Darin Ciccotelli
SOON
Castles. Desiccated forest the color of hatbands.
The fantasy balked from swollen
cornflakes and got up suddenly. Waxy flags
popped in light.
Bright wainscoting sheathed the country walls.
The donuts greased a bakery box,
cretinous and itching for brains.
A wish became pragmatic scorn
explaining the election as one thing.
Jealous policemen wandered
and with a Dasani bottle clubbed air.
Autumn sloshed its canned peaches.
Scared sounds twinkled assertiveness
with desperation.
DARIN CICCOTELLI is a 2017 NEA Fellow. His poems appear Antioch Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Subtropics. He teaches at Soka University of America.
ISSUE THIRTEEN features poetry by Luci Arbus-Scandiffio, Rick Barot, Stephanie Burt, Lauren Camp, Laura Cronk, William Virgil Davis, Chelsea Dingman, Erica Ehrenberg, Robert Fernandez, Gabriel Fried, Tracy Fuad, David Gorin, Jennifer Hasegawa, Stefania Heim, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Ish Klein, Wayne Koestenbaum, Christopher Kondrich, Keetje Kuipers, Anna Leahy, Alessandra Lynch, Alicia Mountain, Allan Peterson, Iain Haley Pollock, Adrienne Raphel, Emily Rosko, Lauren Shapiro, Adrienne Su, Cole Swensen, Tom Thompson, Anne Waldman, G.C. Waldrep, and Stella Wong; fiction by Rachel Lyon and Benjamin Niespodziany; nonfiction by Angela Ball and Joanna Luloff; a film essay by Gustavo Pérez Firmat; and Anne Waldman in conversation with Sandra Simonds.