a baltimore-based lit and arts mag
we believe that the door to closer intimacy with life is generally found around back. the strange, the inexplicable, the challenging moments of uncertainty or confusion: these are what give way to depth and expansiveness in our lives. literature and art are deliberate occasions for confrontation with this depth. reference mollusk publishes work that guides you, gently or not, around the house to the back porch. step in and see what you find.
❤ dan
Alexandra Duprey
I. BABY POWDER
A distant train bellows into blue velvet night.
It calls over the roar of the freeway,
a ceaseless wave
splitting apart
Baltimore city.
II. IT’S BEEN A LONG WINTER BUT THE TULIPS WON’T SAVE US.
Wash your face and shine for God.
Rain! Oh blessed rain.
Pollen and dirt
to stars strewn across
windshields.
A man in a wheelchair picks up trash below I-83.
The sun streams
through his body,
through my body,
through yours.
The breeze takes my breath
and drops it at your feet.
III. A MAN WITH THE BIGGEST GAP TOOTH I’VE EVER SEEN
smiles as he makes his next chess move in the tree’s shade, another man sits alone with a half-finished rubix cube, plays music and fiddles with the colors, leather-clad art kids gather on blankets and whisper, there are takeout boxes and pages fluttering, there is air and pavement and mulch and approximately twenty-three street trees between you and I, driving once I saw a man holding a turtle at the gate of his walkway in West Baltimore, I swear it changed my life, fresh green lambsquarters and chickweed are abundant in neglected curb strips and abandoned planters, my neighbor wears a velvet bomber jacket and walks his chihuahua, I pass him often and don’t know his name, I watched a woman wearing a bandaid on her cheek walk by and there was another woman sleeping in the shade of a bayview window, then there were those barefoot boys standing at the bar wearing capes and flower crowns, but the other day the fattest rat I’ve ever seen touched my foot while Linden trees shouted in yellow bloom, I’ll ask you not to faint at the dance hall but we will sweat through our shirts, he stands with a cane at the crosswalk, he cannot see, his friend sits on a stoop across the street, he rises and helps him cross, fat dumpling sparrows yawn on the iron wrought fence, sparrow dust baths in dried out lawns, sparrows dancing in a pot hole puddle, a leaking hydrant, sparrow waterfall, a blue-eyed friend one street up, four streets down, the breeze carries chit chat chatter, a magnolia springs from a rowhome yard, huge ivory flowers, they go POP POP POP he says, blossoming one great bud at a time, everyone is fully alive at the farmer’s market, the calla lilies glow against her dark brown skin, a child sleeps in a stroller beneath a bouquet of pink flowers, the french baker gives me six Canelés instead of three, my Kurdish friend at the pizzeria gives me four slices instead of two, a pudgy toddler is up to mischief at the west Monument park, gunning for the exit, the clack clack clack of a cane, any cane, all canes, on the sidewalk, a black horse clop clop clop on cobblestone, yellow and red wooden buggy holds cabbage and other vegetables, the man guiding the horse yells to the mansard roofs, he wears a suit, he clutches blue hydrangeas and baby’s breath, the father sits his lanky daughter on the stone ledge, she tells him a story with big hands, and he watches, smiling, captivated by her world, their love will survive all of time, an army of tiny dogs descend the marble steps.
I think of pink peppercorns.
She wears a neon jumpsuit and stands over her bike, I pass her, neon blur, the cop asks me where are you going, Miss? Orange rosehips wait patiently on a neighbor’s bush. What are they becoming?
