July 12, 2024 - “Heart under water” by Ellis Dickson
I keep forgetting we’re out of towels
When I use the bathroom soap
I bend over a little, just a bit
And my hands close over the void
The water has drowned the kitchen
It came in through the cellar and through my soles
Kissed my feet and tasted my ankles
Susurrated forbidden words to my knees
I took a shower to rinse my skin
my mouth
From all this sand
I made a wall of it behind the beam laid on the road
But the weight of the barrel was too heavy for my arms
I had to carry the first kilos with my hands
By a cardboard box in the wheelbarrow
Soon I was engulfed by dirty water
Under the wet, sticky sand
that seeps in everywhere
I was holding the flashlight with my teeth then
The grains crept into my mouth
I went inside, holding the pump down against the stone
Sitting in the water but protected by the roof and then
The current jumped
The motor fell silent and the whole neighborhood went silent too
I was alone in the impenetrable night
Lying on a puddle
I wished he’d come and get me
To dry me in the light
I waited I listened I called him but he didn’t answer so
I slipped between the stone and the wood
And closed the door behind me
I showered like this
I only had one tea towel left to wring myself out but
I still had a clean tea towel
One day all this water that now overwhelms us
That threatens to rot my floor
We’ll miss it
When there’s not a drop left
In the brooks
To the swamp
To the river I know
One day we’ll miss that water
For now his absence biting my belly
He left one evening carried away by the storm
It was how many a week two three
Since then I’ve been watching in the dark for his return
I fill in the gaps and since the sun doesn’t seem to be coming back
I become a hybrid creature
If the water rises and transforms my house
I’ll be a frog an eel a fish
If I no longer have his arms
If I no longer have a roof over my head
For the days when there won’t be a drop left
I’ll make myself liquid
Ellis Dickson is working on identity and home through poetry, short stories and novels. She is interested in light and colour in the representation of the familiar. A few texts are published from time to time in general literature, poetry and science-fiction.
July 11, 2024 - “Shade Part I” by Kyrsten Jensen
She stretched strong fingers
outward,
deep ridges and pale
bark cracked, whorled,
each ring hidden inside her an
age spelled out in secret.
We pressed in, eyes burning
from shrieking light,
where underneath her outspread
limbs a cool, blue quiet
Settled.
Our fingers clawed, tore open
on splinters, nails gouging
and she pretended the marks
had always been there.
She pretended she’d always bled.
She wept sweet sap and we
lapped it like smooth,
sticky syrup,
those amber tears stained
our lips and hardened
like a diamond coating,
so each word we spoke
cracked our mouths
open and slit like
a razor edge.
She pretended she’d always had
the scars.
As cold winds set in
fingers bent down,
creaking, trembling, curling in
as we etched notches into
her trunk—she batted the
wind back as we
bet who could carve the
most—who could
sink the point of the blade
the deepest.
Her arms grew longer
to cast her blue shadow
where we wanted.
Her bark grew paler
in the fierce, naked heat.
Her roots twisted underground,
red thirst burning in a
dark stillness no one could see.
We required a spring,
and she gave it—
sending water up from the black
earth to pool in our cupped,
expectant hands.
We drank and did not care
to wonder
where the water came from.
July 10, 2024 - “Bird Sanctuary” by Ingrid Jacobsen
We walk some wetland, reedy, spread by the
unspeaking engineer, whose plans are
oft trampled on, here trace printed paths
and tiny signs enjoining us to step
not off them, the typeface worn away by order
of content, straight-faced, tight-lipped, all-caped,
piping plover nesting here keep out please
pedestrian Keep Outs are less personal
so many are so private, so many
want to keep out that it’s a spinner on
the rack, all around the country the same
sign hangs on spindled wood fences,
forefather trees, mixed metal, rust.
Here, part timers at either end of a
scientist’s decision mark the split of
two environments, cleaving their claim to
protect, bipeds bisect avians with
a pillar of the hammered word
Ingrid Jacobsen will be reading at the following events:
NYC Poetry Festival, Governor's Island
Sunday, July 14 at 2pm (Beckett Stage) and 4:30pm (Blackbird Stage)
Verses & Vinyl reading
Tues, Aug 20, 8pm
All Blues, 87 Walker St
July 7, 2024 - “The road had curved on the way up here”
The road had curved on the way up here, kept asking them to bend with it and they had, and now she wondered, as she walked slowly around the inn, where exactly it had taken them and, of course, she knew where they were, of course she did, but something about tonight felt breakable, in a way that made her want to treat it preciously, to cradle it gently and rock the night as it had rocked her, swaying her back and forth, and maybe it was her that was breakable, and the woods were watching, trees talking amongst themselves saying, look, she is about to shatter.
