Another Night at the Central Station Hotel where the happy hour DJ spinsBilly Butler & the Enchanters singing “I Can’t Work No Longer.” We kissthe first of many goodbyes under a Super Moon bright as a spotlight,with our hot breathy mouths and a craving for each other that lasts until our next hello.On South Main Street, the floors quake and rumble back to this train-station-turned-hotel with its high ceilings anddesigner retro vibes. We toast our parallellives with a French 75. He takes my hand,the first two on dance floor, and pulls mein close, sliding his knee between my legs as we groove to Silk Sonic’s “Love’s Train.”He gets me. We…

The Eiffel Tower Lift Has Only Women in It One of them is afraid of falling in love with an astronaut-in-training. If he should fail, how could she compare with the thrilling boredom of space travel, the slow-settling dust on the moon? One spent all day trekking the catacombs, is in the mood for a cheerier skeleton. One is thinking about Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, the woman next to her about her ex’s finsta. They’re all quiet, grateful to leave the ground, but disappointed in the rising cost, the looping queue, the view: another skyline. I don’t know what I was expecting, one says flirtatiously. The quip’s recipient chews her…

Chalk My snail thoughts smooth across the slate, white residue of theory on my fingers. Why is the word inkling, when only chalk is capable of hints? The problem I propose you solve dissolves beneath the eraser, its felt indifference. The sound of my lessons— arrhythmic castanets. Somewhere a man who hasn’t been to school mixes with his hands a bucket of slurry, pours it in the mold, brass and honeycombed with tubes— each a piece of chalk, a cocoon. Are you confused? Let me draw a diagram. Here is the phytoplankton, its skeleton ball of CaCO3. And on this timeline here it dies 100 million years ago, sinks, sediment…

Bird Watching What can I say? Finally I have lived a bit more and loved more too, but still I cannot grant myself the happiness of moving in, of shared weekday breakfasts, of a shared watching of birds in their perilous hoppings from branch to branch, those plastic orange berries they seem to adore, but I have yet to name–the birds or the berries. To name something is to love it, I have thought that many times, especially those Floridian creatures: Anhinga, Ibis, Spoonbill… how can I help but sing them out each time I see them? I want to hold those swamp days, if not in my hands, at…

The Alibi She was dressed in wild honey, standing motionless where the road rose into the biscuit-glaze of hills The world was heat-shimmer, evaporating as I watched I noticed most of the sky slipped into the scraggy juniper gorge Henna tattoo, filigree ankle flower—I noticed clouds in her posture Salt, its taste and texture, grinds in the teeth Other evidence is circumstantial, sunstroke events placing probability within the process of free will The sky was baked blue As you know, she was dressed in wild honey Most of this I confirmed later in writing Estill Pollock was born in Kentucky, and has lived in England for more than forty years.…

Our Kind of Coevolution We chewed and swallowed            the clouds, our long             linen dresses drowned andwashed up later— Solar storm poppies and coyote            sage, a corolla of white fork             tines, the hoarse wind throughthe ghost grove cherries. Now, I know how we started            our pollination. You tongued             your gold dust taste on me, and Ilit your sleep on fire—   Amalfi —after John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi             Let her choose,…

Symbol of the Rose Window on the first floor in our 1912 house, depending on the light is sleepy eye, a fist, teeth, a screw, aperture, protection. Sun slips through the oxidized gleam and sweet rays tipped in green. I see it every day I ignore it every day. If you stop on the landing and gawk people will run over you. That’s where we live and have always lived—in the concentric. It’s so beautiful we mutter, carrying all we have up and down the stairs. Merridawn Duckler is a visual artist and author of Interstate (dancing girl press) IDIOM (Harbor Review) Misspent Youth (rinky dink press) and Arrangement (Southernmost…

Lessons at Dead Broke Farm Sweaty flannels, riding trails, Dale’s shoulders rising and falling in time with his horse. I learned to pull hard on leather reins, prod my heels into ribs. On the last day, Dale made me help him brush his gelding—a wall of flickering muscle. He could tell I was nervous, so he led my hand to the horse’s flank. The beast was nervous too, twitching under the brush. It’s alright, Dale said, pulling a carrot from his back pocket, which the horse took between his teeth. I was still brushing, wisps of hair writhing in stripes of light. That’s good, Dale said. I wasn’t sure if…

Juney, It’s You Greening like a luster colour. Red and bluebirds flying to the heavensall done up. The cumulus so nimble it collects to cauliflower— cotton-masses just like batting—prestoas I write a tiny spider walks my wrist. In someone’s culturespiders crossing bodies must mean luck. Rain, a sudden windfall, the cherry tree is fruiting. Hard green baublesstill the squirrels, vying with the starlings, come to feast.Juney, it has to be you—I couldn’t do this. Or ring like Canterbury bells, or smell as deeplysweet as spring syringa, or hang my head like Lilyof the valley crooning the garden nymphs, the dulcet parasol mushrooms. Again, I’ve planted digitalis—hopefully she takes.The light is…

Deer in the Orange Grove Often, down here in the city,the first sign of fireis a dry breeze sweeping the hills beforethe lights fizzle out.Everyone reaches for flashlights in the dark,wanders out to see what’scausing the fuss. Once, in my neighborhood,we walked barefootdown the street, pausing at the thin lip of redthat lined the mountain’ssleepy silhouette like the last shred of nightsky’s rind, peelingaway from us. I saw their shadows first.All the orchard’s treeswrithing in light. Then I heard the hooves:the quietest stampede,leaving dimples in the dirt. And the sound—the sound like the ripeweight of a thousand oranges falling at onceto the soft groundin little thuds. Jacob Herrera Spears is…