IV. SUMMER
He was two blocks away when I saw him but his rawness washed over me, he was without skin, exposed to me and the Sun alone. The spikes across my skin blistered. Herons sit screaming in their nests, they shit so much, white splashes on the sidewalk below, I see one carrying a fish home, the babies squeal. The tiger lilies, milkweed, and mullein are in bloom. I want you to want me, when we’re walking through balmy air and sweat drips down my back, yes I want you to want me, when the quarter moon shines high and the whip-poor-will cries. Now I’m watching him weep without tears and there is talk of violence without fists. These days are much too long and heavy, scissors snipping at my nerve endings, my thoughts moving at a crawl. A ginger beer, please bartender, for my new friend since he’s wearing a nice vest, and I’ll put Edith Piaf on the jukebox and we will sing as if we ever knew sorrow. A woman walks down the street outside, yelling on the phone in Portuguese, the brownstones, scorched canyon walls, sailing her irritation skyward. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that our rats are getting bolder, peeking out of pipes and trash cans, yes I see them, they’re right there, running between bushes on the hem of daylight. Summer is steaming dog shit and moist upper lips and ragged stares and greasy, greedy hands. Hiding in a shady nest, my blinds are drawn. I lost my stamina for these bright evenings. For you, too. Locked doors are blown open and I see red.
V. A CROW FLIES OVERHEAD
I see blue sky in the gaps of its wings.
There’s a security guard who walks by the park. He overflows with dignity and grace, he clicks his heels and his black Ray Bans glisten and the silver rings across his knuckles flash like stars, and he points, finger slicing the air, at a man, they exchange a Hey Man and embrace, he walks away with true swagger, I am breathless. At the south end of the Monument, a black capped nightingale lofts punches at the dimming sky. There are plenty of dark silhouettes staggering behind the spewing steam vents, nodding, but there was a man one evening in the cool fog, tall in tailored slacks and a long black coat, leather boots, and a sharp, wide brimmed hat cast down over his eyes. Another night, a man with a haltering walk, leading his tootsie roll chihuahua named Bonbon, says she used to be sportier, in her youth. The Ravens sign glows purple in my neighbor’s window. I’m a confused woman wandering these deserted streets. I walk home alone, a wilted flower on my tongue. Street lights make shadowy lanterns of golden gingkos, a rippling dance across the dark, dark tar.
VI. TOMORROW IS FAR AWAY
Driving down Wolfe Street looking to park.
Yellow lights flare around me,
I catch a glimpse of a scene in a parked car,
bookended by shadows.
Jawlines and cheeks and two
pairs of lips locked in embrace,
illuminated by the street lamp
streaming through their windshield.
The city exhales.
In a flash, I am gone.
Katia Matychak
Sun Abandon Desert Memory Clay
Salt Oasis Detachment Sand PSTD
_________: Something that heats your bones and shifts all of your cells around. Something that draws the moisture out of you and leaves fossils. This pulls you from 1st person recollection but leaves you subject to everything else. Layers of this tell a story to someone who dares to excavate it.
Will it be you?
Will it be you?
Will it be you?
_________: Somewhere, a tire melts a little, every time it slaps the pavement and is ripped from the road over and over again at 110 miles per hour. The bird has to leap at some point, but would you say it learning how to walk was a waste of time? Pull the leaves back and you’ll see more dead leaves. Every time something happens, it becomes more and more real and it gets closer to cementing its place somewhere in my body that does the remembering. My brain hasn’t been good at that in a while.
_________: Water tells a story, but please note that different water tells different stories. See coconut water. See the ocean. See our blood. It’s everywhere and nowhere, it holds a city of carbon that grows and waits for those who need it. Proof that the desert does show mercy, which makes me ask, should it be grateful for its circumstances? That the desert made it grow? That time took so much away, altered that lump sum of devastation, and alleviated doubt through a slow blooming of a summer forest? What is the ground’s obligation to all the empty space? Is the moon the mediator? What about the distance between you and your reflection in the water?
_________: What happens when our empty valence meets its match? I know, I felt it. It was a click. Here, _________ is life. Life wouldn’t exist without it, and neither would electricity in a heart beat or a thought. I love that I am made of Death Valley. This is where everything starts– oceans moved to make this possible. He completed my octet, and I his, each the metal and nonmetal. If the oceans can move, why did I think I couldn’t get better?
_________: Something I know I’m supposed to have, or something they tell me I came with. There are layers of shields, like spine to succulent. If you want to get through me, you’re gonna have to get through my short-term. Watch me make a language out of methyl groups and my body will read it later with coffee and a couple of days later. I learned about biology, just to end up using it to heal. I learned chemistry, just to recognize where I came from. I don’t need to remember the specifics after seeing what I’ve built. That’s the thing about miracles, right? Something from nothing in the blink of an eye?
