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M. Wright

Radiosonde


It might seem unnatural           to harpoon stars from the sky.
To hang them                 fish-hooked under lampshades

and call them possessions.           If you are a belly
that faces different colored ceilings          each night,

you are probably           a satellite            or a metal whir
that can count the number of hairs on my head.

It doesn’t have to be                   a profession.     To drop
soap into a bath and watch it bubble up or
 
to clean the contents of a jelly jar           and wait for Wednesday
to take it from the blue bin at the end of the drive.

If it doesn’t bother the neighbors           you can even
rehearse duck-and-cover drills just to see what it’s like

to be the froth in the bath         or the jam spread out and
staled. And it doesn’t cost a thing to call the tub an ocean.

You can collect data    on your own     with nothing more
than a breathing straw             and a patch of Atlantic.

Float with your head down and arms out.    See a set of barbels
lock eyes           with a landmine. A Super Size plastic cup

housing a family, its block-lettering   fixed to outlast the species.
A signal traveling        from seabed to surface so abruptly

it would have the bends          if not for the fact that you
can’t paralyze a sound, no matter        how fast you yank it,

like you can’t carry pith to letter without loss of fidelity. Which
is to say it is perfectly acceptable to simulate           being
 
if your home is             the heart of a projected radius. Take a
moment and marvel at your belongings, they are incredible.



Come on in my kitchen


The clocked-in field hours                      antlers stiff,
the stuff of dust collected by the inches, dead-
gentle               the slow flick of my right ear.

Howls and boots break the floorboards, a hail
of calloused heels       making to hum the whole catalogue.
The house          the family, the feversome white fence.

I crawl out from             cement-capped
rows of grass and fodder           so January empty
past truck beds and burials I might have
 
stopped and grown up and died in
without ever seeing a snow globe take the
last people left to a new world
 
where you can          pluck the moon out
from the sky             rub it on your fur
and bite right through the worm.
 
The yard churned       tectonic winter,
folding into itself. I let it happen.
I pressed my wet nose to the glass with gratitude.
 
The woman held a knife to the table
and juiced twelve bones without
getting any blood         on the floor.
 
The children were fiddlers      were singing, were
changing what it meant to sing with the dead.
It was sensational.
 
I’d have plaque’d myself right then, shacked up
and surrendered my head if I could. Would have,
if not for the stacks pulling my horns
 
to the truck bed. The night was closing around the family
like a rescue ship and it was leaving me folded,
leaving me spirited with a front-middle view.




--
M. Wright is the author of the chapbooks a boy named jane (Bottlecap Press) and Dear Dementia (Ghost City Press), which was featured in the 25th annual Poets House Showcase. He is a Best of the Net 2017 finalist and his poems have recently appeared in Glass Poetry, UCity Review, Wildness, Saint Paul Almanac, Temenos Journal, and others. Born in Chicago, M. currently resides with his lovely partner, Dylan, in Minneapolis.

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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025