Features • Fall 2025 - Diagnosis
Poetry • Fall 2025 - Diagnosis
after Ellen Bass
O black bean boy, O owl eyes,
O package of muscle and fur.
My cautious companion, my
in-love-with-me friend. What will we do
without your low grumbles
your hot-water-bottle body
beside us all winter? O sun-scorched nose,
O wacky teeth that can’t bite a thing, O
fluted, veined callalily ears
taking the world straight to the heart.
There is no guy I’d rather sleep with,
no slinky tuxedo like yours.
When you frolic and hop
in your nightly routine, the sounds
of cracked glass and low howls
are like the heartbeats in a womb.
In that embryonic waterfall, we sleep.
Two lucky mothers.
O bloated bladder, O swollen,
sleepy heart. When we nearly lost you,
we sought you in our grief
to ease our grief. We held your exhausted body
to us. O seeing soul, O aperture closing and
widening, catching the landscape
of more than mere humans can know.
Beloved beast, dear body that heals and heals.
Tiny horse, honeyed contralto,
our leaping, whiskered seal —
Fiction • Fall 2025 - Diagnosis
W E The People entered the home of the Crisis Actor illegally. This is true. Why deny it? We certainly weren’t going to be invited in. There was the matter of him knowing our faces, from those days when we picketed on the gum-spotted sidewalk or confronted him at his car in a parking garage downtown, our accusations drowned out by the scrape of skater boys. And, of course, there was the restraining order. Legal lines had been drawn and, yes, we decided to cross those lines, which resisted no more ably than strands of cobwebs stretched across a basement doorway.
The fresh online pieces we experiment with outside of our print cycle. Formerly known as Blog.
Notes
The purposes of this review are twofold: first, to convey the eminently pleasant though not necessarily intellectually stimulating experience of seeing The Light in the Piazza at the Huntington Theater; and second, to convince you, yes YOU, the member of the Advocate reading this (or honestly whoever else) to take up my mantle of reviewing shows at the Huntington now that I have graduated.
From the Archives
Fiction • Fall 2020
I’m always letting men infect me. Before Andrew I dated an actor. Alex. After a fortnight together he’d given me ringworm. He was a mountain-range hiker of low-range ability, and prior to our coupling he’d spent a month schlepping around the wet Hebrides. The diagnosis took a toll on his libido, and our dates would usually conclude with us sitting in my bed, me palpitating, him pantomime-yawning, delicately removing my hand from his thigh. Such was my desperation that when he told me he had ringworm, and showed me the taupe circles on his inner thighs I decided to say I didn’t care, and climbed on top of him. He always preferred it with me on top, which I think now was less an enjoying-the-view thing and a more a path-of-least-resistance thing. For the next three months we passed our ringworm back and forth like a logbook, and at the beginning of the fourth month he told me that, while he was attracted to me, he wasn’t wildly attracted to me, and he didn’t love me. We broke up three weeks later and then he moved to Portugal.
Poetry • Summer 2019
For Charlottesville
My city, hardly a city, still
swimming like a newborn—
two winters into this dream
the streets feel pale and distant.
I made my room so clean last night
I thought I might disappear, folding
laundry until the space looked smaller
like something out of a children’s book.
Or like Meg’s window in the corner of the television.
Or like an engine in reverse but heard
through playback. Last night in the dark
something seemed to give, so I scraped the salt-licked brick
for the heat beneath. In the newer version of this dream
everything is still red and distant
and August finds bodies pressed to the street
like too many petals collapsing. Each husk unearthed, unfolded
in my two steady hands. My city, I am trying to write my way
back to you, but out here I remember
only echo or ghost. Or these hands
shaking, all through the night.
Even in the body each story ends
outside of the body, and here in snowy Boston
something is left buried. Easily, like broken glass. Like light
bouncing off the sidewalk.
Poetry • Fall 2018
It’s hot in the middle of the storm. It’s humid
gray. Makes the dust bloat. I can hardly breathe in
it, air moving too fast for me to hold onto, wind’s body
swimming over mine. Like being in a room when all
anyone wants is a little power over you, arms stroking
against heads, black wide glass eyes darting, staying afloat...
In dance class we are told to fall forward–
hurtling our bodies ahead, asking to be caught
by our selves once we get there. What I put forward as
flesh gets pushed back by wind. Our bodies hurtle against
each other, one risen from the sea, one made out
of clay... Power is a series of erasures. You fall into it. You
push against it. It pushes back. The wind is full of coyotes
saying, saying –
Some days, I say, I don’t think of it
at all. I wake up having already been loved
by the entrance of the day, the day that says come out
now. The day that says the earth is your friend and you
have a secret between you– it is your life. You walk out
under the blue carpet of night and see planes migrating
overhead, then a fountain, this magnolia tree, its pink
fisted buds newly unclenched, dormancy beat open,
pushing up against the seed-coat... Here we are,
we did not ask to be woken, though it was not easy,
not safe, we open as oblations on a dark branch,
pink-veined luscious mouths drummed open by rain.
