Dominique

  • The Love of Dead Roses

    By Serenay Ozkan Lead distilled from the sky, a cool stain upon my brow, As the hearts of roses beat, the vessel trembles now. Neither the slumber of the wind nor of the sea, A single verse; a leap across a thousand years of darkness to be. Silence fluttering its wings in a quiet grave,…

  • Latrodectus Geometricus

    I. DextraShe hangs, fangside up, upsidedown in a tangle in the corner A haphazard cradle of weaponized silkpoisedabove the black and white tile that’s piled with husksof other spiders D e x t r a o n l y e a t s other spiders Bold, the Brown Widow, my house button spider Geometric body…

  • The Heart is a Place of Secrets

    By Rebecca Burton Kit is reading Naguib Mahfouz to me, Kit in our apartment in Cairo – first in Arabic, straight from the original, which sounds to me like he is speaking underwater, vowels that come from the back of the throat, consonants bubbling up. (Like a foreign language, except that we’re the foreigners here.)…

  • Redwoods Dark as Blood

    By Rashika Singh Nate had asked about it every time they saw each other that week. At the local diner, where he first brought it up over a shared plate of banana pancakes, pushing the walnuts to Casey’s side. Outside the church, where they’d stand near the door and listen to the choir sing, Nate…