" ... a man can only be a man except in those rare cases when he is more ... " - David Tomaloff, LOUP GAROU I-III {a suite}
#12 by keith higginbotham
I am trying to be more. More inspired. More woman. I've been wanting to become a little bit Russian. Something sinister, dark and scarlet. How to become things that you are not is like trying to become the sky at night. Stars are stretching themselves and burning out, but pretending not to burn out. Sometimes I feel threaded into the universe, and other times like a loose string. I beg the gods to burn me off.
My voice falls from space and dissolves into the voices of other people — people that are poets, or poor — and I demit everything I ever thought of myself or my shape in life, and I just become things that I am not, but at the same time, things that were always inside of me.
(Other things I beg for: dig me a grave, trash in my veins, a heartbreak in a dream.)
Claudia, August 2011
Note: This issue's artwork was submitted in collaboration with David Tomaloff's poem, also featured in this issue.