Contents:

The notch of my eye

 by Beau Peregoy

I see cities all my own all the time
Matte-dull saliva gleam on cities
All my own. I see cities all the time

Six-dimension cities aren’t clock-
Working functions of space, I see them
As something fresh like cucumber

And I wouldn’t eat these sites I see
Because some affinity for them I dance
For them I make platters and plans.

Cucumber snap dance, cucumber platters
Cucumber plans for dewed grass
City grass cities I can call my own.

Józefów

 by Joe Masco

I believe it was somewhere
In Józefów

That a man tore at his
Beard

And wept for the voices
In the wood.

Visitors’ Feet

 by Kurt Havens

The basement became a lake. The darks populated, repopulated, spread
thinner until sun creased and

splintered the virgin surface your skin so light light hardened on it and you
said, “This is morning if morning

folded in on itself.” From the bottom of the lake autumn unfolded. The morphine-
sulfate psalms in our throats grew

thick and lavender. Visitors’ naked feet splayed the surface and the
flesh dangled like lures.

god for me

 by Courtney Bush

is the way my grandfather thinks about jesus
believes until it’s just called knowing
like science and directions

his hands are hard as stone when water hits them
in the sink
washing some ceramic birds
that my grandmother left him

what i believe is he believes in god
and he tells me on sundays
washes the birds
uses the word amazing

it is just my grandfather
talking and the cathedral
is built in front of me

two hands
water falling from them

Illinois

 Jade Conlee

Wasn’t the sky all combed
with snow when you were
born in this house,

didn’t Grandma shove her pills
behind the armchair and say “this

is my favorite day of the year,”
and didn’t you kill a chicken

in the vegetable patch
or was that Grandpa,

and isn’t the yard different

now, little tangled plants
choking the strawberries,

didn’t Uncle Tom have his walnut
cane that year, and his forehead

that sweat like cheese, didn’t you
feign concern when he threw up

in the hall bathroom, and didn’t you go
next, didn’t it start to snow
when you took the lid off the Tupperware

I remember the kitchen sink after
they’d all been in the hospital
for a month, crumbs drifting
in the dishwater like tiny flowers

didn’t you know Uncle Tom would
die that winter so you’d be alone

in the house with the dog and the Vicodin,
didn’t the dog die the next Thanksgiving

and the sadness set you running

into the November six o’clock spit
flakes, front door agape.

Roller Wing

  Charlie Corbett

It’s like cracking a walnut to see it has chambers just like your heart,

you squeezed until your forearm cramped, then threw it at a bird on the
sidewalk, in one long motion like you were taught—

When the bird flew by the left wing pivoted in its socket, it was drawn out in
pencil and labeled with narrow lines,

but knowing the names of bone segments will not make flapping yours arms
more useful.

What you need is feathers.

It’s like walking a block east, forgetting you do not speak like they do,

that you have made up the conversation and nodded when possible.

There was a woman selling bananas, she looked bored in all that yellow, so you
bought one.

There was a bird with its eyes shut in a cardboard box and it wasn’t your fault,
really—

You waited three days to sleep through the storm, wishing your mouth could
stay clean without floss and toothpaste,

or that there were better reasons to shave than to keep from going back to bed,
but that is as good as any.

Otherworld

  by Eric Stiefel

These days I can’t keep faith   in the earth, its tides change like whispers:
The clock tower still   standing in the cobblestone square,
where Wayne Andrews blew buckshot through   Clark Early’s jaw

over a bottle of bourbon   or a young bride, a handful of spades,
maybe, it doesn’t make   much difference. Now, I wonder
whether their copper finds itself   clotting beneath the soil—

And these iron hands, they lie   somewhere between noon
and the next day, where the slugs left   holes in the pavement
after Andrews drew and fired two more shots   on the deputy sheriff,

and my heart pumped silt   even harder than the cold fists inside the clock,
caught between two cogs,   the same close hour when the mill
shut down for good, when the train   stopped running and the draught

drank the river dry, the men left   behind with nothing but these dried
veins of earth, the smoke and scotch   still burning in their throats.
And you would hope that the rain   would find its way here

before the heron closes its beak,   before the men go back
to refill their empty mugs, but these days   lead runs through
the clouds like lungs caught   beating through the silent sky.

