By Thomas Luhrmann

Extraneous but extraordinarily meaningful events
clog the drains of the summer house in Devonshire

while no atavistic memory of our desert origins
can alleviate the gloom or fill the night with strategies

or is it strawberries and the memory of some terrible defeat
stretching before us like a herd of wildebeest?

The sky is beautiful, the trees are beautiful, the buffalo
yet the people are uniformly and unmistakably hideous

The baby vomits up a miniature horse, a dog and a pig;
how rapidly they disappear into the wallpaper

while the dimly–perceived infrastructure tickles us
with its vague though never fully understood banalities

and the worm at the center of the apple–shaped cloud
imagines she’s the center of our world

By Chloe Stricklin

There is grace in the fields as the wind dies
slowly with the sun. Brittle Calluna stalks
dance in the lingering frost, almost defiant
in their lack of blooms.

Brushing my fingers past the crack in the car window
to feel the rush of air, it was unsettling —
the mass decay of a species
thought to be evergreen.

At dawn I return on foot, a stencil of the moon
still visible like a lover’s indent in the mattress
or the ghosting touch of a man
who should not be so close.

Now face to face, I grip the tallest stalk I can see
and whisper with the cadence of prayer
as if to a sentient being, as if the flora could
accept apologies on behalf of its namesake:

I was cruel when I assayed you
through his lens of drunken blue,
but now clear–eyed I wonder
if he plucked your joy out too.

By Eliot Cardinaux

Sudden
dark drew you in

Broken beams
lay dull weight
on your awkward
frame

The weathers of all
these years have emptied us

In the hollow
the notches lengthen
& violets
spring up in the silence

I turn to you slowly

With each stroke ink
sobs with the current

I drink this air
where the earth sings
rough edges of language
to quiet labor

by Mary Paulson

It’s inappropriate to
leave your door agape,
accessible to outsiders or
to like being liked
too much. It’s
irregular to enjoy the
slow scan of
strangers, ill–advised
to encourage longing
in a man because he is just
a man always
willing to try his
luck at your precipice.

It’s vulgar
to want to be painted
naked, directly
on your skin, indecent
to have him seated, watching
you metamorphosize, become
glittering, green–
tipped, a winged thing —
See, his dark pupil is glazed
and fixed, see how his
mouth comes alive.

It’s wrong to want
to be held
down or to crave
him bare, stripped,
in awe. The boy is after all, one
of the better parts of a man —
at such times, isn’t it
corrupt to feel like his

mother, hunger
to ruffle his hair,
pull him close, take him
by his hand, take
his breath, take
everything just because
you can.