After Jamie L. Smith

It wasn’t our donut—your roommate’s
brother, Hunter, bought it downtown

that family-visit weekend: they skied
and did the Getty, did Disneyland

and Venice Beach, and his mother paid
one hundred dollars for that donut.

A yeast donut, chocolate glazed,
with a layer of gold foil—real gold—

atop the chocolate. As for gold
there is only so much—enough

to cover a tennis court at a depth
of ten meters. Like everything pure

gold is debris: shop-floor scraps
from the forging of a neutron star,

boiling at earth’s core until dredged
up again by asteroids. Testament

to both making and wounding: look
how it shines. We love it

for being the color of the sun, and
for its frailty. But Hunter didn’t

like it. He ate two bites and brought
it home, where we found it

on a saucer in the fridge, forlorn
the way that having is forlorn

when want has gone. I thought of
that donut driving through Las Vegas,

leaving you for the last time,
not of what we will do to be loved

but of what we will do to be loved
in a way we recognize, or a way

we are sure our roommates and their
friends will recognize. Some

prove it with peril, some with
waste, but for some of us

damage has always been
the proof with most authority.

Corley Miller is a student in the University of Utah's Creative Writing PhD program. His work has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Full Stop, The LA Review of Books, The Guardian, and n+1, among others.

Sara Hubbs is an artist based in Tucson, AZ that primarily works in sculpture, drawing, and blown glass. She completed a BFA in Painting at Arizona State University and an MFA in Visual Art at The George Washington University where she received the Morris Louis Fellowship. Hubbs has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and at The Cooper Union. Her work has been included in group shows at The Tucson Museum of Art, the Ex-Teresa Arte Cultural in Mexico City, Collarworks in Troy, NY, and Carnation Contemporary in Portland, OR. In 2019, Hubbs received an R&D Grant from The Arizona Commission on the Arts. In 2023, Everybody, from Tucson, AZ presented a solo booth of her work at NADA New York. Her work was included in New Glass Review 42 from the Corning Museum of Glass.