by Jake Phillips
Broken duplex for breaking & re-entry
a knuckle braced into diamond / translated / excised into
the solar plexus. this is breaking / what it feels like—
solar systems collapsing / your lungs / atmosphere /
venus crushing mars / burn of meteor / a universe of dust
in veins / ever-expanding. air-locked cabin/ an airless everything
dust of all histories gritting against your window.
dressed in leaving, I say / I need some time / &
widow myself for the day / shatter under doorframe.
we do not know the boundaries / hard to chart
diaphragm failures / & again this ever-expanding
diagram of routes between us / our starry
expanse. there is so much love in our universe. /
espouse— as in the way I have taken / breathed /
you in / ever-expanding / translated your breathless
ruin / into my own xenoarchaelogy, traced rivers
& borealis blues / topographical from your skin /
bore into my own geography. apart, I miss your
skin / the soft of you / soft, even your knuckles
scanning the skies / willing us back / you, a compass
nickel & brass brushed / pointing home / space-sailer.
Author Jake Phillips is a queer poet based in Rhode Island. He was named a finalist for the Miami Book Festival’s Emerging Writer Fellowship in Poetry. You can find his poetry published or forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, Nimrod International, The Penn Review, HAD, & Change, and elsewhere.
Artist Rachel Coyne is a writer and painter from Lindstrom MN. Her books include Whiskey Heart, The Patron Saint of Lost Comfort Lake and the YA series The Antigone Ravyn Chronicled. Her abstract works reflect her love of color and movement.
Gulf Stream Magazine 