Eunoia Review

There is a substitute for everything. Seven dead zinnias in a windowbox. Condensation on a dirty pane. I crave the last drop, unadorned, opening directly into the sacred. Hallways we travel night-blind until, somehow, we know the sky outside is dotted with grackles. Jim Zola is a poet and photo artist living in North Carolina. Several of his books are available on Amazon.

I have a jacket with pockets like dark envelopes I fill with letters. This one tells about my kids, who ride broken bicycles forever through the night. Another explains why I walk with eyes downcast, in search of shiny things, how alike we are. I’ve had enough of me. Someday I’ll empty each deep pocket. Jim Zola is a poet and photo artist living in North Carolina. Several of his books are…

You sleep alone. Something above the ceiling answers to its own hours. You arch your back because no one’s watching. The scars thrum. One foot out, toes bite at the cold. The room holds still. Your breath goes up first. Then your ribs, one by one. Then your last scraps of pride. The corners are furred with dust. You play skeleton until the body turns traitor. Nothing blesses you. The body…

I live in a cyclone that stopped spinning years ago.             Everything is dissident             and chilled, a long morning that never             ends.                         Napping in the abyss. I’m just                         waiting for my frozen pizza                         to be done. You can’t fight city hall, and I’m too old to be building killdozers.             I used to run…

We used to think talent had something to do with how quick you could die. The truth is, it’s how long you can keep from swinging after everybody starts talking about your early work. Have you read my early work? Artists die for such dumb reasons. Lack of affordable mental health care. Murdered by jealous fans/ lovers/self. How many of them even know how to swim, when they’ve got a pool right…

So much is written on the mirror’s surface to be read back in steam, I suppose, if at all. I prefer something with a little plot. I’ve been guilty of wincing at myself plenty of times, and telling everyone who couldn’t get away all about it, but I don’t pretend the hearts I’ve drawn will survive a good cleaning. I wonder what it’s like for them when they come out of the bathroom, that cave of…

Is it a change in the weather or the impending collapse of Democracy? The lachrymose release of pollen trying to infiltrate my sanctimonious sanctuary to plaster concert bills on the telephone poles of my innards? Whichever, it will be a relief when my skull finally explodes, brains on the midnight train to Toledo, eyes somewhere dark and wet. The sudden crack of bone shearing free. The…

In a cab in Kaohsiung, the driver heard my dad’s accent and switched from Mandarin to Taigi. He asked about us. Mother, Taiwan, America, home, funeral—I watched as my dad tried to traverse an old country. The driver said something about a song and began to sing. A cappella. Just his voice, lonely in the air. And the moped horns. When he finished, my dad said buē-phái which I’d never heard him say…

My dad in a white tee shirt. Collar stretched, starched in old sweat, reading yesterday’s paper slowly, tilling it with a dictionary. His chopsticks scratch a Kmart plate, next to him plastic-wrapped Kmart cake. His paper sighs as he folds it back again, for tomorrow. We don’t eat in the dining room, it’s been cellophaned for fine furniture. We eat in the kitchen, on sticky mats that say it’d be…

Nectarines rubbed nocturnal spasm. Ancient thoughts. Who is in that room, the one       filled with sand? Bony flotsam genteel occipital. Modern disasters. How did they get all that sand, you       know, the room? Peter J. Dellolio. Born 1956 New York City. Went to Nazareth High School and New York University. Graduated 1978: BA Cinema Studies; BFA Film Production. Poetry, prose-poems, fiction,…

Our fingernails touch as the universe keeps expanding. David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Anthropocene and trampset. His latest collection, Dawn’s Incision, was published by IceFloe Press. You can follow him on Twitter (@davidhanlon13) and Instagram (@hanlon6944).

A couch red as fresh blood. My body holds itself too tightly, as if trying to leave through skin. Every violence I imagine threads briefly into furniture— soft, domestic, absorbent. The world keeps making comfort out of impact. And keeps it. David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Anthropocene and trampset. His…

Sunday is an apocalypse disguised as quiet. I gather everything too exposed, too alive to leave out, and shove it into a drawer. Then I step out of my furnished mind. Blinking. Already half in Monday’s pulse. David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous magazines and journals, including Rust & Moth, Anthropocene and trampset. His latest collection, Dawn’s Incision,…

Every morning lately my heart empties itself onto the nightstand. Wet, beating. I go around smiling at others while inside there is a hollow space that echoes when I laugh. At night I gather it up— arteries, veins, stubborn weight— and place it back inside my chest. Then I sleep and dream it stays. All day. Steadfast. David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His work appears in numerous…

This world is full of black dahlias and paper cuts, scentless plants and shallow wounds. I sit in a windowless room, air flat as my monochrome gaze. The flowers are burgundy, maroon, plum-rich— but here they turn the colour of their name: each petal a raven’s hooked beak. Light is a kind of pervasive sorcery, blooming bruises into every clear sky. I drag my nails across the coffee table, test…

I saw you through the smudges on my winter-weary car window, raising the little red flag on your mailbox with deliberate precision, task accomplished; I hope your missive is promptly collected by an observant mail carrier (unlike mine who has never once responded to the imploring arm on my letterbox); and may the recipient of your letter always love you (unless, I suppose, it is the utility…

Godspeed, green galoshes somewhere in Virginia, your rubber-printed frogs smiling quizzically from a hotel lobby I’ll never see again; perhaps a nice man will hand you, on a downpour day, to a timid child, saying “we always keep a spare in our lost and found,” and the child will jump gleefully in parking lot puddles, the way your first owner did (I tell myself this because I cannot bear the…