by Lauren Silex
Best Stranger
after Kavek Akbar
If you press your ear to mine you’ll hear
an entire ocean. I’m convinced life is a series
of cycles. How long until my next eventual
breakdown? If my retreat into abstraction
seems familiar it probably is. Did I ever tell you
about the spider on the ceiling? Either way
it told me this apartment is full of fragments & you
deserve better. I once was a mirror of possibilities.
I sit on the shore of Lake Superior; the best place
to be a stranger & watch my reflection, unsure
of even my cheeks or this dust in my lungs. Coughing
has become useless so I attempt to pull myself
from myself with sharp teeth & wrists. Tracing
my veins in search of a beginning. Even these tattoos
will dissolve in your mouth. If I’m meant to unstitch
the wounds of flowers, let this time be quick.
It’s 3:20am on a December Morning & I Don’t Yet Know I’ll Miss the Bobcat Driver
Plowing Snow Outside Our Window
Understand I would never commit a murder, but at 3:20am when my partner & I
are unable to sleep because, once again, the bobcat driver has arrived
outside our window at an absurd hour to push snow from one
lonely curb to another, I consider it. Of course, we are grateful for clean streets,
but also tired of winter snow & long nights dreaming in green. All this
happened before we became stuck inside our one bedroom apartment,
carving out personal space, each attempting to send hundreds of emails a day
while doing our best to comfort the cats as they hop between laps screaming
for our attention; I’m sorry, I have none to give. My focus is on the car
outside our window with boxes of minute rice stacked in the back seat
like a city & every goodbye I have ever said. The government
is sending people $1,200 which will barely pay my bills, lucky
you still have a job is probably the saddest thing my mother has ever said to me
because it’s true. Right now I feel so scattered yet somehow my thoughts
keep returning to storms in late December & the bobcat driver I kept cursing.
How I wish he’d show up now all coffee high under the cover of another
moonless night to push snow with purpose, stopping for a quick cigarette
& to listen to the apology I tap through the glass. In the fog of his breath
he’d write everything is fine, go back to sleep, this will all be over soon.
Steve Merino (he/him/his) lives in Saint Paul, MN. His previous work can be found in or is forthcoming to Ghost City Review, Mineral Lit Mag, Oyster River Pages, littledeathlit, and You Flower / You Feast. Find him on Twitter: @steve_merino
Baltimore artist Lauren Silex comes from generations of creative family. A concern for the environment in 2008 finally led her to cut paper collage and the use of recycled materials in her artwork. She uses storytelling to illustrate how the natural world interacts with and is affected by civilization. After applying acrylic paint to a wood substrate, Silex meticulously cuts and glues hundreds of pieces of paper from old magazine pages, atlas pages and coffee table books, etc. The piece is then embellished with detailing in ink and oil pastel. The result is multilayered and rich with meaning. Silex graduated from Prince George’s Community College and the Maryland College of Art and Design. She has had solo shows in Los Angeles and Baltimore, and her work is in several private collections around the country. Published on the covers of the Free State Review, The Mighty Line, and forthcoming issues of Palooka and Gone Lawn literary journals, her collages have also been awarded Best in Show and People’s Choice in 2019.