Size / / /

Tonight we drive to the city—in our absence, please negotiate a final settlement with the mole:
we will concede all territory from the driveway to the garage—but no more—and trust
this meets with his satisfaction. We have coped with his tunneling, despite the injunction;
endured his refusal to schedule daytime meetings; and so we rose, at midnight with flashlights,
for conferences in which he hid behind a bush, spoke through his intermediaries—
but I understand the mole must live and work in isolation, and cannot cease his digging,
for his claws are godly spades, and dirt his pleasing material. He knows dirt contains nutrients,
i.e., organic matter, and should not be confused with filth, and he perceives that dirt,
even mixed with broken teeth or spit or tears, remains malleable, and in dirt he can freely breathe,
re-oxygenate his air—in dirt the Holy Spirit blows through him, and behind him as he digs,
he creates mounds, and many are the mounds he has built for the glory of his God.
The mole, I know, is grateful for the velvety fur in which he slides through his tunnel,
for he is an earthworks artist who works in the ancient style and tradition of his clan,
and is vain only in the matter of his tail; he will twist his neck backward to admire it.
He is furious in his concentration, for his craft, he knows, is essential for the Earth to revolve
around the Sun, and when he works in one-pointed Samadhi, he neither eats nor sleeps.




Lisa Bellamy teaches at The Writers Studio. Her chapbook, Nectar, won the Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Tri-QuarterlyThe Sun, New Ohio Review, Calyx, and PANK, among other publications. She won the Fugue Poetry Prize and received honorable mention in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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