Page 2 - Issue 162 News Today

I.Ten years ago, she—a woman I only vaguely remember—laid herself inside a chamber that promised an escape from her senses.The chamber might have looked like a colossal goose egg, but I could be remembering a fiction.She had hoped it might resemble the steampunk tank in Altered States, or the cyberpunk telepod in The Fly. It might actually have looked more like a tanning bed,

To Jeremiah’s eyes, the word sat fat on the page like a bull amongst calves. But to Ms. Jones’s—blue and swift and confidently as they moved—it lay in wait like some snake in the grass. Jeremiah didn’t want to see her get bit. She was a nice teacher, a young one too, and as it was with all nice, young white people he met, Jeremiah liked to imagine that Ms.

For Sarah Ghazal Ali Days unclear, filled with sun. The flicker of another           life coming for me. Rushingmakes an imprint—bruised knees. Time purpling           the rhododendron. Near summer, when childhood’s shadow is near, you say you feel           God's hand. Where on your back, exactly? 

Starlight and empty sidewalks, closed storefronts and cicadas,                               when did I first define solitude as standing adjacent to objects without touching? The streetlamps sputter Luna moths akimbo,                          a frantic arousal, their rinse of wings.

            I thought my body a thick hearty thing, a big- horn sheep perched in a crag                         of rock, an elk fording a snowmelt river, a fat rattlesnake sunning             on a dusty boulder. Today, you are no days older             than you will ever be,

Witness my father who drives and hums the notes to a song I do not know and I            do not attempt to ask for fear that in asking he would stopto explain, thus diminishing the magic of his throat as we travel along            the Susquehanna. Witness, too, the clouds that resemble a hiveof bees, the crows and the triumph of their carrion, the river that could carry

I’m blood-hungry for touch,             ferocious in the body,             ferocious in my bones. Winter’s syntax. Every day every night             at home. Frost on the window,             steam from the dryer vent, the dormant orchid             on the sill waiting to bloom.             Icicles crack, hit the ground