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Issue 3

POEMS
by
Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller

In Passing

I knew a man once who had made a film about seed saving. He looked like a Greek statue. Kissing him made very little sense but it seemed like a compliment, one someone gives who doesn’t know you whatsoever. I drove to the hills where he lived and after a single night, he decided he could not love me after all. I drove north along the Pacific Coast Highway. Took a video of the dim ocean in the drizzle. We spoke a few years later. He told me he was making a new film. I don’t remember now if it was about smoke or about fire. I judge a person by their pills. Holy basil, fish-oil tablets, biotin. I put a pill made for epileptics on my tongue. It does something else for me. The doctor who gave it to me in San Francisco wore a translucent blouse. The doctor who gave it to me in Detroit had African masks on their walls. The doctor who gave it to me in Orlando had books about psychedelic mushrooms lining the bottom shelf in his office. When is this over?

In Passing

I knew a man once who had made a film about seed saving. He looked like a Greek statue. Kissing him made very little sense but it seemed like a compliment, one someone gives who doesn’t know you whatsoever. I drove to the hills where he lived and after a single night, he decided he could not love me after all. I drove north along the Pacific Coast Highway. Took a video of the dim ocean in the drizzle. We spoke a few years later. He told me he was making a new film. I don’t remember now if it was about smoke or about fire. I judge a person by their pills. Holy basil, fish-oil tablets, biotin. I put a pill made for epileptics on my tongue. It does something else for me. The doctor who gave it to me in San Francisco wore a translucent blouse. The doctor who gave it to me in Detroit had African masks on their walls. The doctor who gave it to me in Orlando had books about psychedelic mushrooms lining the bottom shelf in his office. When is this over?

Punchline

My friend calls and says that she wants to kill herself, because she didn’t get into college. There’s nothing I can do besides remind her that the world is full of rejection. The next day, she calls from a Wendy’s parking lot—she’s on Xanax after an emergency trip to her psychiatrist, a saint. I think of the story about the boy who cried wolf—did the wolf get him in the end or not. My friend is babbling, says she’s been waiting on two junior cheeseburgers for so long that by the time they arrive they’ll be seniors, ha-ha. Ha-ha, I say.

punchline

My friend calls and says that she wants to kill herself, because she didn’t get into college. There’s nothing I can do besides remind her that the world is full of rejection. The next day, she calls from a Wendy’s parking lot—she’s on Xanax after an emergency trip to her psychiatrist, a saint. I think of the story about the boy who cried wolf—did the wolf get him in the end or not. My friend is babbling, says she’s been waiting on two junior cheeseburgers for so long that by the time they arrive they’ll be seniors, ha-ha. Ha-ha, I say.

right edges

Despite legend, the Bermuda Triangle does not have a higher rate of disappearances than other geographical sites. It does not appear on a single world map. At present, Alaska ranks as having the most disappearances per capita. Though California ranks as the state with the most disappearances. 2,133 people. Sri Lanka has the most disappearances in the world: 60,000 to somewhere near 100,000 missing people since 1980. If you look at Sri Lanka on a map you’ll see it looks like a human nail. And oddly, yes, like a triangle. Laid out in one long line, the average child’s blood vessels would stretch over 60,000 miles. The woman who will become your next lover is describing her divorce while she gives you a lift to the airport. When she begins to talk about taking off the wedding ring, her hand cramps, and she opens the window to press her left hand into the wind. You were engaged once. It was months after the proposal that your fiancée actually gave you a ring. Christmas in Virginia, your first time at his family’s home, and he presented the ring to you in front of everyone. It was a family ring, an opal. When you put it on you thought, My god, he doesn’t know me at all.

