Mitchell Jacobs

ALT Equinox after Sara Ryan Now, the blades of leaves divide the shadows on the forest floor into split hearts. The wind makes a riot of cold. March slips on green socks, and somewhere a raccoon grips a spear of grass in its muzzle to make it whistle. Floorboards yawn. A sapphire chips out of a robin’s egg, and this is how change arrives. At its most expected, there is still a shock of blood where a girl flattens her knees against the trashed riverbank. Her ribs cradle more breath than blood. Her hands grab at a downpour of maple seeds, and she aims her ankles at a noon-flushed cul-de-sac. She names that place: "memory of toothache and bramble-scratch, a kink at the back of the throat, duskless and gray-puddled and hollow as dovesong." She slides a spiral shell from the brass chain around her neck and watches her trail bend in the sand, away from the water, away from the woods, her steps unmasking shoots arranged like points on a crown.

ALT Cover of a literary magazine featuring text that reads "Tampa Review 67," and a large image of a reddish-orange, rusty sign labeled "Sandman Motel: Vacancy"