a love like soda

The dark no softer than it was before by Carl Phillips

I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won’t Because I’m Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen by Sandra Cisneros

And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. -- Genesis 3:13 Beguiled, my ass. I said no such thing. You say I lost the gift of Paradise. I couldn’t lose what I never had. You say the serpent tempted me to eat. You omit that he entered the Garden on two legs and walked like a man. And here’s what your story always ignores: I had pure gold, rare perfume, precious stones, but Adam hadn’t touched me all those years. Perfection in the Garden didn’t mean that way. Not having it and not wanting it was God’s idea of perfection, not mine. So when that serpent strolled up to the tree, all upright and fine, he threw off the balance, and I began to pray, Oh, let him be mine. When he held out the apple, so round and lush, when he stroked it to a keen red glow, I didn’t fall to temptation -- I rose to it. I ate that apple because I was hungry. I wanted what lay outside of Paradise, a world without the burden of perfection. Now you call all sinful women my sisters. I say, let them claim their own damn sins. The apple may not be perfect, but it’s mine.

You With the Crack Running Through You by Kim Addonizio

anglerfish 

Prayer by Marie Howe

In my desk by Frank Bidart

Sandra Cisneros, from Loose Woman: Poems; "Bay Poem from Berkeley"

Sandra Cisneros, from Loose Woman: Poems; "Waiting for a Lover"

Poem by Denis Johnson

To a stranger by Walt Whitman

Vow by Emily Jungmin Yoon

Oil on canvas , 38 x 56 in.

I let them riot in my mind a few minutes more before the news comes.