ISSUE ONE
FALL 2020
R&R:
RECOVERY & RESILIENCE
Recovery/Relapse (Forgive Me)
By Sean Cho Ayres
Remember when it stayed January for months?
When the lake wanted to become a lake again
but couldn’t. We stuff our hands into blue mittens
and took turns sitting on them for each other.
My body would’ve charged in any direction
that you’d let it. It’s much harder than you think
to time travel back to a past self
and ask it for your old behaviors. What January was it
again when we saw the winter-thinned-goose walk over
the lake and you went outside fed it stale greensprinkled-
sugar-cookies out of your hand.
The goose got fat and you got well. The goose came back
every morning till it didn’t. You waited for me till
you couldn’t.
*
It’s August now and I’m alone again
This morning outside my window a fox walked
across the porch with a fat liver between his teeth
sweet organ blood on his white chest he’s delighted
My dear please forgive me
I’m starting to think this is all I can be.
Sean Cho Ayres
Sean Cho Ayres is an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Salt Hill, The Portland Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Ploughshares. In the summer of 2019, he was a Mary K. Davis scholarship recipient for the Bear River Writing Conference. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize.
