Vol. 8 No. 3

Winter 2025

Waiting for Godot
Editor's Note
A Poem in Which I Live Happily Ever After
Terra Bella
Vick's Vapo-Rub
your father
Zero to Infinity
Tiny Fish
As If I Were a Meadow/Antonietta
How to Keep Produce Fresh
From East to West
Crossroads
a jumping fish in three parts
What Drops on the Ground Becomes Fertile
A Dedication
When I Left the South
The Site
Unclaimed
The Pool Isn’t Empty
The Unknowable
Quatern: Spinoza in Exile I
Why a Dove
Autumn Leaves in Taos
Snow Angel
When I worked security, we’d walk
wedding garden
Rummage
Birthday Party All Tricked Out
Herd Instinct (A Diptych)
Crawfishing in Macleay Park
Communion II
Loquiphobia
Toronto Night
How to Make Potatoes Au Gratin for a Family Holiday
Cactus Fruit
Nobody’s Girl
We Can’t Find Where My Grandparents Are Buried
The River Calls For Us All
Hook
Scavengers
Shaving
Interchange
schedule this message to send at 3am
Wes Anderson
Cartload
While attending the Deep Vellum ten-year anniversary party at The Wild Detectives
Camera Obscura as Self-Portrait
Returning from an earthworm’s funeral procession being carried out by razor jaw ants, we get stuck in rain*
Imprint
This doe as a map
Cicadas, Puenta Allen, Yucatán
Stab Shallow
Mystic Aquarium
Summer A
Vigil
Interior
Untertow: A Love Story
Medusahead
When my lover wakes, there are no warplanes in the sky
Stones & Stories
After One Last Trip to the Store
Even a Rabbit Can Twist an Ankle
Someone Always Needs to Explain
So Many Books, Too Few Elders
Tree-Eaters
Fast Friends
Wild
IMG_5472
Atoning
Lily Elsie Before The Merry Widow
Dick Van Dyke flees his Malibu home
How to Lucid Dream
Six Characters in Search of an Author

How to Lucid Dream

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. I was born with all the eggs I will ever have. I don’t talk much, but when I dream I yell my head off. I remember the details: when I’m flying I’m late for the flight and the airport doesn’t exist. Each of my flight bones exists, but I can’t see them all at once. The ground is like the bottom of a pool. My legs push and I fly.

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. My ovaries are two floating thumbs. I’m empty of womb and glad. I have a sense of myself: round hole to a square peg. Sounds I make wake me: Oh! Fucker! Help me! Stop!

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. I lift my skirt and I’m wild. Untethered. My feet in the cold stream with the salamanders. I remember a spiny body. I remember flying a drone to see myself at the bottom of a lake.

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. I remember I said oh good this dream’s going to be a revenge movie where not a lot of innocents die. I remember being pregnant in a hospital birthing room where all the other mothers were getting plastic surgery afterwards. I will remember hearing screaming bunnies. Leashed to the house. They’re not unhappy, but their sounds make you think they are.

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. I will die with nothing but a shape beneath my eyelids. A square with something on it. A tray. A record player. A blocked tunnel.

When I begin dreaming, I will remember that I’m dreaming. Some mothers walk the other way as their sons in business suits walk straight into the ocean. I pull my baby out of the brine amazed she can still breathe.

When I am awake, I will ask myself: Am I dreaming? Am I dreaming? I will ask myself, when I am awake. Awake am I, when dreaming I am.

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