This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from FishWife by Alysse McCanna (Black Lawrence Press, 2024).
The Night We Met
we made out
on the teal loveseat
in my garage,
passed smoke between us
like teenagers, pressed
between the sloppy rows
of boxes left by my ex-
love. You didn’t mind,
knew bodies wound
together for a time, then
parted, like the best of dances,
the worst of sutures.
You elbowed the wine glass
into shatter and fluster—
for the spirits, I laughed,
and forgot the ghost hanging
in the high air of that house.
The beautiful dark
of even your eyebrows
eclipsed the tumbling night.
I couldn’t have known
who you would become:
mapmaker whose mouth
leads me to the study
of flowers. When you speak
I hold your language,
its roil and hollow,
in my own mouth like a bulb.
My hands burn and bloom
in the kitchen, garden, bed—
your body a breathless path
I learn by touch.
Alysse Kathleen McCanna is the author of FishWife (Black Lawrence Press, 2024). Her poetry has appeared in North American Review, The Rumpus, Poet Lore, TriQuarterly, and other journals. Alysse’s chapbook Pentimento won the 2017 Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Competition. Her work has been supported by the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Tucson Festival of Books, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds a PhD in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA from Bennington College, and serves as Associate Editor of Pilgrimage Magazine. Alysse is an Associate Professor of English at Colorado Mountain College in the Vail Valley.
Merrick Sloane (they/them) is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a sucker for expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in creative writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and are Associate Poetry Editor of Doubleback Review. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, Stories for the Road: Trauma and Internal Communication, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, Arcana Poetry, and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and ANMLY. Merrick’s poetry was recently selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s contest on Neurodivergence / Intersectionality and as a winner for AWP’s 2025 Intro Journal Awards. Their work has received support from the DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, Poets House, and Sundress Publications. When they are not writing or editing, Merrick loves to serve as a pillow for their cat, Kitten, while getting lost in new worlds written by other dreamers. Merrick is deeply committed to helping create a world that liberates us all.
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