MICRO

Mad

By MARTA BALCEWICZ | 25 APR 2018

By Viviane Sassen — rape flowers, Courtesy of Wilf

1.
We are one tremendous
field of undulating
flowers

waiting till it happens

the chase and rhythm so wild
it melts bone

I am told

by everyone who’s a mother
especially the new ones.

2.
When I visit Sara
her hair’s undone
for once

in fact
anything previously
strapped or hinged
has let go

I think of the flower
now-found, no longer
waiting;

it’s a picture of rest
and lodging,
a shape seeking fitting
fitted.

3.
When I bring up
her mother
she snaps the spoon
in half.

Her mother has
touched the baby

her mother has
touched the baby.

Marta Balcewicz's stories, poems, and essays appear in Catapult, Vol.1 Brooklyn, Boulevard, Pithead Chapel, AGNI Online, Tiny Crimes (Black Balloon Press, 2018), and elsewhere. She lives in Toronto.

MICRO

Father

By JEANETTE LE QUICK

There's been a mistake, I said. That's not my father.

MICRO

The Rites of a Light Heart

By GIZELLE FLETCHER

Their husbands’ rigid fists became hands glib with plant soil, and instead of bruises down their thighs, they saw hickies planted like booby-traps along their collarbones.

ESSAY

A Brief History of Touch

By ALYSSA SONGSIRIDEJ

How we know our bodies comes from the way we are handled, from the way your parents held you to the press of sexual partners. We become ourselves through the experience of skin against other skin.