July 6, 2024 - “Great American Wash”
The plan was simple: meet outside of that laundromat by that liquor store two stores down from that bagel shop on 9th Ave at 2pm. Go over everything before we go inside. Option 1: you buzz apartment 3B and if anyone answers you say you’re there to see the apartment — that you’re there for the open house. Option 2: you don’t buzz, ring or knock — you just wait out front on the sidewalk until someone walks out the front door, then you slide in. Option 2, you’re carrying plastic bags that look like groceries. Option 1, you’ve got a pen & notebook, “Apartments on your list.”
July 5, 2024 - “I am talking about now”
Sometimes there are too many good things to be done at once. This is a lucky problem to have, and it happens very rarely, but sometimes, you sit on warm stone and dip your legs in the pool and think about what to have for dinner and, sometimes (I am talking about now), a joint makes you cough so hard you are laughing, and colors look clearer then, brighter right as the day is dulling, and the moment will not last too long because there are things you’ll want to fix once you start looking, like — there are more ants than you thought. They all walk quickly in small, stressful circles and you can’t stop thinking about the scene in Oldboy where Mi-do says that very lonely people hallucinate ants, and you know these little ones are real because you sweep them off the counter every morning, but the exceptionally large one in the bathroom has you less convinced. You are still coughing. You find out that spit in the grass looks like spider webs.
July 4, 2024 - You will not hear her at first, so she will ask you again
The fog is called a sweetness, in some cities all the movies are in black and white. Night piers along the Hudson here feel like wishlists, jumbles of sounds and wind-swept memories that hover over the river in the early mornings. We tried giving imaginary gifts made from incenses, candle smoke, and sencha green tea poured forever-hot out of a stainless steel pot that would glisten in the afternoon sunlight. Back then, seven miles felt like twelve summers ago, a gust of wind on an early autumn morning, frozen piña coladas from El Lago II on Smith Street, the one that doesn’t close until three. Those summers we could feel the sun coming up through the bridges that kept stretching across the East River. We kept dreaming about bonfires and two a.m. confessions over dark dark beers, flames that would dance through the block cold nights every Saturday in March. Those first three years were a hammock strung between two trees too new to hold our weight. Maybe somewhere . . . in South Florida or across the very center of Tennessee on a fourth of July fourteen years from now, I’ll be on rollerblades and gliding down a narrow path with the sound of fireworks soaring, careening, what have you, about the sky above me. And you’ll be on Smith Street, a few feet away from where El Lago II once stood. A child will walk by with a bicycle, with a rear tire that has gone all the way flat, and one sparkler in her left hand. You will not hear her at first, so she will ask you again, do you have a lighter? she will say, for this sparkler . . excuse me, she will ask you again, do you have a lighter? For this, for this . . .
July 3, 2024 - “Pilgrimage of Aisles” by Ingrid Jacobsen
Stretch tops
low-back tubes
slinky longs
courageous shorts I pine
high waist high cut unders,
ambidextrous rubber slides
sour suckers deals & steals
total change for little of it,
in and out of grasp,
I could, I could not,
when did it become
so easy to resist
temptation, or perhaps
resistance is not temptation’s
armament, here the sister superior
(part time, no benefits) plays
satellite radio what’s the
electronic dance hit
of the summer
no one knows,
down shop rows
into which cast the rack,
spine silver, bent and giving,
laden by arms unattributed,
washing just-in to clearance,
pilgrimage of aisles,
each trend illuminated:
Tie dye tinies
Pucker athletics
Life together matching set
Rememberwhenovision graphicT
Don’t talk to me, I’m sleeping
Skinny girl elastic underwear
Sweater for sparse parts
In some stores
I wander Mens’
having sailed flap shirt
long zip pocket pant
here, Mens’ is Siberia
Womens’ is a multi-climate
interconnected landmass
from here to Siberia
all species represented:
Young skin, Body at gym
Form enshrouded at gym
Fresh in class
Don’t look at me in class
Religious rite
Out tonight
Interview
Uniform
Night shift
Sleep
All day cooking
All day caring,
every size and occasion,
at the equator of the store,
stamping single postcards
with decaying values
of isle hopping owners
The universe inside
Telco is exactly as
big as the universe
outside Telco, our relation
is civic, in line
for passports or vaccines,
working for the government,
cleaning the building,
walking by and using
the darkened window
as a sort of mirror,
but never entering,
no use for thinking
what goes on in there,
just some happy carts
signing for your eye
outside, we’ve got
2 for 3 we’ve
got starting at 5
wow, get it now
going going gone
Ingrid Jacobsen will be reading at the following events:
NYC Poetry Festival, Governor's Island
Sunday, July 14 at 2pm (Beckett Stage) and 4:30pm (Blackbird Stage)
Verses & Vinyl reading
Tues, Aug 20, 8pm
All Blues, 87 Walker St
July 2, 2024 — “Nothing’s gonna stop us now”
The song had been on the radio for months. Everyone liked it, then they didn’t, then they did, then they stopped saying whether they liked it or not and just let it happen, sang along quietly under their breath. She hears the words fall from her lips and does not bother catching them and if this world runs out of lovers, she sings out loud, willing the woods to sing back, we’ll still have each other.
