Urn Skin
Materialized by william erickson on Thursday, December 21st 2023.
As a boy I fell inside of a shape. The villagers set out their rescue
pants and sharpened their knives, but who could say what
constitutes dimension? This was the start of the Era of
Argumentation, the last time anyone fed the cats or crocuses.
There was endless banter in the village light, and endless light
exhaled from all the villagers’ mouths, and it rose above the docks
where underneath the seaweed whales fit snugly till the hooks
came down. I know now I’ve lived a double life—like how you
wander the strip mall days at a time bleeding little drips of dried
up clay.
william erickson is a living poet. His work appears in Afternoon Visitor, Gone Lawn, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere. william is a 2024 Best of the Net nominee, his most recent chapbook is Sandbox (Bottlecap Press), and his debut collection is forthcoming with April Gloaming in 2024. He lives in Washington with his partner and their two dogs in an old house across the street from a large tree.
Other stars in the Range asterism:
Date Night
Tara Campbell
Neither Audrey nor Nick could have imagined that after spending decades on the moon, they'd one day be sitting together in a cozy French restaurant in Orlando.
Intergenerational
Lesh Karan
Scientists had shone a light on a squirm with one hand, and pronged them with the other. The worms wound into tight coils.
Waiting for Motherhood
Shannan Mann
You eat a whole cherry pie as big as your entire hand. You feel her dance inside you on Sunday afternoons.
Pachisi
Mandira Pattnaik
Curiously, pieces are in four colors. But always numbering sixteen. Any similarities to pairs of eyes, ears, lips, wrists, breasts, shoulders, hips and legs, also count of sixteen, purely coincidental.
O’Gallivan on the Mountain
Marina Ramil
In his 28th year of research, he met a cow named Cass. Cass was a Braunvieh and her favourite time of the year was late March, when it wasn’t too cold or too hot and the lilies were blooming.
Sunset Apartments
Addison Zeller
I wish I could tell you the dead and gone are younger now, healthier, or stronger, but my impression is that, if anything, they have grown older, smaller, and weaker.