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      October 4, 2019SusurrationLania Knight

      Like a snake, the belt slides
      the loops, hissing down and down
      again years later. Across an ocean,
      an entire continent, my brother’s
      heart lashes inside the walls
      of his chest, pumping blood
      through splitting seams. The same
      strap, the one that burnt like
      fire across my back—it cracks
      and breaks now inside him. Our
      father, the buckle in his palm,
      raised his arm—I wish I could
      say only once—at his children,
      bellowed at the woman beside him.
      A man, a boy really, he just wanted
      to play ball and spit from the pitcher’s
      mound. But he was our father, and he
      was his father and all the fathers
      before him, filled with a boy’s ache
      to run. There were the women though,
      the children, the moments one after
      another. The fathers, they were meant
      to know the answers. But they didn’t.
      And I don’t. And now I have this scar,
      a wound I think is healed until
      the sheets slide across my back,
      and I watch my lover
      loosen
      his belt.

      from #64 - Summer 2019

      Lania Knight

      “I’ve written fiction and nonfiction for a long time, but I didn’t start writing poetry until I moved to the United Kingdom three years ago. In that move, I gave up everything—my family, my job, my car, my cat. It was a lot to process, and poetry helped. And the poems were only for me. They didn’t have to be good. I played with language, tried things I’d never tried before. What I love about poems is when they show you ‘this is like that’ or ‘this is actually about that.’ Poems don’t have to tell a story—they can show you one moment, one idea. They can make something beautiful out of something painful. And for that, I’m grateful.”

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