Feature image by Chris Johanson, Human, (Future Trippin On It Because of the Machine People and How It Makes You Think So So Much), 2005. Etching, 16 1/4 × 14 in, 41.3 × 35.6 cm. © Chris Johanson.

Listen:

The moment we say alone we are
not. The sun tucks under the mouth
of a mountain yet still light fills
our skin. Every day a heart is pulled
out like a wet plum from one body
and placed inside another. Every day
someone comes home to a lover
packing her bags. It is normal
to fall asleep in pain and wake
with more. We break open
clouds by waiting long enough.
Behind this midnight other midnights
trace a face so familiar we touch
our cheekbones like twin moons.
With closed eyes we wonder what
we are to do with all this living.

Philip Schaefer
Philip Schaefer is the author of three chapbooks. [Hideous] Miraculous is available from BOAAT Press, while Radio Silence (forthcoming 2016 from Black Lawrence Press) and Smokes Tones (available from Phantom Books) were co-written with poet Jeff Whitney. Individual work is out or due out in Vinyl, The Cincinnati Review, Prelude, Forklift Ohio, DIAGRAM, Sonora Review, H_NGM_N, Adroit, and Hayden’s Ferry, among others. Schaefer tends bar at a craft distillery in Missoula, where he received his MFA from the University of Montana.