Ekphrastic After Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa / Joanna Grant

Mad Alice /  Judit Hollos

There was some sort of crazy curiosity
in the manner people used to flock together
to watch an auto-da-fé
as if it had been a medieval party,
a live streaming session from the ancient times.
There lurks some kind of bizarre nosiness
in the way they lay their blankets on the ground
a couple of centuries later,
to contemplate in a landmark building on fire,
as if they were enjoying a family picnic,
angel corbels and gargyoles consumed,
hoping they would witness a dreadful scene.
The same crowd that now visits exhibitions to marvel
at intricate artifacts carved out of human body parts,
the same folks who, thirsting to burn their private witch inside,
wander around the winding back streets with selfie sticks,
where ghosts, henchmen, bad birds and saints regale tourists
with stories of tortures and blood-spilled snickelways,
where Alice was once accused of poisoning her husband
until she confessed sins she had never even committed,
until she was hanged, only to haunt the shabby taverns
with her scream engraved into their solid wood stairs.

She failed to notice anything had changed,
even though her boyfriend had long drifted away,
and the girls from work now sparkled in unison,
a distant constellation of smirks in the corridors,
hopping on and off on the coach using the last door,
pretending they didn’t take note of her at all,

the ash-grey space the office weirdo occupied,
the glass-encased silence of her newly built kingdom.
They came for her early in the afternoon
and halted before her thick curtain wall.
They lured her down under false pretenses,
who wouldn’t want a friendly chat, after all,
but when she carefully lowered her drawbridge
paramedics were waiting for her with straitjackets
and held her down as she fluttered to escape,
never mind she forgot her meds home that morning,
that her phone was still lying on her desk upstairs,
that she was left out of touch with the outside world.
They came for her early in her afternoon
and discreetly dragged her away from her lair,
centuries from now, curious strangers will tour
the ever-snaking maze of glass palace ruins
by guides dressed in witch and henchemen costumes
to be entertained with tales of an insane woman
who confessed too many of her non-existent deeds.

wildfire backdraft geminate / Zach Hauptman

your life sprawled magnificent
deep thick roots plunging
beneath humus greeting
digging things;

a redwood bursting straight
so our canopy
never touches
except in the deep beneath
electric with myccorhizal
gossip;

a eucalyptus dropping
hard fruit in a rain of gum nuts
curious children pick up, step on
turn over and over until
soft hands are calloused
and grey with dirt;

meaty and rich red, soft and fibrous
an old man with your own weather; or
oleaginous and pale
stranger, easy ignition of passion

beneath fingernails
it waits for a wildfire to germinate seeds
I am waiting through this conflagration

           gum nuts cracking
pop pop pop

like caps or guns
I will emerge shiny with scars

nocturne no. 4 in f / Brice Maiurro

after Chopin

i sleeplessly rode my most anxious of night times
into the belly of sky that has swallowed
all of these stars that watch down on my lifetime
from balcony seats far beyond my reach

it’s here that i wander with eyes half lid open
half in a spiral of unanswered questions
whose rustling noise finds it way to the aspens
that live in the margins of what we’ve deemed human

& knowing that i am on stage to the starlight
i move through my city with drama & tension
i don’t want to let down the crowd that has gathered
but lost in the belly i’m starting to wither

you can’t take a man from his dreams for too long
without him becoming a shell of a shadow
& that’s how i’m feeling this restless september
thrown into springtime to throw off my center

looking over my shoulder i notice a something
silhouette shadows of trees in the twilight
& ask are they trees if i can’t see their faces
when are we something that wasn’t before

& off in the distance the shadows of mountains
that look like great elders wrapped up in their blankets
it seems that in shadows the mountains take shape now
into the hope i once held in my heart

still restless i wander among all this chaos
that seems to unwind into structures of darkness
& as i grow older i’m starting to find
my greatest companion’s the darkness i dance with

so onward i walk in the night all alone
abandon the sleep abandoning me
in dark shadowed moments i too am a something
not to be written or drawn on a page

insomnia brought the far side of the world
by throwing an ocean below my old legs
& here on the ocean of negative wonder
i wonder if ever i’ll return to day

at the base of the mountain with elders of old
i leave all my questions & turn to their om
the question of what do i need is redundant
when everything’s here within this dark magic

ii.

they tried to tell you 
it has nothing to do 
with the night

but here we are together 
beneath the same moon in poland

& we both know that a person 
can carry the night with them
into even the most brutal day

iii.

finally now as the east starts to churn
my poor western head can lay down to bed
the station is empty awaiting the train
to bring me my dreams soaking wet from the rain

The Thing   / Kimberly O’Connor

Listen, I can’t tell the details. I want to, but they’re not mine. I can say something bad happened. That’s not true. Something happened. This thing happened that some people thought was bad. I thought it was a bad thing too but it turned out to be good. It turned out to be the best thing. 

Not to suggest there wasn’t pain.  

I was reading these novels with characters who’d cut ties with their families. I wished I could cut ties like those characters. Then this thing happened.  

Now I’m like those characters: estranged. Estrange, like to make strange. Strange meaning unknown, unfamiliar, distant, inhospitable, separate. I always was the black sheep. 

Rage is a freedom. Rage is a hate in my heart. Rage is a madness.  

It doesn’t really matter what the thing was, does it? You can imagine it–whatever it would be in your family that would make someone say, no. And then you would answer, no. Every time I read anything about forgiveness I assume it is written to someone else. My madness is righteous. You don’t have to know what the thing is to know how that feels.  

Smith Point Walk   / Michael Schad

My brother, father, and I would go to Robert Moses, 
and we would go to Smith Point, it did not matter, 
we went to the ocean, we’d build big sandcastles
and try to boogie board, a couple of times I would
attempt surfing on an old board my dad got from work,
and many times we would walk, either east or west, 
but on this day we decided to walk to the point,
and it was far, so far from where we would be.
And there it was, a small crowd, no dogs
because dogs were not allowed on the beach, 
it was right before the point, a piece, of a piece 
of the TWA Flight 800 had washed up, just a piece.
You could not tell it was a part of a plane
that flew 20,000 feet, or carried 200 people 
from shore to shore, across the pond then back.
I felt so sure it was not what it was, and we started
to walk onward as a beach patrol truck came.

genealogy / Kashiana Singh

stripped open
the last of light
swallowed

pregnant moon
thick air fragrant
with possibilities

genealogy
all our ashes folded
into the river

matchmaking
tucking his socks
into each other

sickle moon
the window cracked open
for the night to breathe

She Can  / Elizabeth Wolf

for Amelie Lynn Peterson

i

She can hear X-rays.

She can see the sound
               of caterpillars crunching
                              the jagged green edge of leaf

She can taste the sadness
               you deny
                                        deny      deny        deny
d
e
n

y ou deny until it smothers you
                              the small centered dot
               within the ripple of a pond
stilled.

ii
She can hear X-rays
               see the structure of a nautilus
                              iterate & iterate & iterate &

see the tiny feet
               climbing all those stairs
                              swirling and looping like an Escher

see the tiny feet
               marching
                              marching
                                             march     ing

iii
     When she closes her eyes
it doesn’t stop
but all seems
      more                    clear

iv
She can hear X-rays.
Nothing is broken.