“{marginalia} bartering lessons,” by Valerie Witte (forthcoming in issue 22)

I gave up stories, shuttering / dogs to nurture

bodies to belong to small things I can keep; they take

up very little space but oversized rooms, furniture

what’s a basement or a yard if not for hoarding / if

houses let you go unfulfilled in exchange offer

an abundance of redwood, tile or the like employed

in an overlapping series of compromises held

to terms and I’m bound, a settlement by concession

endangered as a skirt is vulnernable / the underside

exposed / erosion or a weathering hoped for / I traded

love for casement: the simple perception of hue

value and saturation / water, tables / in turn we live

with strangers and do not expect affection pressing

against a building / remains of swag forms: intercourse

I need bartering lessons / to cheat the rolling

mechanism we learn to give up for radiating / glazing

bars stripped / metal bent and stretched to fit

any circumstance / a channel to catch

and carry companionship / I never knew I’d have only

one chance when we let go a recess opened

I’ll always distinguish yours from all the other faces

from “Bride of Paradise,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

Thee bears, jaguars, beavers never get plugged into this the bleakest street

in America.  The neighbors behind their Xmas decoration are dead.  Lights

winking in their circuit are a warning do not call, walk on: fists in pocket

shoulders hunched, shambolic through this desolated hall.  Be emptied onto

Main Street.  There the bar turns out its furnace heat, the dilapidated rambler

gets a brand new coat, the stone foundation holds.  We live for this, more or less.

The buses take us in, we sob and think, drink bourbon and screw like people do.

Anyone might find us here together in my office, beneath an ancient photo of

a chocolate lab emerging from a shadow, taut chain shivering, bees noiseless

in the grasses.  I guess the question is: where does it end?  Do you want to be

some asshole in search of the perfect meal and a dream home, extending his

life all over a road between two worlds?  One here, where the snow lays its

hand across our many mouths, and another in the skies, where I sail around

to parties in heaven, dancing too hard, smoldering at the periphery, thinking

you'

Dee Sunshine (forthcoming in issue 22)

“The Early Histories,” by James Capozzi (forthcoming in issue 22)

It's more important they lay open in the ocean

And whether or not we mount the red birds

Like beveled ornaments

Less sophisticate

The shifting tents are mutinous

New movement

Eats the grain each day, little by little

Even the noun eats acid

You are in a Roman place

But the year is out of order

Only the tent city stirs in the morning

Nothing more