I want to take different/sounds inside me, in shape/and color I could never believe in/out in the open, elsewhere

By Zach Mueller

Issue 33 • Spring 2016 • Poetry

I’m trying too hard to be quiet & lonely,

sincerely astonished by the economy

of the animal families inside me. Divulging

the secret of beginning somehow in a circular

logic. Endless implicated in each sky

as though it were undone over & over again.

I found my voice in a flowerbed by way

of its own dead flowers—eternal

& dirty, like us. Heaven replacing moments

where I would normally take a breath

with an understanding that I, too, am not

endless. I’m quietly trying to untie myself

alone in the woods from being alone

forever. Like everything, I know memory

alone begs for a life of moments I can’t

explain. Someday, trees I haven’t seen

will come to terms with me. When & where

like ice water glowing deep down

from some fish lingering so long

& imperfect it carries a candle in it’s belly.

Invisibly, walking by water without intention,

the wet skin of things gone-by mapped

over mine in a newborn ocean. Light

of something I have not been.

Zach Mueller

Zach Mueller is a poet from South Carolina currently working on a PhD at the University of Nebraska. He was the 2012 Hub City Writer-in-Residence, has an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina, likes pictures, brief questions, and signs high scores as GFK, a tribute to his favorite member of the Wu Tang Clan. His poems have been in Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Hobart, Timber, and Heavy Feather Review.

Lawrence Eby

Lawrence Eby is the author of two books of poetry, Flight of August, winner of the 2014 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and Machinist in the Snow, ELJ Publications 2015. His work can be found in Forklift, Passages North, Fourteen Hills, Superstition Review, and others. He is the editor in chief of Orange Monkey Publishing, a poetry press in California. This is his first time publishing photos.