Issue 36 Summer Special Edition: Lost in Midtown | Jennifer Markert
"hormones fade to zero, a single line, to “no.” / Psychologically, “yes” was the lighthouse / and “maybe” was the wreckage."
Welcome to KHÔRA, a dynamic online arts space produced in collaboration with Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. Visit our Archive to read previous issues. Scroll down if you’d like your work to be considered for future issues.
Issue 36: Special Edition
In this Issue 36 Summer Special Edition, you’ll find essays, short stories, and poems about summer love, desire, lost love, missed connections, and finding love in unexpected places.
Today’s poem is by Jennifer Markert. Jennifer is a writer, mother, and marketing professional currently living in Pennsylvania. A lifelong storyteller, she studied creative writing at Temple University and has been quietly penning poems and essays ever since while building her career and family. Her most recent passion project is a book-length memoir of a high-risk pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lost in Midtown by Jennifer Markert
I.
Made in India, bought in Madrid. A two-euro jumpsuit
worn in Andalusia, stained on 7th Avenue,
New York, New York.And what happened in Spain ends before it begins:
thin floral cotton, breezy in the August sun
that deja vu, that out-of-body cruelty
the subdued, wet ruin of it all.
In transit, in tears, in the eternity
of an eight-minute stumble–
the city deifies the life we mistake.II.
At 4:45,
a girl walks into a clinic, crying.
Saturn returns restless to this old cliche,
rings still and glistening, grace left in space.
A woman hangs framed, glamorous in onyx
painted eyes averted, skin like the moon.
What’s black and white with red all over?
What’s red anywhere if no one says its name?
Read Lost in Midtown.
Issue 36 Highlights
Issue 36 Special Edition: Strawberry Lipgloss
Issue 36 Special Edition: Lost in Midtown
Issue 36 Special Edition: Olympia Billiards
Issue 36 Special Edition: Gut Feeling
Issue 36 Special Edition: Mother-in-Law
Issue 36 Special Edition: Please Leave A Message
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With galactic gratitude,
Leigh Hopkins
and the Corporeal/KHÔRA squad