Something pricked me. Out of the dark, your face moved
towards his, lit by firelight. Nothing happened.
Backyard, where you beckoned him. Just a gesture
lighting the edges,

making faintly visible outlines like an
afterimage, negative, all the space un-
covered by his need for me. Left an imprint.
Jealousy nursed it.

Winter: I’ve imagined it. Swooning, were you, 
in my absence? Laughing and drawing nearer?
Meanwhile, you grew larger to me, a problem:
canker I wanted.

Little pang of pressing it. Press again and—
endless is the pleasure of proving love is
lacking—gulled, I saw myself. Longing then was
augmented, fuller.

Damp and bitter everything. Road salt. Circled
back and squeezed the rind. Wanting him, I 
wanted you dissolved in me. Hunger rendered
faithfully, waxing.

Published January 16, 2022

Alexandria Hall's debut poetry collection Field Music (Ecco, 2020) was selected by Rosanna Warren as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She holds an MFA from NYU and is currently pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. She also makes music and is a founding editor of Tele-. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the LARB Quarterly Journal, The Yale Review, DIAGRAM, and BOAAT, among others.

Mary Shah uses oil paint and watercolor to weave visceral memory-scapes evoking atmospheres both imagined and concrete. Her paintings focus on light, space and time, with a specific interest in how one's consciousness attaches and identifies itself within those combined contexts. She was born in Glen Cove, New York in 1984. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2007. She was director of Lennon, Weinberg, Inc. from 2008-10, 2013-19. Her work has been presented in group and solo exhibitions since 2004, and is in private collections across the United States. She was selected by Michael Rose as one of the artists to follow in 2021 and included in the eponymous online exhibition. She is represented by Rick Wester Fine Art in New York and has been showing with him since 2015.