lightning and phlox Ishan Summer

lightning and phlox

I spent the whole day in obscurity this Sunday was over before it began, but now it smells like lightning and phlox

as the the sound of the rain floated eastward and the petrichor wafted from the grass as the sturgeon moon began to outshine the distant lightning so brilliant it seemed to burn through the clouds like sun or perhaps they just parted in recognition of her the full moon of august barley, green corn, and sturgeon accompanied by a metallic yet spectral baying as if a lightning-struck tower were howling in agony

I get the urge to call you every single night except for the moons. on the moons I just look up at my long suffering companion, pockmarked and scarred with craters

and here I am reusing the same vocabulary to write to you again, but, that’s okay, because I get like this every moon and she’s the only one who really gets me.

Ishan Summer

THE SUN

at the end of the road there is a patch of nasturtiums overflowing peach dream creamsicle eyes peering at our hands while we pick, pick, pick. everything is more or less sunny side up, isn’t it -- pennies all heads when you ask, robins egg cracking and look: the robin inside. the carolina wren is taking apart an olive branch, red house small spiny bits poking, the sparrows didn’t find her out yet. I don’t think they will now. at the end of the road the nasturtiums greet us, wishing well of blooms, sweet punks singing stevie to the sun, the blues means we cried and lived to toss all our tails over our shoulders. look down. at the bottom, there’s a road, and a pickup truck, and at least five tomato plants, bursting.

Maren McKenna

angels

Zora Duncan

Photos by Callie Wohlgemuth Model: Olivia Lowe

[“Dock boy: A gender neutral term”]

“Dock Boy: A gender neutral term” you tell me on the phone I am by the water refilling beach magic lungs full of dirt from earlier, “please calm down” dirt, too many cherry pits inside, girls and red, neither of which I am today, not by choice but rather by pounding; t-posts again and again the woman has been buried, where, only by the pigs working past 9pm, it will be uncovered spewing pronouns from [ ] mouth, eyes dirt wild there is some magic in driving the tractor down the Real Road some beauty in stuck slowness, some peace in the lowered head nod, the salutatory wave to everyone who is not carrying two hundred old eggs and a dead rat in the tractor bucket in front of them, egg, rat, road, magic, sucks me from the slope I see, how easily my body could be crushed under this Kubota, how fast I could have the grass smeared across my face forever, stains et mortem, pathway to elysium lined with lawn mower cuttings, perfect red circles on the new white counter-tops its beet magic this time, wrings me from cheesecloth whispers sshhhpsshhpshhh to wrap my fingers, tie them to each opposite bicep, forearms in an X across my chest the only red in the food processor tonight is vegetables, the only one bleeding is the earth, who, mouth still full of dirt, eyebrows the most verdant and wild grasses you have ever seen, is still not ready to share [ ] pronouns with you.

Mira Rosenkotz