No name Here I am, building my altar. Here, the spine of a cow,the tail of a squirrel, the skin of a snake, a girl abandonedin her dorm room to die. Here I am, standing in front of our refrigerator,the freezer door wide open. Here, the dead micein a Petco bag tucked behind Eggo Waffles.   There she is, stretched along the living room floor.Orange,           breathing,            hungry.   There was never an agreementif we should give her a name. Her heat lamp off for days,   no food, no water.I’m told the rescue was quick.   She only ever bites when…

Thunderstorm Rain is a gill slit, a monument shadowof brackish smooth devilfish.The fissure of liquid plummetsstrung together with a pearl button pressed in black denim. Stamped tissue heavesas the carriage of pitch exhalesinto a gray diesel floating across the sky:fig skin and fish scales sewn together as a net   holding the iron horse buoyant in the airfor a moment, and the net tears— split open—the motive form irrigates, splashing across the plains,the mountains, the trees, the sand;   the ocean salt glances toward the moon.The tides pull each diamond back home.     Austin Allen James is a Visiting Professor at Texas Southern University. He has taught at TSU…

At the First Gathering after the Pandemic we look up from our wineglasses,we look up notice the shadow of the shinned hawk   near orange blossoms hung from the swag of leavesa table covered with green oilcloth spattered with hibiscus   and the baby on her knees on the deckpushing a toy and making soft noises, our laughter   above platters of mezze warm in the sun, stripesof sunlight and then shadow fall across the table   as we notice the dark mass hung from its clawsthe round furred body and the tail swaying   as the hawk drags it above the fence post towardsour party, the stunned silence as…

Home and Away My ears ring with the treble roar of eight-year-olds; one hits the ball, I watch it fly,a kid runs with my brother’s hungry gait—but no one’s on this field as I walk by. I’m three blocks from my house, but also threestates distant, five decades ago. A mapor calendar disproves this, but I seemy brother’s curls escaping from his cap. Waning Crescent He stepped onto his ninth-floor balconyand looked up at the stingy arc of moon—the city lights mocking its subtlety,its glow not quite the stuff of Clair de lune.Less potent than those fuller, brighter spheres,it nudged no tides onto or from his shore.More like the yellow…

Keatonesque And yet these fine collapses are not liesMore than the pirouettes of any pliant cane                        – Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque” We wait below the white building’s wavering façade,the wind at our backs hunching us over into tired lovers.We always know where to stand. Always know how tofall, but today we watch and let things fall around us for once. The man with the megaphone shouts something,but the turbine catches it and throws the wordscounterclockwise, missing us all in spirals. Then,it begins its calculated descent—the inevitable palm. They will tell stories, but they will not tell ours—the one where, for just a moment, we wore itaround our waist like a floatie.…

Orchid Mantis —Hymenopus coronatus Every part petal, a moth orchid             fallen to pieces, then put back together as a hunter that can grab a victim             so fast there is no suspectingwhat is coming, or what comes after.              How limited this camouflage,blending in with blossom, the smallest              beauty of this world. I fully expectan afterlife where everyone I know             blooms. I will be a gladiolus reconfigured as a flick, a flutter,             a fascination on the wing. Or I will…

Spinning She too dusty, Mama said.Don’t play with her, too muchliquor in that house. Stay clear. I watched out the window, her spinningand hanging off the apple bough.She humming, whispering to crows.Why can’t I twirl and laugh with her?We stay in the yard. She look nice enough. There’s trouble in her eyes, Mama said. I couldn’t see it. I watched her all afternoonfrom behind curtains. She was sometimeslike a fairy. I expect she knows magic.I would like to also know. One day the police came in a commotion.Then everything pulled out, put in a truck.I don’t see her again. Death in that house, Mama said. Didn’t I say trouble? Was…

The Rose Bush It wasn’t so much I wanted to hurtso much as I wanted to fightthe mite-spread virus—rose rosette—killing off my last stand of intentional landscape, careful cultivar,so one day after one too many like this, helpless, anger second-guessed, I tackled the overgrown bush arched over my driveway— its build-up of a little dead each yearentangled with the little living—wiped blood from my ungloved hands my skin in the game, as if to resurrect resistance. Left my whittled witness. Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar House Review, Florida…

The Hypnosis Series —For Brendan Constantine  I. The Beginning Hypnotist Writes Her First Poem “It’s advisable that the budding hypnotist findas many subjects as he can, so that he can morequickly arrive at that stage of efficiency that willmark him as an effective technician.”– From Advanced Techniques of Hypnosis, pub. 1948 Out of the inaudible noise of news breakingthen breaking again, subdividingwith that crack or hiss of the drasticonly civilized fish hear,and the wild ones (and turnin their waters toward that sound),this guidance destined for mefound me, a she, Sheherself, the hypnotist in late bud.(It’s nearly Fall.)And though I’ve been marked by fateand—who knows?—perhaps DoomImminente, and by the usual and…

Silver Bullets I like this little town. Some good  restaurants, now farm to table.  Lots of friends from grade school.No crime and well-behaved  children. Sure there are werewolves.  But we know whothey are:   Gus the butcher.  Reverend Wilson.And my father-in-law. All month he takes  Alevatol,  Trulicity,   Zestril,  Metformin.  He cries during chair yoga , throws hiswalker,  curses the TV. My wife still beautiful in the moonlight watchesfrom the balcony until there he is again, as powerfuland frightening as he used to be. The Afterlife My mother said to writeevery day she was stillon earth. So, Mom, there’s an earnestgirl  here who  asks everyone,“Have you prayed today?” If her pants weren’tsuch an…