Issue 127

Holy Tuesday, a bag of dried figs
left with our stroller

How deeply Brother terrified me, I realized as I walked back home.

We seemed to live on the edge of oblivion.

She wondered

if two sips of lite beer had ruined her
lip gloss.

But somehow I caught on, a matzoh crumb of hope,
a teaspoon of charoset sweet-and-spicy on my tongue.

if God was the Blank that washed the world so clean

then I was crouched inside the carapace

Mother didn’t teach me how to slice a cucumber so thinly that you could see through each slice, a world looming misty and gentle.

chopsticks diving
deep into the bone

As a kid I remember trying
to watch myself fall asleep.
Trying to observe that precise moment
when I was no longer there.

This would be the first New Year’s Eve in their new flat, and Tanya wanted everything to be perfect.