i am not an extraterrestrial. i am
leather-sewn and blistering

detritus at the cusp of an Appalachian summer, that kind
of amber decay hemmed with fungus and arrogance. here

i am safe, knowing that
the fruit the apricot tree could not hold is still light incarnate

lying sun-warm on the ground, rotting
to become new. the astral is a body too, and two

nights ago when i slept
next to my mother in her lover’s bed she told me

she didn’t know it would be like this, told me
that when the line is drawn

in my mind, the line of decomposing honeysuckle
cast aside and fractured, dissociated

nuggets of coal held together
sharp with multi-flora rose, to touch

the last place my feet hit the ground. it’s okay
to disappear from your body, i think–

we leave this world briefly, melting
to protect ourselves. what lies beneath

the sun and the dirt are no farther
than my hands, and enough

 

Madeline Augusta Turner prefers to be covered in glitter. Currently living in Northampton, MA, her heart is always somewhere at the intersection of industrial decay and endless cornfields. Madeline has received a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Smith College Elizabeth Babcock Prize for Poetry. In 2022, she was also a Kenyon Writer’s Workshop participant. Say hello anytime at madelineaugustaturner.com.

In my dreams, I am so pure
I don’t need a bath,

or a secret pill to keep
my liver from exploding

like a piñata. There is an artery,
I believe, for safe passage of faith

through the body’s dark. Fickle,
I am almost alive as the next

person. Brimming with desire, a real
boy, except for the bones lighter

than plastic. An Ostrich’s eye is bigger
than its brain, God’s eye is bigger

than my desolation. The expansion
of the universe is the expansion of us.

I hope no one looks me in the eye
ever again, I remember saying when

I caught wind of my prognosis.
You should know I tried counting down,

scattered my heartbeats like seeds
upon things that watered woe.

Whereas, God was busy, leagues above
tilting sunlight into my bone marrow.

 

Pamilerin Jacob is a poet & editor whose poems have appeared in Barren Magazine, Agbowó, Lit Quarterly, IceFloe Press, Palette, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. He is the curator of the PoetryColumn-NND, a poetry column in Nigerian NewsDirect, a national newspaper.

I am thinking about the flower
my son picked, insistent
that we put it in a glass of water
or it won’t survive, he said.
I didn’t know what to tell him.
Rootless, it floated
in a bottle. I knew the colours
would never glow so bright again.
That night, as the sun went in
the petals closed, and when it rose
again they opened. They were
still yellow: defiant
as a dying star.
There have been so many times
I too have strayed, adrift
on open water, with life seeping
from the very stem of me
but still I turned towards the sun
and here I am. And I am grateful
for the thing that keeps us
going through the motions,
trying: reaching
for the light.

 

Katie Oliver is a writer based on the west coast of Ireland, whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. Her debut short story collection, I WANTED TO BE CLOSE TO YOU, will be published in December 2022 with Fly on the Wall Press, and she is a first reader for Tiny Molecules. She can be found on Twitter @katie_rose_o.