Letter from the Editor
“As I’ve been editing this Volume of Sontag Mag, my last before I step down as associate editor, I’ve been thinking about this idea, attributed to Camus, that the misery and greatness of this world is that it offers no truth, only objects for love.”
Companion Novel
“When you get a dog it’s a big one. / When you learn to drive it’s at 29. / When your arm breaks it’s clean / like a liftable bridge splitting above water. / a gap in the x-ray: a black inch for freighters / to pass through”
Heavy Duty
“It became the story we drank / to all that summer — hauling / out each time to embellish / with some new detail — like / how he strained to lift / what must have been / heavier than he imagined — / or the ways his steps / turned asymmetric / as he toddled towards / the doors”
Barren Form
“if memory is truly lyric :: minimal :: / compressed :: / not market share or trends :: brisk / futures / in grain or metal :: but / one slim man :: living done :: / he won't burn long :: naked before the fire”
Your Father Tells You His Dysthymia Is Over At 72
“he reports over the phone to you / that losing his regular depression was like / someone came in out of nowhere to change the sheets: / yes, it was here, / yes, it’s gone now.”
Echoes Wands Hands Children
“Watch an hour at the lake, the lake becomes the hour. Becomes the hour, null & soundless. Break of day, the sky / Undimming, clouds on the horizon a mistform ceiling. Soil like black cake crumbling down the bluff”
Simone Considers the Future
“In the future / everything sublimates into an irksome / concert featuring G. Love and Special Sauce. / Attendees sway like cattails w/ blunts / poking out of the cattails. Historicity / goes the way of the great auk.”
Because It’s Winter
“you having fed them this: i have things / it’s december & it doesn’t taste like a break / there’s a red notification / it’s always that same / blooming opium rush & a wand / pointed at your head commanding desire”
Pre-Flight Instructions
“steer clear of anyone holding more than one snake / and of anyone clutching bound volumes / they claim to be divine scripture; / try everything that seems like it won’t bring / a premature end to your experience. / You’ll know how it’s going after thirty years.”
The Cry Of The Ugly Bird
“I grow vast and distant, / in possession of my own church / Its cry solitary and pure, / over the open wilderness / A lonely tree, for its sake, / raises up its withered faith”
Thank You for Coming to the 8pm Eucharist
“I know you trekked a hell of an earth to get here, / I know lightning bugs trail you even now, know your ghost / waits right outside these doors, know in your spine, you / feel altitudes, know wolf meat attaches your bones”
Middle-School Production of The Tempest, When Closeted
“Downcast. Downstage, defeat / enters effortless, enunciates “escape” / following fairy feints. Foes faint. Ferdinand / galivants, gets goddess-gobsmacked. Great / Heavens”
Love Song in the Key of H
“You call just to say / you have nothing / to do all afternoon / & a half empty / hotel room / & a glass / of iced vermouth / pressed to / your forehead — / you know / I crave / the sweat / along your / collarbone”
How I Falter in Psychotherapy To Say I’ve Only Been with Asian Men
“I crave no bygones to be bygone / with so much of me left to prove”
Spring Ephemeral/s
“I mostly ignore my body until / I enter a tree’s corona where / my nakedness doesn’t feel / like a collapsing galaxy. Lilacs / & shadbush have perfect / flowers. Redbud, crabapple, / winterberry, witch hazel—oh perfect / flowers, riddle me & spell me / to bloom.”
Living Alone
“I saw you / through the solemn antenna / of the one who, by living alone, makes fire / with their body. It was that essence. / I am a cowboy for the blue-black sky.”
Cool Breeze
“spying / his mark — he’d reach / through rolled down / windows to snatch / co-pilot designer / mini-dogs / from cars with / bumper stickers like / COEXIST — / you know the one — / this world spelled out / in holy symbols”