______________________________ Image: “Urban intervention 2018” by Chifumi Krohom is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Notes on a Body of Salt
When a Real Adult Walks into my Office Seeking Legal Advice
eyes swelling like a housing bubble and before i can even introduce myself, asks What should I do? The bank is trying to take my house. I have a family. I have no way to pay. What should I do? i should have something useful to say. i’m a lawyer. but all i can think of is my studio apartment carpeted with dirty laundry how…
You Do Not Need to Be Someone by Molly Brodak
This poem originally appeared in the 2018 issue of Portland Review. We are republishing it online in remembrance of Molly Brodak, a poet and memoirist, who passed away last month. I’m my mom and my dad. Two blanks, coat and hat on a rack. Mom’s hands, endless sea reach without sound, Dad’s downturn luck, god-wrest force of coin. At night the moon won’t stay at all,…
Lindisfarne
Keening nuns turn to boreal fiends on their tidal island, filing through blind arcades fighting nor’easters. Heading chapel wise their habits keep their foreheads cozy. But the altar has gone green. The girls drop their coarse cut cloth and get low, to prostrate. Lithe moss virgins, their green bodies light up the damp stone. A ring of thorns has sprung up suddenly outside—proper protection for…
Wat Nong Bua Yai
Before the State had built the dam and Mother River wet the ochre earth with her reckless kiss, our villages converged here like veins meeting at the heart or rice-grains gathering in the gut. My friends and I would play, our noodle-arms hung off the tamarind trees. Our parents sat out on patterned mats, their bright sandals strewn out to dry. The smells, the sounds,…