This selection, chosen by guest editor Merrick Sloane, is from FishWife by Alysse McCanna (Black Lawrence Press, 2024).
THE SCIENTIST
Old friend, always leaving half
of a sandwich for me, slipping
her best cards beneath the table—
a trick. Her hands, lithic. Cold,
precise as soft claw. Just her finger
on my forehead and my lip, quivering.
What natural history, our affair—
strata like necklaces laced, then
undone. Each catalyst preserved
perfect as the day it was doomed,
my hands too small to reach the thistle-
nest of her closely guarded church.
The ability to predict catastrophe
this far in advance is zero, Doctor—
her affection sparks a flight
of birds burning shadow
a feather’s width of whiskey
and my fingers stroking the rough buzz
of her scalp. Ancient, these flutters.
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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