Issue 1.2
Fall 2021
Carrie Nassif
Reflection
This poem came from a random word generator search yielding the word “seam,” and I imagined this internal world of minerals and scars and mending.
we thought of ourselves as a lustrous gold
​
a malleable solid steeped within fleeting veins
that which we sought that what was got
by this mining our own pluck our own grit
we unearthed it with worn shovels these scars
and stains like badges like trinkets like coins
even so something burrows a soft
a quieting thing fettered and shut tightly
against its own twin self some part of us
putty-bare and edible skinned and spiraled
peelings all pinched and clamped shut
against the commotion this city of meat
we live in the ranting the rotting the baggage
within as if we could by jaws
by jowl by cheek by mouth if we could
sever could chew could only ever cleave
could hack could slice ourselves from it
in increments or swerves or in swift in grasping
chops all this riving this trying to split
to pry apart what must only needs
kindness to open
Carrie Nassif is a queer poet, photographer, parent and psychologist with a private practice in the rural Midwest. She lives happily with her partner, their 16 year-old future marine biologist, a very spoiled bearded dragon, an aging but sassy orange cat, and an aggressively friendly 65 pound lap dog. Recent work can be found in the Gravity of The Thing, Tupelo Quarterly, and Pomona Valley Review, featured in AROHO's Waves series, and in several anthologies.
Carrie's Book Recommendations
I can't say enough about Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. I stumbled upon it in an airport in 2011 and reread it almost every other year. It's an insightful juxtaposition of patterns in our collective histories.