_________: It persists, but it can change. I can get better like a stylus records history on it– hardened to preserve the way I am this time. Relief has a weird way of growing like palm trees and new strategies after old ones stop photosynthesizing. While there is separation between striations, many separations make up the whole mountain. It is important to not be afraid of the next striation. In this whole desert, full of what I need, I count my gravel blessings. Look at those mountains in the distance– so many good things are on their way to me, I just have to walk toward them.
_________: We need it to love the dark. There are these everywhere. Night comes, but the day always follows. In grad school, I used to test the connection of protein shape to the conductance of electricity. I didn’t need a thesis to know that if you dance, you’ll have current. Believe me when I say that the desert pulses. It has always been calling. High noon in the desert feels good when you know it’s all going to be okay.
_________: I’ve written so much about this already– the desert gets cold at night, and everything shivers, but then everything still grows. You know how we have floating ribs? Ribs that don’t connect to the sternum? And we hope to god they don’t dislocate? See Aloe vera or agave. They have one point of connection but do they say the ground has _________ed them? No, they grew without restriction.
_________: A mix of bones, fossils, and other organic matter. There needs to be dead things for new things to grow from. In my case, I grow out of myself– my own carcass. When I was in the desert and I heard the Joshua trees creak under the wind, I remembered that sound from when my chest split open and I peeled out of myself. Does the tarantula recognize the same sound? And both of our former forms await their granulations?
_________: Leave it to the scientist to talk like they are the expert on something I saw once. Does it count if I saw it twice before from a plane? If I went back the next day? Do you need a degree in something you know is part of you? Your meninges? Your marrow? I’m sure this came up in one of my cadaver labs. The horizon and sunset too. With skin pulled back, I saw freshwater ponds under carpal ligaments. A diaphragm separation between mountain and sky and hypodermis and abdominals. Look at that blazing sun and tell me that’s not a surgical light.
Anaïs Lothrop
Part I
A fetid smell of not-quite-alive. Ad memorandum concealing little foyer, “My roommate’s mom died last month,” she said. “Don’t mind the mess.” I didn’t. The only salvageable personal affect was an old Singer sheened in dust.
We rounded the corner and she led me upstairs. Underfoot, the matted carpet was dingy, catching my socks on the steps.
Demarcating the two railroaded bedrooms, a rifle lay.
I began to salivate in this wretched place.
I found her through last-ditch desperation, combing through some gimmicky gig site–professional cuddlers for hire. Her profile was a forgotten relic of pandemic loneliness. Called at midnight, back in the city that same afternoon. Smiled reassuringly through therapy; parents expressing relief, gratitude for my resilience. An hour from this intervention I sought comfort in the arms of a stranger. Over the phone she spoke rapidly, a gnostic quality to articulations so nebulous–trailing, disjointed; it thrilled me. Her voice possessed such neurotic intensity. A hark that jostled me from my brooding.
I lapped up her unintelligible gospel, especially when it veered into freneticism.
And so there I was, at the top of the stairs, rifle and obese pitbull staring back at me.
I was deeply sheltered though nothing scared me anymore.
Yet these surroundings were staggeringly unfamiliar in a way that evaded hostility.
I was in another world, one of filth and poverty, desperation, illness, death.
I had gone from watching Water’s Multiple Maniacs that morning and effectively entered “that world”.
Her room–a mess of visually tolled warnings warning of an oncoming stroke. Skeletal wires and circuit boards snaked her walls. Shelves bore tools I could not name. Hardware and stones and ash-greedy windowsill and three monitors, arrays of fantasy wear and toys and emptied estradiol bottles lining her desk. It was disorienting and I relished it. I had chosen this, chosen to come and she had soft eyes and trembling hands and a racing tongue and a story so unwound it made me forget about yesterday and wanting to lie on the train tracks so everything else could be ground to a bloody pulp.
