Just in time for November’s end, this week’s feature offers a heady mix of augury and inspiration. Here’s the stunning title poem from Kirun Kapur’s new book, a powerful first first collection that charts indelible histories. Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist I don’t know when I realized he had one eye that watched me, alive, the other free to read the heavens. Could he see I grew where others couldn’t? Could he read my face, in its lines all their faces—my aunt’s that morning, in the mirror beside mine, hissed, don’t stare, don’t forget details, it’s your honor to look for all of us. Did he see I hated his eye, sometimes, hated my honor: the hand always above me. Which eye reads that hand? Which eye can judge its weight? I wanted to look away. Wanted to cry. His untethered eye was milky as a teacup. Why have you come [...]
Jane Satterfield
From the recently published collection, Trickster (University of Iowa Press), Randall Potts offers some uncanny arithmetic. Math I put 0 and 0 together And arrived at nothing. Nothing was accomplished. I had done it perfectly. I made 0 disappear into 0. I made sure nothing was left. There was no doubt of it.Next, I made 2 into two. It was easy: numbers are words. I made sure nothing was left. I made sure nothing was said. I made sure nothing was written It was getting complicated.My thumb was black with ink. So, everything I touched became itself plus me. Every addition complicated it. Every mark was a number. Every number mocked. I settled on the number one. I refused all manner of addition. I was careful to touch nothing. That’s impossible,” someone said. I knew someone was right. ____________________________________________________________ Randall Potts is the author of Trickster, published this fall by [...]
Photo credit: Cedric Terrell Casualty Notification The Only News I know / Is Bulletins all Day / From Immortality. – Emily Dickinson Switch channels, stop the breaking news, press mute to hush the anchorman’s reviews of war, his litany of each device and bomb gone off today. Silence the price of bread or medicare or gasoline. Make the black pinpoint on the TV screen. Unplug the blackbox from the mouth of the wall. Uncradle the phone so nobody can call. Let the venetian blinds blind everyone to what’s outside—the dead, indifferent sun, the car pulled up along the curb, the vexed men in uniforms looking for next of kin. They bring a check to pay the cost of grieving. Their dark sedan puffs out exhaust. And now, the only sound a daybird singing, the only bulletin a doorbell ringing. Previously appeared in West Branch (issue 74, Spring 2014) ______________________________________________ Jehanne [...]
Photo credit: Cade Leebron As autumn deepens, poet and essayist Kathryn Rhett meditates on the magnetic forces of inner weather. In Bed I can’t stop talking about the weather. You say not to, and I can’t stop. Did they say it would rain? The white light pours down—I don’t think it will rain, but did they say? I don’t know. It’s eight o’clock in the morning— one child has a fever and another is in a play about death and nobody’s slept. He’s performing all the parts about death, death itself and the one who doesn’t want to die. The rain and the one who waits for what they say— they didn’t call for snow sometimes they’re wrong it’s no wonder with all this change in weather he has a fever. You say not to, and I can’t stop the white light that filters in through fabric blinds. If only [...]