Tag Archives: poetry

Do Sacrifices Dream of Empathy?

AR Dugan

 

 

Time and tide he thought. The cycle of life.
Ending in this, the last twilight.
Before the silence of death.
He perceived in this a micro-universe, complete.

— Philip K. Dick

 

I want more life, fucker.

— the android Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982)

 

 

Ask: When did the word please / become our weakness? / Say: In every declaration I see sacrifice. / Ask: On how many altars must I open? / Say: I need the response to my call — / I love you. / Ask: Is the lie you told me empathy? / Say: Take two in the morning for your trouble. / Ask: Where’s the floating red cross that fills my vessel? / Say: Life is like a cell / phone battery — a little less each charge. / Ask: When I feel the weight of it all, / will you find the brim and overflow me? Say: My fullness is yours now. / Call me Capacity. / Ask: Why does every offering find us here? / Say: The light that burns twice as bright, / burns half as long. / Ask: Do tears count? Do thoughts? / Say: Speak my name like a good machine. Join me. / Ask: When is the expiration date? / How much time? / Say: The knowing another loss / itself. Ask: In the end, / will your depletion be enough to bring me back?

 

 

 

 

AR DUGAN is the author of the chapbook Call / Response (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and has an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. His poetry can be seen or is forthcoming in a number of literary magazines and reviews, recently in Barrow Street. He has read poetry for Ploughshares and taught literature and writing at Emerson College and Wheaton College. He lives and works in Boston.

Our April Issue Is Ready to Meet You (from a Safe Distance)

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Welp, when lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, we weren’t trying to smell them through DIY-bandana face masks while maintaining twelve-foot-diameter personal space bubbles. This shit got hella real and then proceeded to fling itself into our collective fan.

The poems and stories here in our one-hundred-and-eighth issue brought some sparkle to our gloomy days, and we hope they’ll do the same for you. Take a leap with Sarah Sexton’s statuesque protagonist and sing the sheep electric with AR Dugan’s replicant. Ride a Sisyphean ouroboros with P.K. Read, look down on Leatherface with Anne Gresham, and explore the final frontier with Deborah P Kolodji before trying on a new (out)look with Chris Stanton. Don’t leave without admiring the organic fusion cover art of Ajay Kumar (Jordan) Singh.

Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Send us some of your words. We’ll be back with another issue in July, because the more things change, the more we stay the weird.

Recalling the Creation Account

L.R. Harvey

 

 

‘And let them all be lovers of the light,
and throw themselves against all sources of

it, searching for a fix — and when they hit
the chilly concrete stoop, all jumbled up

in disarray, let them forget their past
mistakes and try again, again, till they lay

in little furry lumps, their little arms crossed,
scattered around the faded Welcome mat.’

It’s something like this — I just can’t remember if
this was the day when God created men or moths —

or maybe it was possums, like the one
my front-left tire just kissed goodnight, tucked in

to sleep between
the curving yellow lines.

 

 

 

 

L.R. HARVEY lives in Chattanooga, TN., where teaches English and writes poetry. He has been widely published, and his most recent work appears in The Write Launch, The Tennessee Magazine, and After the Pause.