Issue #54


Authors

A Cento for the Better Parts of Being Alive: We’re Here at the Same Time 

If you ever decide to age— love: invite me. I’ll retire my

bones to make you tea, our skin bare and soft. We love with 

claws and teeth, yours gnashing louder than your 

monologue: thank god it's morning, and we're dead 

in the morning— somewhere the moon rises 

out of the rain: I stood there bathed 

in the quiet. Come in from the cold, let me love 

those bruises out of you until your skin sings 

songs that your lips don’t even know 

the words to— crows bowing in a vulture’s 

shadow: mushrooms blossoming in 

the soft parts of my skull I can taste the next 

60 years of my life: it appears as a hand 

kiss: gentle nudge: spray of memory: cardinals 

with snow-brushed wings nestle themselves into pine 

branches the way a heart nestles into the ribs— rivers 

flow out their beds: gay manic flame snapping 

in the fireplace— I am teaching my body 

new muscle memories: what I thought was an end turned 

out to be a middle— I will get up with the gold glow 

of the sun, a blue sky, my laughter and a full tank of gas— 

I saw the future, and in it— I read you poetry: alive. 

Sources: 

- Adrienne Lenker, “Fool” 

- Ashe Vernon, “Robins Egg heart(break)” 

- Caroline Kepnes, You 

- Girlpool, “Cut your Bangs” 

- Jan Wagner, “Portrait of the Rain” translated from German by David Keplinger

- Jasmine Mans, Black Girl Call Home 

- Keaton St James, “Wisdom Teeth” and “The Strawberry Poem”

- Elliot Wake, Black Iris 

- Lev St. Valentine, “This is How Much I Love You” 

- Neil Hilborn, “The Future” 

- Rudy Francisco, “Love Poem Medley” 

- seravph (on tumblr), “I Think I Am Going to Cut My Hair” 

- Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnet for my Past and Future Assassin”

- Timothy Steele “On the Eve of a Birthday” 

- Tony Hoagland, “A Color of the Sky”

Corona, CA Ghost Story (1887-now)