Issue 3

What a curse: how I hate to be touched at all—a boiled-hard
shell, a bell jar of birthday smoke.

your secret skin exposed, baby soft, and unprotected

i want that pearl now / to cut it from the clam dress

With or without him, a glass next to the bed. A compulsion I turn toward each morning.

I know / lichens and mushrooms, I’m sewn / in their quietest tongues. Grief is a stillness

it’s fine it’s / a cocked wrist / close the door

Myth: The lilac cries salt. / Fact: When you are outside, / the gardens darken

I keep the small, sustaining things near: / a kettle, a stone, a blanket /
for my fingers to fiddle with—

Stop. There is no cipher /
Only sorrow. You must know /
By now

you are too young to understand that his hands shouldn’t move like that and you shouldn’t breathe like that. you did not know until you laid next to a sleeping woman for the first time

I try to think of gentleness but instead imagine floods, soaked and rumbling riverine earth.

Arachnid They say you came from deep underground, perhaps emerged from a fissure beneath the red hills of La Rioja. Others say it was the…