Poetry | By Jeremy Lespi & Kristina Lucenko
Poem
To read this poem, please purchase a copy of Issue #1, 2014
To read this poem, please purchase a copy of Issue #1, 2014
To read this poem, please purchase a copy of Issue #1, 2014
Yes, I am lucky; I’ll never have to die on a treadmill, starve myself into a cocktail dress. It doesn’t matter if I wear a seatbelt or stare into the heart of the sun (It’s just a dark lump, really). That’s why I offer to cut onions, tackle the wasp nests and ant hills after …
I must have peace and this is the only way –suicide note A question of creation: your discovery was ours and ours to despise. Its cries were ours, its fear of burning. You understood how ugly we think we are. If …
Be plucky, foolish, drawn to underwater caverns and other damp lairs. Cry attractively, one hand against your mouth. Wear something diaphanous, and you will probably survive the night, although your lover’s best friend will almost certainly die. Pace, sigh, practice your scream. Raise the alarm when he floats to the surface or lies …
The remedy: anesthesia at the back of the throat, numbness spreading up and out, down and in as your grip on the stem of the glass grows loose like your consonants. The difficulty: to keep a human heart beating, the seeming-simplicity of lifting a creature toward the flashing sky with the turn of a …
I, too, grew up among the deaf. I learned to use my hands for understanding, to change my face to exaggerate emotions. Sometimes I used glue or wires. Sometimes I used putty. I moved from silence into speech. I changed my name to something shorter. I pretended to curse my house, pretended to …
Maybe I’m the only one who sees the pelt across your bare face. I know a quiet man like you, a man who’s quick with a laugh and a fist, the first to break a vase across his rival’s head. You lean and smile and hold yourself in amiable check. I see your hands around …
To read this poem, please purchase a print copy of Story #3, 2016
I return to the room for a long time each time for a long time and each time you are there, often unfolding my stomach. In this way, my cheek swelled to a door and shortly after, it opened.