For the life of me I cannot capture the haiku of my pear tree and my pecan tree finally touching limbs after twenty years of growth—superior lovers, patient, knowing, they reject my prying, reductionist mind. After a rather extended and varied second childhood in New Orleans, Matt Dennison’s work has appeared in Rattle, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Cider Press Review, among others. He has also made videos […]
Your thumb sinks into the clementine And a sparkling Sweetness Fills the room. But even the clementine pales Before your braid Of henna, mahogany, and rufous. And your face is the citrus moon That climbs over warm fortresses And the ravine Of secret provinces. I am their sad Nomadic thief. It is springtime, And I walk in the rain As the wind claws me. Hon-Wai Wong grew up in […]
in my dream i am back at les bulot cautiously trawling the fish soup afraid of probing its depths and finding myself hopelessly out of my comfort zone wishing i had opted for the sirloin steak which you are now pushing around your plate with the silver cutlery making blood and cream and the lissom pomme-frite mingle sensually on the bone china plate and now you are laughing at me […]
I kissed you too much that morning. Or it could’ve been too often. I don’t know which it was. I’m just sorry. I’ll blame the returning sun, the way it had silently purged the dark night of darkness, and the drunken streets of drunkenness, and shown me with its straight face that not even within an eternity could I ever kiss you enough, never quite capture something enduring of you […]
Because you did not encircle me completely, even though I would have let you, wanted you to, I still retain my own image of myself, albeit one ringed with a halo of ragged scars where we joined. And it is no surprise to hear you tell me, “I have a hole in my soul, where you have been.” Robert Ford lives on the east coast of Scotland, and writes […]
You notice the deep shovels of his hands are a combed-beach collection of scratches, the knuckles all wrecked, and still raw as lies. Black flecks like question marks on a map, sunken into the skin; you assume them to be thorns, but brambles rather than roses. From beneath the frayed cuffs of a cheap, over-worn shirt, the unruly wire of bronze hair emerging, and the first inch of a louder […]
Trapped in a body that doesn’t feel like home. Trapped in an apartment that doesn’t feel like shelter. The reckoning has already taken place. They’ve cut up their clothes. Bandaged their wounds. Sit quietly, chest heavy. A dose of hormones is packaged within reach, promising to rewire reality. Sculpt their bones, comfort the crying child with more than just a balloon. Comic book pages cover the walls. Nothing’s ever as […]
creeping over concrete trails to the clink of phantom draughts – the shadow of red velvet nights staining my teeth and throat the altar of empty bottles—tributes to the blur and stretch of a girl whose name I will forget to the assurance that death is a lie to the knife-edge brightness of Orion to waking up, to minute-stopping throbs ticking down the day against the walls, my skull; a […]
The sun lowered itself into our six o’clock armchair, blushing cream walls to the tune of Dionysus’s blood, your faith between my ribs chanting thanks to God for the static under fingernails and when the same sun has gone tortoise-slow and quiet through the ground beneath us the breeze that didn’t blow today transforms a moonless night into myth—a remark thrown into shape: it’s summer, these things happen I know […]
In aisle five they sell wireless doorbells with a 150-foot range — battery life 3 years for chime, 2 years for buttons for your new home, in this old house, so your husband waits while your legs take you to the world to get one It had never before occurred to either of you that you would need one, the old one rang just fine, for the house, it wasn’t […]
Melancholy Hyperbole 