“Let go said the
What.
Let go said everything.”

–Brenda Hillman, “Split Tractate”

 

A fox sprinted across the dark driveway:
orange spark that trailed through the headlight’s spot.

You register this sighting as a totem. Then,
drive on into the life you’d written one way,
then revised due to characters disappearing.

In the nightmare. No, in the dream. (never
sure when it’s called a dream or a nightmare.

My son says it’s only a nightmare if
you wake up screaming) there’s a dead body

being consumed by a writhing nest of
black and white snakes. They are re-writing what was lost.

When you wake you decide you would rather
be ashes than dust. You’d rather blaze out
like the fox, like a fur of sparks in the night,
than be left to rot, be untold.

By now, you thought time would have righted the swerve.
Thought your tires would have found tread. Instead,

you live in an echo chamber where owls
call and call, asking for forgiveness.

 

Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Interrupted Geographies is her third collection of poetry. It was featured as the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection for July 2017. Her debut poetry collection, Gold Passage, was selected by Ross Gay to win the 2012 Trio Award. Her second collection, There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air, was published in 2015. Her work has been published in publications including San Francisco Chronicle, Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, Women’s Studies, and Chicago Quarterly Review. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

In our morning conversations the creature
on the roof might be invisible; a ducks’ nest
hanging batlike from the ceiling;
someone and their dog as one body.
Flour dripped on potting soil makes
bread grow—thick, healthy loaves,
stalagmites in our kitchen. I ask for
twine and you bring me
a length. I tie it around the stringy
stalks I’ve just replanted. This thing
always seems to lean away
from the sun—I turn it, like
I know better. To be happy
is an effort—you know this
about me.

 

Jackie Sherbow is a writer and editor living in New York. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Moonchild Magazine, Bad Pony, Luna Luna, Day One, The Opiate, and elsewhere, and have been part of the Emotive Fruition performance series. She works as an editor for two leading mystery-fiction magazines, as well as Newtown Literary, the literary journal dedicated to the borough of Queens, NY.

Cayla listens to chatter perhaps a little too well.
She asks questions. Important for the kids to tell
her their toughest regrets. Eyes are not windows
to the soul. They are mirrors for secrets exposed.

No one knew Cayla was a double agent, first
for parents worried about boyfriends and the thirst
for drugs. The nights were long on the cold shelves
and the dolls decided to make up alternative selves.

Some children became dolls. Some dolls became spies.
Some spies became children. Some memories were lies.
The press release was practiced by a boy kissing the lips
of his cordial doll, his paralyzed audience, a syllepsis

from the time she, he, or they could imagine a universe
beyond the swift stares and steps; the microphone whirs
in a world where it is fine to not believe or to know.
The pieces, too, tell the assembly of how to grow.

 

A longtime resident of Los Angeles, Martin Ott has published eight books of poetry and fiction, most recently LESSONS IN CAMOUFLAGE, C&R Press, 2018. His first two poetry collections won the De Novo and Sandeen Prizes. His work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines and fifteen anthologies.

I float dry through the wet grave
a grief boat in the rain my dry eyes
polka dotted with flowers gray green gray
till they reach the bottom of the blackness

a grief boat in the rain my dry eyes
digging the narrow house, water rises
till they reach the bottom of the blackness
I mistake for an alligator by the pond

digging the narrow house, water rises
to tan carpet, mosquito hawk, troglodyte
I mistake for an alligator by the pond
I wonder if she went smoking to hell

on tan carpet, mosquito hawk, troglodyte
polka dotted with flowers green gray green
I wonder if she went smoking to hell
I float dry through the wet grave

 

Laetitia Burns has been writing poetry since the age of ten. She lives in Los Angeles and is the assistant of a famous Hollywood comedy writer. Her poetry is forthcoming in Tin House.

Please list the ways in which our concept of death might be improved upon:

The sin of living, the sin of not dying: which is the greater sin?     

Would peacock cremation be the best way to jump-start the phoenix population?   

Did you meet the dead animals you’d killed in your first life? How’d that go?

To the best of your recollection, what was the average wingspan of a seraph?

Were they beautiful? If yes, did you feel judged by this loveliness?  

Did you hear the Cocteau Twins coming or going?  

Was there forgiveness? Was there?

Did you hear the crows peck open the field above you?

The regret of going, the regret of coming back: which is the keener?

Do you feel you’ve stopped living or stopped dying?

To the nearest decimal point, please count your blessings:

When you examine a Lichtenstein self-portrait, do you see a self?

Do you feel you’re the victim of a father and son magic act?

Do you consider earth your new birth mother?

Describe your feelings toward God the Father and his apprentice son:

How many times a week do you now have sex with your wife?        

Is this more or less than before?           

Define the traits you have in common with a) a seraph, b) a peacock c) a phoenix

Do people see you as coming or going?

Please use the space below to tell us what you want to see the next time:

 

 

Ted Mico began his writing career in London as a critic for the weekly music paper Melody Maker. Since then, he has edited three books, written columns for places such as The Guardian and Huffington Post, and had his poetry published in journals such as Caesura. He is now based in Venice, California.