I’ve Lived So Long as a Dream Girl-old

I’ve Lived So Long as a Dream Girl by Jacklin Farley I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be real. Between meals, I pinch up belly fat, chubby bunny marshmallow bites sandwiched by my suspicious fingertips. I then attempt to conjure metabolism like a monsoon of China Slim Tea and sugar-free Haribo gummy bears through my blood. So it goes for those of us past the acceptable age for playing Bloody Mary and comparing thigh gaps at sleepovers. As I get older, I realize it takes velocity to exist in organic form, especially mine. One minute, my love language is sophisticated curve, peach slice dripping sweet with juice. The next, it’s an aspirin tablet dropped into a liter-sized Pepsi bottle with the cap screwed shut, transparent jugular bulging with carbonated excess seeking evaporative exodus in the snack aisle of your local Walgreens. It’s on the days I feel the emptiest that I want to explode the most, feel like I am running through a Reese’s peanut buttercup field encased by green Jell-O salad, that I want someone to unbuckle my ankle straps and call me “kitten” despite the fact I haven’t been teacup-sized since I was fourteen, despite my repressed scheming to eventually fit my fat ass back into Paris Hilton’s handbag. But if I can’t have hip dips, whipped cream on my titties, or armpit jiggle ready to embrace the lips of a saxophone player, do I even want this life? I must be eating more to have such energy to philosophize, to embrace living like a back alley duct tape Brazilian: throbbing and shameless, fleshy and blushed down to the bone in places no one else can see. It’s painful, but at least I can feel more than nerve damage in my hands, the urge to hold my coffee cup in a compactor-tight grip to register even a Celsius of warmth. Call it my own method for moderation, aftermath of disorder. Call it crème brûléeing the wound after it curdles. As long as you sing, paradox of my digestive tract. For I know one day I will cease to be cute. For all I know, today is that day pouring into my palms over my belt line, spilled pitcher of milkshake, too much love in my handles. The world can tell me I am too old to be silly or fat. It won’t stop me from molting, coming back in a different skin. For I think I am rather too young to be dead. Poetry Home Art by Winslow Schmelling

Missing You

Missing You by Dante Novario I ate the cat. It was the first Tuesdayof winter and I was missing you. Thoughtmaybe the taste of your palm print could stillbe found as it slid down but I only coughed out hairballs for weeks. I opened the dusty closet, foundyour favorite scarf, hand-sewn sweaters, slurpedthem string by string but your scent wasn’t hidingin the arm holes or collar trims. I was afraid of my mouth, the way it wouldn’t stop speakingyour name. I ate our words,the local dialect, our language of angels strippedof all definitions. Some things couldn’t be swallowed: the leftover slice of pecan pie, old photographstoo sweet to eat, the starved futurethat we once feasted upon together. I started licking door framesand floorboard cracks, gnawing on scribbled notesthat carried sacred messages likeHeaded OutWe Needed Peaches I thought I’d die from hunger. Chewedthe walls of our once-home down to their bones, stoodstill in its empty lot trying to stop my stomachfrom spewing our life back up, knowing no one would want to bear witness to such a stunning mess. I wishI had eaten you when I had the chance, kept yousomewhere safe. Is it too lateto crawl into my open mouth, remind meof spring, of what it feels like to be full? Poetry Home Art by Michael Moreth

How to Lament on a Tuesday at a Coffee Shop at 16:23 PST

How to lament on a Tuesday at a coffee shop at 16:23 PDT by Jarred Mercer I saw scenes of war that made me,held the dying child and bleeding mother,watched the man who never lived without shaking shake untilhe didn’t live. I knowthe sea’s creatures are strangled by our greedsmell the hellfire of dry leaves stripped from naked trees butmy daughter’s hugs sink in like rain in soil likesomething new will grow. I know the forcibly displaced with no homesee the erosion of my coastlinetouch the fear of generations butseals play like sea-puppies chasingtheir tales, bouncing their bellies onbulbous boulders at the same shore shaking offdespair into the deep and as I do the dishes the sun blushescherry and plum behind the house andwithout purpose laughter tickles our tongues andrattles our chest and on any given day a stranger’s smilecan save a life and sex can be good notjust a weapon and white veronicas bloom evenafter winter and someone somewhereis starting to sing. We weep on knees for centuries to learn lamentis the shape of hope. Poetry Home Art by Kateryna Bortsova

