The baby has to wait until after the apocalypse
**
LUCY ZHANG writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Contrary, Lost Balloon, New Delta Review, Hypertext, EX/POST, Jellyfish Review and elsewhere. She is an editor for Heavy Feather Review and assistant fiction editor for Pithead Chapel. Find her at https://kowaretasekai.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @Dango_Ramen.
heaven or hieronymus
too many people ride one horse
the organs of the landscape:
acid water and rose quartz
teething towers
strawberries
gems of desire + death
red / blue fruit now red / blue pills
even when it doesn’t look like hell
it is
body wears two cherries
like a crown
a giant duck feeds body
a cranberry
the earth is singing
in the gardens in the mud in pools
reflecting light like pupils do
sinners of the world
hear me
in this frame the world is finally an oyster
our bodies its pearls
free and by default completely insane
I don’t care if we look crazy
I just want to be losing it completely
with my friends
on this festering fault line
the owls surveilling us
through our phone jacks
right next to the heat of our breath
and still unable to compute
our very own chaos triptych
fortune
**
SEMI-CONSCIOUS IN KIEV
blithing wet
with light
honey
leaving
the wand
the milkmaid
the czar
the tailor
the general
an epoch
spent
picking
sunflower seeds
now my name
glittering
on an official
document
my time
separated
for me
in Ukraine
the churches
have no clocks
only bells
never hands
no tenderness
of touch
**
**
ISABEL BOUTIETTE is a poet, artist, curator, editor, and occasional book-maker living in Seattle, WA. She works at Wave Books and is an editor at The Quarterless Review.