Poem [Lana Del Rey has collapsed!]
by Julia C. Alter

I am processing the tragedy of Skinny Lana. 
There’s a photo of her at peak juiciness, walking past 
a sidewalk sign advertising COOLSCULPTING. 
Gym shorts bunching up between her thighs. Her dimples 
of saddlebag cellulite, L.A. sunlight glazing the stubble 
fuzzing her calves. There is no rain in California. 
Who doesn’t want to kiss a dimple? A peach? 
A dewy-ass cheek? She’s holding a wax paper pastry bag, 
a creamy iced latte and her phone, blinking 
into the middle distance, mouth a glossy pout 
and fresh gel nails—ten cherries on top. 



&




the only thing that still fits me is this black bathing suit




&



As a pre-teen counting calories in my food diary, 
I never understood how my little sister ate 
those sundaes every night and stayed skinny. 
Three scoops of Ben & Jerry’s gilded 
with spoonfuls of Nutella, crushed Oreos, 
globs of Skippy peanut butter, Lucky Charms. 
Then I found the stash of laxatives stockpiled 
in her bathroom. Lucky charms.


&



I first learn about Ozempic from my friend Erica, 
whose laser technician tells her she can’t come back 

for more sessions since there’s no hair left
to laser off. She’s not on a GLP-1, but her friend is. 

Erica explains it to me—she just like, doesn’t get 
pleasure from food anymore. 

Pleasure—the revolt of it. I could gag on the word. 
A word that lives in someone else’s body.

But this was always the dream, wasn’t it? 
Someone else’s body? 	A “magic pill”? 

A shot that could make you not want 
food so badly? A shot that would make you 

smaller and smaller until you disappeared? 
Kate Moss’s infamous quote—nothing tastes as good 

as skinny feels. And invisible tastes even better—
the most delicious superpower. 


&


But I remember when my baby brother 
wanted his nanny Alexandra to hold him, 
instead of our 100-pound mother, because
Alex doesn’t have any bones. So boneless Alex
snuggled him, and gripped him 
slippery in poolwater in her functional 
one-piece, teaching him to swim, and gave him 
milk and tucked him in while our mother went 
to parties, played tennis, took the Concorde jet
to Paris, got herself down to a zero 
to fit into runway-sample Valentino gowns. 


&


Smaller and smaller 
until she fit 
in my father’s palm. 
He made a fist 
around her 
to keep her, but kept 
cheating on her, no matter 
how small 
and blonde she got. 


Down to a zero. 
It took her twenty-five 
years to say she was done. 


And still she says to me
you’re still hungry?
you’re already hungry?
you’re hungry again?

haven’t you had enough?


&


I am wrapping my arms around Lana’s sloping shoulders, folding into the type of hug only a woman who has really lived can give. A hug with no hunger in it. I am a baby woman, starting over, drooling on Lana’s cotton hoodie, nuzzling my nose into her neck, tugging on her thick braid. Thick everywhere. The thickness of women rubbing together. She smells like dirty roses and fresh cream. She holds me and whispers thick things to me: French toast, weed smoke, butterscotch pudding, a crowd of a hundred thousand singing your words back to you. 


&


I love the storm of her body, though I can’t 
forgive myself for my own thunder
thighs. Resolutely thick. Thick going 
into forty without an end in sight. 
Beefy legs, my son says, pinching 
them when I’m bending over 
with the Dust buster, sucking up 
fallen crumbs. The way I contort myself
to arrange these beefy legs 
in bathtub pics for my beloved 
to make them look leaner, though 
he loves them just like this. The right filter. 
The optical illusions we’ve mastered. 
We all thought we’d be skinny 
by now. Here we are, in America, 	
collapsing like a lung.


&


The only thing that still fits me is this black bathing suit


&


Oh Lana Del Rey we love you get up


&



Lana can you breathe easy now? 
You’re fifty pounds lighter, riding 
Jeremy’s airboat through the swamps 
of Louisiana. Lana, they say there’s no way 
you hit the gym—no way you did it naturally—
the housewives picking over your paparazzi 
photos like picking the meat off a rib. 


