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Post Canvas #11 by David Goodrum
**CW: references to suicide

Nostos by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer

Like kisses, rain on the windshield. Five minutes
into our drive, the back right tire went flat in a burst

of air. When confronted with my own inadequacy,
I have turned away from it: I couldn’t help change the tire,

and so the man bent over in the tall August grass on I-10 East
and explained it to me, and I stood there. When confronted

with the emerald body of the dragonfly dipping low
in the grass to find its breakfast, I chose to ignore it, all the while

wondering if dragonflies could bite you. Yes—
something had bitten me on the wrist last night, where the man’s mouth

had closed over me in rapture. The day before, we awoke
to raw sewage creeping up the pipes like a thief. It was raining then,

too. Hurricane season, he told me. He took me into the garden, nodded
to the gecko on the side of the fence, and together, we watched the sky

come down in gray sheets. Once inside again, his skin flushed
as we moved tables and backpacks and piles of clothes onto whatever

counter space was available to us. We made pancakes
in his landlady’s house. I crumbled butter into flour for what felt like hours.

Measured salt, tasted sugar. He touched me from behind, hands
turning in the white apron lashed about my hips. I washed dishes

and thought, yes, this could be my life. He drank my coffee. I wiped
the dots of dark liquid from the corner of his mouth, and we talked

about the deaths that made us capable of grief, and what
they used: the guns neither of us could ever own, the hypothetical light exiting

the apertures of our bodies. How easy to imagine a hole like that
splitting the forehead’s monotony. How easy to think, yes, that too

could have been my life.


Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer’s work has previously been published or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Crazyhorse, Poet Lore, Beloit Poetry Journal, and others. The recipient of a 2022 Pushcart Prize, they have won awards from the Ledbury Poetry Festival and Bryn Mawr College. They attend Syracuse University’s MFA program.

David Goodrum (Corvallis, Oregon) has had photography published in various art/literature journals and juried into many art festivals. He hopes to create a visual field that transports you away from daily events and into a place that delights in an intimate view of the world. See additional work at www.davidgoodrum.com.
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