Cover by William Lukas

“…Aren’t lovers 
always arriving at each other’s boundaries?--
although they promised vastness, hunting, home.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Fourth Elegy"

I

A HEN CAN LAY ONE EGG A DAY, BUT A DUCK CAN LAY TWO 
 
Today I talk to someone who isn’t a farm animal
            or you on the phone a couple hundred miles away.
The self-checkout station at Ingles stops working
 
as I’m just about to pay, forcing interaction--
            excuse me        help                 it’s not 
 
The hawks circle overhead. A woodpecker
lands on the fence. I feed the sheep 
and the goats and the chickens and the ducks
 
while rain pours downhill in its deep trenches.
I’m still the only human I’ve seen
down here in the holler.
 
I check the bird yard again for eggs—             
 
there’s six in total, covered in bird-shit mud
and I know I should be able to tell 
the ducks’ from the hens’ by now, but
 
today I cry about the death of the Mars rover. 
I google “gay bars near me” and the search comes
up empty. I call you again and suggest we try 
 
phone sex as a performative act of missing--
            yes                   baby                like that

UPON LEARNING THAT FOOD CHANGES FLAVOR DEPENDING ON HOW YOU CUT IT

I watch as she peels a pomelo, butter
knife gliding through the thick, pithy rind--
never too close to the flesh. If you pierce it, 
she says, the entire fruit blushes bitter, 
ruined on your tongue. How different
this is from the way my mom would cut
our morning grapefruits, right in half, then
so surgically precise between the slices
they could be scooped right out with those 
serrated spoons. Sometimes, an eye-full of sharp 
juice. And how much sugar we needed on top, 
syrupy layer forming in the pulp. The pomelo 
tears apart quietly, muffled crunching like 
stepping out into crisp snow. She, now 
successful in her task, places a sweet, pure 
pink chunk in my palm for me to enjoy.

II

A POOR READING OF GIORDANO BRUNO MIGHT SUGGEST TOUCH DOES ONE OF THREE THINGS

1.    Send the body into evaporation. Direct feeling inside to a state of unconsciousness. Relieve the self of knowing its body. Join self with absence. Collapse awareness. Tell the body it's not necessary, though a talented, hungry conduit. Launch thought skyward into a diffuse, relieving automatism. End something which will be welcome as having ended.

2      Feel dry, or, alternatively, clammy upon the skin. Pull at it. Irritate the receiving body. Invite it into confusion. Bring upon banal thoughts about skincare routine, diet. Tell the body where it stops, or at least pose the question.

3.    Deliver sun upon the body. Shoot warmth through it, adding density. Bring an awareness that is welcome and reassuring. Apply tranquility as though a compress. Form the body with labile softness. Tell it not where it stops but that it can grow outward with the touch the graces it. Not skin, flesh; Not the barrier but a continuity of the organ with whatever adjoining part. The skin meeting the blood meeting the muscle.

We would like to thank:
William Lukas for our amazing cover art
Patrick Blagrave of Prolit- Magazine for his editorial eyes
​Joey Sweeney for use of our new release home, Radio Kismet
and the Philadelphia poetry community
for always being our home.