ISSUE 1
Anthony Borruso
An Eye to the Keyhole
We have made it far as a species. Yes, some teens are tasting Tide pods. And sure, Ayn Rand deigned to collect social security, but I don’t blame her for shuttling to work each day on our collective asphalt just like I don’t blame myself for being so loose—my promiscuity merely a means of accumulating data: each orgasm, each thrust performed in indifference to chart seismic eroticism on an XY plot. My little window of experience like a lantern brightening the krill-swelled belly of a whale. I, too, have been accused of hypocrisy, of wielding love like a lance and lacking objectivity. They tell me not to breathe the commodified air. They urge me to check out of Squaresville and ride my motorbike right into the sky. If only I were a belt buckle, or a fishing hook, or Saturn’s icy clasp, I might be able to hold something up or close something off. Shrug on, Atlas, I know these words aren’t mine, but you can still follow their crumb trail into the witch’s oven. You can enjoy this poem like contraception with always a millimeter between writer and reader. And don’t the aliens have telescopes? I wonder if they pity the price we pay for insulin. Or are they just voyeurs, laundering the thirst that throbs in their own latex hearts?
​
Yogiisms
You’d be surprised how often
the seemingly silly stumble
upon pith. How a slip
of the tongue can leave you
copying lamps by poem light
or gracing the party with your
pheasants. No one need know
the party is in the basement
and meant to celebrate the crumb-
legged legacies we manage
to pull from our bedheads. He said,
if there’s a fork in the road, take it.
So here I am, hungry and ready
to shovel in fuel like the coal-stained
men who wield their brawn
at the back of the train, whispering
bawdy jokes to one another, beckoning
the fat lady sing their shift to
a close so they can contemplate—
the ballgame, crickets, quiet—
anything, just anything.
​
Tilda Swinton
it is your body I see powdered in
sleep lithe and long and almost
saintly in its stillness in this glass
box in Serpentine Gallery an
exhibition an object un-object-
ifiable I follow the thin bridge
of your nose down to indifferent
lips and a self-protective crook
of the arm above your mom-jeaned
hips can we talk about Kevin
devil-spawn and beige awnings life
with its steady whimpering of wonder
remember when you beamed down
androgynous mystic thieving glances
all Ziggy Stardust foreign lust and spooling loose
from the borders of yourself remember
when they Woolfed you from noble-
man to wayward wench as they tried
to fence a frame around your arthouse
body your angelic ravishments most
surely shorn from sky that’s why
I’m struck by your skewed sense
the way you twist your arms and contort
all grace from your neck make me vivid
as dust tangled in spotlight tune me
so a song gleams from the eyes that trespass
over my flesh teach me to collaborate
with lingering spirits heron-like
white in an unruly river
​
​
​
Ode to Bad Movies
One shouldn’t laugh too hard or else suffer
a pang of guilt. They tried.
The make-up artist applied
her limited palette with grace;
there was a script, a set, a face
worn weary in the final scene—
It’s hard to know when you’re crafting a clunker.
Blockbusters flop—
Ben and J-lo drop Gigli.
Think John Wayne in Fu Manchu
as Genghis Khan. Think Kevin Costner
on post-apocalyptic Jet Ski
or high-heeled Halle Barrie
licking leather paws. We can’t
all be Kubricks, Coppolas, so at least
make your misfires ambitious. Dress
winter as summer snow, go
Tommy Wiseau, or full-on Ed Wood
hanging a hubcap from a fishing line
as a low-def flying saucer. Woeful
is hard work. Sometimes the kino eye
has a sty, but where is your heart
letting lines lie on the cutting room floor?
​
Against Solipsism
I always wanted to be alone,
a dark dot on a white page.
Noiseless, sexless, I kept
kisses on the threshold
of my lips. I was a birch branch
teetering in wind. Then
winter came to crust
the streets. Trees slouched.
The sun turned peach.
Slate faced strangers
passed me, smiling, frowning,
wearing whatever expression
I imposed on them.
Like a dusting of snow
swallowed by a blizzard,
that’s the taste
of realization: all this white
connects us. Silence
clings to the world:
a boy lying on a field
of dried husks,
the hound dripping rabbit’s blood
in the spruce’s understory,
one cloud smeared
on an unspeakable sky.
​
​
​
​
Anthony Borruso is pursuing his Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Florida State University where he is a Poetry Editor for Southeast Review and co-host of the Jerome Stern Reading Series. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and was selected as a finalist for Beloit Poetry Journal's Adrienne Rich Award by Natasha Trethewey. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, Spillway, The Journal, THRUSH, Gulf Coast, CutBank, Frontier, and elsewhere.