Cover Art: Paul Caponigro, "Bloomfield, N.Y." 1957, Gelatin Silver Print, SFMOMA

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Time Lapse Acid Rain

From the slightliest forfeitures
of my wallowing, to the deadliest
finishings of my rank, I lace
the room with bourbon air,
and shave the guests with scraps
of light in a glass. Forcefields
have been a myth, but also
a convenience. As a kid, I left
myself, of course, now and then.
Walls where were walls, and some
where were not: I saw a train
drag its file of skimpy beds across
Kentucky, and wound up with miles
of leftover aluminum. I saw a fountain
in a corporate park, and knew the point
of being homeless was to be alone.
Vacancies are slender, and ubiquitous:
coffee on a tooth, hard water sucking color
from a dock. The whole city rides atop
a decade's broken wave, in an eye I shut
and then reopen, melted and rebuilt. 

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Alec Hershman lives in Michigan. He is the author of The Egg Goes Under (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017), and Permanent and Wonderful Storage (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), recipient of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. He has received awards from the KHN Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, VCCA, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. You can find his poems in recent issues of Denver Quarterly, Columbia, 2 Bridges Review, Crab Creek Review, AMP, and through links to his work online at alechershmanpoetry.com.

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past, Jesse Breite                                                                                                                                                                                                          next, Laurinda Lind