The Blog

Air Signs

Tim Taranto

The hot water was out

with the dark of a new

moon when you dreamed

of drawing a hot

bath; I got pots going

on all burners, watched

broths fill with fish

eyes; I carried each

boiling sacrament

to you with dish rags

swaddled around

the handles, careful

not to scald

a wrist, tops

of my feet, or trip

on the stairs,

but composed,

also, hurrying

slowly as an acolyte

at altar; I poured in

one and then another,

the steam rose

blooming condensation

on my lenses; you stood

on your clothes — they

looked conquered

as a molted skin,

black crescent

under your feet; Our Lady

of flowers pressed

on the apron of a beggar;

downstairs, I

didn't hear you

enter the kitchen

over the seething

Stay

Margaret Ross

The heat stank when you turned it on

This was the Desert Star, the Redbird
  Inn, the half-off room at the Rose
  Hotel Casino with coffee vouchers
  you could cross the sunken
  gaming floor to redeem

7 a.m. and people with soft collars tucked out
over sweatshirts drinking Pepsi
at the slot machines. Wherever you were

was the same place at the Motel 6, an
orange bedspread. Hairs I pulled out

would drift into loose webs
with the others’ underneath the bed. It felt almost

The Narrows

George Kovalenko

To find the world unfamiliar takes a span too long under its spell,
and I—a minim hurdling the crossing—did.

Last century saw cofferdams arising from the brine
and from them piles, bearings, beam, but strangest was that from above

the sky was mirroring the shoals. I had the windows down onto the grey.

I had to have, to keep the screen from clouding up and over.
Sheets of dark, which made the drive underivable, broke
only in their sheeting as a spectrum flaying into unity.

The thesis that the patination
on the bridge’s saddle housing was apportioned by design is flawed.

It is concurrent with the color scheme, to be here able to discern

the goodness of all things in gradients and only so by squinting.
I don’t know if it is enough to merely make it over

Opal Reunion

Alicia Wright

There goes Hannah behind that cloudlet
—C.D. Wright, "Trusting in the Haptic Sense"

I have bad news for you
when it comes to hope: pearlescent:

holy hope: bee's sting, morning news
frames this heaven: me, falling:

you are in water. The paddle's encased
in: opacity, pearlescent: hope's stasis

is so sweet: I have combined
news and a wash of bliss: oaring

pearlescent: hope as it drowns you
is the chorus of: heaven: low roads, path to:

wine bottles sidelong: I have bad news
for you, for the bees, and it is the disconnect

that will come: from you falling,
water’s reflection: This will be the last thing

we ever see together. I have bad news
face down in the black grass: This

world only a side reflection, your dark
grave: pearlescent: haze of: news

Genuflection

Meghan Maguire Dahn

I am always trying to have polite conversation
with my own guilt: rose tea with juniper berry.
Bitterness abrades a delicate thing. Blundering
old bully. Marmoreal hypocrite. I am unrelenting
even in the presence of my strong little girls. Oh,
you skinned knees of the world, I promise you—
who climb any tree at all, delighted by capability—
I want to be kind when exposed. I knock back
my potential for invisibility. Any day now
I will be bridled in a stampede, pressed close
by the bison as they abandon the valley. I will go along:
I am always looking to be deconsecrated by nature.
Nobody wishes for boredom, debt. I begin to suspect
there is no appropriate ointment. To taste
a little of a poison thing is to reflect. Put down
the Tiger Balm. I will give up my perfect height.