Skinny swamp queen, 
are you finally good, gliding 
through the humid marshes?
The alligators—closed-mouthed—clear 
a path for you today, but could snap 
you like a wishbone tomorrow.


Lana, you can’t write on an empty stomach.
How many songs will be lost to your starving?

From 'After Nature'
by WG Sebald

When morning sets in,
the coolness of the night
moves out into the plumage
of fishes, when once more
the air’s circumference
grows visible, then at times
I trust the quiet, resolve
to make a new start, an excursion
perhaps to a region of
camouflaged ornithologists.
Come, my daughter, come on, give
me your hand, we’re leaving
the town, I’ll show you the mill
twice each day set in motion by current,
a groaning miraculous construct
of wheels and belts
that carries water’s power
right into stone,
right into trickling dust
and into the bodies of spiders.
The miller is friendly,
has clean white paws,
tells us all kinds of lore
to do with the story of flour.
A century ago here Edward Fitzgerald,
the translator of Omar Khayyam,
vanished. At an advanced age
one day he boarded his boat,
sailed off with his top hat
tied on, into the North Sea
and was never seen again.
A great enigma, my child, look,
here are eleven barrows
for the dead and in the sixth
the impress of a ship long gone
with forty oars, the grave of
Raedwald of Sutton Hoo.
Merovingian coins, Swedish
weaponry, Byzantine silver
the king took on his voyage
and his warriors even now
on this sandy strip keep their weapons
hidden in grassy bunkers
behind earthworks, barbed wire
and pine plantations, one great
arsenal as far as your eye can see,
and nothing else but this sky,
the gorse scrub now and then,
a capacious old people’s home,
a prison or mental hospital,
an institution for juvenile delinquents.
In orange jackets you see
the inmates labour
lined up across the moor.
Behind that the end of the world,
the five cold houses of the place called Shingle Street.
Inconsolable a woman
stands at the window, a children’s swing
rusts in the wind, a lonely
spy sits in his dormobile
in the dunes, his radio’s earphones
clipped on. No, here we can
write no postcards, can’t even get out
of the car. Tell me, child,
is your heart heavy as
mine is, year after year
a pebble bank raised
by the waves of the sea
all the way to the North,
every stone a dead soul
and this sky so grey.
So unremittingly grey
and low
as no sky I have seen
anywhere else.
Along the horizon
freighters cross over
into another age
measured by the ticking
of geigers in the power station
at Sizewell, where slowly
they destroy the nucleus
of the metal. Whispering
madness on the heathland
of Suffolk. Is this
the promis’d end? Oh,
you are men of stones.
What’s dead remains
dead. From loving
comes life. I don’t know
who’s telling me what, how,
where or when? Is love
nothing, then, now, or all?
Water? Fire? Good?
Evil? Life? Death?

GUION PRATT 
Poem with misremembered Vermeer

Here is the line
where a colony

of purple-tooth
bracket fungi clashes

against a flank
of false turkey tails

across the surface
of the felled oak

by the creek. Deep
in the heartwood

the war beneath
the war: tendrils

of hyphae test
the border they make

with their bodies
urgent as knees

touching under
a table. Everywhere

I’ve lived already
had a fence

around it when I
moved in. It was never

in question whose property
the spruce tree was

though its branches reached over
to shade the neighbors’

trampoline. They’ve gone
back to Jakarta

until next summer
as they do each fall

but said to come jump
all we want. Said nothing

about the motorcycle
parked in the unlocked

shed. Sometimes, you
want to go somewhere

you can’t go, so you go
home and lie

down. Tonight,
I wanted the wine

in your cup. I mean,
to be it. Most days

what I want
is want, lucky me,

easy to come by
in this life. I want

a painting with good
exits, one

where the gambler hides
the ace behind

his back or the maid
pours milk into

the family bowl,
her eyes fixed

on something just
out of frame.

MATTHEW NIENOW 
How to Love the Unfinished Dream

There it is again — that
little pop of possibility

sparking in my brain.
It’s an effervescent joy

I can map out fully
in my mind from blue-

prints to the manual.
I have all the tools

even & the know how.
O, what a bit of bare sky

& sun will do
to a winter mood.

