Throwback Thursday is a monthly series that re-visits work originally published in [PANK] Magazine. 

—

Since Interstitial was published in PANK, I have been working on a full- length collection of poems that considers objects that are no longer in the world. Some are animated by the person who had worked with the object, some are alive themselves. So far, the project feels like an inquiry into the many spaces ordinary things occupy and how they bind us to them. Recently, I studied at Bread Loaf ‘19 and the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center and I have also begun a cartooning practice. I’m following the great Lynda Barry’s direction in her new book, Making Comics, to shake up my writing and broaden my perspective.

~ Ellen Devlin

INTERSTITIAL

1

liminal
icy lake of unknowing
glace
pummeled fruit-heart
of the matter
distinct from energy
distinguished:

Latin dis– ‘apart’ + stinguere ‘put out’ (from a base meaning ‘prick’). A small sorrow, slang: penis, vulgar : a spiteful or contemptible man often having some authority. Authoring laws, restrictions of movement. I am not moved by their sorrows.

2

longing
miles of asphalt
no propellers
humid

longing                                       

3

Do you remember growing
a body with an electrical charge,
lightning, you curved and curled
into another’s hollows, left park grass singed
beneath you hiss and steam, light shining
from the spaces between your teeth?
Now, I hardly remember the sound of desire. 
It’s a pillowed hammer, soft, without insistence.

4

Who is god?
earth, man
this likeness
a beginning
everywhere
all things

a beginning, everywhere
all is infinitely perfect

distinct, and equal in all things
nature and substance

create heaven and earth by
a single act

man and woman
holy
eat blessings
eat forbidden fruit
we share
original

6

1.How do we find nourishment in the death of others?
2. It’s a trick question.

Rita at the Toy Store

Barbie Hello Dream House, 2017

-still pink
-hi tec smart house
-equipped w/floor sensors
-speech rec
-girl in the ad smiles
-at six different Barbies
-still white
-impossible bodies

8

longing
a cleaving
a small empty boat,
a rocking

Directions: go in summer
on Sunday, look again at the house
where you grew up. 
Sweep another August
into hallways
pocked with insufficient rugs. 

9

I have searched this bus and there are no sleeping children.

awake     a fissure     in your skin     admitting     without your request     raucous wound

10
-diminutive
-occupying less space
-crouched
-body openings
-as invitation
-goddess

Izanami

Sunset is still bruising at five,
swelling through the deepening
wound of days. 

When you are sent across a bridge of clouds,
to birth a fire god, you will be immolated.
All gods are arsonists, and you
are already burning. 

What do you do with a creature who bleeds and doesn’t die, grows children in her body and feeds them from hers?

Solutions:

SQL constraints: used to specify rules for data in a table. Constraints are used to limit the type of data that can go into a table. This ensures the accuracy and reliability of the data in the table. If there is any violation between the constraint and the data action, the action is aborted. 

-ritual/accidental murder, judicial murder by silence, murder by mutilation
-restrict mocement, literacy, flights into lavender, sovereignty 
-flights into lavender

11
Already desert when you find her
moth larvae braiding in her hair–ghost blossomed
in a graveyard of her own making. 
What else could she do?
Then your slow wind gentled her,
quickened her. She drank you,
your scant April rain. 

—

ELLEN DEVLIN is the author of Rita, and a forthcoming chapbook, Heavenly Bodies at The Met. Her poems have appeared in in The Cortland Review, Ekphrasis, Lime Hawk Review, PANK, The New Ohio Review, The Sow’s Ear and Women’s Studies Quarterly Review. “Border”, a poem from Rita, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.