“I just swam in the Adriatic,” B. sends
a picture of the beach from her waist to her feet
and further out: the blue Adriatic Sea.
I catch the tail end of my radio program.
They have a plan to reintegrate a species of muskrat
native to the island of Guadeloupe.
I enjoy the word Muskrat, especially
when it’s followed by the word Guadeloupe.
The sun is one reason we’re living
and the distance between it and us, another.
This video of an elephant discovering the ocean
is like a description of everything
we spend our lives hoping for
but that’s not everything.
Everything is something else entirely.
Like this portrait of Berenice Abbott
taken by Hank O’Neill (1979)
in front of a false November sky,
you were the most beautiful non-sequitur.
I am flowers, I am animal
(a line I borrow from the deceased
Koko, of the San Francisco Zoo.)
My heart is of uncertain buoyancy.
Sayonara is the kowa-bunga of goodbyes.
A Chinese Lantern, a rogue wave, one Saint Helena olive.
If you die you will be to me unlike any of the dead.
Sayonara, kowa-bunga, goodbye.

Grayson Wolf received an MFA from Hunter College. He was the founding editor of Solar: a Publication of Writing & Conversation. His work can also be found at Fourway Review, Prelude, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.

Lucy Bell is an artist based in Northern California working in painting, illustration, murals, and mixed media. She is curious about religion, rituals and the subversion of both. Bell’s work explores her own personal mythology and how it intertwines with motifs of folk art traditions. Bell graduated in 2020 with a BA in Studio Arts from UC San Diego. Since then her work has been published locally and internationally. Bell’s work has shown in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Livermore.