After hours of talking we both went hungry and stared at each other feverishly. We made to the bed like animals; shared desperation overtook us.
I was scared and sad and my heart broke open many times as I felt littler and littler. It was beautiful but all wrong.
I need to write this in segments. I don’t think I will ever forget her.
Part II
The sink was clod with a pile of dirt. Out from it, a thousand shattered porcelain mouths gaped. Centipedes snaked through the bathmat and I felt like I was going to die. Hunched over the toilet wringing chicken vindaloo out of my cunt scared I was going to get sepsis or something. Christ. I tracked the bathroom with sativa laden vision and the dirt in the tub on the floor in the basin and the fissured ceiling and flushing humid walls but all I found was two ply and I just prayed like hell.
I trundled back to the bed and she grasped me in apology. We watched some sort of Starseed documentary on youtube and her granite eyes widened while she told me her thoughts on transhumanism. She kept apologizing for hurting me, but we were both too far gone to realize my vagina and her cock were mortal-pestling the remnant spice.
I crawled to the window and fixed a pillow behind me. Stuffing was pouring out of it like guts. Poor thing was gashed. I raised up the window and lit a cigarette. We looked at each other a long while. She moved closer, resting her head near my pretzeled legs and so I stubbed the stale Newport and laid supine beside her. She turned then to face me, raising her torso with bent arm and her black-walnut curls were all sticky and static. She furrowed her brows as she looked me square in the face and told me that when she looked at me, she saw fire.
She told me she thinks she loves me, falling in love but that it was real reverent shit. Her pupils mooned big eclipse. I said an awful lot after that; all sincere, truthful to inhabiting this marsupium. It houses the wretched indigence of two one-time lovers, both dying, one a mother with a thirteen year-old girl and a head that’s gone, she said, ‘cause of my schizoaffective. I, the other.
I left early that morning. I had worn a romper over–fitting for that rumpus room–and drew a shirt out of her hamper for more cover. I still wear it to sleep, but I don’t have it with me now here at school. It’s at my family’s house.
Jake Leonard
my bike’s front wheel
sinks into sluff
I don’t remember how I fall
limestone gravel pierces my palm
crystal flecks scrape
from stone to flesh
I sleep at the foot of the falls
slip in the morning
on the mist-soaked moss
slender piece of slate
vertical in the dirt
digs deep into my hand
I catch the white glint
of sinew or bone
then blood fills the hole
spills over my cupped hand
red drops dot dead leaves
my body’s false border broken
some of me soaks into soil
reaches for the bloodroot’s rhizome
and burrows towards subterranean blue
Nels Challinor
She would not be named Alice. She would not be impressed or scared or torn. She would not waste her time with people who bored her. She would not act her age.
The reason would scare her parents, when and if she told it to them. The reason would scare her parents even more than she did because, of course, they would never understand it. The reason was complicated and liable to change. The reason had something to do with a radical honesty that she had decided she would practice from now on. The reason bore repeating, but she couldn’t find the words to express it. The reason preceded words, and it preceded the name.
Tomorrow would always be one step ahead. Tomorrow made a certain kind of sense in that way. Tomorrow was dependable, but also Tomorrow was always new, always different.
Cheryl said that good girls were boring. Cheryl said, “It’s about time you did something for yourself, I had almost given up on you.” Cheryl said she liked the new name.
Being liked was not why she did it. Being liked was like getting Orange Julius at the mall. Being liked was not at all why she did it, but she liked when Cheryl said she liked the new name.
With the new name came a new life. With the new name, she had the power that the world and her parents had denied her. With the new name, she would be heartless, strong, angry, beautiful, young forever, temperamental, effortlessly cool. With the new name, she would be anything she wanted.
She and Cheryl went to the mall without any money. She and Cheryl did this once a week and never tired of it. She and Cheryl walked up and down the escalators backwards because it confused the overpaid parents and the underpaid security guards. She and Cheryl caught the eye of a kid who graduated the year before, who had no reason to know their names, but did in fact know their names, when he told them that he liked their style. She and Cheryl laughed all the way home about how he had sounded so lame and self-consciously old-fashioned.
