Issue 105

When I hear my parents’ voices lilt with Midwestern shame, our pernicious lineage, I want to set the bench on fire or bury an axe head into it.

days like my lost eyelashes, 
just dry leaves curled there and here,  

Now you are a monotonousness of grace- 
light under my steps, the unseen seen.

Because we die, we all die, and the oak lives, 
those imagined rings like so many glasses 

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture,
overtaken by another giddiness.

We will be the young tufts of spring. 
My shadow will lay itself down over yours, reader.
We will not cut ourselves open any longer.  

How does this resound in my heart, Lord? Do you hear it? It’s the sound of my shovel hitting those aluminum markers.

The orchard blooms, 

and strangers tend, in wooded plots (or tombs), 
blue nightshade, to the bitter end of gene. 

I remember when those hands were furnaces burning in the hearts of celestial bodies. I watched the very dust fall to earth and become you.