i miss you
by Nia Musiba
Myself Donated
by Austin Newton
She comes to retrieve her Simpsons DVDs,
claiming the final vestiges of herself
I cling to. I sit on the fender of my father’s Chevy,
limply surrendering the DVDs,
stooped so as not to confront her penetrating gaze.
Her words travel to the region of my ears
as if from a ghost,
cataloging things I already knew but couldn’t face.
I’d lent my body to another, tearing a piece of my donated self
and offering it in confidence like a prayer.
Tears abound, jettisoning from our eyes so
wrought with disillusion. We apologize
and embrace as if to wring each other of the demons inhabiting us.
Those nights, transverse across the carpet before the TV,
content with the re-runs
we played over and over again, never really watching
them, enraptured by our bodies’ communion– that’s where I should’ve paused,
there, when I lost interest.
Werewolf in the Room
by Briana Graw
