Issue 46: Summer 2019

What Is A Human Possibility?

The body is a riddle and bones comprise a kind of orthography,/ says the linguist to his mother.

The body is a riddle and bones comprise a kind of orthography,

says the linguist to his mother.

A mother is a library seconds before the tornado strikes,

says the woman to her reflection.

Nothing makes sense when you are a twenty-something

who has already breathed in as much of the past as is humanly possible.

What is a human possibility?

Not love, not grace. Forget I asked.

I plucked the wings from my own back.

What I do not want stolen from me I destroy.

It is Monday. This means I have already committed the crime of emotion.

Write this down. Desperation is hope the size of a forest and

shame is a dress caught between the ankles of a man

who lugs his lovers around like photo albums.

Every waking second we dwell in indeterminacy; we pretend our lives are novelistic.

Survival is the same story of contamination told again and again. (Bummer.)

More often than not I am a sledgehammer

striking the filthy walls of the world.

Rarely do I peer in on the other side.

Author photo credit to Tenille Campbell

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