Issue 117

A nun told me once, that as Jesus died,his mother’s breasts wept for the first time in years,staining the ground beneath her. She’s standing in a room full of children. A stucco of Virgin Mary hangs on the wall.Jesus splayed across her lap. Mary is looking straight upinto the sky, lips parted; Xanax tongue. Feverbreak […]

Broken-winged sandhill crane on Country Line Rd.,angled feathers invite pity Flat tire, home just    out of reach—midwest bird spotted east of the Mississippi Headlights gave way to feathered gore,shiny smear like tar on darkened asphalt, red eyes peered through coarse sawgrass,tall and frightening You wrote your dissertation last fall—Transgender Bodies Under Surveillance: When Things Become […]

My grandmother was a sentinel of her language – Babcia a legislated word warranting a silent Sunday dinner.She kept a fast watch over how much margarine we allotted to our bread.  It’s sacred, you know. The body. She crackled the Lord’s Prayer, if not hasty for being so familiar,then surely for being too forgiving.  I hold it against her […]

dust amassed, a pattern of california lilies across the stained wood table in the kitchen, roastednotes of bitter root hit my tongue it burns like dry ice, a warning of summer days to come thepast rolls through my mind,a hot needle poking at my brain — and there’s only one way back out. you travel […]

Soak under scalding water, molting swirls oftoo-tight skin—an apple, peeled. Showerhead washes away sin—                    my own private baptism. Flesh, solid as born-instilled sin,          gives way to wet, soft as clay, dust-to-dust.                    I still carry the weight of everything I was told to be. Press pruney fingers to slick walls, pray for transformation.          Ache builds, cry out to God,                    desperate for […]