Return
"My father is long dead, and I was / faithful to the last. Still, postcolonial / that I am, I have built my own myth / of departure,"
found under mother’s bed
"one end adorned by rhinestone and sparkle. the other open."
7-Eleven
"My mother’s lament: four girls, but the little one will not eat her food."
Cheongsam Woman, Still Trapped in the Forties
"Finders keepers, losers weepers — the cliché was true here."
a sonnet is a lot like that apartment we shared
"because memories get written into corners / and a room has way more corners than a person"
“Waiting in Bed” and “Eternal”
". . . very good."
Lieric
"Why listen to God of Definitions, anyway? It's you and me who have the power here."
Babyland
"Mom says if I’m a dragon I’ve got fire enough in me to make the beaches here warm, so maybe I should share more. I haven’t thought of a good come back yet."
Rituals
"That’s how / it works— / whichever hand / wrecks the largest / bit of bone / wins / the right to wish."
Kathmandu, are we heart broken?
I am angry. You had no right to seize our peace. What right did you have to destroy…
Tree Rings, Gutted
"(I’m trying to apologize to the trees.) (I’m trying not to let the rings be parenthetical to the story.) (The rings make the story.) (I’m here to study the story.)"
The Observer Effect
"One day, much later, I learned that life was just too plain for him. He had to squeeze and shape it like clay, until he felt it was something worth living."
Measuring Memory
"I think it’s a gas, / or a vapor, or the dust / swept up from the front / of a corner store—"
Tender Hoof
"Of course, I knew what was wrong with all of this: the cows were lonely."
So Says the Admiral
"The Lord of that land would give him all he wanted. The Admiral asked for anything as if receiving a great favour."
It Must Have Been
"They trusted us with the money, why not the keys too? There was no one around except the ghosts."
The Canyon
"Showing me the chicken wishbones she carried in her pockets for good luck, breaking them into halves of a full moon to make a wish."
Something to Stand On
1. Your veins show through, the skin softens and puckers, a pink wrinkly bud. Folding in the middle,…
Circadian Rhythm
Image credit: Marius Dzialek
MTV News: A Letter To Jonathan Melvoin
"You had to go and die that summer. You were all MTV could talk about. We didn’t come here for this. "
Assistant to the Magician
"Naked bulbs are strung over the bar. It makes me feel romantic, in the way that only old, broken things can."
Side View of House, Winter
"perhaps his camera sought the places / mine were banal / where hyacinths bloomed / of his hopes or nostalgias"
The Wayback Playlist – Fall 2022
A playlist to accompany our fall 2022 Wayback issue, crafted and curated by issue contributors and Longleaf Review staff.
When I Lived with the Witch
"Sometimes she asked what her name was. Or how we’d gotten to the forest. But she never forgot who I was."
Drink
"My mother would not rest in her grave if she knew I’d soon be drinking what they drink, but I’ve given up so much to move all the way here for a better future."
The Disarticulation of a Fern
“Crowned by the overgrown foliage, heralded by trumpeting rosefinches, I sit. Wait.”
Light Red Over Black
"She was a repressed woman and didn’t cry or laugh or smile. Instead, she possessed a tendency to sigh."
Splendor
"What the Palmers failed to understand is that Splendor isn’t like other neighborhoods — those neighborhoods Out There."
Little Red’s Revenge
"Every path I took, there you were. Beside. Behind. Ahead. You were everywhere."
Sometimes Luck
“‘Haste ye back,’ the children say to day-tripping families on their August holidays while the adults smile, nod and wave. ‘Join us in December for Crab Grab.’”
NIX
“Despite the water’s darkness, they caught glimpses of a strange, shimmering fish’s tail below her waist. ”
Capture/Exposure
"She wouldn’t cook. She had no desire to work. She said there were too many things hunting her."
In Helsingør Cemetery
“Together the gravediggers got down and began to dig deeper. The dirt began to sing.”
Track / Stream
"The jealousy permeating our college quickly morphed into resentment, a simmering stew of indignant glances and stiff smiles, laid thicker than the summer the air conditioning leaked."
On the Market
“Access to attic via hatch and descending wooden ladder. We recommend ignoring this (please, ignore this). . . .”
Wolf Cries
“Father said that a wolf was bad enough, but a wolf witch needed to be set alight in a grave of flames.”
13 Nights of Horror: The Playlist
A playlist to accompany our fall 2022 mini-issue, crafted and curated by issue contributors and Longleaf Review staff. Get spooky!
sunlight falling across a void
"my name / appears like an angel: / speaking in distorted / & lost hymns, too loud to truly hear."
Rancho Las Tinajas
"I’d filmed a western once in the desert, and I see plant after plant I recognize but don’t know the name of."
Soot and Concrete
"naked and tentative, a bridge across the lake. / I submerged down into the water. / until I was floating just above the bottom."
Two Letters To My Uncle, c/o Willowbrook State School
"I wonder which image you would have liked more: a peaceful canopy of ash leaves under the skin, or the marks of a dozen spears."
No One Will Tell Lena
"No one will tell my cousin Lena how her father died."
