Our Fall 2015 issue features three outstanding poems by Anna Meister, from her series titled Nothing Granted. We’ve posted one of these poems below, and if you’d like to read the rest, you can purchase the issue in print for $6 or as a good old-fashioned PDF for $3.

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REMEMBER WHEN I’D ALLOW HER TO TALK ABOUT PUSSY.
Expected flush, the natural heat of power. She runs
over my feelings with great sweetness, eyes
intent on me. She used to say You can be
whoever you want, but is tired of me now
that I look at her more. I show up & leave
as myself. Continue past the moment, say I am
thirsty. Pick a million tiny pieces up. We like loss
to ground us, learn to love people quietly.

Outside, flowers like lemons & not
the other way around. I remember her
mouth never closing. When I speak to the sun,
I’m dressed before we hang up. I speak over the light
while she wails & knocks. I exhale
loss, a pretty girl sleeping. If my love expires,
I’ll renew it for the weekend. If I fucked her less I would
be aggressively lonely. Outside, each flower makes
a face. Each looks, she says, the same.

Stopping for gas late, an angel kissed me.
I like how summer bent. We like loss to come,
like to feel it quiet. What a luxury to be without
hands. Whatever I got is enough
to drive back. The silver, long unraveled
eye, the motherfucker rinsing
another fork. We’re clean as the chicken,
but not that inspiring, just
bones in the water when they simmer.

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ANNA MEISTER is an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University, where she serves as a Goldwater Writing Fellow. A Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net nominee, her poems are forthcoming in Powder Keg, Whiskey Island, Barrelhouse, The Mackinac, & elsewhere. Anna is a 2015 Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Fellow. She lives & works in Brooklyn.