then he nursed and his lips took a toll
Alkaline in the Age of Julius
By Nicholas Trandahl
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