By Julia Guez A cistern full of asters, notes from the split–risk ward above the lindens tops of poplars wave in the long light, an agitation of birds. What they fever after, I have fevered after— in tight swaths—circling the only one who makes all the seasons more beautiful than they really are. Coming now to the place where no word is apt, parting. Wendy Videlock, Chaco Canyon, photograph

by Cristiana Baik Autoconstrucción¹ My second life began with fabrication my other name plucked from a book by Auntie Kyung, in a plane ride to California from Seoul. In the breach that was the Pacific what was familiar became interpretation that always-constant point of reference: ghost-shades of adolescence toward transformation—that different place rewritten: where I was born. Life became about arriving, property lines and furniture, new rooms thus dividing walls, eating spaghetti with chopsticks, a washing machine and never drying clothes out in the sun. My father’s absence and golf clubs, cardboard boxes and accumulation. That’s why we marry, my friend Alex explains. That’s why we write and get tattoos. Objet Trouvé Mid afternoon hour’s changing light—fetching. Thunderstorms in distance resemble washed-over paintings, blue sanded down pale. In a dream, there were no paths or roads. Just piled-up stones where trees began to grow. In another dream a hat, obsidian, wire mesh, broken shells and plastic buoys. Hula-hoops. He said, This is an encounter, all the while I thought it impasse, watching the delicate rupture, flood of light darkening into vast open space. I was left with found fragments, possibilities after points of convergence becoming equilibrium. I told him there... Read More