Misunderstandings

Nonfiction Home Art by Collin Scott Misunderstandings by Emily Hall “Yet here I am, on my way, arm raised in greeting, and then I am no more.” Gabriel Josipovici,  Goldberg: Variations I. Before my husband Fausto and I made the fourteen-hour drive to Maine, he asked if we were going to scatter our dog’s ashes in the ocean there. I paused for a minute because the only time we took Nicholas to the beach he had loved it; but I couldn’t imagine saying goodbye while we watched the current take him away from us, so I said “no.”We were packing for our trip, unsure what to bring because we rarely took vacations. It was a splurge meant to help me grieve the dual losses of Nicholas and my academic career. After fourteen years of teaching college English, I had burned out, but there were no funeral rites to acknowledge my job’s end. In fact, I had spent the last year as an adjunct, so there wasn’t even an office party, just an email from my department chair saying that he thought he understood and an essay that I was writing about non-linear time and waving in Gabriel Josipovici’s novel, Goldberg: Variations, that I buried in the bottom drawer of my desk. When Fausto and I finished packing, we got into our car, laughing nervously as we chose a playlist. We had tough-to-say-the-least childhoods, so we kept giving each other sidelong glances and asking  if we were allowed to do this, allowed to drive for days, stopping for bookstores, donuts, and coffees along the way, because we still couldn’t fathom making these choices for ourselves although we were nearly forty. Two days later, when we crossed into Maine, a place neither of us had ever seen, we waved at the welcome sign and felt a little breathless, like we’d climbed to the top of the world and knew we’d still have to come down.   II. On the second night of our trip, around midnight, Fausto and I went out to our little balcony so we could hear the ocean crash. But as we settled into the faux-wicker chairs and oriented ourselves towards the sea, we realized the waves were drowned out by the sounds of birds we couldn’t identify. Their calls pierced the air, whooping and whistling unseen, while we sat in darkness so deep I hoped my body would melt away until I was just a pale pair of ears absorbing the bird cries. And as I imagined myself disappearing, I remembered a flight we took years before to visit Fausto’s family in Florida. The plane was cramped and overcrowded, but the baby on the other side of our row didn’t seem to notice. From her mother’s lap, she waved a dimpled hand at Fausto, who sat nearest to her in his aisle seat. He waved back, so she excitedly began a series of poses, holding each one for only a few seconds. She rested her chin on her hand, then shyly laid her face against her mother’s shoulder before leaping up to wave at Fausto again, her face blooming into a joyful grin. We chuckled, and her mother laughed in surprise, as if she had never seen her baby do such a thing. The rows immediately before and after us took notice, and soon they were also watching her and giggling softly. Across these rows, our laughter fused and lifted upwards like a cloud, even as our bodies sat belted in tight seats. III.   In the days after Nicholas died, I kept asking Fausto when I would be done grieving. I wanted to pinpoint grief’s place in my body and root it out. “I don’t think it works like that,” Fausto would gently explain. But I wanted a hard date and decided that my grief would be over when I didn’t cry for three days in a row. The first day was always the easiest: I would get through it by weeding the garden or cleaning my kitchen cupboards. On the second, I’d feel the urge to pull up one of Nicholas’s many photos, but I would put my phone in another room and pick up a book instead. On the third day, I’d be triumphant, convinced that I had conquered my grief, and I’d boldly tell Fausto that I was ready for another pet because I had already weathered the worst of it. Then, I’d go for my nightly walk and see my neighbors who’d wave at me cheerfully as their own dogs trotted beside them. In response to their greetings, which always felt carefree and content, fat tears would roll down my cheeks, and I’d rewind the clock to give myself three more days. IV. In Cape Elizabeth, the surf was rough, as were the winds, but the ducks rose and dove unbothered. Fausto and I were watching them from our perch, a bright red picnic table outside of the Lobster Shack where we were eating greasy trays of clams and fries—we didn’t come for the food, but for the view. Now that we had finished eating, we were staring at the vast stretch of rocks before us, and when my eyes finally adjusted, I realized that one of the brown orbs in the distance wasn’t actually a duck; it was a harbor seal. I had never seen one outside of captivity before. Gasping, I pointed it out to Fausto who followed my finger towards its place in the ocean. The seal rose up, its speckled belly winking in the sun, and plunged under again. From what we could tell, it was alone. We watched it in silence, our bodies tense and eyes squinting. After the fourth time the seal surfaced, it went back under the waves and swam out of sight entirely. The seal’s sudden appearance seemed to mark the end of dinner, and we took our trays to the trash and away from the eyes of two seagulls, who moments before had