how could we ever not know

by Victor Pambuccian

it took a meeting
for us to notice
that neither wind
nor waves
nor rolling thunder
are needed
for a green fruit
invisible
soft to the
unavailable touch
us embracing
the air
with that look of
lemon scent
at dawn
to ripen
on its own
in the absence
of holding hands
locked-together eyes
the sound of
breathing
the maddening silence
of a smile
it’s as if
the separating space
the individual habits
the patterns of sleep
the fading memory
all conspiring
are hopelessly
overexerted
by the time
it takes
to keep
two halves
submerged

Spectacle

by Jack Dunnett

---

Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University. His poetry translations, from Romanian, French, and German, have appeared in Words Without Borders, Two Lines, International Poetry Review, Pleiades, and Black Sun Lit. A bilingual anthology of Rumanian avant-garde poetry with his translations, for which he received a 2017 NEA Translation grant, was published as Something is still present and isn’t, of what’s gone (Aracne Editrice, 2018). He was the guest editor of the Fall 2011 issue of International Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in Communion, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Panoplyzine, Lucky Jefferson, O:JA&L, Poetica Review, Apricity Magazine, Detour Ahead, The Elevation Review, The Dillydoun Review, Red Ogre Review, Pure Slush, Havik: The Las Positas Journal of Arts and Literature, Vermillion, and Sparks of Calliope.

Jack Dunnett is a mixed media painter who grew up in the Highlands of Scotland. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Gray’s School of Art in 2017. He currently lives and works in Glasgow.