The Observable Universe 
 
We’ve all heard the question why is the sky blue? but why is it dark at night?
is something else entirely. It becomes a story beneath the science, like 
infrared of Botticelli’s “Man of Sorrows” revealing a sketch of Madonna 
and child. What did he decide? Was it prayer rearranged into another 
prayer? We are left with what is observable, what we are meant to see. 
The universe itself is illuminated just right; what we see is light having 
traveled this far and that’s it. So much light still on its way. We’ll never 
see it all, no human being, but maybe a tarsier with big soft eyes or some 
distant relative gripping a tree, the night sky getting brighter. I’d hate it. 
Leave me inside the sensuous dark or at least be bold enough to bring me 
a brighter lover to obscure the sky: Andromeda, or maybe Saturn and its 
rings taking a closer seat, the scale model of desire collapsing. 12 degrees
tonight and a ladybug clings to the kitchen light. The stars are clear as hell 
in this crisp air. When I ask what is observable? what I mean is what is still
making its way to me? I’ve been told we create the kinds of relationships 
we want, and of course that’s true but it doesn’t consider the distance 
required to travel. It matters sometimes to be far away. I am standing 
watching the ladybug wondering which prayer was closer to Botticelli--
the one he hid from us, that seems right.

Caitlyn Alario is a queer poet from Southern California. She received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a Ph.D. student and Teaching Fellow at the University of North Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in MORIA, Third Coast, and elsewhere. ​

​SAPPHICS II


warm night in the athens apartment. each night
beer bottles & nail polish on the balcony.
slow wind. each glass container almost empty.
     the square sounds open,
 
full. lo fi from our roommate’s laptop. m says
she likes mythos better & it’s on the list
for tomorrow. all the greek beers taste like stale
     piss on my new tongue.
 
plates in the sink. mismatched glasses. i don’t think
too much about how our nights have been ending.
m coming home from a hookup & scuttling
     into my bed, drunk                     
 
breath & quick kisses. slips in & out the door.
on the metro i try to ask how she feels.
she tells the others i might be lesbian.
     i think she was cruel
 
accidentally. we all have ex boyfriends
back home. sex with mine was good, but he liked to
pin my shoulders to the ground when i thought we
     were playing. i act
 
like i know all the secrets. like humming when
he’s in your mouth. like french fries cure hangovers.
like girls can kiss in dark corners at parties
     & kiss after too. 

Michael Battisto has work that can be found or forthcoming in The Normal School, HAD, Poet Lore, The Shore, MoonPark Review, and elsewhere. He has lived in many places, but now he lives in Oakland. You can find him on Twitter @mbattisto3 or @michaelbattisto.com. ​

My Friends


My friends and I exchanged dead fathers
until our smiles were the same. We drove
through old songs to other states to find
what the midnight there meant. Expecting
our bodies to be bankrupt by thirty
we pawned our arteries and stomachs
for chemical epiphanies. We might fast
for a week to buy tickets to stripped
auditoriums, where the music slowed us
into the present tense. We sold seats
to canceled concerts and smoked our guilt
with the profit. We borrowed each others
clothes and partners and beds and confessed
our shame through relapses, then slept
on the nude floors of stranger’s houses.
We listed our dissonances on the walls
of our ashtray apartments. We snorted
cocaine off stolen exit signs and made sure
no one went. Eric and Chris play-fought
with knives and threatened to let the other
win. We were children humming our
innocence and hammering on ourselves
with fists. We bought cigarettes instead
of food whenever we could and predicted
when each other’s bodies would end.
In our conversations we declared silence
obscene, and left blank pages in our hidden
diaries for our friends to write helpless
commentaries and promises we
almost believed we would keep.

Dear H

​
I scrub flies from the shower,
dark shapes from cheap tile.

I can’t enjoy autumn—any moment you’ll text.
I make playlists to fill the quiet.

I listen to Joni but I only think
of summer, your easy smile.

Do you remember that day
in Iowa City, the light in the trees?

Today I learned you ended your life.
Today I went back to the old house,

stood at the same intersection
where I stood on so many mornings.

At the edge of your life, did you search
the night for meaning, for one last star?

I lie awake. I wonder how we fare
in this project of living.

Self Mythology
 

​I learn and I mourn
for not learning earlier.
 
The mint grew but was not eaten.
A harvest turned to waste.
 
The old brick of this house keeps
the wandering night air cold and inside.
 
I cannot fathom my mother
before she was my mother.
 
