The day my shoes spoke to me was the day that I put aside my winter coat and brushed the lint from my eyes. My shoes were tired of being trodden on, a sentiment I could relate to. They demanded early retirement and presented their resignation in a formal letter attached to one heel with a wad of chewed-up gum. I had no choice but to acquiesce. I set them free, free to join the other shoes at the bottom of my linen closet where they all chain smoke and complain that their leather is cracking. My leather is cracking too, so I oil my skin with primrose and lavender, ponder my own early retirement, unlike my father, rotted away before his time.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

(after Jamaica Kincaid)

this is how you cast a spell, child: pray your hands together, weave your grimy, fruit-stained fingers into a basket tight enough to hold the serpent hissing at its seams. this is how you pull your eyelids tight to your skin. this is how you resist the temptation of sight, resist defiant pupils that wander where they shouldn’t and talk out of turn and ask too many questions and echo a heartbeat that catches in your throat like a prayer half-digested. this is how you swallow bad Scripture: mouth the words down and keep your gaze on the ground until the Father in heaven and the father at home are one and the same. this is how you fold yourself thin like Sunday School sheets: pastor’s kid, lightweight, not down to cause any trouble. this is how you smile and nod when Pa and Ma rant about the liberal gay menace (but what if the menace is living under your roof?) this is how you sneak onto Yahoo Answers when Pa and Ma are asleep to find out whether you’re gay in ten simple questions (is it okay to look without touching?) this is how you close the window and shut down the computer before they catch their son in the sinful act. this is how you dodge questions about what girls from youth group you’re crushing on. this is how you hold the shame in your lungs, then your stomach, then your entire body. this is how to curve your back into the shape of an apology that will never be enough. this is how you live with your eyes closed—no boys to tempt you into ruin, no pastors to root out your sins. this is how you cast yourself out of the church before they can: drift downstream, tread water, clasp your chafed hands into a straw vessel sinking faster than you can bail, rock them together like a rowboat in a never-ending storm, pray for the miracle worker to come and change you like they say he will. father, don’t you know you raised me right out of your home? where do i go but away?

this is how Father answers your exile: with a wave of good Samaritans washing over you. this is how, in the first week of college, you meet PJ, then Claudia, then Reverend Jordan (and if a loving creator did not make people like this, who did?) this is how you find God in a family of outcasts; find yourself back on your knees on a chapel floor for the first time in four years. this is how the ocean swallows a prodigal son and spits them back out, salt water welling at stubborn eyelids, flooding them open. this is what tough love tastes like: a rush of light in your mouth, sharp enough to blind at first, too brackish to digest in one gulp. this is how to throw somebody into the deep, baptize them in grief and heartbreak, pull them back out gasping alive. this is the story of Moses and the burning bush, Jonah and the whale, Paul on the road to Damascus, Jesus speaking in tongues. this is the riddle you have left us breathless to untangle. 
this is how you cast the spell anew. this is how to sing the song in your own voice: i was blind, but now i see. this is how you believe in magic, how you still find light in this world when it is cracking apart. this is how you untangle your hands, feel your grief flood out until all that is left are the fingers, ready to weave together something new. this is how you learn to touch, to embrace, to cast the words out and pray they kindle a path forward. (but Father, what if i never find my way to you?) child, you mean to tell me you have not yet seen me in the searching?

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Header photography and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

I’m sorry I panicked when I saw you,
rolling down my window,
pinwheeling you into traffic miles from your hive.

You must have snuck into my car
during last night’s storm, unable 
to find your way out.

Bees have a homing instinct.
I hope you’ll manage the journey
back to your queen.

Along the way, will you stop
at foreign flowers and arrive
with your legs laden with souvenirs?

I hope your friends appreciate how hard it is
to be pushed out before
you’re ready, forced to fly.

