The Blog

Harriet Levin Millan’s HOW FAST CAN YOU RUN

Nicole Banas

In 2000, the U.S. government granted political asylum to almost 4,000 unaccompanied minors from South Sudan. These so-called “lost boys” had survived deadly fighting between the Sudanese government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army during the country’s second civil war. Many had walked thousands of miles, seeking shelter in Ethiopia before being expelled back to Sudan or to refugee camps in Kenya. Some of these children saw their families killed in government-led attacks on their villages. They fled wild animals and survived days without ample food or water. Resettlement in the U.S. provided Sudanese refugees access to education, employment and valuable resources. It could not, however, ease the gravity of their loss.

I Don’t Blame You for Attempting Escape

Parke Haskell

I too did not ask for this skin.

But the land made, like a bug trapped
beneath a glass, your breathless

boundary. Inside, insidious
fish dart and glitter,

greedy appetite of the dumb—

these envelopes of bodies
bursting.

You deserve better
than to disappear

into a vast and teeming
hunger.

We know our world.

Parke Haskelllives in LA, where she directs plays and writes poems.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop

Our Favorite Actress

Michael Judge

We are, in a public setting, comforted
by the lack of expectations

until something awful happens,
an accident, someone choking

on a peach pit, for example.
Or worse, something intentional

but entirely unexpected, inappropriate,
the indiscriminate shooting of passengers

on a train, for example. We get sleepy
in public. We fall asleep in the audience,

lulled by the comfort of coughs,
laughter, the crowd breathing in and out.

It all feels so civilized until
our favorite character, played

by our favorite actress, falls
face-first into the orchestra pit.

The show continues with no understudy.
Death grants us a private audience.

Diagnosis

William Brewer

I stepped out of the doctor’s office and felt confused.
Or not confused so much as stunned,
and not because she said I was heading straight for death,
which I was already well aware of, and which she knew I knew,
making her telling me anyways irksome, like getting served a drink
that looks like your drink but is the wrong drink, you’re nearly certain of it,
but not completely, so you keep drinking it, knowing it isn’t yours,
each sip further confirming this fact, and this is what you get
for not trusting your instincts, you think, you deserve
to drink this drink that is not what you wanted,
not what you would ever want,
but it’s her job, I guess.

Team Keep Sleep

Lauren Haldeman

This is my first draft and I join team ‘Keep Sleep.’
My number is behind me on my uniform.
On occasion I feel the iron-on plastic’s curve

and it feels like an eight. I might be an eight.
Our jerseys are off-white; our symbol is a pile
of fingernail clippings, slightly turned

to the left. A lawsuit requires this.
If shown from above, the pile too closely
resembles the symbol for ‘breath.’

Our team colors are tooth white & brain-
white and diamond. Our cheer goes
like gin down our followers’ throats.

Tomorrow, we play the team ‘Recall of Elephants’
who supposedly compete with their eyes fully closed.
On their uniforms they’ve scribbled

the text of team movements in layers of grey pencil
on light parchment gear. It is said
they remember. It is said if shucked open

Harriet Levin Millan’s HOW FAST CAN YOU RUN

I Don’t Blame You for Attempting Escape

Our Favorite Actress

Diagnosis

Team Keep Sleep

Pages

Find Us