GASTROPODA

‘Because the world is so astonishing, the snails — to take just one of the many possible examples — are so short, and it is all too great...

Igneous: The way I began to love you was igneous, something molten bubbling over the cracks, into the air of me. I held it in my palms...

Fountains—found-tains—found, fond, An ain is what? Plain, pain, air lodged in your nose. Breath like sun-bleached spring, winter hangs on...

Your wings murmur hymns that the dead return to life, your body’s gleaming bean robbing the rabbit’s eye. Your feet’s rancid needles rub...

In dark December, stiff January, it’s always a brisk walk to the car to start and turn the heat on, or the weekend grocery trips, the...

MURMURATION the firmament welcomes flight in dim light of fading day, when starlings return to roost staccato chirps give way to...

the marine biologist is an expert fish assassin— icthyocide is an artform and he has learned from the masters. none but the rarest, most...

after Danusha Laméris The game dupes us all at first. We play hard, scars fading faster than their stories, time’s twirl only a number. I...

my ungrateful tongue, its surface area taste insults the decadence of your golden mango flesh to your richness, heaping mounds of bazaar...

After Hanif Abdurraqib An endless room with endless windows / and the view outside is just better out of some windows than others / at...

I would be a plant in your garden and be happy for a short life, hearing nothing but your thoughtless song, watching you feel the sun...

after Jack Gilbert* We come home every morning after a walk, small marks of sweat in the underarms of our t-shirts; our lips entering the...

I want to push our cities together like tectonic plates. under a fig tree in Greenpoint the light is looking strangled and my dress in...

As the moon lifts her swollen self into the dulling sky, some ancient stirring pulls me to the wilderness, where, like an augur, I root...

My mother knows a trick that turns grief to sugar and she hides it all in her ageing spine. Last winter, a sadness drenched my father-...

Why do the geese cross the road to the clinic? To get to the other side where the grass is taller and full of feed. They have no idea how...

The fallen leaves scatter like chickens. A squadron of ducks floats on the river, silently paddling upstream, hunting among the rocks and...

Less make-believe and more, belief-making - is the sea’s love for me. Under a commotion of jealous stars, it rushes around me emptying...

Emma Burger is a writer, healthcare professional, and end-of-life doula. She splits her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan and New York...

The restaurant is called La Petite Escargot. When the chef’s daughter starts learning French, she tells him the name is wrong. “Escargot”...