by Benjamin Faro
Image: “RubyLozenge2” by Jean Wolff
Despite our desire
to spot our desires,
I'll get seasick
enough to forget
my name, heave
like couples
therapy, where fear
and the future make
love uninterrupted
(how do they do it?),
whale-like, big
bellied and elegant,
playing the stickiest baleen
harp of all
time. Listen,
as far as I know,
nobody has
tagged my fear
and mapped
its breeding grounds.
They have not
graphed the agro
-chemicals accumulating
in my fear. They have
not confirmed sterility.
See, if I were tossed
from the ship
and found the limp
hide of my fear
in the open sea, yes,
I would cling to it,
feel its skin
peel back
fold after fold
until I was ill, looking—
for the future,
then, would not
calve, my dead
fear a matter
only of this
barnacle or that.
Benjamin Faro (Ben, he/him) is the editor of Equatorial Literary Magazine. His work appears or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, The Florida Review, Grist, The Journal, Meridian, Nimrod International Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry and holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Queens University of Charlotte.
Jean Wolff has had group and solo exhibits in various galleries in New York City and internationally. In addition, she has published 178 works in 124 issues of 64 magazines. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Jean studied fine arts at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, receiving a BFA in studio arts. She then attended Hunter College, CUNY in New York, graduating with an MFA in painting and printmaking. She is now part of the artistic community of Westbeth in Manhattan.
For a complete exhibition list and bibliography, please visit her artist website: www.jeanwolff.com.
Instagram: @jean_wolff_art