"Shaddai" by Marisol Brady
Neighbors by Phillip Watts Brown
My husband and I are houses.
Neighbors when we lie down
at night, pillows like snow-filled yards.
Even if we touch walls, kiss
one windowsill to another, still
there is glass and brick between us.
I study the architecture of his face
as he dreams. Blinds drawn,
memories on like evening news.
Childhood scenes? Today replayed?
I can’t tell from here.
This is how we live in marriage.
Wandering alone the blue dawn
I lock and unlock doors,
some I’ve never opened to anyone,
closets cluttered with darkness.
What are you thinking about?
he asks, now awake. I glance up
from my pile of loose thoughts,
fold a few away before I answer,
the way people straighten a room
before they’ll let someone in.
Neighbors when we lie down
at night, pillows like snow-filled yards.
Even if we touch walls, kiss
one windowsill to another, still
there is glass and brick between us.
I study the architecture of his face
as he dreams. Blinds drawn,
memories on like evening news.
Childhood scenes? Today replayed?
I can’t tell from here.
This is how we live in marriage.
Wandering alone the blue dawn
I lock and unlock doors,
some I’ve never opened to anyone,
closets cluttered with darkness.
What are you thinking about?
he asks, now awake. I glance up
from my pile of loose thoughts,
fold a few away before I answer,
the way people straighten a room
before they’ll let someone in.
Phillip Watts Brown received his MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including The Common, Ruminate, Spillway, Tahoma Literary Review, Longleaf Review, and others. He lives with his husband in northern Utah and works at an art museum.
Marisol Brady is a self-taught photographer whose work examines the ephemerality of capitalist excess, nostalgic distortion, times we’ve had, times we’ve been told we had, and the time we have left. They cast an optimistic, neon-lensed glance at the decay precipitated by the hyper-escalating economic inequality and planetary destruction of the past four decades that, with some squinting, recognizes its transformative potential. Originally hailing from Long Island’s south shore, Marisol lives in Brooklyn.
