Reflection Under Yellow Sky Sitting at a counter in the stoplight diner, I stared out the window, you staring back at me. The traffic had travelled down FM 202, Leaving the road dusty, chaff-filled After the thresher had fed. Only you kept me company.

Hearing I You sit in a dimly lit courtroom facing Maat. Her veiled face tilts downward at an oak board with etchings that you can’t make out. Shadows slither in the room, shuffling into position but you can’t see them; the spotlight is only on her and you.

Hidden Nature Heraclitus said, “Nature likes to hide itself.” At the heavy sound of human feet, Chipmunks scurry for leafy cover, While snails recoil and pretend not to be home, And moles find refuge beneath the sod.

Thoughts My Morning Coffee Stirs I believe in the strength of the first sip of coffee and the rickety leg on the chair at the table. I believe her tattooed shoulder, against my tattooed thigh never altered the planet’s arch, nor the speed cancer grows on a kidney, nor how many children will be cold tonight as they sleep.

He sat there on the edge of the pond, remembering the days before the edict was passed. He and the neighborhood kids used to sail boats on its still waters. Sometimes they would race their boats, and sometimes they would lazily let them float from shore to shore. Jack kept those moments locked away, trying not to think of the times where happiness thrived. By doing so, he missed it less, almost fooling himself into submission. Though, try as he might, he could never forget those days. With a sigh, he picked up his school bag from off the ground and headed towards his university. After a full day of math and science—the arts forgotten in the aftermath of the edict—Jack began his journey home. Jack meandered down the side streets in no hurry to reach his destination when something caught his eye. There, on a gate he’d passed by at least a couple of times on days like today when he had nowhere to go but still didn’t want to go home, was a rainbow.

Of all the goddamned places to be stuck when World War III kicks off, I thought. The news on the old TV in the restaurant was Russian – Cyrillic script scrolling by beneath the newscaster reading the headlines – but Zhenya was translating for me, occasionally going silent for long moments, her fingers tapping her front teeth, her eyes fixed on the screen. This can’t be for real, my mind raced, cavitating. I tried texting Jason, the copilot, still back at the Malah, but there was no service showing on my phone. No texts. No email. No service. Jesus Christ. Jason had stayed back at the squalid hovel that passed for an airport hotel. It was isolated, connected to town only by the ice road that crossed the frozen bay between Anadyr and the boneyard of crumbling Soviet Bloc tenements and the abandoned rusting equipment and gutted concrete bunkers that fringed the airport.

Looking back, she was my first love. She had the strength of character and the courage of her convictions to endure any hardship life could throw her way. On my second day as a firefighter, my captain ordered me to accompany him across the street to the local gas station on a call about “a cat stuck in a tree.” I did as I was told, donned my gear, and walked to the tree to ponder how I could climb it without scaring the small feline to higher elevations or encouraging it to confront my face with its claws. These are the decisions for officers, not rookie firefighters.

You do that quite well. Can you do it again. The repeat has a gold medal for showing up and making a fool out of itself. The comfortable repeat lives in a big house up on a hill. At night, his living room comes out and does a little dance. You can hear Dizzy Gillespie blowing a horn made out of brass that knows every note on the scale needs to be primped. A little lipstick here, eye liner, brush those cheeks like you wanted them to bear the beauty of jazz.

I walk into his office; the name in brass on the door reads Dr. Adam Reagan. I sit on the small plush chair and pull my feet under me, my warm mug of tea in my hands. He smiles when I slide into the seat and sigh. He thinks he is breaking me but there is no way I can allow that to happen, not after everything I think I have been through. “Where do I begin,” I say, I don’t mean it to sound sarcastic but to my ears the words sound sharp like tiny pieces of glass in my mouth.

My roommate and I were both freshers and had both been assigned temporary accommodation at the college hostel. My mother hadn’t paid the hostel fee and because she knew someone who knew one of the college administrators, I was allowed temporary accommodation for ten days. She promised she would send the money before those days were up. The matron, a portly nun with a serious face, said she didn’t care.

His country is the land of paradox and contradiction; where a frustrating government pleads for more productivity but can’t provide an efficient bus system to get people to work on time. Clifton—or the newly stylized Cliff, as his well-to-do friends call him—knows he should have been out of the apartment at least fifteen minutes ago if he wants to catch an early bus to get to work. He works doubly hard at his job in the ICT sector, which means he gives online technical support to people overseas. In his hurry, he pulls a T-shirt over his thin frame, only to realise it’s on backwards. He fixes it while struggling with his keys to lock the front door, then runs off before noticing that he’s left his phone and has to turn back.