Everybody knew him as Fox. Everybody knew his jawline was perfect, his eyes a kind of deep and radioactive blue. Everybody knew his move was a drunken karate kick, high in the air. Everybody knew his claim to fame was that he had once fucked Lucy West on the back of a party bus. Everybody knew that the story did wonders for Fox’s reputation but more or less ruined Lucy’s life when his friends who were in a band, of course, wrote a catchy song about it.
She wasn’t worried about Lucy West. She wasn’t worried that she would end up like that, because she’d never be so stupid as to have sex with Fox anywhere except a locked bedroom. She wasn’t worried about the actual sex, thinking to herself that if people as hopelessly nervous and square as her parents had done it, how bad could it really be? She wasn’t worried about herself because she had her new name and besides, there was enough to worry about with acid rain and Republicans.
The first date didn’t feel real until she told Cheryl all about it. The first date didn’t take place at a restaurant or a movie or any other normal place like that, which she would have hated. The first date didn’t last very long; Fox and her spent a little over an hour walking in circles around the park, but she knew that it was a date because he had asked, sweetly, timidly, if he could hold her hand. The first date didn’t end with the promise of another, but somehow she knew there would be another. The first date didn’t end with a kiss either.
Fox had a friend for Cheryl whom she tolerated because it meant that she could tag along everywhere. Fox had a friend who worked nights at the Machine and so could get them in without being carded as long as they wore something lowcut. Fox had a friend who sold whatever you were in the mood for. Fox had a friend for everything.
She found that most of the time, coke made her feel nauseous. She found that most of the time, she didn’t even like drinking. She found that most of the time, this weekend was just a rerun of last weekend. She found that most of the time, Fox’s friends just sat around talking about how cool it was the last time they were on drugs or how cool it was that they were currently doing them. She found that most of the time, everyone politely ignored Cheryl and her, leaving them to speak their own private language for hours.
Dating Fox meant that everyone at school knew something about her. Dating Fox meant that she was cooler than everyone, which was mostly a lonely and embarrassing feeling, made worse by the fact that being cooler than everyone was one of if not the reason why she had decided to date him. Dating Fox meant that she always had a ride, or someone to talk to, or someone to talk about. Dating Fox meant that she understood love better than anyone ever had. Dating Fox meant that she could find the words to tell Cheryl how much she loved and needed her.
She didn’t feel like an adult until Cheryl got dumped by her boyfriend for insisting that he take her home by curfew. She didn’t feel like an adult until she reminded her best friend that boys were nothing. She didn’t feel like an adult until she and Cheryl exacted Polka Dot Revenge on his car, covering it in sandwich meat and letting the acid chew the paint away, leaving rusty spots behind. She didn’t feel like an adult until they stayed up all night rehashing every beautiful memory until they ran out and sat there in perfect silence, watching the sky brighten. She didn’t feel like an adult until she realized how much childhood she still had and wanted. She didn’t feel like an adult until she admitted out loud how fucking scary it would be to leave her parents and town and especially, Cheryl.
Fox disappointed her when he didn’t find the car thing funny and instead argued that “you don’t fuck with another man’s vehicle.” Fox disappointed her for quoting a movie that was too obvious to be his favorite, but was indeed his favorite. Fox disappointed her by acting too comfortable around her, without timidity and shyness and everything she thought that she and only she knew about him. Fox disappointed her whenever he opened his mouth because nothing that came out of it surprised her.
It took about six months before her attraction to Fox wore off completely. It took about six months before she realized that though he was a fairly decent kind of guy, his friends were decidedly less decent and what did that say about Fox? It took about six months before she let herself ask this question, because it sounded so like a question her parents might ask. It took about six months before she realized that there wasn’t anything bold or romantic or original about her relationship and she was still just like everyone else.
