‘Our; or, Upon Failing to Understand Adiabatics at a Cursory Search’, ‘Anthropic’, & ‘Mistaken’

Katie Hughbanks (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and teacher whose photography has been recognized nationally and internationally. Her photos appear in more than 40 publications, including in Peatsmoke Journal, Cool Beans Lit, In Parentheses, L'Esprit Literary Review, New Feathers Anthology, Glassworks Magazine, Azahares, Moonday Mag, and Black Fork Review. She is the author of two books, Blackbird Songs (2019) and It's Time (2024). She teaches English and Creative Writing in Louisville, Kentucky US.

Our; or, Upon Failing to Understand Adiabatics at a Cursory Search

Something in this
/// \\\ train of thought
/// we are \\\ screams
/// like
|| mercury
|| coalescing
// each \\ on the trunk of
// other’s
| tongue,
lumps of sugar
/ \ salivating
/ \ for the
/ \ sweet
/ \ abandon
/ in being \ of this
/ and-not-being \ madness
/ and/burning
allthesame.

Anthropic

one man
feeds another
in a desperate
display of power
hungry
foolishness

Mistaken

When did it begin to take root?
Was it growing with the clovers
across the mud-choked fields?
We tasted them too often.
Did it cinch itself over Huron
while we angled ourselves pontooned?
Crisping in the last week of summer,
our hands silvered with minnows.
Did the blaze of stars and campfire
fuel this rampage under your skin?
A surfeit of skunks presented
the danger we mistook for real.
Did it press upon your shoulder
when your arm slumped from its socket?
Was it not mud that freckled your neck
as you rode off alone? Your limp fingers
clacked among spoked trading cards
the rest of us kept pretending to be.

Now, don’t take this moment to gloat.
There’s no high road for you here.
My memory’s failed to collapse
like I did in the one grass stain of shadow
on our newly paved way home.
You left me behind, knowing
I didn’t have the backbone for it.
But should I have seen it then, digging
at the base of your bobbing blond skull?
Did it chase you down in your furious sprint
through the sun’s broad stroke of August?
Swathed by the hazy, bulldozed ghost
our asbestos-stuffed school had become,
you moved at a speed I’ve never learned to match.

I didn’t see you come back
by the time of my revival,
but there you were, staking claim
to your own crush of green
beneath sugar maple mercy,
sunburnt and smirking beside me.

Steven O. Young Jr. is knitted within the Great Lakes' mitten, where he earned an MA from Oakland University and occasionally slathers soundstages with his body weight's worth of paint. His latest literary homes include Revolute, Barzakh Magazine, Havik, 300 Days of Sun, and Washington Square Review.