Issue 35: Emmett Lewis

from THE SKIES OF EUCLID

10.08

I stood with Simplicity and looked out over splitting rock. Marcuso, below, blustered incongruous, clapping porch-swing to his nuance. He swallowed Libridium, Fluxanone, 550 mg of Fax-Machine. The Cytophrene held epochs compressed into tallow. With Marcuso as medium—erupted head, chest, tongue. Likewise leapt water from rock. Please, she said, carry on as if we were broken.

10.12

I set the lamp on its side and went looking for limes. Inferred the albatross into an expanding man. They call it Dachsund Integration. He taught the pope to ellipse so that domes smother into diamond. Marcuso stomped the vertex. A whaler from a space outside origin. A collapse in obfuscation. In the maws of tomorrow.

And tomorrow. The day after came a day before the previous, revealing iterations that could no longer traverse. So a quantity rolled over into ambivalence. The real was nothing more than a bivalve caught tangled in a stocking. Signification skedaddled into the clocktower. It rang until we stopped.

09.21

I love having a body. They felt encaustic untangling, that is. Or, arch materialist into embouchure. The declarative was ineffectual for the purpose maintained. We slept on a landscape. Barely consequent until you undermined our rationale. Such as might be glimpsed to the upmost. Awoke in a portrait. Interior with gauze. Said please, one more step to the side—a motorcade and a children’s song.

05.12

She slipped a nickel in your carburetor as the Minnows leapt for livery. Property slept with Fax Machine, ogled Monkfish. Pacific kissed Water Cooler as Dolly fled to a ranch with chandeliers made of lambchop. Simply kicked her leg to a “T.” Threw her arm to a “K.” Flipped on her diction and screamed to a “G.” Marcuso jittered to a bracket. Intercepted an orphan as the semi wept rufous.

01.29

The percussive mold of a house without edges. Doves plinking and pawing. An archipelago of half-drawn insurgencies. Where the color jaguar juxtaposes an evening of mice. Simply left her pick in the ground. Marcuso bid adieu the Lovers of Information. He said, you taught me how to feel. Unmoored the citadel from its axis.

Emmett Lewis holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia University, where he was the recipient of a Creative Writing Teaching Fellowship. His work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Chicago Review, Capgras, Volt, Nat. Brut, Tagvverk, Noir Sauna, Mercury Firs, Fieldnotes, and elsewhere. He lives in Queens, NY.

Copyright © 2026 by Emmett Lewis, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.