I made all your old mistakes new again. I took turns
blind and fast. My palms tasted gravel and then I tasted
gravel, licking the blood from them standing up. I fell
in love with every woman in the bike lane. I had no idea
how to make anything from that. My knees took
to their impressions of the man in the moon, in color
this time. Nancy looked at them and saw a rabbit. I saw
a low howl. I stayed up late enough to gather the good
ideas that bloom along the road. Then I fell again
asleep before writing any down. You said the problem
with New York is there are always people trying on
fucking up for the first time. I forgot to avoid them,
like I forgot to avoid people proud of their own cruelty.
I wandered out of love like stores without paying. I went
walking leisurely and phoneless exactly at meeting time.
I hate that I know who I will sit by at your funeral.

Robert Wood Lynn is a poet from Virginia. His debut collection Mothman Apologia (2022 Yale University Press) was selected by Rae Armantrout for the 2021 Yale Series of Younger Poets. His chapbook How to Maintain Eye Contact is forthcoming from Button Poetry in 2023. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, The Yale Review and other publications.

Michelle Saffran, a photographer, educator and maker of books, lives in rural Vermont. She earned a MFA from Lesley University of Art and Design (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and holds a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and a BA from Oakland University (Rochester, Michigan). A consistent thread running through all of Saffran's work is a visual narrative that hints at the sociological and psychological insight into the ways autobiographical history, memory and experience affect identity. Saffran is the recipient of the Artist Creation Grant and Artist Development Grants from the Vermont Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts and a Vermont Community Foundation Grant. Her work is included in private and public collections across the United States, Mexico and Australia. Born in Detroit, Michigan Saffran's identity is strongly tied to her early developmental years as a blue collared daughter of the auto industry.