Three Poems
Oft Permitted to Join in Agreement
two legs converged in a hazel wood and I
I let myself be swallowed by
coniference.
When You Know
you know
when you have your love and it casts a little shadow
like a vase moved against the light cast by the window
the window’s sun it performs against the vase’s figure
its element of darkness
when your love you know is moved by a hand and stains
the page stains thus a movement caught by volcano
asked against a blond wallpaper
a movement
when you know your love has flowed
it went left and left a trail like a beard
a remaining trail that says the words have flown
left like hand shadows of birds fly in the winter
A True Account
At night the heater woke me up
“Are you up?” I was liquescent
runny where my arms
lay along my body, broth
where my legs touch, damp at the
brow, in agitated night
the space heater spoke “Are you
okay?” “I’m hot” I said “Space
heater why are you on, why
are you up so late?”
“You were careless with me,
you didn’t press the button, I’m just
doing what I do” “You’re
giving me nightmares” I said, “In
my dreams I’m at the start
of laughing opening my mouth
I realize the water’s coming in
and begin drowning” “Oof” said
the heater sympathetic while in
the dark the leaning mirror played
steam rising from my hair
“Why are you steaming” “I don’t know
you tell me, you’re the heat source”
“Honestly I just transmit” it said
“I don’t know—something there is
that loves me in this wall?” “That’s not
O’Hara” I said “it’s Frost anyway I’m
Sappho, or I’m going to be. So
do you have a message for me
am I special to you should I persist
have you visited me tonight to urge me on?”
“Not really” said the heater “I’ve been here
Hannah ordered me for you” it’s true
in horror when she visited and saw
I could not stir to warm myself. “You
didn’t shut me off. I don’t
know what you do! You shiver on this
pad, you entertain with sex or tales of
woe, you call our room your
Garret of Despair. I mean you
heat it some but slowly,
no offense, honestly I can’t tell what
your function is, this isn’t
critical, I came here in a box”
sultry on the mattress
I shifted to gaze back, “Heater,
I don’t know, I transmit too maybe
but I’m never sure quite what, to
be candid, you’re right
I’m not much of a heater” “That’s
not what I mean, I’d never
compare you and I, for all I know
you’re a fridge,” “True” I
nodded in the dark, “I’ll shut
you off now if you’d like,” “That’s fine,
but do it for yourself. I don’t mind
in fact I can’t” Space heater
what else is there to heat but
space I thought, gaping the sheets
to vent a wave of steam.
“Goodnight heater” “Sophie,
goodnight. And don’t feel bad” “I won’t
heater” I said, “Thank you” “You’re
welcome” it said. Coolly.
Sophia Dahlin
Sophia Dahlin is a poet in the East Bay. Her first collection, Natch, was released in 2020 by City Lights Books. Her second book, Glove Money, is out now from Nightboat. She leads generative poetry workshops and teaches youth creative writing. With Jacob Kahn, she edits a small chapbook press called Eyelet, and with seven other poets, she curates a weekly reading series at Tamarack, Oakland.
Paige Turner-Uribe
Paige Turner-Uribe paints atmospheric scenes with open-ended narratives, which are both familiar and mysterious at the same time. Her work explores the sublime and the uncanny in ordinary life and the way light and color convey feeling and mood. The paintings consist of layers of oil on canvas gradually built up and wiped away and reapplied until the image is resolved in a luminous surface that is both representational and abstract. Her work exists in a space of reverie where in-between moments reveal themselves in an iridescent haze contemplating the beauty and tragedy of the urban landscape and quiet domestic moments. The varying yet interconnected subjects move together cinematically like stills from an ongoing film. She earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA in painting and printmaking from San Diego State University, and has participated in numerous exhibitions including with Ochi Gallery, Massey Klein Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.