interests not just of SVSU students, but of the broader communities throughout the Great Lakes Bay Region; a blend of both local and global submissions, she believes, would round the journal out to its best form yet. The following piece by Ben Hall represents some of the global work published in the Winter 2020 issue of Cardinal Sins. Collins says this piece was one everyone on the reading committee knew they wanted to include from the moment they first read it. Winter, 2010 by Ben Hall So you wrote a book for all the rabbit-faced men that gave you slurry advice on love. Once, you’d asked for mine. I started climbing buildings the night Dad came home with cancer. And though by now it’s just a peppering of memory, crudding up the web of some house spider, there’s still the little matter of the note I left on top of my old high school the December after our conversations ended, lying on my back as flecks of Mississippi gravel froze into my hair. The geese that passed were throating encouragement (possibly criticism) as Ryan Adams saddened in my ear, and I, a little drunk on booze, on a febrile thirst for miracles, was thinking that, if I could tune myself to the right frequency, I might slip through, might ink into some other world where (probably) it still hurts but for better reasons. I missed you this time I love you Maybe you thought I couldn’t understand. But we were all looking for ways to discharge, to unburden this terrible love we’re born with. You— into your pages, your huevos motuleños, the men you led to your table. Me— along the edges of a knife and across the rooftops of stars that were soundlessly beckoning, You don’t need to leave just yet. There’s hours left till morning.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
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