Even dressed as a man, Elena was radiant. Kate dabbed her eyes with her one remaining tissue. As the music from the final act of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier swelled to its rousing pinnacle, Elena’s voice soared through the opera house, merging and blending with those of the other singers. Together they joined the interweaving melodies and chromatic harmonies of the orchestra, the entire ensemble climbing to such unsustainable heights that, to Kate, their ultimate convergence personified longing. The crowd rose and erupted into cheers seconds after the orchestra released its last chord, but Kate remained seated, thunderstruck. Finally, she stood when Elena strolled to the front of the stage to take her last bow amid the roar of applause, while flowers and programs stripped to confetti rained over the cast.

I first encountered the hidden world on a muggy summer night in Bahrain, near the still waters of the Arabian Gulf (or Persian Gulf, depending on who you wanted to avoid an argument with). Multiple witnesses denied what they saw after the fact, blaming alcohol, of which there was admittedly plenty, or tricks of light and shadow. The religiously-inclined claimed we saw one of the jinn, a being from the spirit world, which was more plausible than an excess of overpriced beer. No one ever hallucinated from Heineken.

You are here. Darkness surrounds you now, both literal and figurative. You sit hunched over against the wall of the crowded bus, pantomiming meditation in a defecatory posture, eyes wide-open stealing glimpses of your crusted New Balance sneakers with the occasional passing of city lights. Maybe somehow there’ll be a reflection, a final glimpse of your thick brown hair. Instead, green edge of a road sign that passes too quickly. You know that you are somewhere in South Carolina. That’s where the plane landed.

The sun was setting as they rode back up the entrance road to the farmhouse. Douglas breathed in the pungency of the newly turned soil as if it were a harbinger of what was to come. There was now a small sports car parked behind the Toyota; the crate, minus one of its sides, sat empty between the house and the corrugated shed. Emrys greeted them at the front door, holding it open. Squinting against the raw light, and before inviting them in, he gestured with one arm towards the sky behind Gwen and Douglas. The dogs barked, again and again, out of sight.

No. 1 – Already Be a Wall Become a wall before it is necessary. I can’t instruct you on this because I was naïve. I thought, Let pain come; it’s a part of life. I thought being a wall was cold-hearted, and that I am not. But please learn from my mistakes. Being a wall isn’t being heartless. It’s just the smart thing to do. No. 2 – Remember the Pain This is the worst step—I’m sorry. But I have a feeling that if you’re reading this, you’re like me; you absorb words.

All My Exes Hate Me it’s a big gross world and i don’t know what it wants from me close my eyes listen to lo-fi remixes of brazilian disco hits beats hit like waves and everything smells so salty i am so damn salty

Exhuming Luigi God, we were drunk the night we exhumed your ferret from the dirt in the grounds of your old school. We drank mudslides and white russians until the bartender dimmed the lights and put all the stools but ours on the bar, the chairs on the tables. Stumbling into the cold, on a chorus of “Life’s Been Good” and “Marian the Librarian,” thinking what a good idea it would be to dig some bones from the dirt.

I Am My Own Savior Somedays I take my pills gladly, with hope and juice to wash it down, and other days I glare at them until they get caught in my throat and I hate myself for feeling like they’ve failed me already. Somedays it’s 85 degrees in Phoenix but I’m caught under feet of suffocating snow with no one to pour salt on my flailing body, like drowning all over again, but so weighted and cold I’m dragged to the earth’s core.

Ode Et. Al. We still pray to the old gods changing of the guard: deity in that solemn face of the ancestors. Help me through [the moon light] We still pray in Quechua, Aymara, Lacandon, et. Al. Affinity –see the shoulder width of those keloids scars on the backs of African slaves [marks the above fight]

Golden Shiraz Everyone here lives in the past In a golden age of bliss Living in our own versions of the past Living in a version of what it all meant Ghosts of what once was Before the revolution Before the loss Before we packed our bags and left Before, before, before When we were all made of gold….

Man of the City Put red crosses all over my calendar jam my luggage til ‘tis too heavy to heave I wanna be sure I won’t leave Prepare hot meals anything warm for our factory-stomachs let us first lounge & rest in the shade of our jungle-lounge hidden away from the omnipotent eyes of our western lives.

Forest Nocturne this drama hums birched, blue, and pine behind winter-closed doors where raccoons and rabbits still. i remember the evening’s autumn cathedral when amber light massed in prayer above. i played over the under of your body. don’t think Nietzsche would be angry because under i explored this penumbra’d path round a temporary pond jewelled with drake and hen lusty in spring swell—winter’s death finding level.

Beloved Mother What I want to write is that I am and I can not stop being I want to give back everything you have given me, mother. And thanks to you I am far away again in New York But I’ll be fine. Do not worry A poem for you, mother is the least I can do turning my love into words. Here’s a bit of me and you It rained in your day today for you mother. I am ashamed I can not give you more.