Jeff Friedman

We held each other as our bodies turned to smoke and rose above the burning leaves. Hawks plunged through us, carrying bits of us in their beaks. We settled on roofs, clung to nests and nets. We drifted and drifted like cirrus clouds, like long tongues licking the sky, like glittery trails. Below, mounds of

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

This piece is part of our Fall 2019 print issue.

Nothing survived the Annunciation except rocks and the hard shadows of cypresses. Fright in her eyes, she smiles, trapped in the interior of a painting, her hands dirty before she is dragged away in the deathly air. What is beauty if not the roundness of her arms. Or the young Tobias, at war with the

As the moon shadows the jasmine bush and the star-shaped blossoms curl, he utters a cry of surprise and delight, but damns the nocturnal insects swarming the jasmine, stinging and biting. He smells the dark avenues that run through the garden, the dazzling pale white flowers fading in and out. And yet the moment fills

1. Spring is born anew without memory of past lives and the experience of leaves and flowers. A drop of blood spilled on a white carnation petal may appear to signal a trace of Ariel’s random crime, but there are no other clues and no secret police in the flowers. Roots that dig deep into

When my friend calls from the West Coast,
he tells me about his blurred sexuality,

It begins with something small:a virus hitches a rideon a copter or a few germsfling themselves into the eyesof the nurse tending the princewho drank too deeplyfrom the fouled water of the pond;or a flea bites a ratwho scurries into the holdwhere his brothers and sisterscram into the spaces between casksof wine and the barrels

Give up the dragons tattooed on your arms

in blue and red, your proud captions

He’s the god who watches over you,

making sure you get what you deserve,