3 Snellen Charts
"In Too Bright Light"; "What Can You Say"; "Learn to Speak"
The Ablution
"Let the soil and grit dissolve into the saltwater, clouds of milky brown mud dissipating into each swell of the sea."
Object Permanence
"I am old enough now to have seen it happen again, / to know we are always dying / little deaths:"
Sundays with Carolyn
"People were crying more than they used to, but they still needed to go about their lives for the sake of the economy."
Aubade for Eye Doctors
"I / soul-search into corners / that cannot do the / possible ask."
The Year of Minnie
"But there is something particularly adorable about senior dogs. They look sad and tired yet tinged with delight, much like how I feel, tinged with how I always wish I felt."
Dear Casey Kasem. In the decant of Thursday nothing comes early.
"have you ever felt this heavy? like last night was a shore. and you’re seaweed."
Noodle Shop
"You doused your noodles in chili sauce to clear your clogged sinuses, and your ankle was hanging over the edge of the bed, careless and gentle, the tendons relaxed, the soft hollow of skin like stone smoothed out."
Status: Unknown
"the first news report reports the government’s apathy. the second just says 'citizen.'”
Learning to Drive: A Fat Abecedarian
"Prey would be smarter than this. When has a predator ever been dissuaded by a turned back?"
Nondisclosure by J[ ] R[ ]
"I was alone I can’t / tell you [ ] / made me feel I can’t tell you"
Beetlemania!!!
"I closed my eyes and caught a whiff of Aiko’s Dove anti-dandruff shampoo. For a second, the idea that my absence hurt her too filled me with a bestial joy, then faded to pain at the idea of her pain."
chang’e, the liar
"nothing but teardrop comets; tell her i taste her sticky rice, tell her i remember: / her silken-sleeve ribbons, her bamboo biscuits"
Waving, Not Drowning
"This is what also delights: the stripe on the bottom of the pool, the stripes on the side of my suit, the snap of the rubber cap, my spine snapping into the turn, my feet snapping at the wall."
Dalgona 달고나
"With that, the video ends, breaking the spell before I can taste the sugar on my tongue, before I can take a scorching sip of tea."
Counting Stairs
"On the desk pencils are scattered. A laptop rests half open, the current tab on the internet opened to a WikiHow article about resurrection ceremonies. An unopened envelope lays on the desk, addressed to you."
Abecedarian Perplexed by Desire
"So I try / mimicking what my mother did. Endure. Never say / never, I learn."
In the City of Flying Trumpets
I wish I could tell you exactly when they’ll appear. They used to come with the sunrise every morning, shouting their flourish into the skies, a salute like something you’d hear at an Olympic opening ceremony:
After Great Sleep
I (my whole body) am stepping out from behind cracked glasses and welcoming the big box of wheels rolling over the road
Praise
Mahogany board by swelling board
sits still on a hill between
yellow birch. The dogs down the road
sing to each other, while a dead calf
It’s Not Over Until You Leave His Animal Crossing Island
If I took all of them and placed them in a sifter, and shook, then tapped the sides to separate the smallest sources of pain from the largest, I don’t know what would fall and what would remain.
The Motivations of a Hibachi Chef
He flung the hibachi spatula in the air, twirling it, catching it behind his back. Tossed a shrimp tail into my t-shirt pocket. Poor shrimp.
Poem Beginning with a Line from Paige Lewis
And when I walked by / the chicken coop, reader, / the chickens walked me home. / One got loose with her three chicks
Sleepless Night #113, A wineglassful of martyrdom
A wineglassful of martyrdom was duty but wandering, wild, and fiery, was nice cold water,
Determination
Beneath translucent lids, its eyes were purple hull peas. Directly above, the nearest branches were much too high to reach, so we filled the shoebox with grass and twigs.
In Praise of the Moon and Earth As Tidally Locked Bodies in Synchronous Rotation
And you love the sound / a fresh pad makes when you peel / off the wax paper, unwrap it / like a birthday present, the one / you asked for.
transitive erasures
Testosterone Cypionate Injection, USP
name
[an image here of the testosterone cypionate molecule]
available in two,
each
Heat Harvest
The fire, then: orange-red, orange-yellow, orange-blue, just blue. Colors like threadbare sheets pinned to a line, and blowing.
A Girl Just Wants to Have Fun
She understands now. How appealing it is to blow up your life.
10 Wounds in Which I Was Born
I thought I was born blue / the way my hands looked / pressed against the inside / of a blue-glass jar.
Best Intentions
The people that wore the hats didn’t see the birds when they lived. They didn’t know that their bodies never bent that way.
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON ON BALSAM AVENUE.
i am lost in the daze of my grandfather’s friday fish and whipped cream on dessert. i’m not sure he recognizes me most days, but still he clutches my hand and tells me he loves me.
The Vacation
She hasn’t kissed anyone for seven years, and though with Diane she doesn’t feel the same electric desire coursing through her body that she had felt for the men she’d been with romantically in years past, she feels something. Something she didn’t know she could feel. Something she still hasn’t named.
The Joy Playlist – Winter 2022
A playlist to accompany our winter 2022 Joy issue, crafted and curated by issue contributors and Longleaf Review staff.