A Meditation on Sobriety

Lucy Clementine McNees

If he turns his head to look at you, you would never know the vase of sticky syrup he holds gently in his hands by that smile. The stack of pancakes posed carefully atop his head, his mind consistently concerned with their stillness. The headache he gets from being around his brother snorting cocaine, the migraine of stubbornness he must lean into while surrounded by sickly sweet maple syrup he cannot lick. Melting in between his fingers and sticking behind his ears, yet all that appears is a cleanly pressed suit of hidden temptation. He has poured some full piece of him into that greater power that sits atop his head, asked it to balance this extreme and stuffing breakfast plate for him, touching and touching but never tasting. With eyes closed, sobriety is easier. All you can feel is the syrup dripping down your neck but it doesn’t exist to the naked eye, just as his temptation appears to no one but him. With eyes closed, brotherhood is difficult. Perhaps they need to switch who is balancing the pancakes, who is serving the sobriety syrup. Perhaps snorting cocaine in front of your happily sober brother caused his hand to shake, a drop to spill, and what sweet child would not lick spilled syrup from their palm?

Newly Resurfaced Miles Libbey

Climbing with four furry toes going flat up to the air And the other fleshy five coming down on the big boulder that was safe from the wolves And the other coming down on top of the earth. Two flat feet propelled me: I leapt And dove into the ground

Feeling my fingers break the surface tension and then my body fully engulfed as the dirt swims past me.

Paddling deeper and deeper with my clawed paws until the ground no longer feels soggy or dirty on my star nose but warm

Where I can make a spot to cuddle into And tuck and twist my segments in to lose my head and tail to the dirt. Until, like the groundhog or the bear in Winter I’m ready to resurface to the world And stand on two firm feet.

Site of Soul

Holiday Rosa

Give me a cross

A veil

Make me holy with these material things

Tell me there was a reason

And that there is an after

And I’ll give you the time of day and All the pieces of my stitched together soul

But I can’t give it up

All the unknowing

All this surety

I want nothing to do with another voice

Which only seeks to fill silence

I reject your god and seek only finality

I crave your structure your piety

I crave the belonging

The knowing

The community

I crave a silk headscarf

And the blessing of a priest

And the wings of an angel

Give me something to touch in the dark night

Something in a fourth dimension

Someone to hold my hand

Give it a name this thing you trust And convince me that I too Shall be saved

But I can’t give it up

All the woman I have been building

She is mine

And belongs to no higher power

But the billions of years of rock beneath my feet

I belong to no one

But the mountain ranges

And the ocean trenches

I want to know humanity

To connect with this billion strong personhood

To embrace those around me

In a different sense

To cloak myself in some kind of Transient assurance

I watch the nerve endings around me

Come to similar conclusions

Even reject salvation

On the grounds of personal dignity

But I am no deep thinker

There is no wise woman here

I am only a bundle of atoms

I am only a mix of chemical reactions

And leftover energy

A vibrational mass giving itself meaning

Based on unbalanced charges and Deeper electricity

I belong to the Nevada desert

I took life from California fields

And breathed American air

And whence I came

I shall return

My bones will become fossilized something

Or perhaps nothing

I won’t be rock

But I might be soil

I might be

I might be quiet for once

I really am pyrite I think

Fools gold

And your god doesn’t know me

Or at least I can’t see him

Because I have no beginning nor end

I am only what the tectonic plates have decided

And what the pacific tides planned

I crave your knowing

And yet it is a sort of sacrilege to believe in anything but time

Between Me, and Me Brett Dunn

When I dreamt last night, two of me:

I dreamt of me;

I am holding myself, tender and intimate. I smell my shampoo underneath four days of untouched hair, and I see streaks of blond reminiscence from the sad haircut lying between my legs. I am coddling myself close; queer sex

I look down at the side profile of a face of closed eyes. I am curled and I am fetal. I gaze at myself, a different body in my lap with arms sheltering, and I kiss myself all over my head.

Kisses of a lover: kisses on my ears, kisses on my eyelids squeezing tight, and kisses along my nose down to my freckled cheeks.

I remember the warmth of my body, warmer than mine. Then my eyes wept until my body in my lap bathed in tears, and my body glanced up to me, long in the pupils.

“Why do you sob at the sight of yourself?” my eyes ask, and then we wept some more until we both awoke, only one body drowning in gray sheets.

Noah Velick everytime after i have sex with you, i bask in the post-orgasm dopamine (yours or mine) then close my eyes and say in prayer: thank you to the queers who came before us. thank you to the people who fought fucked suffered loved i do not take you for granted. we lay together in bed i notice the texture of the sheets i notice your thumb tracing my inner thigh like a question mark i notice that you are still wearing socks i know what was once at stake to be here with you. i do not take it for granted. i do not take it for granted. i do not take it for granted. amen

It’s in the chirping of the cicadas that I hear the voice of God

Rachel Lock

My friends tumbling out of the body of the repurposed church, bellies full of joy, sounding our own cries of delight into the night Running to greet the Shabbat bride.

And the swaying of the shrouded people could almost put me to sleep but it’s the first cold night after a hot summer and my dad wraps me in his tallis safely cloaked in a holy cocoon of love.

Do the trees know their leaves will grow back in the spring? Or do they mourn the death of their beloved each fall? And who takes care of the scapegoat when he’s sent to the woods? Does the goat return to the barn of his master, his back weary from the weight of our sins? Or does he wander into the arms of Azazel, cold and rotting in the thick wilderness. Does his heart ever let out an extra beat when he feels the cold night’s prayer on his cheek? Or perhaps he bleats a prayer of hope as he loses his way in the thicket. All I know is the first cold plunge into a spring on a humid summer’s day the burn of hot tea on impatient lips the way the land fits perfectly with the sea And the cicadas, crying into the night for the warmth of their love.