The Blog

Home Birth

Noelle Armstrong

Last night I watched The Unassisted Home Birth of Felix Alexander Pt. 2. I
was most struck by the moment when the baby’s gray face emerged. Her
partner was wiping her ass right above Felix’s gray little face. Frightening
proximity of shit. Sent this to Ana Cecilia and she said: dear god. As in
dear god—deliver me from this? It makes sense now, the whole saga of
Eve.

Plum Island

Zachary Bos

Which are you going to do, small plovers?
Run for cover, or take the plunge? Neither;
you just hover at the shoreline, where waves
smooth and resmooth the sand, til it’s as raw
as scraped calfskin. Little poem makers . . .
What are you writing, plovers? With your feet
stamping cuneiform into the beach:

Remediation

Zachary Bos

The song of Cicadetta montana
is a static hiss, with irregular
lulls, and has not been heard in Great Britain
for twenty years. Thus conservationists
have sent out drones across the pastures, heath
and woods of the New Forest, to listen
and record what they hear. In the next phase

twenty one

Dillon Jones

my friends are real cool black men who like chocolate cigars
& dollar store vodka i tell them my white friend dave slapped
me they wont meet my eyes as i explain instead of gutting him

with one of amandas steak knives or peeling back his scalp with
a bottle opener as they say they wouldve done i sprinted six blocks
sunk to the floor of my apartment a teary heap pissed myself asleep

How Many Encounters

Anna Zumbahlen

Through what process of comparison should my attention fall on this heat
over milk

turning over velvet
The man in the next room has a cough in his ribcage

Insufficient that you should simply experience this exchange as time
Unable or unwilling to consider me head-on and also from the head down