fall 2021
Table of Contents
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latchkey fragments
Frances Boyle
i decay, bro
erica hiroko isomura
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
Making the Most of Our Voices
Ken Victor
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
Say It Delicious
Berry-Picking
Laura Cesarco Eglin
She's a Pretty Bird
Susan Zimmerman
Swans at the Golf Club
Ruth Daniell
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage
Granada, Take Three
Elena Johnson
Anubis
Dana Sonnenschein
A wrist, a wren, a small knife
Ellen Stone
Boy With Orange
Phillip Watts Brown
Between Then and Then
Millicent Borges Accardi
Late August at the End of the World
Bren Simmers
No One Knows How to Be Good
Emily Kedar
When I See Lake Water
Kristin LaFollette
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth
Charlotte Vermue Peters
On the Straightaway to the Rockies
Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator
A Nova Scotian Night Light
Ryan Smith
Anubis
You’ve seen his shadow.
Narrow face, high forehead,
tall, sharp ears. You called him
jackal and believed him
imaginary like a sphinx—
the African golden wolf.
Appearing at dusk, at dawn,
fading into the sands.
He ate plagues of locusts,
pawed scarabs from dung,
took rats and fawns,
cleaned up carrion.
In his predynastic form,
you’d have thought wolf
right away. Blunt muzzle,
rounded ears. But his tail
was tri-colored; already
he was turning into a sign.
Then he went hieroglyphic,
a silhouette, seated or lying
on a tomb with a door,
his snout and ears pointed
as the stylus that made them,
his body a lean gesture
that materialized as a statue,
a black god with hands in lap,
long nose, pricked ears—
Anubis, guardian of graves,
the one who takes the dead
where hearts are weighed.
Holding a reproduction
in your palm, you might think
apotropaic or wonder why
his figure feels so heavy.
He who was in the place
of embalming waits for you.