The seventh issue is out. If you can't get the printed version, you can still read it here:

 

Inside

It’s a beautiful day, outside

One of the last, if not the last

Before a heavy winter sets in

I like to think of windless autumn

Days as rare, and endangered

They make the wait more puzzling

What am I waiting for – perhaps a force

To make me – step outside

 

 

Family Values

 

Happiness was a bottle

of iridescent soap water

meant to burst in bubbles

on my mother’s marble floor.

She was annoyed and banished

from our common home

what she saw as stains.

She, who mercilessly counted

good times in fridge magnets.

 

 

In Flight

 

I looked suspicious.

My heart was in the hidden

pocket of my bag.

 

my breathing mask on before

I turned to help you.

 

Falling, the dancing

lights on a welcoming sea

told me I belonged.

 

Pain was the red paint

on Claude Monet’s poppy field

in Musée d’Orsay.

 

 

Momentum

 

Our joys were made of plastic and fluorescent lights.

Raised by chip factories, we’d grown virtual feet.

Our time was running out like early morning coffee

and patience was the throbber on our loading screens.

 

Raised by chip factories, we'd grown virtual feet

and the first impact with sun-smelling turf felt strange.

Patience was the throbber on our loading screens

until we paced for hours in bleak waiting rooms.

The first impact with sun-smelling turf felt strange

but it shook off our belief in confined square spaces.

Until we paced for hours in bleak waiting rooms

our experiences had the depth of all-inclusive tourism.

 

What shook off our belief in confined square spaces

was the flawless animation of detaching yellow leaves.

Our experiences had the depth of all-inclusive tourism

and we just couldn’t get higher on computational speed.

 

The flawless animation of detaching yellow leaves

while time was running out like early morning coffee.

We just couldn’t get higher on computational speed.

Our joys were made of plastic and fluorescent lights.

 

 

Dinner for the Wolves

 

If I were a daube de boeuf

at an intellectual dinner table

would I find purpose and pride in

being eaten and praised and escorted

with pinot noir straight out of Burgundy

 

or would I try to crawl off the silver plate

daring to blotch the too white linen

and then straight off into some

drain leading to the gutter

where I would call out

my revolution?

 

 

[Read more about the project.]