She started thinking about the future. She started thinking about Belize, the scuba license she would one day acquire, the glow of the moon on some tranquil bay. She started thinking about the big, new, scary, shiny life on the other side of Tomorrow and how her patience was wearing thin. She started thinking about how leaving Fox was the first step in a series of steps that included leaving her parents, her school, her hometown, her normal life. She started thinking about how changing your name was all well and good, but reinvention meant changing your circumstances and though she had managed to do that a little, she was after something more titanic. She started thinking about how the scariest things were really the only things worth doing.
Cheryl didn’t ask why, but instead asked when. Cheryl didn’t ask if she was sure, but instead asked, “What do you think Susan Sarandon is up to right now?”
When she dumped Fox, he told her it was the biggest mistake of her life, which was so needlessly dramatic and laughable that she left feeling completely validated. When she dumped Fox, Cheryl wanted to egg his house, but they decided not to – too much work. When she dumped Fox, everyone at school wanted to know the reason. When she dumped Fox, she said that she “just wasn’t feeling it” to each new person who asked, repeating herself until she started to actually believe that this was the reason.
The following Monday, she heard a rumor that she had given Fox head inside the photo booth at the mall. The following Monday everyone heard about it. The following Monday, she had a new name, one that she did not choose for herself. The following Monday, she stayed at school the whole day to deny everyone the satisfaction of watching her leave early.
Telling her parents was easier than she expected. Telling her parents was part of the radical honesty. Telling her parents was not a cry for help or advice or compassion. Telling her parents was good sense as they would surely hear about it someday and despite all her disdain for their priorities and lifestyle and ideology, she needed her parents to know that it wasn’t true.
Her dad said he didn’t even know she had a boyfriend and when did that start and why didn’t she tell them. Her dad said he would kill that little shit. Her dad said they could sue, that they should sue, that they were going to sue. Her dad said that he would help her transfer to a different school. Her dad said all the wrong things.
Her mom asked her if she was okay and told her that she was so sorry that that happened to her. Her mom asked her dad what the hell was wrong with him. Her mom asked if she’d like to talk more about it or not.
She was ashamed how much she actually wanted to go to a new school. She was ashamed that she had not foreseen this outcome. She was ashamed that she did not egg his house when she had the chance. She was ashamed that she was ashamed.
But Tomorrow, she would return to the school, defiant. But Tomorrow, she would remember that in a few days, or a month or two, or six years, none of this would matter. But Tomorrow, there would be a different Tomorrow with more to decide and forget, so much more. But Tomorrow, she might find herself repeating some of her mistakes, but she would never repeat herself. But Tomorrow, she would be afraid when she felt fear, and she would feel fear, because her parents were the two most scared people she knew and, honestly, they were smarter than she gave them credit for most of the time. But Tomorrow, she had three people who loved her without question. But Tomorrow, she would remember that other people do not define us; they can only help us define ourselves. But Tomorrow, she would get that tattooed on her body. But Tomorrow, she would change her mind and get a bumblebee instead. But Tomorrow, she would have the chance to start over. She would start over as many times as she needed to.
Dan Foley
Borne out of Truro, along the grades of towns as old as the slouched glass paned windows. Could I lean against what shackled wood you made your broad shoulders of? Resting quiet town streets exhaling. The place of which squares and the longer the shingles carpet patches stood at before there was space there to begin with. As if the planky ground had been waiting a century for what came after just one moment, god knows when, the tide falling just as if it were the same lines of sand never knowing what changes hadn’t had to have been made. I could only stand tide-ankled and rain-chested through the crunches of the pink shells of a mollusk. Steam mixed with mist sixty miles off.
In the afternoon, lost tide hours in gray mist, finding where it was to pull through you to the grass-sliced fingers, the crackle glassed reeds growing an inch a month in the sand while I had counted the nails nailed into the floor boards of the kitchen. I pressed along the shore, salt river the color of slate, soft forest above as if the soft ground would cave in if I were only to touch it. The sand stabled hill beneath those trees I thought of as if I could sleep then, their arms reaching down more slowly than I knew they could. Seeing once the time it took for it to know and my knowing of it spilling small grayish light, slackened tide slipping again to sea.
