Issue 7, Winter/Spring 2009

[Nightly, I knife into my mattress.], by S. Jason Fraley

Nightly, I knife into my mattress.  Sometimes springs, sometimes miniature gnomes with coiled skeletons.  They don’t try to escape.  They smile, continue to support a weight that is not their own.

Painkillers override my senses.  Roots proclaim Earth’s dead nerves, that it will not regain its original fallopian shape. 

Crust is the white snow of crushed styrofoam.  I dare you to kneel and learn anything—by prayer or osmosis.