What forgiveness is necessary,
for someone doing their best?
 
There is no relief, only the swell
of an inward tide back toward the self.
 
I learn and I mourn.
There is no anger,
 
only truth. Only consequence.
Only: I, gazing at the past
 
of my own body, the shell
of myself melting, meaning I will drip
 
to a future where I am a mother;
am my mother, and all is what she helped create.
 
There is also what we broke.
There is also what we mended.
 
One day, too, my daughter will break
upon the shore, and still
 
she will float back.
I see it endlessly. 

THE WAVE IN MY HEART IS A GREAT GREEN WAVE


You and I know all about
how the rain comes late

like an afterthought, like a
kiss you could have given.

Time is a story full of green
windows closing, mostly forever.

Every morning somebody
else who could have been

saved, saying, what light it
was, that almost found me.

Study the dried-up places
on the dark road to God’s

house, find out how much
longer you should have

waited, where you should
have stood beneath the

window, what it would have
taken – such small wings.

If the person had woken up
one more time, maybe it

would have been the day
they noticed their name –

the watergreen shine of it,
field of lilies falling to light.

WHEN I TELL THE FLOWERS  HELLO, SHE KNOWS
            — After Paige Lewis
 
that i  am talking to directly to Her
 
i’ve grown weary of saying the phrase   you left us
though it was your choice,  of course,  to leave
 
alternatively—   i acknowledge that your decision
was actually    a simple change in residence 
 
that these days, instead of merely one body, 
you call every shade of purple     home
 
sometimes in sunsets,    but more frequently in the flowers
that i find, conveniently scattered amidst my path
 
i am walking to work and there you are      blooming
oh hey, my love   i say to you,  in particular
 
sometimes     i pretend to be annoyed
to be frustrated to see so much of you
 
yes?    i ask,      what do you want this time?
always with a smile in my voice
 
even when you were alive      i remember
how much you loved attention
 
and while this  has become our routine      i am 
often shocked to see you in places where nothing should grow
 
to see you on days    when there is no sun
when i want,   so badly,   to join you 
 
there you are—   
 
saying  Hi      in a voice that is 
somehow, softer than the bellflower petal itself 
 
it stops me in my tracks
 
and with a deep inhale   i realize    this
is the closest I can get to you
 
next    i  hold your home directly in front of my face
so close  that it sometimes brushes   against my nose now &
 
then      in a different realm,
you are standing  just inches from me  and
 
this     is my favorite part--
when the flower flutters gently in the wind
 
i rush to inhale   what must be your breath
saying hello, once more

On Polyamory


When you said it’s like a door
that’s always locked, I said we’ll climb through

every window. When I built a ladder,
when each rung crumbled as I climbed,

when I fell to the ground, when I built
more ladders, when I fell to the ground

again, you met me there, again & again,
every time, in the dying grass, in the rain,

in the rubble, all winter, & it was there,
where we couldn’t stop looking at each other,

& so we didn’t, so we stopped climbing, built a house
we cut the keys to instead of breaking into one

someone else had built, the bricks of it everything
I tried to cling to every time I fell: the perfect

pillow of your cheek on my thigh,
the shirt you leave in my bed

when I won’t see you for a week,
your towel I leave hanging in the bathroom

​like you’ll still be here tomorrow.

​Caroline Stevens is a queer poet from Minneapolis. She is currently a second-year MFA student in poetry at Vanderbilt University, and serves as the editor in chief of the Nashville Review.

Field of Vision

Tell me the story again, the one where
she and I both wanted what we now have:
 
sunny room where the only audible noise
is what comes out of us, our animal song.
 
The way she tends to herself, carefully,
after a shower, steam lifting off skin
 
as she pulls a comb through long wet hair
like a child guarding a snail shell. How
 
the only line between presence and memory 
is the shape delusion’s shadow casts 
 
on the wall. This morning, for example,
I could have sworn I saw her silhouette 
 
behind the curtains at the kitchen table 
with coffee, waiting for me to wake 
 
so she could leave the first mark on my day, 
as easy as the crescent moons left from my nails
 
in the ripening tomatoes. Longing’s colors
stack neatly, horizontally, like an Agnes Martin
 
painting—blues so pale they seem white,
the pencil lines invisible until another step 
 
closes the space between face and canvas.
Let’s go back to Madison, or Duluth, 
 
somewhere the horizon meets the still lake
in the same shade of blue, where the only way 
 
to remember that the two never 
actually meet is to believe it.