by Hudson Wyatt

Grandmother’s jet
black hair fissured
like broken bottles. A waitress
since ten, she worked a hundred
year old restaurant where I
dug sauerbraten and danced
on tables at five years because she
made more tips. Not
an addict like me, she died
in a middle–of–night scream, while I’m
left in a world of many, an odd
feeling really, a being
to myself, a race of myself: I want to press
my fingertips everywhere — to leave
fossils on this planet where my
grandmother’s the only

moon. Mother’s hair was
black too. But hers
I’ll call raven. I don’t
want them to share descriptions — blood —
can’t help that. Mother abandoned
us, even as her
mother lay dying, but my
attic needs new space, a facelift, needs
today, not Christmas
Eve, 1966, when I, dreaming
matchbox cars, crawled
from my bed into hers,
crawled through the reeking
mist of whatever got her
drunk that day, over to some
man, new from last week, arms
draped across mother’s breast. Eyes
open, boy of five too awake, hours
sleepwalking like years, when,
on my thigh, his big
man’s cock pulsed, though I didn’t
know what cock meant then, just a hard thing
that rushed me into real
shame and pleasure, as he took me
down to the sea that’s always
there with its smell, and I stayed
not knowing how to swim until
he fled into some faux nightmare sleepturn.
Mother snored on, he
lasted six–to–eight
weeks, eyes turned
away in a picture taken Christmas
mid–morning —
mother’s glazed
stare under bee–do
hair, her glasses, horn rimmed. One
of seven pictures kept. The others.
at eighteen, fire
to ash.

by Ciara Shuttleworth

I.
I am a luminous leaf, tightly
bound, a boat to carry the dying
until wind threatens
to release the cargo and all that will be
left is residue, memory
of what I fed from
and so gently embraced.

II.
I talk to him as if
he can hear me, as if he will
sit up and respond. I mold him a fauxhawk
with residual EEG goo,
tell him what I’ve done. I rest
but do not sleep. Or l sleep
but do not rest, wake and rush
back to nothing changed, to grasp
at what may never again clutch back.

III.
My love has never been
so culminated as when light pulls
from the opposite side of the hospital
where cut out fish in the window refract light
off snow in the vestibule between.
I count days in depletion and accumulation.

IV.
Ice cobwebs lake edges, the water
alive with what laps beneath,
these delicate constellations, not quite
kissing the rocks, their sharpness
collecting feathers, leaves, detritus,
holding just shy of intimate.

V.
We have always been very sharp objects.
We left marks on each other, but now
what I seek in your face is the sun
rising above the horizon. On New Year’s
Day, you’d promised to rage, rage, and
it’s nearly spring, and I’m telling you:
I am a leaf, and I have come completely
unfurled as I hold you, swaying in the wind.

by Ciara Shuttleworth

I run the beach in hopes
years of words, of half–failed poems,
will wing away, lift
over the ferries & crab boats
taking the Strait in to leave
with nothing. Isn’t that
what we all want? To leave lighter,
toward open water, the shore laden
with all we carried
a great distance, with purpose
even, maybe? Georgia O’Keefe
burned all her paintings to move
inland, Santa Fe, to paint without
the old staring her down.
Maybe that’s why I brought
old writing journals to read,
to burn along the shore the night
of the full moon. Maybe that’s why
I drew the grasshopper, the fool,
as my totem animal from the deck
a friend passed. The fool leaps
in hopes of sunshine, a feathersoft
landing this time.

by Maeve McKenna

In crafting, a heavy settlement,
a cruel understanding.
Can you see from there? I murder
spiders by fear, cave regret
like a stain
left on my underwear.
I haven’t washed in days.
The tiles are too virginal,
floor non–slip.

Every month I begin a month.
Then, a blot of red exits
my functioned body. I am pinned
by the custody of the dying
who fail to live.
I dream of trees and elephants —
my hinterland —
their massive community. Who speaks
but the speaking?

Yesterday is a sewing box.
I gather the company of colour, stitch
green eyes, and brown, with needles
sharp as my eyelids. Your tongue I knit
pink as a young dogs.
I unravel wool, pull your name
from the loose threads of a blue mitten,
glue each letter to a blank sheet,
read you there.