seafoam sours beneath my tongue spills over in the speaking of a name a tide in my throat, a surge of syllables the gravity of the words i swallow turns my body inside out tears my teeth from my mouth. secrets dissolve in my mouth drops of nectar spear my tongue to my jaw, i speak without saying...
Reviewed by Micah Killjoy Carellin Brooks, Learned (Book*hug Press, 2022), 120 pp., $20. “Don’t you ever want to disappear?” asks Carellin Brooks’ Learned, a collection of bildungsroman poems that explores the world of a girl-turned-woman living as a Rhodes Scholar in mid-90’s Oxford. Learned’s...
After the painting, The Juggler, by Spanish surrealist, Remedios Varo (1908-1963) Yesterday a great many pellets of graupel shot out of the low grey sky— bouncing ice-balls! Spring’s thunderous shout muffled by its cloudy facemask. We have been too knotted into death counts & pollen counts...
Centerpoint Mall doesn’t know the fate that awaits her. The dust that will soon rise from her roof, the way her shadow will shrink from the parking lot. She thinks what we all think about our bodies. Imperishable. Centerpoint is an immigrant mall full of immigrant things. Baadeh. Cameo...
and aspire to something that looks like love. Or is it just the margarine version? Try to do all the things originally on your five-year plan. Pretend they are still achievable. Pretend they will make you happy since what makes you happy can change within a single unexpected glance. How what you...
Reviewed by Shannon Page Lor Gislason, Inside Out (Darklit Press, 2022), 112 pp., $19. Inspired by classic horror movies like Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob, Lor Gislason’s debut novella Inside Out is gross and visceral. The story opens in a remote mining camp in British Columbia, as a...
