All posts tagged: Issue 16

Offstage, Christ

 By KRISTINA FAUST
Winner of the 2018 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry

At the meal with the earnest centurion and the woman full of pain, he wanted to say the lamb was delicious. It surprised him to love it as much as he did the blinking gaze of the newly sighted, but to say so didn’t suit the narrative that was running through his fingers like water.

The bed they’d given him for the lonely night was more than adequate for a man. Besides, he was now nearly sentimental about the roughness of linen and the funk of straw.

Offstage, Christ
Read more...

The History of Sound

By BEN SHATTUCK

 

I was seventeen when I met David, back in 1916. Now I don’t very much care to count my age. It’s April 1972 here in Cambridge. White puffballs that must be some sort of seedpod have been floating by the window above my writing desk for days, collecting on the sidewalk like first snow.

The History of Sound
Read more...

On Negative Capability

By JOHN MURILLO

       Whitewalls   Mudflaps
Late night howling down
       a dark dirt road   Headlights
killed and so the world gone
       black but for the two blunts
lit   illuminating Jojo’s fake gold
       grin   One girl each screaming
from the backseat we raced
       the red moon   rawdogged
the stars 

On Negative Capability
Read more...

We Used To Call it Puerto Rico Rain

By WILLIE PERDOMO

The rain had just finished saying, This block is mine.

The kind of rain where you could sleep through two breakthroughs and still have enough left to belly sing in the ambrosial hour.

Blood pellets in the dusk & dashes of hail were perfect for finding new stashes; that is to say, visitations were never announced.

A broken umbrella handle posed a question by the day care center.

We Used To Call it Puerto Rico Rain
Read more...

The Burrow

By TERE DÁVILA

 

They started building right away, as soon as it was safe to go outside.

“I can feel them moving!” Cristina squealed, standing knee-deep in leaves.

“Their teeth tickle!” laughed Zoe.

Something had caught their attention as they searched for pebbles and twigs. They crouched amid the soggy storm debris, then sprang up, kittenlike, uncombed curls against the gray sky, chattering and unaware of my presence. But as soon as they saw me approaching they stopped and exchanged looks. Cristina bit her bottom lip and smiled, a small and well-calculated gesture of contrition designed to deflate a scolding, but Zoe, the eldest, fixed her eyes on me, and her body tensed. She seemed ready to run, like a surprised wild thing.

The Burrow
Read more...

Four Skies

By JOANNA KLINK 

What have you, in such indignation, become. Dusty—
a vaulted interior echoing with air, envy, blood.
Vanity’s steady hum. Each wrong done to you
a gate that opens forever into storm. Farewell to cobwebs
swept with water-lights. Farewell to children who smile off
into the distance.

Four Skies
Read more...

de Las Pisadas Del Insomnio / from The Footsteps of Insomnia

By ANA MARÍA FUSTER LAVÍN
Translated by JENNIFER ACKER

An English translation follows the Spanish.

Día 29 desde el huracán y sin luz.  Todavía las jornadas en mi trabajo, por la falta de energía, son más cortas. Mi oficina, a la que llamaba (y ya todas mis amistades conocían como) las catacumbas jurídicas, se perdieron, por lo que nos reubicamos en la biblioteca. Intento llegar lo más temprano posible, para traerle agua fría a mi querido amigo y colega Francisco, para preguntarle a los demás cómo están, si han dormido, a Pabsi si tiene gas y saber cómo siguen su mamá y Lalo (el gato), y a la vez contarles o contarnos todos a modo de terapia de grupo que seguimos a oscuras, que algunos no tienen ni techo, que el gobierno nos amputa las esperanzas en pequeños trocitos, que muchos se han ido, muerto, enferman, emigran, permanecen….

de Las Pisadas Del Insomnio / from The Footsteps of Insomnia
Read more...