Pets

they announce us      Valentina Covarrubias montada en Viento
my girl does not cower           does not wave or smile…

we are taught the beauty of the rose
the serenity of the soft and the still
the austerity of silver stars…

By ire’ne lara silva

By ire’ne lara silva

  "When one is seen gliding through the woods and close to the observer, it passes like a thought, and…

My teacher says of their cat, now gone
missing. In his absence, everything is still.

The small, silvered…

By Fatimah Asghar

By Triin Paja

my father plays in a field.
he sees a horse, meek and glowing.

he touches the animal,
but when you …

All the while the dog was dying.
I didn’t know. His little heaps

of yellow vomit. Damp spots
where he’d slept. I didn’t know

what it meant until meaning
sat still enough for me to see

nothing else. Then a man put
in my hand a pamphlet...

BETWEEN US AND
animals is a namelessness.
We    flail    around
generically      —
camelopardalis    is   what
the Romans came up with
or  "giraffe" ( it looked to
them  like a camel crossed
with a leopard ) or get the
category wrong — a musk
Ox  isn't  an  ox at  all...

It's confusing, after eating so much cauliflower
From the serving tray, to find oneself alone
Like this, a cutout on the cutting board long after
The blade has dropped. Whatever is useful
In the cruciferous digestive experience will lodge
Somewhere in the psyche's cluttered nest
So...

Mid-morning, a girl and dog attend the woods,
the lilies of the valley just shy thin shoots.
The Boy Scouts' flying squirrel huts are crooked
after last night's storm, and the woody vines tangled loops,

depending. Girl palms the oak she calls half hers,
two...

Three hundred twenty is the number
         of frogs I’ve raised
and released during the pandemic.
         Yes, I’m trying to impress you,
but I don’t count the dead.
         The ones the hunter drove over.
The...

Last patches of snow all but gone and first
wildflowers flecking the lawn, I walked out
to the shed and pulled open the door
with a woody squeak, and there, rising from the dirt floor,
surrounded by a dusty clutter of tools,

a little mountain,...

Abby hates car rides. All buck and thrash,
         her gray swayback swells and her limbs
flail like drumsticks when we lift her
         ("One, two, three!") into the backseat.
Hey, if I'd spent ten years in a...

Send to: [email protected]
From: [email protected]

When writing friends an email
I sometimes &p*&%^$#
           have a fit
    if Mitchell walks across          the keys
k:j^$% and adds a note
                 vpq#peifgu3gy ...

On the buffy-tan painted house sides
there’s a hornets’ nest we let grow, huge
domed head, anchored crown, helmet of  paper
folded and striated like metamorphic rock,
ashy layers increased by each returning hornet,
chewed wood pulp, saliva, soft tree branches
masticated, first a papier-mâché bulb,
phallic...

On the phone, when the vet who was waylaid
sounded stunned by what Burke had just described,
and reasoned that the mare was getting worse,
Burke, although at first sorely grief-winded,
found within himself another cup of poise,
downed it quick, and then, as recommended,
brought...

I.

Stars among
corn fields
above fences
the crows
line like
darkness points,
spread over the earth
like tea leaves
in a cup;
the sky
without a cloud
braid breaks
the spell
of people
stepping from a church
smaller than
a sunbeam
at sunrise
or sunset.

II.

Not free,
an inside color
or outside color,
I sit
on the cottage
steps and purr,
a tomcat
home to
die for
the...