She lights the second cigarette, sinks into its pull in a way that makes her think of another garden, and she knows temptation is the problem here too, but tonight is not the night to say enough. She closes her eyes, tastes ash, and waits for the woods to answer.
June 29, 2024 - Every other reflection would weave into the next
Ocean Hill became this memory, neither one of us could tell if it was real, whether we had walked Hull Street at 10:00am on the last Saturday in June or not. It felt possible, but we would had to have lived in a different dimension to know for sure. I think there was this coffee shop two blocks up and one block over, you had said. Their cappuccinos were $7.34 if you got one with oat milk, or $5.77, iced. Our memories kept getting tangled; every other reflection would weave into the next and the years would intertwine. Saturday nights would sprint into Sunday mornings, and I lost track of which side of the street had flowers along the sidewalk that would bloom first.
June 28, 2024 - Letter from the Editor
Dear Reader,
I’ll start off by saying, thank you for being here. I first found the wonderful world of Curlew about five years ago when I was looking for a welcoming space to house some prose pieces I had been working on. Now, thinking about those first pieces shows me exactly how much I have grown into my voice as a writer over these past few years and what a steady hand Curlew has had in that.
When I first submitted work, I had just moved back to Brooklyn after a year in L.A. and was experiencing a rare moment of sureness in my life. After exploring a new city and several career paths I felt rooted in my decision to come back to New York and focus, fully, on writing. During that time I made it a priority to solidify myself as real writer, feeling that compensation was what validated that title. While I took part in a handful of creative projects that sustained this belief for a few years, there was an ongoing exhaustion that accompanied freelance work and it seemed to be slowing down the progress I wanted to be making in my own writing, so about six months ago I pivoted yet again. Currently, I work at a very enjoyable, non-writing related day job while scribbling down short stories in my off hours, and I have never felt more like a real writer.
Throughout both of these chapters, Curlew has been my literary anchor. By granting me the opportunity to write for the magazine consistently, my editorial predecessor, Jordan Myers, provided me with a place to explore the point of view, narrative and form of my writing. Those three factors take new shape with each story, and I credit Curlew as the fuel that kept me writing when I didn’t feel like writing.
For me, editorship comes with an air of imposter syndrome, in the sense of what gives me the right when it comes to reading and selecting work. After a few days of asking the question out loud to myself (and patient friends), I kept coming back to the same, fervent answer. Even on days when I doubt my own ability as a writer, the confidence I have in myself as a reader never falters. I have done it for a very long time and I have loved it for a very long time, and to illustrate this I have located a quote from my mother’s journal in regards to me at age one:
6/5/95
Often chooses to read books rather than nurse first thing in the morning.
And still, when I read, it feels like there is nothing more important. So, for now, that stands as my endorsement for the role of editor. In the future, I hope that my experience here does as well.
I look forward to taking the next few days to catch up with current Curlew contributors and start collecting new submissions for our Daily Page.
Until next time!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Lerman (aka The Editor)
June 19, 2024 - “Juneteenth(!)?”
It’s a great weight, an elephant in the room; an honest question without a clear answer: what to make of our newest Federal Holiday, “Juneteenth”? By now, three years after June 19th was added to the cannon of the United States’ Federal Holidays, most are at least vaguely familiar with what it stands for: a day in which African-Americans . . . or more accurately, Africans, who were carried over on slave ships and brought to America, would no longer have to suffer the horrors of enslavement.
