Art: "Volcanic Woman" by Lucy Kay Plowe

Poetry: "No man is an island entire of itself" by Jonny Groom

“No man is an island entire of itself”  

–John Donne 

 
yes i see that now John the love i have 

for you is the same love i have for me the body 

gave up trying to make sense of the map 

replacing itself with Bermuda Triangles 

 
i tumbled as the earth bottomed-out 

under the weight of our mouths all the poison  

is held invisible as marionette strings in night sky 

 
taut with directionless mass the fingertips 

i kissed goodnight become callused islands 

so prettily faraway my hands reach up 

to meet them in orbit 

 
in third grade my best friend called 

the only Iraqi girl in our class horrible 

things he would not be capable of spelling 

 
were it not for his father who was the only 

man outside cartoons to tell his son cold raw  

meat healed black eyes a tongue cannot  

do the work of lungs but then again we’re fluid  

as any ice planet caught far from the sun 

 
the damage is done 

we run at one another but there 

aren’t enough movable joints 

 
to justify anything but love for your fellow 

animal we meet at the crossbite of horizon 

the trees growing crooked as a mouth 

full of genetic words our teeth  

 
work through the archipelago of men 

like lava through a sieve the alien in me is  

the alien in you we’ll fly each other’s bodies 

like spaceships & alight on titan heads 

the lanugo of grass & green ash 

over which i’ll still wonder why  

i was too gutless to stick up 

like Haneen for Haneen: 

soft gentle girl 

Published February 27th 2023

Jonny Groom is a student in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he once saw a fox and hopes to see one again. He often talks to squirrels.

Lucy Kay Plowe is a nomadic painter and yogi. Her work deals with the human soul in relation to nature and the miracle of reality.

Volcanic Woman
the smoldering crater, remnants of a past epoch
Oil and wax on linen, 50×58 inches. 2022