Volume 3, Number 2

FORK

by Larissa Szporluk

Today I found an egg
and broke it open.
It’s trailing me now,
the cartoon of a bird,
its oversized eyes and fetal curl.

It isn’t love if it’s banging away.
It isn’t love if it’s incendiary.
It isn’t love if it leaves traces.

Today I am a giant ignoramus,
the stopped flight
of a warbler’s life
in the palm of a hand I can’t explain.

What loves loves to ravish.
What is loved loses consciousness.
There’s love in the fiery river.
There’s love in the furious house.

I did without thinking.
I did it like a mortal.
I took the left-hand road
and now I’m out of lightning
and the ear has fewer notes
and I wonder when they’ll figure out
I murder when I’m normal.

DEATH

by Georges Godeau

Death called me on the phone. She told me that I interested her, that she could drop by soon, yet she couldn’t say exactly when.

Deferential, I waited for a while, and then, without news of her, I now go out, I go about my business.

Death has an ugly name. She should call herself drop-wort, or shellfish, or sun. There are plenty of gaudy names that aren’t a sack of soot.

Translated by Kathleen McGookey