Issue 126

There was a man that night on the lovers’ moon
walking as if on water

THERE IS A STORY I have been trying to tell. At first I began with a metaphor, but it never felt right. I rewrote this metaphor a dozen times or more, unwilling to let it go. The metaphor was both premonition and denial; it was an unconscious attempt to disguise the collapse of my marriage,…

Why did Jesus make the nights here so beautiful, soft to the touch? And did I really have a substitute explanation to offer my son?

the world’s ripe belly open in its bloodless way

For us Iranians, carpets are not just objects but a sacred part of family existence: We are born, live, and die on carpets.

They had left about forty crows
in the conference room, as a test.

An artist’s solitary toil often elicits comparison with the life of a cloistered monk, as both vocations navigate between isolation and communion.

It’s only a blast of gunpowder that loves
to say its own last name

Love is
a dying into only.