ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble

On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.

TWO POEMS – Patrick Landy

the slow inflections of the wind
where rivers run like scars.
The moon hangs quietly
in the blackened air, halved and emptied, decaying since dusk

ONE POEM – Ava Patel

Here lie abandoned gyro crusts and Bundt cake crumbs.
Your fingers shine with olive oil grease

TWO POEMS – DS Maolalai

waking
at midnight
to piss
on the sand dunes
and the sky overhead
like a badly
scratched frying pan.

ONE POEM – Ryan Clark

Below the wall the soil
leeches contaminants
from an artificial hill rising
out of the field like a wart.

ONE POEM – Sarah Degner Riveros

Mama hugs
her son. Can we get
horchata? No. Not today.
It’s Tuesday. Treinta tacos?
De asada? Para llevar.
The wait’s worth it.