Robert Fernandez
ZODIAC
O chicken,
how can
we save you
when your head’s
cut off
and all you dream
is spider?
O level-7
clippers
at the spider’s
beard—
O bearded
spider,
how can I
offer you
fire when
all you dream
is the web’s
center of hair-
gel sheen
jiggling
blocky images?
Not my job,
but, but
it’s sad to see
a chicken that
could be squashed
like a star
under a resolute
cleaver is
instead
so dry.
O spider,
step into
the light,
become
a pearl.
Some pearls
are waiting
for you
with open hands
and red dresses,
soft drops
of night
in their centers.
ROBERT FERNANDEZ is the author, most recently, of Scarecrow (Wesleyan), and is co-translator of Azure, poems by Stéphane Mallarmé.
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ISSUE FIVE features fiction by Olivia Clare, Aaron Hamburger, Maria Kuznetsova, Dan Pope, Stephanie Reents, and Terese Svoboda; creative nonfiction by Lesley Jenike, Philip Metres, and JoAnna Novak; film writing by Adam Golaski; poetry by Cynthia Arrieu-King, Catherine Barnett, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Malachi Black, Miranda Field, Janice N. Harrington, Sophie Klahr, JoAnna Klink, Elizabeth Robinson, Maggie Smith, Rebecca Wolff, and Robert Wrigley; and an interview with Olivia Clare.