by katie clark
it’s september in the way we know it
(summer sticks to your upper lip salt-slick and shining)
and you are helping me carry boxes
(we no longer share a hallway or a house or a name, even)
this is not new
(i still remember the day you carried me home instead of dad, skinned knees, the unbelievable red of it, a how did something in me make that color wonder)
but it is wonderful
(you set me on the counter and took down a bowl)
and i know inevitably
(magic trick: those little white bowls. i don’t remember what our cabinets looked like closed)
this too will pass by us
(you made us sugared strawberries and they looked like my knees but it wasn’t sugar it was splenda and it had been long enough that this wasn’t a loss)
become once/then
(your large hands gentler dripping pink syrup as we ate them with our fingers)
and i’m sorry for always trying to
hold so much of this
(until all that was left was the blue flower on the bottom and a pool of sugarwater)
as if i can keep some even if most goes
(but i can’t recall what came after that or what color the kitchen walls were)
i’ve just been seeing it slipping since we
stopped being children together
(i didn’t know then that it was something i would wish i’d kept)
first you and then me
(hid somewhere in the yard out back)
and now us, this
(to be found again)
and i just want to remember
Katie Clark is a queer poet on the verge of the twenties who belongs to a lot of places: Jacksonville, parts of Georgia, the pioneer valley. Katie is figuring it out. Likes planting things and being alive. Her poems have been in several kind publications including Vagabond City and Spy Kids Review, with forthcoming work in Voicemail Poems and Words Dance.
Art: “Orbit” by issue 6 featured artist, Matthew Chapman
Working from relationships observed in his day-to-day, Matt finds his work in an interaction between two people, the space between the meeting of nature and architecture, or the spill of light on the ground. Using painting and drawing as a way to speak to the these relationships, a language of geometric abstraction and considered mark making is developed.
Chapman lives and works in Lancaster PA, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (MFA) as well as Lancaster’s Pennsylvania College of Art & Design (BFA). He has exhibited at: The Walter and Leonore Annenberg Gallery, Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building at PAFA, Philadelphia PA. Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia PA. Rothus Halle, Solothurn, Switzerland. The Ware Center for Visual and Performing Arts at Millersville University, Lancaster PA. Sunshine Art + Design, Lancaster PA. City Hall Permanent Collection, Lancaster PA.
Instagram: Mattallynchapman
Facebook: Matt Allyn Chapman
Website: www.mattallynchapman.com