Issue 6

Perhaps this
is the true meaning of loneliness–/ the way I’d invite teeth in/ through the door/ and offer them a place/
to stay.

Like a good daughter, I pretend that I can sit still, balance cups of tea on a tray. I pretend to want two children, four lemon trees and just one country…

Strange the people/ who bring us to water, strange the milk-honey/ of language spoken in films, where the male lead/ snares his love

We are capable of miracles, says the Jinn/ of water. Where are you? I whisper.

So many things have a history of seeming like something that/
I want to call goodness. Historic houses, wombs, the model T Ford.

… there is/ no altar without a walk of/
shame that ends in a wafer.

Bleach spells/ are a poor substitute for/ constitution but I’m still/ young

you have to stop calling in the middle of the night/ asking how close I keep my bible&bullets

Time made me a body when I could have been a forest or a lake. A collection of stones patterned ominously in the dirt.

In the penultimate/ line, moths, the poor cousins of the butterflies, flock/
toward the light.

Above, my mother carries the guilt for me, I can feel the weight, her back can’t take it. There used to be birds.

Once I/ leapt like fire into a man and burned like a god/ asking what could come after me? Who/ could come after?