Of course, a deeper dive would reveal that the June 19th that gave rise to the holiday occurred in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted. What caused the two-year delay? Mostly, due to the absence of the internets, folks in Texas did not receive word that the Federal Government had already freed the slaves, so it took some time . . . like two years, before Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas —- on June 19th — to deliver the news.
Still, when I write out Juneteenth, I think of adding an exclamation point at the end, a-la, Juneteenth! But that doesn’t look right, it doesn’t feel right. Yes, there’s a celebration that the name invites —- a celebration of freedom from enslavement for my ancestors, but is that celebration a jubilation . . . or is it a private, heartfelt, and solemn reflection . . . a quiet moment to sink deeply into the sadness and anger at the hurt that building a country —- this country, on enslaved people has caused.
Forgive me for the leap, but I think Derrick Rose —- yes, that Derrick Rose: the point guard from Memphis who was drafted by the Chicago Bulls and was the rookie of the year in 2008, then youngest Most Valuable Player in the history of the NBA, in 2011. That Derrick Rose who showed so much promise early in his career, only to suffer a torn ACL one spring day in April of 2012, sit out for the full 2012-2013, and then suffer an MCL tear again the following season —- in November of 2013. If you’re a basketball fan, serious, casual, or otherwise: you know his story, at least part of it.
But a few months before his first knee injury, there was this: “That time when Derrick Rose Wasn’t Feeling the Dancing.”
I’ve never met Derrick Rose, or the other all-star east starters from that year: Lebron James (MIA), Dwayne Wade (MIA), Carmelo Anthony (NYK), and Dwight Howard (ORL). But in that moment, on that literal stage, if I found myself up there . . . I just don’t think I’d be dancing either. Sure, Rose had made the All-Star game, a remarkable achievement for any athlete, but maybe rather than feeling celebratory and wanting to dance, he felt glad to be there and just wanted to chill, and take it all in.
The day after the game, Rose was asked about why he decided to forego the dancing in that moment and on that stage: “"I can dance," Rose said. "But there's a time and place for that, and I don't think it was right then and there." So that’s what Rose was feeling, but looking back, still I’d send all the same respect to James, Wade, Anthony, and Howard. They earned the right to be there, so if they were feeling the dancing, then by all means, go for it.
Is it insensitive to compare an All-Star game celebration to Juneteenth(!)? In my mind, the answer is yes and no.
Yes, because sports cannot and should not be compared to the sacrifices that Black men, women, and children made on account of slavery. Lives were lost and the impact of generational trauma and wounding still impacts Black and African-American communities to this day.
And no, because whether it’s Juneteenth(!)? or pre-game introductions before a professional exhibition basketball game, we should all have a choice about how we wish to express ourselves, and lean into whatever surfaces in those moments.
It’s the earliest of the morning hours of June 21, 2024 as as I write this, so I’m two days (at least not two years!) late. So I can’t say whether this will be helpful for you, reader, this time next year, but I know that it will help me, so I’ll write it out: whether I’ll feel like dancing like Lebron and Co next Juneteenth(!)? or standing still and quietly reflecting like D-Rose, either way, I will have celebrated the holiday the right way, whatever that may or may not mean to you.
- J.M.
June 18, 2024 - “Sunburn”
A man buys his dinner and then walks by her, his cologne wafting behind him. The wind won’t let her lose it. He smells like someone she met the other night, a person she can’t picture or place, and she knows she doesn’t need another drink, but, actually, it might help her remember.
The bar is emptier than it had been before but still, the man behind it doesn’t pay her much attention. He is disinterested in her, the way people are sometimes, he has no need for her internal journey to choosing the right beer but she recites it aloud anyway.
Back outside the sun is where she left it and she slides into the spot where she had been burned before, and not because she liked how it felt, though she definitely didn’t mind it, but because she had entered into an agreement with the sun when she got here and it was a simple one. It would shine and she would sit in it.
June 16, 2024 - “Everything felt like blushing”
We pulled weeds all afternoon
every Sunday in June. We lived
in this dissolving world. We forgot
the ice for the lemonade. I tried
to explain the cracked doorframe,
and why I kept crying in between sighs.