At least one of us belongs to a species
that doesn’t count ending up back home
as failure.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

who buys brown-spotted eggs direct from the chickens. 
Who never scoops out the blood spots 
     or tosses shells in the trash.
I will wash and sort my recycling.
I will bundle cardboard with rough string and gift-tie it
      in neat bows.
I will cook fresh soups from scratch. 
I will wrap my leftovers in beeswax cloth softened 
      against my heart.
I’ll become a person who sweeps and mops the front porch 
      and waves hello to the neighbours.
Who appreciates the relationship of bees to apiarist.
I will return strange mail to the sender.
I will switch from outdoor shoes to slippers.
I will become a person who can knit baby socks on 
      tiny needles.
Who can tame a songbird on an outstretched hand. 
I will eat crystals.
I will work miracles.
I will wake up with the sun to be mindful.
I will be a person who speaks only in song.
Who sends handwritten notes to mark minor occasions.
Who bakes crispy pies and writes in fountain pen.
I will scrawl to-do lists onto my palms.
Collect dryer lint in apron pockets.
I will be the kind of person who changes the sheets daily
      and hangs them to flutter in the cinema of the yard.
I will dream with brightness up and saturation down.
The one who consumes her receipts. 
Weeds the sidewalk.
Boils the roots for tea.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

first it appeared like an oil of rainbow, 
shimmering under the sunlight, dancing 

with the ripples & stretching toward the 
shore to baptize little multicolored stones. 

i have seen fire run like an athlete on water. 
i have seen it lick a river like a child

does a bowl of his favorite broth. in the place 
i come from, i have seen fire dance on the skins of 

men who received an impromptu visitation 
of misfortune. they say: something must ignite a fire.

what if the nascence of burning is within, would you 
call it self-forging, like the malleability of red steel?

i have heard stories of how a memory can incinerate
the soul & make the body: a warehouse of ash. perhaps,

all of us have mastered the art of our burnings;
we’ve learned to feed this flame with water to quiet

our consummations. i know from my childhood, between 
my first tooth and first walk, i have accessorized my lungs 

with enough gasoline to fuel my continuity. like 
holding water in your hands, i submit to the fluidity of time.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Good afternoon cmcrockford;
I am from Phoenix also.
Here the insects make no noise,
though something sings along with the night.

Are you in my Phoenix,
where the roads shiver when it’s cold?
Do you get lonely 
even when hearing the songs of the dark?

Me too, me too; 
I wish I was between your legs.

Why don’t you answer my emails 
or reply to the texts?

Will you not come 
to my dying patchwork house?
Will you come and see the nettle leaves
now spreading along my ceiling cracks?

Please

Are you here?

I am willing to offer 20 percent for your time;
hurry while it lasts.

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Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

The great moray eel whips her head out 
of the cave, demon-faced, cursing, 
a prehistoric ghost. 

Even with the glass between us, you pull back 
from the glittering eye, the thirsty mouth, 
this spectacle of ruined survival. 

I want to say, yes, death comes like this—
powerful-jawed and unrelenting—
to remind us, by contrast, how fragile the anemone is. 

            Watch how it waves, tentacle-bright.
            That kills, too. Just in brilliant color. 

Death always comes out stinging— 
bite & poison, eel or flower, 
disguised and hidden in the craggy reef. 

I want you to know I see the coral 
is the same color as the bedsheets 
at the nursing home, the same color 

as the scrubs of nurses who wipe your mother’s 
mouth and wheel her to Mass. And I want 
to say, yes, I, too, see her face in the moray’s—

the mouth gasping open and closed, 
the trembling jaw that spells mortal. 
We will all have our moment like hers,

we will all be spit out into that unfathomable blue. 
The cave’s invisible veil will float us 
into primordial sea. But until then, slip

            back into the darkness with me. Hold 
            my hand among all the glowing tanks,

all this breakable glass, hold me close 
in the water until the inevitable last.

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

Black clouds
         roll & gallop
churning the skies
        some kind of preparation
               for war

shimmering sheets
              of slanting rain
yanked & contorted
             in elemental violence

tree-crowns lashing
             left and right
as if the enemy is within

the animal clamour of
wild doors & windows

          and then,

the sudden outburst
           of small feet upon
    the drenched terraces
             shrieks of abandon
                     & glee

and the frenzied hands
                  of mothers
clawing laundry down
             from the line

so much joy
so much urgency

so much nonchalance

as today as perhaps 
a thousand years before

impervious to the monarchs
who wield
           neither rain
                      nor thunder

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

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Header photograph by Deborah Hughes
Header artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson