Rebecca Boyle

NIGHTCHANGE

We’re getting thin to thin out a less generous conclusion of a heart hardened. We’re exposing an exposé: milky faults, chalk bone, lacy anatomy. We’re inspecting our abdomens. We’re thinking on economy. We’re petitioning not to lag in this matter where hearts get smaller. We’re imploring ladyslippers to be more real. We’re telling half-truths in our negligees. We’re concealing our moonmake while wondering if Witch Baby truly loves Shy Cop. We’re fashioning ourselves women in danger. We’re aiming our arms: Bang! We’re covered in star guts. We’re undressing like men in conflict. We’re reassessing the eyebrow situation. We are erring and erring on the side of don’t be an insect. We’re having second thoughts about the marriage of Witch Baby. We’re thinking surgically, blooming precisely. We’re waiting for night to break open, for moonboats to scar the water. We’re tucking our wings into our jackets. We’re parting the gray lake like dessert knives. We’re getting so sure of it. We are getting certain we will find exactly what we came here for.


REBECCA BOYLE is from China, Maine. She graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with an MFA in poetry and now lives in northern Minnesota, where she teaches writing.


Issue Twelve
$15.00

ISSUE TWELVE features poetry by Samuel Amadon, Rennie Ament, Bruce Beasley, Brittany Cavallaro, Lidija Dimkovska, Denise Duhamel, Alexandria Hall, Rebecca Hazelton, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Kim Hyesoon, Gilad Jaffe, Michael Klein, Peter LaBerge, Nick Lantz, Eugenia Leigh, Robert Wood Lynn, Lisa Olstein, Eric Pankey, Tomaž Šalamun, Elizabeth Scanlon, Nathan Spoon, Sampson Starkweather, Peter Streckfus, Rodrigo Toscano, Stella Wong, and Felicia Zamora; fiction by Marie-Helene Bertino, Emily Neuberger, and Ed Taylor; nonfiction by Kate Colby, Krystal Languell, Kathryn Nuernberger, and J. M. Tyree; a film essay by Zack Finch; and Prageeta Sharma in conversation with Michael Dumanis.