Everything felt like blushing. Neon tragedies
would flit across my mind. It wasn’t the heat,
the humidity, the sun . . . but still, the yard
looked best at dusk. We lived out there at dawn.
June 15, 2024 - “In the way that I am here”
I don’t mean to make you feel isolated, her fiancé says to me, and I am taken aback by his sweetness. I say, oh no, I don’t feel that way at all, when really, I have been sitting here feeling that way very much, and they are all married, or close to it, and I watch their pregnant friend stroke her stomach and swallow something that could be envy, though not in a I need this right now sort of way, but — I want to be on my way towards it.
A waitress leans over me, refills my water and says, I love your tattoos, by the way, and I have already put on my old denim jacket, so she must have noticed and then remembered, and that makes me want to hug her and say something like thank you for seeing me in a moment where I felt very far from being anything at all, and it is so clear that I don’t belong here, I think even when I do, I still won’t, and they are doing everything right and I have to convince myself that wrong is okay, if wrong is just different, than it’s okay, and sometimes it hurts to be here, in the way that I am here, and I want to go home but there is none of that now, and there won’t be for a little while longer.
June 14, 2024 - Jordan Myers’ “Introducing our new Editor, Elizabeth Lerman” / “What if?”
I’m sorry. I fell asleep and entered into this fever dream. I did not know how long it would last, but I knew that it wouldn’t last forever —- that it could not last forever. I‘ve been thinking a lot about the City —- that city —- New York City, and what it means to me and why I lived there for as long as I did —- and why I lived there at all.
I knew Curlew would not end when I left, but I didn’t know what to do with this Curlew world that I’ve had the honor of sharing, co-creating and living in with so many wonderful people over these last seven years.
I knew I had to leave New York. And at a later time and day, I’ll share those details and tell that story. When? September 28, 2024. That’s when we’ll have Issue No. 10 ready, my last issue as the Editor of this magazine. Until then, I’ll be working with our new Editor, Elizabeth Lerman, as we re-launch Curlew Daily, prepare issue No. 10, and re-create the landscape of what it means to be a contributor and subscriber to this journal.
What does it take to be the editor of Curlew? The first thought that comes to mind is a certain fierceness —- a certain degree of strength and determination . . . an ability to love a city that keeps telling you and showing you, again and again —- I’m not lovable, I’m not a place that you should fall in love with —- I hurt people. That fierceness, that love for this city that does not want to be loved — that cannot be loved, is what’s needed. But what else? An inquisitive mind and a curious heart — a sense of wonder and excitement. And of course, compassion, coupled with an ability and want to write and read honest, vulnerable, and brave work.
The beauty of New York for me has always been what if? Perhaps there’s no place in the world that lives and breathes and offers up as much sheer possibility as New York City. That sense of possibility . . . that what if feeling is what brought me to La Guardia with a suitcase and an unclear dream (though a dream nonetheless!) in August of 2011. That sense of possibility, blended with the realities of what six years of living in New York felt like, is what led to me deciding to pour my heart and energies into making this journal . . . this place, into a reality. And I did not do it alone.
The list of those co-creators and contributors who have built this place with me is long and enchantingly beautiful, so I'll only name a few: Jason Koo and his poem, “Morning, Motherfucker,” first gave me the idea. Adrian Moens, Alexandra Bildsoe, and Emily Fishman . . . they were the first to give me the courage to try. Elizabeth Lerman and Rahil Najafabadi . . . their shared vision, belief, and work allowed me to keep going. Everyone else . . . their names are listed on the covers of Issue Nos. 1-8 and within the pages of Issue No. 9. And many many others, their names may not appear anywhere, but I hold them dearly in my heart and memory all the same.
Having met, worked with, and enjoyed the work of Elizabeth since 2020, I know and trust that whatever is meant to happen within this Curlew world next, she’ll be capable of handling —- she’ll be able to provide the steady hand and voice that will be needed.
When we first spoke about her taking over as editor a few months ago, almost right away the full circle timing was obvious: Curlew began during my 30th year, and Elizabeth — she won’t mind me saying (I’ve asked!) —- is right around the same age these days. Good luck and thank you, Elizabeth.
When I dream back to that first summer, 2017, and that first night, August 10, when we launched Issue No. 1 at Berl’s Poetry shop in Dumbo, Brooklyn, my heart overflows with nostalgia and joy.
Will this world still be around, five, ten, or even twenty years from now? God, I hope so.
- Jordan Myers