Poetry

My mother’s sadness—diaphanous, which, to me, was like the rolled prayer shawl held overhead, one’s toe breaking the shallows, stepping where cardinal fire bloomed dark on the whetstones. Give heed to the shots of fire crackling behind her; hope the gears don’t slick in the river’s current. Darius Atefat-Peckham is...

Our ghost bones hollow in the stringed light; her fears, undead and slow in the morning after the morning she told me she felt burnt. From up here, every glint a penny, smoke pouring as we’re told it does, pulled to go anywhere but here, the old Western impulse. Like...

i. when he thinks you cold so you sit in the kitchen, matches in hand, trying to decide when enough will be enough. the scorches on the tile, your mother walking in, and you, swallowing whole. ii. when he climbs you, when he sifts your gold, leaves the dust in...

The barn behind our house was nailed shut, scheduled for demolition. Stay away, my father said, strange people lived there. We found a side door, pried it open, walked into a world of dust and forgotten lives. We built a bee catcher once. They crawled in and were trapped. The...