Cincinnati Review

  For more of this story or other great literary nonfiction in issue 15.2, order now in our online store. Digital copies only $5!

If the mind is one of those Piranesi prisons, she said, full of darkly nested architectural redundancies—as we know the human brain is, with its neurons like ropes slung precariously from cell to cell, and interrupted spiral staircases going neither up nor down, and ruined stone lions hinting at some tapestried past when all this …

Begin with knowing the comma is a word and the word is always fuckin’. Forget the gerund, then torque the lazy u into an a, and let the vowel kneel into the roof of your mouth like a penitent against a church pew. Stretch the c into the k, graceful as Astaire in blackface. Now …

  See more poems from Issue 15.2 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.

  See more poems from Issue 15.2 by purchasing a copy in our online store. Digital copies only $5.

Rita came home from the war. The town was not as if she had never left. Some things had changed. The Taco Bell, for instance, was closed, but another had opened on the next street. The Church of the Passionate Blood, with its stained-glass Christ as slim and pale and sweet as a glowworm, had …