| ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGE
by Andrew Aulino I'm hanging open at the hinge. At the pressure of his hips I was a mandible. I locked around that sharp-boned boy. He tried to stretch one narrow leg— my jaw-body stopped it when it touched me. Now he is the gristle and tendon an appetite left behind it. The heat in August turns the darkness tough, into thick foliage, the house into a grove of doors. He spent his day heavy and slack and seated by night something no denser than aroma started him tangling with the dark, towards me. He thought, it seemed, that I was also a door, would do more than shut behind him softly. He'd forgotten the night before. So he struggled in my limbs then stopped abruptly. Now the ache on my abdomen lingers there longer than the hips that bruised them ever did. |
LOCK by Myles Boisen |
|
WITH INFIDELITY
by A.J. Huffman lingering at the edges of a bed that may or may not still be ours, we play at normalcy (whatever that means). Not touching as we make menial conversation about our day's banalities. Both afraid to cross that intangible line we have drawn down the center of our lives. Finally, a word is whispered, the latest lie. It hovers above us for a prolonged exhale, a moment we both force ourselves to swallow in silent dark. |
STILL LIFE WITH TIME by Fabio Sassi |
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ODE TO A FERTILE PLAIN
by James Ducat Halfway down a beer bottle, in song, my ass sculpted by the small of your back, still, I want the math teacher — not my math teacher, one I work with. I haven't taken math in decades. She says sex without intensity is bullshit, although I think she meant without abiding love — you are not afraid of her mouth on me but of her mind gyrating in mine, like when I insisted there is never one right answer, not even in math and the math teacher nearly cried then we went out for a cigarette and you stayed in. You don't smoke. Must be a koan — coexistent desire, tempo mediates malaise. You are a halting-step genie — your uncooperative left leg stumble outruns any bump 'n grind — and I don't see nothing wrong. Even the heat of your temple against my stomach, your nails across the underside. Let's leave in a gravel-spitting wheel spin. But not like Thelma and Louise — unless that means you bucket-brigade self-consciousness and ride off a cliff. Not a literal cliff, just the wall-edge of house arrest. That would be cool — not explosive silence undetonated. |
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