Shawn Fawson
C
C his eyelash we found on the pillow.
C C two sailboats bob.
Come back, we say. They do. They don’t. We aren’t
Certain about weather at the sea’s edge. Then was a different
Climate on a different
Continent. Or
Consider then to be a mouth remembering shapes of
Cherries or an interior orchard that feels a boy’s feet
Climbing ridges of bark. Such a brief season—the
Country of wooden sandals now under the bed. His body drowns in its
Chills and night sweats. Our minds race ahead without him—
C an empty hook or
Chipped plate.
C a sound of breaking.
C Hiroshige’s unfinished bridge on paper
Cannot reach the opposite
Coast. The gap, both flaw and portal. Never mind
Coming from or going to.
Cloudbanks rise halfway up the shore, and the moon
Comes down on the brink of another world.
SHAWN FAWSON resides in Denver, Colorado. Her book Giving Way won the Utah Book Award for Poetry in 2011. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
ISSUE FOUR features fiction by David Crouse, Susan Daitch, JoAnna Novak, and Ian Stansel; literary criticism by Rick Moody; film writing by J.M. Tyree; creative nonfiction by Michael Levan and Marco Wilkinson; film writing by J.M. Tyree; a David Remnick interview with John Ashbery; poetry by Natalie Eilbert, Kathy Fagan, Sarah Gridley, Philip Metres, Danielle Pafunda, Daniel Poppick, Zachary Schomburg, Sandra Simonds, Analicia Sotelo, and Catherine Wagner; and translations of Jorge Luis Borges and Ye Hui.