It is the purest heaven —
& the only kind

I believe in: brief
& ending the very moment

awareness mounts
the stone staircase

of the mind. It was
good though, wasn’t it?

That little bite of bread
after so long without —

MARK STRAND
The Night, the Porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

DUNYA MIKHAIL
The End of the World

For Lori, who says “everything is happening now”

Everything is telling me
it’s the end of the world:
the astrologers,
the deadly new viruses,
the ozone layer,
the ant cavorting with the grasshopper,
the wars,
and his message, cold and curt.
But other things change my mind:
the clouds that always know their way,
the seashell that hasn’t quite disclosed all,
the wishes tossed with coins in the fountain,
and the flower, waiting to happen.

CAITLIN JOHNSON
Mugshot of Assata Shakur, April 1971

I love the way this mugshot fails
to capture any part of you
that matters—no smile, eyes
as if nothing, chin up straight
and zero fucks uncovered
by the clamoring flash
that claps over you again, again.
I love the way this mugshot fails
to touch you at all—free despite
the State’s say-so, despite
the numinous omen of bad
metal, despite the warrant
of unending cruelty—free to go
anywhere, anywhere but home.

The difference between narcissus

and sunflower

is a point of view: the first

stares at his image in water

and says, there is no I but I

and the second looks

at the sun and says I am

what I worship.

And at night, difference shrinks

and interpretation widens.

Homing
by Kate Welsh

An ornithologist tells me that all birds have a keel, a bony protrusion 
from their breastplate on which their wing muscles anchor, 

offering leverage for flight. Keel as in a ship’s first foundation, 
as in what keeps everything righted: stability in the waves, the air, 

in the surprise innate in both. Only recently I came to understand 
that messenger pigeons don’t know how to go anywhere but home.

Taken away from their coop, they orient solely towards what is familiar, 
returning again and again, relentless in their want for what they know.

Not travelers, then; not seekers. Despite their wings: rooted. 
For months last year, I had a new address every week. And now: 

a set nest, my own slippers by the door, a plant I must water.   
On the molting oak outside—my tree, I’ve claimed it—a small crew 

of tiny Odysseuses stop to rest. I welcome them. 

You survive the end of the world in Kayenta, AZ with your mother
by Kinsale Drake

in the Blue Coffee Pot. The waitress sets two tall plastic Coke cups
of water before you both. Today, everyone must be especially
generous to you.

All around: nalis with their tight tsiiyééls and jewels and long velvet skirts
that brush the floor. Your mother says that the turquoise

tear drops are a shield. Never take them off. The women smile
at their grandchildren. They don’t sit with any husbands. You’ve become

attuned again to their little song. Your mother says to you that a plate
of mutton will cure any ailment. You both eat with your hands. You could

have cried. Later, it’s back up to Monument Valley
where the rocks look like women, hushed together. KTNN buzzes:

I wanted to be your everything. The only station for miles. Rock formations
give nothing away. Not everything, you think. Your mother

tells you to use the grease left on your palms to heal your lips. You
smear your fingers across an eye instead. The other. The monuments flicker

and you hum a song about women with straight backs
and eyelashes strung pretty with rain, a song you heard most

while your grandmother still lived
and the roosters rampaged in her yard as she bent

over the fire with cardboard and a poker
and your mother smiled and swayed you on her hip,

looking off, off toward the mountain,
feeding you mutton with her hands.

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door,
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Torture
by Laura Kasischke

From the Latin, torque: to twist. 
The infliction
of it, as
well as the experience of 
its 
infliction.

Rumors, thunder
rumbling, some 

wild applause in a small 
auditorium
after a child’s 
terrible 
performance.

Or the detonation 
of a bomb. 
The hiss
of a missile. 
“The ground 
shook, but we 
didn’t feel it.”

No one was killed.
No matter what they did. 
No one survived
no matter where 
they ran or hid.

Believer
by Andy Chen

Weathervane of infinite angels, smoke sharpens the air. Below you, I’m supposed to be home. Slate shingles, flagstone. Flag that tells a country its folklore. Long ago songs blooming in gusts. Gutter giving space for a nest. Greenery crown, moss as soft as it looks. Moths—Hairstreak, Antler, Pale Grass Blue—I relish your applause. Weathervane winged. Light on bronze, arrow survived. Sometimes I blink and can’t believe it. A new web, sparked with dew. Horizon: I love how you withhold. Surface: how the pebble breaks you. Cicadas: the parting in your song. Stars: that your light leaves the night unseen.

