Like Asterisks

David Shook

The newspapers say you’re two packs a day

flavored like souvenir cigars: bus exhaust, fruit rot,
soured smoke of boiling hops, trash & burnt plastic

limited edition ash fall

You hide the city like
asterisks hide the us & is of
fucks & shits

like string bikinis cover nipples

a sheet-draped mass on the highway shoulder

Smog flags like riptide warnings at the beach:
stay indoors if red, walk if orange, light sports if
yellow, if green fine

never green

earwax gray,
mucus marbled black

David Shook is a poet, translator, and essayist whose work appears in magazines like Ambit, PN Review, Poetry, and World Literature Today. Kilometer Zero, a poetry documentary he covertly filmed in Equatorial Guinea, is forthcoming in 2012, along with his translation of Mario Bellatin’s Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles, where he edits Molossus. http://davidshook.net

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In This Issue

Russell Jaffe
...No Punctuation Birthday
...Giant Caterpillar Sleepover
...Wild '93
A. Kendra Greene
...One Perfect White Swan
...Every Glass Flower in the Harvard Museum
Melissa Bobe
...Moscow
Joseph Mains and Donald Dunbar
...from Jorge: Sangre del Mar
D.E. Steward
...Octovre
Melanie Noel
...Warm Earth
...Cloud Trophy
Hai-Dang Phan
translating Phan Nhiên Hạo
...Paper Bells
...Morning at O’Hare Airport
...1858
Dana P. Diehl
...The Collectors
Chris Siteman
...The Bindery
M. Lewis
...Badness
Kyle Hemmings
...Bedbugs
...Gross Fable 2
Kari Larsen
...Van’s Friend in the City
David Shook
...Fourth Tenochitlan
...Like Asterisks
Jamie L. Olson
translating Irina Yevsa
...[Don’t whine, just eat your soup]
...South Station
...[How are things in Eden?]
Greg J. Hayes
...Drawn Boxes