soundtrack: fall in love (remix), slum village / because it just might, / i dance like my life depends on it.

Mixed media artist Ellen Wiener on the featured art for issue 16.

I said goodbye to my father for the first and last time, after his death, in the quietest place in the United States.

He owns seven New Balance shoes, all rights / that have lost in this house their one-time partners.

Here, lens flare recalls the burn holes in her nightgown.

The problem with draining the world from your head / is what rushes in to take its place.

A little rasp in its throat whittled the exhaling air. The auk laid down at last / and stayed there, its breath / so quiet I didn’t know when / it gave way to a greater quiet.

I would like to tell you about my mother’s erratic heart, or share what I know of Las Patronas

so i keep renewing her favorite book / on our shared library card.

What are we as humans surrounded by — do we choose to surround ourselves with — and how do we situate ourselves within language?

A man I didn’t love / died today—a growth / in his colon’s fragile spiral.

They make border out of moving body / and announce that it is dying / and that Mexico owes the U.S. water / but not from our wet backs.

I am dirt, bruised by lake light. white rain, mauve / clouds, the sky’s breath leaking.

The frangipani’s last falling flower makes its way to a graveyard on the passing-by shroud?

Started telling my grandmother / I love her. Loudly, daily, over video calls with / my mother, my mother holding / the phone.