When old man Moses McCloud
finds bricks
from the mill wall
layered in dirt,

he then grinds them
with his grandfather’s cold iron hammer,
buries their ashes into new reds of clay,

which he
molds and then fires

into these just bound shards of earth.

I know the world shapes itself outside of his hands.

Even now, the forest   keeps secrets beneath the trees—the axis and the pistons
pitch themselves in soil, laying wait   away from the old mill workers,
torn apart the way that birds pick through   bodies, the same birds

I used to watch from outside   the quarry walls, that sift their beaks
through splintered bark and these   restless furrows. They reap
stories from another life, parts of   souls stuck inside the earth:

a set of lost teeth, a rust-colored   pocket watch, the monkey wrench
with the initials C.S.   etched into the hilt. When Mr. Early poured whiskey
instead of gin, I heard the mason cut hollows   where men used to come drink

the way that king snakes   wait for mice. You couldn’t set down
a glass too hard without   catching a glance, but from where I’m standing,
this might not mean a thing,   unless, of course, the train and its iron heart

cut through steel and find   what it was doing when it caught its exodus
from the tracks, its mossed wheels and closed tongue   spelling out a different
kind of journey, one that belongs   to the earth, instead of half-dead men.

Mrs. Early miscarried her second child
in the tavern’s cellar. Early and Son’s,

she saw the men carve into pine,
   and she knew that the dead Mr. Early wouldn’t want
 to lie

next to a second failed son.
She built a cross out of oak wood,

etched out in chalk, she wrote,
From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead
   And in the Holy Ghost
   Here lies Clark Early, II.

Some say the earth herself remains a mother,
     I have never seen her lay her hands like this.

Mr. McCloud claims he remembers   when he could
taste iron in the air, the days when   rain fell like a blessing
and the copperheads slept   beneath the brick. Now, moonshine

sends the hills crawling with sin, the same way   I imagine the wind fell
when whiskey dyed   the men’s veins black. Once, old Moses thought
that hell housed itself in the center   of the earth, that the devil spun gears

that made the dirt turn into clay. His house feels   hollow when the rain
hits the roof, and his kiln lights the village   dark for a few nights. I’ve walked
these streets for days, and I haven’t found anything but   the scars one man left

a whole world to fade into, only   eight weeks after the train scared itself off
the rails, when the whitetails wouldn’t let their   knees touch dirt for six days straight.
Now, I wonder if the crows will find a way   to pick apart mortar and clay before

the clouds open the sky. The mill holds tall, like ash and stone   cast into monument,
and the old man Moses McCloud says he’d sell his soul   if only he could
forge this world into something that would last   across these damned seasons.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Bruises on My Upper Left Thigh

with apologies to Wallace Stevens

 by Rhett King

I.
You left a few bruises speckled,
peridot and flat lavender,
murky Easter eggs
in their wicker of pores.

II.
I had thigh bruises
which lay hard
like four wide icebergs.

III.
There were a thousand excuses:
I hopped a fence. I met a dog.
Now there was the fact
of four bruises.

IV.
A man and a woman are one.
A man and a woman and a bruise
are one.

V.
The gift and sudden price
were intertwined.
I could not decide between
the first press of bruise,
or the sting as you pulled away.

VI.
In the throes of a pelvic exam panic
attack,
all I could mutter
to the trim brown eyebrow,
was, “It was consensual.”

VII.
What is the color of the blood
that sifts beneath the skin?
The bruise, instead, is
unapologetic, matted grey,
and thickly spread.

VIII.
Nightly we had not-so-lightly
battered one another’s necks
as ruffled swans.

IX.
When the bruises faded,
a pale nothing marked the skin
for your mouth to carve.

X.
Lymphomas and countertops
can cause bruises
but are decidedly less cut
with the loving selfishness
of licked warm teeth.

XI.
The same rose bruise
would be darkly blue,
a velvet curtain,
if draped over someone’s eye,
hung by fury in a twilight bar.

XII.
The bruises climbed the stairs.
They stung joyfully.

XIII.
Every kiss buried the secret argument.
You were poised to crack open
a something.
I wanted whatever you left
to bruise over
the bruise.

staring contest with an elephant

 by Katie Cho