Two Birds At Low Tide, Grieving
by Christine C. Rivero-Guisinga

each carried

a story of broken wings

a memory of storms

I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

CONAN TAN
Self-Portrait as a Siphonophore


In my next life, I want to be a siphonophore.
Not a small creature by any means but a string
of queer lights. My body
less a body and more the living history of water.
Time passing through me like ghost
blue ripples. Big concepts, big joy, isn’t it?
The real terminology is less
romantic. Scientists would deem me a collection
of working parts. I prefer to think of the siphonophore
as chain and chiaroscuro. An expanse of brushstrokes.
Meaning I’ll have been touched
at least once. I’m trying to transparent
my shame into something beautiful. A depression
worthy of the Louvre. Vermeer deconstructed light
down to its photons and I can’t even
look the mirror in the eye. Four years of therapy
and every session ends with Julian thanking me
for being open, for being. For having
loosened this grief into a galaxy. I deserve
some gold stars by now, I say, and he smiles, grins even, almost
like a friend would. I wonder if the siphonophore
has friends, if it ever feels tired
at its own length. Its colonial weight and constellation.
All the visibility. I wonder if there’s anything
more tired than thinking of the self as fear and feminine
ache. That same night I empty
into bed and dream. I could be more
than the sum of my parts.

Rose 
by Kathy Fagan 

The roses are sick but bud anyway on defoliated stems.
They won’t last long.
Only every other button needs to know,
I mean no one does,
as I am alone
and neither hot nor cold
with no corporeal desire except to live in peace.
Murders everywhere.
And though they bloom with abandon this spring 
the poppies are not a symbol because blood is not.
I am trying very hard not
to wish harm on those who profit from others’ losses
as if they held doctorates in money and still don’t know what blood costs. 
The roses were planted with fish heads, 
their eyes surprised by soil as it fell. I turned my eyes away
again and again. To classrooms, bedrooms, galleries, and bone rooms. 
The inscription above the skeleton reads:
I was once what you are and what I am you will also be.
The dead are not a symbol. The roses are not
because our lives are not.

In a Dream 
by Anna Akhmatova

This black and endless
Separation: 
I endure it too, everything — 
Why are you crying? Come, 
Give me your hand instead — 
                                    promise again 
To come in dreams.

You and I 
Are like grief and the mountain, 
We will not meet 
                       in this world. 
But sometimes 
                       will you send across the stars 
A sign?

ISABELLE CORREA
Desire

Bronze statue in cowgirl, little puddle
of tears on the hardwood floor, silo
of wheat and lost lightning. Desire
is fruit flies clinging to horse reins.
Rattle and whip and frenzy. Charm
my chemicals. Call me your most
beloved ache, like hopes hatching
under the feet of porcelain chickens,
like the hair clip dotted by pink
frogs when you were just a girl
and didn’t know what a woman was.
A woman is desire dressed in flames.
Desire is a bask of crocodiles gutting
the carnations in my chest. I come
to you sorry from the hips, crawling
uncocooned, brain burdened, bent
solemn as a palm tree. Dismembered
doll hunger. Teeth painted red. I am
telling myself lies. I am terrified
of love, its velvet-fucked hands.
Forgive me for needing something
to believe in—the moon, my mother,
a kind true god who doesn’t wish
me dead. Forgive me, desire, for living
in your belly like an unsaid prayer. 

KIM ADDONIZIO
To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

If you ever woke in your dress at 4am ever
closed your legs to someone you loved opened
them for someone you didn’t moved against
a pillow in the dark stood miserably on a beach
seaweed clinging to your ankles paid
good money for a bad haircut backed away
from a mirror that wanted to kill you bled
into the back seat for lack of a tampon
if you swam across a river under rain sang
using a dildo for a microphone stayed up
to watch the moon eat the sun entire
ripped out the stitches in your heart
because why not if you think nothing &
no one can / listen I love you joy is coming