At a corner cut the dunes pillowed steps climbing up from the water, frantic, falling, crawling forward through to the empty space just in front of my feet over and over. The forest floor hard compact sand here at the end of the island thumping the sand through my chest. The steam rising off my chest and settling on the inside of my shirt. The world the coolness in the air crept through cracks of thread. The sign as promised the Samuel Smith tavern site here it was they were, only forest, they were here only now in the forest once where they were is where I was. I counted trees the six feet the foot tracks left stepping through a column that in there was once a man standing. The air the leaves held once rattled with laughter, the pine needles not pointing to knowing where it was set down glass upon the planks of a table. Now a thousand pines left, cold wet breathy gray air, a small depression in the sand cradling the purple shell of a mollusk.
Running I could screech all I could, the steam and mist and now tears condensed on my cheeks, each step taking seeping salt water through my shoes, orange pouring through the gray as it darkened. I knew a thousand names then and couldn’t remember one, their letters all sixty miles off, existing on a map at best. The emptiness of my chest fleshy pink wrapped in memory and the muscles that memories contained, that center the expansive nothing of my lungs slackening with the tide, welling with the drifting atmosphere. The empty center the same air, the steam filling it, the mist, tears, and sweat and the stammering at last of a name without letters only the sand and the way it is pressed into. As if to feel your finger against it as you scrawled your name.
A slanted floor in Provincetown hours later, wondering how we could be seated there at all. The greeny hue postcard middle fingers slapped at me, smiling at me glowing off the gauze of a yellow t-shirt, knowing that one day they would die too. The Dodgers have won the NLCS, your son is at home.
Ella Loveland
I am from the English ivy
Crawling up the siding of our old home
Beautiful and pestilent
With sprawling fingers latched on to rotting wood
I’ll pull the paint right off
I am from the wasp nest below the swing set
Soft fingers reaching for what was thought to be honey
Innocent and misguided
I’ll hold this sting in my mouth
I am from the spiny chestnut shells
Blanketing our late neighbors backyard
Adventurous and wincing
With bare feet carefully stepping onto large fallen leaves
I’ll tread where I please.
I am from the flooding storm drain
And the tired father who heaves the debris
Eminent and exhausting
With Cold wet legs set by a wood stove
I’ll see you when it rains.
I am from the jewel weed and the plantain
Ground into paste for the itching girls
Generous and steadfast
Impatient nails dig into skin
I’ll soothe your wounds.
Robynne Yokota
A house that Isn’t welcomes me with the familiar-unfamiliar. I step full-bodied into the lush warmth of the kitchen that melts the memory of Western New York Winter off my cheeks.
The lights overhead are yellowed with age and everything is where it’s supposed to be:
My mother stands at the kitchen island in ageless limbo, both barely 30 and nearly 60. She flashes a smile so wide I can see the pink of her gums.
I set grocery bags down onto the table. Behind me, my husband trails in. He’s never been here before and is excited to finally meet you in person. Something akin to Thanksgiving is supposed to be happening, except I see no turkey and can’t recall what floats were at the Macy’s Day Parade.
Standing there at the stove though, thick grey cardigan on, I see you and I know instinctively there’s a handful of mini chocolates in your pockets; Mr. Goodbar, Krackle, plain old Hershey’s when they were still palatable. You always sneak one when you think nobody is looking.
I stare at the back of your head from across the kitchen, dark curls shellacked down like they taught you in the Marines. An itchy rationality stirs underneath my skin and the music becomes muted. I claw at my coat and tug at the sleeves.
I have tried and failed for half a decade to mythologize you in a way that matters.
I’ve dissected your death to the point of mutilation and disgust. Beating your carcass in hopes of turning it into something beautiful to satisfy my own selfish desire for closure. To properly eulogize you as the father figure I never had, to parade you around as the Good Man you were, eliciting understanding and sympathy from those around me.
And you’ve given me this beautiful gift where in my dreams, for a brief moment, I can pretend to achieve that.
I want to tell you everything. I open my mouth.
Joseph Colona
Is the point
(creating the sphere
circling infinity)
to be imagined happy?
the logic of home:
settle on
if
or
then
reference mollusk 