Articles

Smoke has made room for rains,
and I want to stave the yellowing
of leaves on my apple tree.
I want my persimmons to wait
just a bit more.
I want time to savor
what I knew and still forgot
was breathtaking.

I expect nothing of the other side,
if that’s what death is—some other

side of being. I’m inclined
to believe it’s mere cessation,

an absence of words, no breath.

Which branches are not worth twisting and saving? Which ones
should we burn?

Light pierces through the narrow window, all glitter and dust. We search
long hallways, find bead collections, notebooks,

their tiny keys. We turn a mountain trail, find traces of the animals
that tested us, hid from us.

by Adam Scheffler   Why does it hurt when I pee, my stomach hurt, my eye twitch, my throat hurt Why do I feel dizzy, bloated, empty, nauseous, weak, shaky, depressed I’m so frustrated with myself, with my husband, with my acne, with my life When will I finally die, get pregnant, find love, get …

startling silence—
I was handmade
from downed limbs

I rocked you in your mother’s lap
my wicker creaked with her song:
swing low sweet chariot—

The baby takes a bath on his birthday; charred & smiling through white teeth.
Everyone burned in the street eventually settles, [200 mg Zoloft]
in a kitchen filled with faces.

We have a yard full of drifting dandelion
DNA because I read that pollinators
depend on them. Though, when I went to verify
this internet truth, I read that dandelions are more
like snack food instead of true sustenance.

Much can be accomplished in the pregnant
pause, in the gap between wish and warrant:
at such intervals, I studied her brunette crown

and the pale travel of skin along her hair’s part,
uneven as a homemade envelope, and the little
black boots beneath her cloaked ankles, resting

on the far side of the davenport: small mute feet,
clutched together like darkly burrowed mammals
asleep in winter’s decay of leaves.

Dr. Freud of the neat gray beard and muffled
sighs, the dark pressed suits and Ascot ties:
he promises, Mother, that the sharp pains
of all last summer—what cuts across my face
like sharded glass—will subside and with them,
my cough, if only I will talk freely of the fears
that crowd in, upon me, in the narrow dark.

Poised on the foothills of the Sandia Mountains for all that awaits on the rim of her twenties the sun on her shoulder the valley below a barbed-wire stitching of cottonwoods and alfalfa yet her gaze remains fixed on the western horizon a red-winged hawk a plume of smoke the faintest smudge on the white canvas sky a root spiraling down to the rancho she left but will seek her whole life the tributary scars on abuelo’s fingers the parchment map of abuelita’s smile the family santos with blood on their knees a run-on legacy staining her pages with both hands bracing she fiercely holds on.