Postpartum

By ERICA EHRENBERG

To have a blind spot
there must be
a surrounding clarity.
Being a mother
brings me the world
I have already
blindly traveled.
Now being home
is a kind of homesickness
and the old chairs
look like relics
from a fire. Children
clear rooms
and open windows
as if they had been leading you
this whole time,
from life to life.

Erica Ehrenberg‘s work has appeared in journals and anthologies including The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, BOMB Magazine, and The New Republic. She is currently training to become a psychoanalyst.

[Purchase Issue 25 here.]

Postpartum

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My Sentimental Afternoon

LEILA CHATTI
Around me, the stubborn trees. Here / I was sad and not sad, I looked up / at a caravan of clouds. Will you ever / speak to me again, beyond / my nightly resurrections? My desire / displaces, is displaced. / The sun unrolls black shadows / which halve me. I stand.

picture of dog laying on the ground, taken by bfishadow in flickr

Call and Response

TREY MOODY
My grandmother likes to tell me dogs / understand everything you say, they just can’t / say anything back. We’re eating spaghetti / while I visit from far away. My grandmother / just turned ninety-four and tells me dogs / understand everything you say. / They just can’t say anything back.