And anybody just might have killed five people.
And anybody just might have drowned a cat.
Barely audible at first, a woman on the train few had noticed began queerly and abruptly a conversation with all the hundred-odd passengers, one-on-one, as the train approached Chicago’s Union Station. Had I heard her right? She certainly had my attention: twilight made a mirror of my window, and I stared out blankly past a corner of my face back across the aisle and watched her where she sat alone. I’d seen her back in New York at Grand Central Station, a silver-haired woman in her late fifties, prim and proper. Her clothes, though from another era, seemed new, as if her beige woolen coat and pillbox hat had been pulled from storage only the day before. …
...continue reading
After my checkup, hatchlings sitting on a broken
bough startle at the form I’ve taken.
Who’s to say what cures & what chafes?
So far, my generation has
discovered Higgs bosons, gravitons, quarks—
nuclear folly & deterrents.
The hatchings nibble at clippings of timothy
while I can still hear the nurse
tugging a ticker-tape of arrhythmias.
If wishing could reprieve
bones, I’d retrieve that echo through all those
lifetimes when I climbed a trellis
the full width of the patio
to replace a fallen fledgling.
If a hint might reawaken
the wilder beast with whom I’m unfinished
one or two lifetimes from now, I’m curious
how (or if) the bird will sing
the encore of my heartbeat.
– Bob Haynes
Author’s Note: This poem was written in 2022, which was not only a year of a continuing pandemic but also a year of personal loss.…
...continue reading
“Barren,”
says the doctor and there it is
the monitored hope
of a caught firefly in the mason jar of my womb:
a crescendo to its emptiness
breathing and gasping in
only pockets of air
through a pin-pricked eggshell thin lid.
– Krysten Ross
Author’s Note: In early 2021, I was having a check-up with my doctor when I raised concerns about my health. After reviewing my symptoms, the doctor told me quite matter-of-factly that I may never have children. My heart sunk to the bottom of my stomach when I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. During one of the ultrasound tests, I looked at the monitor when the sonographer left the room. The cysts on my ovaries lit up the screen like a million fireflies in the night.…
...continue reading
★★★☆☆
Wait time was too long. I stood around for hours, but never got what I wanted.
★★★★★
This is it. The real deal. She will peel apart her ribcage and let you see her naked heart. She hides nothing; exposes everything, even the ugliest parts, the intestines, blood, rotten. All of it is on the page. (All of it.)
★☆☆☆☆
has never been to the bottom of the ocean. does not know what it is to truly cry. can not comprehend loss. mourns but is never mourned.
★★☆☆☆
Doesn’t make sense. Why can’t life be understood? Some of us want to know why we are here. No answers, just questions!
★★★★☆
at dawn she walked the shore to greet me in a hug. she was smiling.…
...continue reading
“Mom, I’m scared,” Kai messages me. “They shaved Eloise’s hair off this afternoon. I think they’re going to put something into her brain. I want to come home.”
Regular communication between Academy students and their families is strongly discouraged, and Kai has not messaged me since enrolling in September. His note crushes the air out of my chest.
Of course, I panic. I floor it from Forest Cove to Sugar Glen, past the Monsanto Crispr AminoSoy fields, Night Market distribution centers, holovideo poker parlors, and Poppy Cig lounges. The Academy has no need for an iron gate because they have electric fencing, twenty-four-hour surveillance, and robot security guards. At Parents’ Weekend last month, I was reassured the Academy was protecting Kai from predators and conspiracy theorists.…
...continue reading
Children search clouds
for bunnies and puppy dogs
but find only
stampedes of thundering water
buffalo, spooked
and hale horned, tsunamis
of great whites foaming
at the mouth.
Air coils
around their ankles
like snakes poised
to swallow whole.
– Brian Wallace Baker…
...continue reading
How a love story begins: that bitch
pushed your name to me,
a perfect paper sailboat, and the
first thing I said to you was
“That’s what I want to name my son.”
The end of the story goes like this:
Summer has tipped students out the
library, we are the only two left
on the basement floor. You will stay here
shelving books into their tombs.
In these remains, we buckle,
my knuckles grip-locking you.
This is how to say goodbye.
Like expelled angels falling from the sky.
Biceps tremble into my shoulders so tight,
may the blades weld into wings.
May I fly to you every night,
to resume. On our way to 7-Eleven and
pause over every star. To bicker over
who packs the bowl, who pays for the food.…
...continue reading