'from Letters to Liszetta'

Liszetta, now the dew is on the flowers, 

and the vulnerable metal is forgotten 

(bruléed, contorted past belief), the bodies.

So all things, pliant under heat,

articulate a will; so we, and ours,

move submarine and sorry, feverish 

afraid. Liszetta, can I tell you what 

I found in all this mindlessness?

beneath the hollowed floors of suffering 

I found in a crook of oblivion

 a kind of choric ecstasy

and what I found I found could not be owned.

Artwork by Alex Haveron Jones

ISAAC NOWELL currently works as a freelance writer and journalist and is in the process of completing his first novella. His work has been published in the Times Literary Supplement,  Los Angeles Review of Books, Lighthouse, and most recently Pain. The Fountain, his first collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Partus Press in 2019.