[FICTION]

[03/02/26]

Practicing forgiveness

Three Poems by Sebastian Hunter

In the Morning the Mysteries of Night

Some years of a “lived-in" thaw
Better known as the source of you
Eliciting the reply, eliciting the reply
Of many faces more beautiful
And artisanal cheeses, wines from the new countries
I could cry about the ceremony, uncles wandering about and applauding
Like an uncontacted tribe
In the ochre aquarium light
Somebody uninvited the organist, somebody hummed
Royalty-free hymns
About America, land of the weak-kneed
And air travel, self-defense
Practicing forgiveness in the mirror
Thank you for the scale replica of the landing
It'll go great next to my disasters

It’s Only Architecture

Another dinner deep with miracles
The rector stripped the walls of their damask
“It's only architecture,” but then he pissed off of the balcony
Into a colder
House of counsel
Feeling the nearness, feeling the nearness
And other shocks of the lake-blown wind
As it corners the bull market?
We used to read things in this country
The Godhead and other minor literatures
In which I was fucked so delicately, in oven mitts
We had just left the Midwest
For younger wives and financed apartments
The wine like water and heroin
Singing soul in the kitchenette
Was scary, but someone had to let November know
Who does the praying and who does all the buying

Requiem

Some well-sunned pumpkins in a rare field
the size of twin Englands
My penis in her pressure cooker,
homesickness in my bowel like a gutted pig
1001 orphans raining their jeers, high on
cigarette fumes and jazzy songs,
tiny tiny child and the pharmacy called “Indigo"?
That spring, we learned another lesson about disease
You can bargain and bargain and your hunger yet grows
What a Christmas it was, Uncle the cannibal
leering at the feet of the trainees
while toy dogs left their purse-hutches
for the duller pastures of Ohio

SEBASTIAN HUNTER is a poet and drummer from Seattle. Poems recent and forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, World Hunger, bethh, Cult. Magazine, and Trampoline.