the genre of god
is locksmith and that’s
why neon is always
looking for a sign :
essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
the genre of god
is locksmith and that’s
why neon is always
looking for a sign :
You caught me, Foxglove, with your upright colour. You turned me from the river thinking I had been alone. I liked your pale and speckled belly, and the tiny fragile hairs guarding your mouth.
Most of my life-years,
you were already dead. Even in our brief overlap
you were not known to me.
It’s hard being a poet in 2020
Which is when this will be published
If you have the GUTS to publish it
Which I doubt
Being bitter & twisted
In response to your suicide letter, I write that I now order a bowl of vegetable ramen from the local Izakaya whose waitlist fills up twenty minutes before its five pm opening.
I swam in the Gulf of Thailand with you.
I held you, small as a kumquat, in my own dark, small sea.
I often think of telling you
There is something wrong with time here.
I’m not sure whether I age faster or, quite the contrary –
Once we’re introduced again, I’ll be annoying in my youth.
She’s pulling up weeds from the flowerbed
And then starts feeling one tug back,
Wrapping her water grip and dragging her
Through the claggy earth.
This rockmelon is bloated with guilt
Sweet, near-rancid, on the knife’s edge of festering
Press down and it will oblige
My earliest memories of goulash are full of warm, satisfying sensations—soft, chewy egg noodles draped in thick brown gravy and big chunks of beef adorned with a few key ingredients like green pepper, onion, and paprika.
I had
one chance out of zero,
but spent a youth chasing
what I am still not.
Appel turns his professional interest in the workings of the human mind to a narrative exploration of the reasons we tell lies.