Cannibal Chelsey Wright __________ After “Scarf Fetish” by Heather Ryan Kelley __________ There are red scarves hanging on a laundry rack in a secret market,watching one be sold and exploitedto a plump model with good taste and a man with blue-tinted teeth. His blue-tinted teeth remind me of the album…
Read Moreen route Jerry Sloan __________ After an art installation by Heather Ryan Kelley __________ you drink water to take pills (favorite mug, borrowedseven years ago from a communal kitchen, shows the cover of Dubliners by James Joyce) and walk to the gallery, past storefront signs for the suicide hotline (“call/text…
Read MoreAfter a Painting by Heather Ryan Kelley Michael Robins __________ —for my brother We might stare, crowding the high,storybook windows, our worrytold in the pictures of us kids. If Iam six & you’ll be eleven: if a threadround my little finger at breakfastor a napkin made honest with a ring.Already…
Read MoreInnocent Eye, 2000 Madeline Ricard __________ After the painting by Heather Ryan Kelley __________ Pasted onto patchy paper worth morethan I could afford when I was in art school,photocopied Barbie legs meet my gaze. The black & white legs flutter and danceon top of cursive letters — ii, f, jjj,…
Read MoreOn the body (Cento with Emma Bolden and Shaindel Beers) Dusti RW Levy __________ Listen, even the birds sometimes believe their trees are singing.There’s a sound the wind makes with the leaves, like the mind always is.Like my mind always is. I was just standing in a moment of impossible…
Read MoreBudding Jianqing Zheng __________ After Yasunari Kawabata’s “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” __________ Kids are catching bell crickets,their colorful lanterns are floating everywhere on the riverbank.Soon, a boy jumps up shouting, “Anyone wants a grasshopper?”Some boys run toward him, but he keeps shouting until a girlemerges, murmuring she wants…
Read MoreAbby Manzella __________ Photos by Abby Manzella __________ At a Highway Seventy-Five fields blur after harvest corn is scythed hay bales sag Stop. Thoreau yourself with a pause and a pace. Take in the fading light. Dried grass and setting sun speak of endings and death or nature appreciation. The choice is yours. __________ Between the…
Read MoreZebulon Huset __________ Written as part of the Exquisite Cento project with Jessica Huset __________ [Only lines from Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, and Script for The Lost Boys] They are speeding along a moon-lit beach(ocean air!)redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whaleHey, dude. My beach. My wave—it is speckled with…
Read MoreJessica Huset __________ Written as part of the Exquisite Cento Project with Zebulon Huset __________ [Only lines from Lord Byron, Thomas Lux, and the script for The Princess Bride] (or I’ve hired you to help me start a war) To mingle with the quiet of her sky the quicksand pits they…
Read MoreSweeney Among the Alley Cats James Enelow __________καὶ εἶχον τρίχας ὡς τρίχας γυναικῶν, καὶ οἱ ὁδόντες αὐτῶν ὡς λεόντων ἦσαν.Rev. IX:8 Tonight old Sweeney sits amazedat sex and food he cannot taste.As king of cats he starts his watchto judge the thin and meekly chaste. The stars out back have…
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