This month we offer breath: holy ghost, matter, morning.
In August we stay with:
air
Submission guidelines can be found here.
love,
billy lezra
Editor-in-Chief
Do your words hang on air?
I took a whiff like my favorite butternut squash
the aroma thrills me, to feel breath on the back
of my neck, invisible holy ghost, so glad you
are not rote, still have hope for your movement
like a glissando, or a staccato breeze, give a
boost, when pushed from season to season. I will
believe until the end, the last death breath of
my uncle, the funnels that fell on me, momma
said, it’s going to rain, before the hurricane, the
presentation as apotheosis, the way its cupola
magna darkens like a blacken trout, loud signifier
of display, make away- air; the minutiae in minutes
I will die without you, the way to inhabit the limbs
open me up to an Oppen-sky with pink mackerel or
gunmetal, just a part of the afterbirth, show the worth
air, it flurried today, what a way to crystalize
the day will be actualized.
Robert Anthony Gibbons has been published in over thirty literary magazines and in several notable anthologies. Recent publication credits include Killens Review, Tribes, Involuntary Magazine, Peregrine, Expound, Promethean, Turtle Island Quarterly, Killer Whale, and Suisun Valley Review, Voices of Lefferts, and the Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 2 published by the Bronx Council of the Arts. He has received funding from the Puffin Foundation (2021), United States Artists(2020), and most recently the New York Foundation for the Arts. (2021) Brooklyn Arts Council (2022) Lincoln Center (2022) Hudson Valley Center for Writers (2022) Brooklyn Public Library (2022).
Calculations
I could have been anything, you know.
I could have been the two squirrels
playing in my backyard.
I could have been a member of an alien race
that lives on a planet with seventeen moons
on the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy
and communicates through telepathic vibrations
made of pure empathy.
I could have been a stone.
When you add up all the ways
that the matter I am made of
could have come together
there must be endless forms
better than this one.
But the particles in me
melded into a mind
that cannot count that high,
so that I can imagine nothing better
in all of infinity
than your hand on the small of my back
in a Brooklyn-bound Q local train
holding your glasses in front of me
to see the lights of the buildings
made of steel that could have been sand.
Luc Diamant is a perpetual student from Amsterdam. He picked up a pen as a toddler and has yet to put it down. When he is not writing, he enjoys spending time with his partner, watching the plants on his balcony grow, and thinking about lemurs.
Morning Air
A phantom muscle in my brain
Works on weekends and overtime
To convince me that I’m imminent,
Just that, imminent
But the morning air has a different gravity
There’s less weight in my lungs
Yeah, less anxiety
My brain hangs me off the edge and
Waits for vertigo to push me off
It shakes me like a magic eight ball
Wait—what’s that clicking noise?
Today’s the day the car will crash
He thinks I’m a tease and such
The weight of the waiting, it’s too vast
It’s too, I’m too much
But then the morning air, it drives me home
It talks to my thoughts, and they take the backseat
Nothing impending, nothing imminent,
I breathe and it’s enough.
This month we offer breath: holy ghost, matter, morning.
In August we stay with:
air
Submission guidelines can be found here.
love,
billy lezra
Editor-in-Chief
Do your words hang on air?
I took a whiff like my favorite butternut squash
the aroma thrills me, to feel breath on the back
of my neck, invisible holy ghost, so glad you
are not rote, still have hope for your movement
like a glissando, or a staccato breeze, give a
boost, when pushed from season to season. I will
believe until the end, the last death breath of
my uncle, the funnels that fell on me, momma
said, it’s going to rain, before the hurricane, the
presentation as apotheosis, the way its cupola
magna darkens like a blacken trout, loud signifier
of display, make away- air; the minutiae in minutes
I will die without you, the way to inhabit the limbs
open me up to an Oppen-sky with pink mackerel or
gunmetal, just a part of the afterbirth, show the worth
air, it flurried today, what a way to crystalize
the day will be actualized.
Robert Anthony Gibbons has been published in over thirty literary magazines and in several notable anthologies. Recent publication credits include Killens Review, Tribes, Involuntary Magazine, Peregrine, Expound, Promethean, Turtle Island Quarterly, Killer Whale, and Suisun Valley Review, Voices of Lefferts, and the Bronx Memoir Project: Vol. 2 published by the Bronx Council of the Arts. He has received funding from the Puffin Foundation (2021), United States Artists(2020), and most recently the New York Foundation for the Arts. (2021) Brooklyn Arts Council (2022) Lincoln Center (2022) Hudson Valley Center for Writers (2022) Brooklyn Public Library (2022).
Calculations
I could have been anything, you know.
I could have been the two squirrels
playing in my backyard.
I could have been a member of an alien race
that lives on a planet with seventeen moons
on the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy
and communicates through telepathic vibrations
made of pure empathy.
I could have been a stone.
When you add up all the ways
that the matter I am made of
could have come together
there must be endless forms
better than this one.
But the particles in me
melded into a mind
that cannot count that high,
so that I can imagine nothing better
in all of infinity
than your hand on the small of my back
in a Brooklyn-bound Q local train
holding your glasses in front of me
to see the lights of the buildings
made of steel that could have been sand.
Luc Diamant is a perpetual student from Amsterdam. He picked up a pen as a toddler and has yet to put it down. When he is not writing, he enjoys spending time with his partner, watching the plants on his balcony grow, and thinking about lemurs.
Morning Air
A phantom muscle in my brain
Works on weekends and overtime
To convince me that I’m imminent,
Just that, imminent
But the morning air has a different gravity
There’s less weight in my lungs
Yeah, less anxiety
My brain hangs me off the edge and
Waits for vertigo to push me off
It shakes me like a magic eight ball
Wait—what’s that clicking noise?
Today’s the day the car will crash
He thinks I’m a tease and such
The weight of the waiting, it’s too vast
It’s too, I’m too much
But then the morning air, it drives me home
It talks to my thoughts, and they take the backseat
Nothing impending, nothing imminent,
I breathe and it’s enough.
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