the failure of imagination

A common inertia. A spell. We are human so we are confused. Everything is an antonym. Yet here we are looking for parallels, for twins. Why look? Why wait? A half-yellow, half-unbeaten sunlight is making itself known across the sky. Where the rest of it is doesn’t matter. We can hang, split, from every answer. We can half and break-away. Erode into mountains; reshape seas; gather into a pile of stones. We don’t need to be whole or finished. Why would we? Why when we can be so beautifully estranged. Unescorted, unattended. One great unresolved. My neighbor tells me that his daughter has a spirit in her bedroom, and he wants my help with it. I go to the bedroom. It is full of the pink marshmallows of anime, pink octopus, pink violin. My neighbor shows me the path where he feels the spirit is—it goes right up to the closet. When I open the closet, there in the clutter is a long flimsy mirror, the kind college kids stick on their dorm room doors. Directly above the mirror, on the threshold of the closet door, my neighbor has painted a sea-green compass. There’s your problem right there, I think, like a plumber.

rites

Your father calls to plan a surprise party for your mother. Since your mother is listening, he is lying about the afternoon of the party. He is so bad at lying he almost sounds like a child. How sweet it is, you think, listening to your father lie. You remember in school the art teacher having the class make pictures using red tissue paper. The idea was to tape or glue the tissue paper in a way that resembled a Pentecostal flame. She hung them all around the art room so all the kids looked like saints. You were made to walk around school with your pockets out of your pants to make sure you hadn’t stolen anything. You were always like that. At the bottom of a stairwell, pockets out. A rite of passage. A body like a fish being cleaned.

right edges

Despite legend, the Bermuda Triangle does not have a higher rate of disappearances than other geographical sites. It does not appear on a single world map. At present, Alaska ranks as having the most disappearances per capita. Though California ranks as the state with the most disappearances. 2,133 people. Sri Lanka has the most disappearances in the world: 60,000 to somewhere near 100,000 missing people since 1980. If you look at Sri Lanka on a map you’ll see it looks like a human nail. And oddly, yes, like a triangle. Laid out in one long line, the average child’s blood vessels would stretch over 60,000 miles. The woman who will become your next lover is describing her divorce while she gives you a lift to the airport. When she begins to talk about taking off the wedding ring, her hand cramps, and she opens the window to press her left hand into the wind. You were engaged once. It was months after the proposal that your fiancée actually gave you a ring. Christmas in Virginia, your first time at his family’s home, and he presented the ring to you in front of everyone. It was a family ring, an opal. When you put it on you thought, My god, he doesn’t know me at all.

the failure of imagination

A common inertia. A spell. We are human so we are confused. Everything is an antonym. Yet here we are looking for parallels, for twins. Why look? Why wait? A half-yellow, half-unbeaten sunlight is making itself known across the sky. Where the rest of it is doesn’t matter. We can hang, split, from every answer. We can half and break-away. Erode into mountains; reshape seas; gather into a pile of stones. We don’t need to be whole or finished. Why would we? Why when we can be so beautifully estranged. Unescorted, unattended. One great unresolved. My neighbor tells me that his daughter has a spirit in her bedroom, and he wants my help with it. I go to the bedroom. It is full of the pink marshmallows of anime, pink octopus, pink violin. My neighbor shows me the path where he feels the spirit is—it goes right up to the closet. When I open the closet, there in the clutter is a long flimsy mirror, the kind college kids stick on their dorm room doors. Directly above the mirror, on the threshold of the closet door, my neighbor has painted a sea-green compass. There’s your problem right there, I think, like a plumber.

Rites

Your father calls to plan a surprise party for your mother. Since your mother is listening, he is lying about the afternoon of the party. He is so bad at lying he almost sounds like a child. How sweet it is, you think, listening to your father lie. You remember in school the art teacher having the class make pictures using red tissue paper. The idea was to tape or glue the tissue paper in a way that resembled a Pentecostal flame. She hung them all around the art room so all the kids looked like saints. You were made to walk around school with your pockets out of your pants to make sure you hadn’t stolen anything. You were always like that. At the bottom of a stairwell, pockets out. A rite of passage. A body like a fish being cleaned.

Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller are the co-authors of There Is Only One Ghost In The World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023), winner of the 2022 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Salamander, The Shallow Ends, and elsewhere. Though they have been writing together for ten years, they have only met once.

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Issue 3