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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
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Meghan Privitello

Day 2


All of the animals are where they don’t belong. 
They don’t know how to get to their mothers
who will kill for them and lay their dinner at their feet
when they find their way home. 
 
I do not have a totem animal. 
I do not have a compass.
 
There is fire in every tall building. 
Eighty boys have already gone missing.


Somewhere strangers are gathering,
which could look like the beginning
of a riot.
 
We don’t have to do anything about it.


That means that we can be happy
with bashfulness and endlessness. 
 
The good news is there is no reason
to make the bed. Bloodwork
is another useless poem. 
 
Whether we wanted to know it
or not, there have always been devils
everywhere. 
 
Birds are them.
Horses are them.  
You are them.
 
What musculature. What flight.
 
We gather the lizards and snakes,
undress for kinship.
 
What to serve for dinner with just one
white tablecloth left, no spell
to make bread infinite. 


Day 3


A coyote returns to my yard every night,
sits under the barren olive tree
and stares.
 
I stare back.
 
We talk to each other telepathically.
 
I lost my hunting partner, he says.
 
I lost my loving partner, I say.
 
If I could sell my eyes to a child
obsessed with outer space
and convince him they were ancient
yellow moons, I would
, he says.


I would build a fire out of the money
and burn myself in it
, he says.
 
If I could sell my heart to a surgeon
obsessed with mourning and convince him
mine was an ancient parable of wanting,

I would, I say.
 
I would build a god out of money
and bury him
, I say.
 
We are both rotten and gentle, he says.
 
We are both animals and children, I say.
 
At the same time, we imagine
a dog carcass in the yard.
 
He eats its organs as I curl up behind it,
my bloody fingers combing its hair.
 


Day 5

Every barn has become a church
to worship storms in.
 
If I gathered all the unsharpened pencils
from backpacks, I would build a golden silo
that worshiped lemons or sunlight,
whichever lasts longer.
 
The first time a boy took off my shirt
was in a tractor for sale on the side of a road. 
Inside of it, we felt so human we cried.
 
If I told his friends about this, he said, he would die.
 
He worshipped me.
Until I married, I only made love in machines.
 
A storm is coming.
Or my grandfather is tuning his radio
from the afterlife.


If I stayed awake for weeks, I could take down every fence
left standing and build a church so large
the living and the dead could hold hands in it
as they told each other the truth.
 
A storm is dividing the sky into sections like an envelope.
I want to lick it and seal it shut. 
 
I remember, though, my mother telling me about a girl
who wrote a letter to the moon every night before bed,
the same question each time: If you can see everything from there,
aren’t you the real god? She only loved the taste of the envelope’s glue
and died of hunger.
 
The storm is big enough to destroy imaginary churches.
 
An emergency announcement was sent from my grandfather,
or another sweet dead man:
 
Close your doors and pile your belongings in the center of the room. 
Eat your photographs. Bury your dogs. Find one object
and memorize it. This is your angel. 


I memorized ten.



--
­­Meghan Privitello is the author of A New Language for Falling Out of Love (YesYes Books 2015) and the forthcoming chapbook Notes on the End of the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). Poems have appeared in Boston Review, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a NJ State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. ­­

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
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    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022