After Night Song

When done, the crickets compromise us
back into our spaces. Our bodies

disconnect— legs, arms, eyes. We extract
the ownership of licensure.

The spoon of our bodies too full
we navigate the crumpled bedding.

Too soon the wolves complete their bay.
Overhead the fan whirrs against white sound

spinning what was made into the nexus
of retreat. We came to surprise

and all the world listened. Let’s kneel
in the garden early morning

and taste again from the tree; we can still
swallow the sweetness of desire. (read on…)

James G. Wetheart levitated once. Just the once, briefly, he was that much closer to heaven. No one witnessed his ascension, so he carefully transcribed the experience in an onionskin journal with a calligraphy pen. Among the details he wrote, “Who knows? But something providential came in and gathered me up.”

(read on…)

“That’s my hat.” Your accuser’s black hair frizzes in a calamitous scribble—she really needs the hat more than you do.

You respond with a lie.

“No, it’s mine.” Yes, you lie, and the monosyllabic words feel all wrong as they roll off your tongue. But it’s January; it’s Upstate; it’s finders keepers. So you repeat yourself. You’re dishonest again, and this time you say it with conviction—”It’s mine.”

But the hat isn’t yours. You found it yesterday; it lay forgotten and abandoned on a hard wooden bench outside the English Department vestibule. The topper’s a velvety black wool and pod-shaped with a flowered cotton lining sewn inside; its crude fever stitches sprout along the seams’ edges like vines. You were glad to find it— you had something new, something warm, and you pulled it low over your forehead and tromped home in the snow. (read on…)