A voice inked with water and wind rises. And the black
loam beneath.
Poetry • Winter 2016 - Danger
**The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.**
I remember the breeze right before…
Burs of—was it willow—slant-falling.
The gray sidewalk, schist granules, scattering.
A brown dumpster lid smushing its green plastic, sandwich meat.
A rat made its debut, but for a moment.
I remember an awning string’s knotted tip soft-thudding a windowpane
—tympani’s uneven beat.
The rustle of stray trash—bass strings, almost rising
—but never.
And the chopper, the chopper—spittletatootling, spittletatootling—
A proud boot landing on obedient asphalt.
The stern, uncrying chrome.
The flighty flames decorative gas tank.
I can’t forget the beryllium blue sunshades
—orange hued at a glance.
And the stars and bars, starched, pressed, bandana.
Nation Idol Gorge
But for a moment
Then
Boom.
**The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.**
Spartacus sprinklers (top rail)
Serial no. 21809A
Inspector 480F
Jiangxi Quality Products
Night Hawk Importers, San Bruno, CA
Roman Roads Distributors, Phoenix, AZ
Port of entry, Tacoma, WA
Tankard 10179.03
Inspector 4201
ILO quarterly report:
Case study 1142
Tingting Liu, 23, female
I.D. 41732
Platform 12, line 8, station 4
Muscular skeletal paralysis
3rd metatarsal taped to 2nd phalangeal
4th proximal splinted to 5th distal
OSHA Region 1 final report:
Incident 2267, explosion (gas)
Inspector 505F
Sprinklers inoperable
Logic Tree branch 20
System of Safety failure
Mitigation device
16 drill holes stoppered
Weld burs not filed
Citation: 29CFR.1910.159(c)(12)
Notes: inspector 505F on leave
DOL budget sequestered
PUB.L. 112-25
District 2, 112th Congress
United States of America
**The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.**
I remember the plume right after…
Orbs of—was it cinnamon—black-rising.
Vapor gray whitening shingle powder rain.
A dumpster lid sheered off a gravestone’s angel face.
A hawk’s claws claimed the stump.
I remember two spouts of thin flame, blue, making an X
—mind’s waking dream.
The hissing of gurgling plastic, supplicant—sick
—stomach’s inner eyeball.
And the bathtub, the bathtub—sittin’ pretty—sittin’ pretty—
The hysteric roof flopping on an unfazed floor.
The wise, ever-wakeful steel beams.
The cheery glass—beaming—everywhere.
I can’t forget that purple doorknob
—horny at a glance.
And the plump couch stuffing foam, blazing, angry.
City’s Final Chorus
But for a moment
Then
Shsh.
**The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.**
Spartacus Sprinklers (top rail)
Serial no. 21809A
Scrap metal yard F-2
Stripped steel tankard 28
Sampson Recyclers Ltd., Pittsfield, MA
Steelworkers local 4-12026
Smelting furnace 48
Slab beam rollout batch 81.2014
Semper Fortis Steel Precision Corp, Brooklyn, NY
Steelworkers local 4-200
Section cutting station no. 12
Steel cylinder hollow type 2b
Store & send department 4
Spirit of 76 Commercial Furnishing Corp, Slidell, LA
Steelworkers local 3-275
Sargon Sprinklers (bottom rail)
Serial no. 321911B
Sink coating station 12
Sanding unit 25
Seal testing station no. 7
Sprinklers standard specification 29CFR1910.159(b)
Station inspector 13
Sales packaging room H
Sort and storage garage 4
Second incidence of forklift crushing worker’s toes
Spirit of 76 Personnel Motivation Free Cupcake Fridays director, Chet Baker
Steelworkers local 3-275 chief steward, Marynella Fernandez
Section 5, clause 2 “Management shall comply with all state and federal standards”
Safety committee grievance no. 78: unannounced station rotations / inadequate training
Staff training regulation arbitration hearing 501.P.36
Sargon Sprinklers 1st annual wet t-shirt contest
Super Sonic Dance Club, 3rd Floor, Picayune, MS
**The Friday evening gas explosion in Springfield leveled a strip club next to a day care.**
I don’t remember the very moment…
Flashes of—was I daydreaming—Biloxi Bound.
The termite swarm at dusk, balling up, sprinkling.
A skeeter swirling in its hotel pool—for the first time.
A no-see-um bug popped out from nowhere—but for a moment—to romp.
I can’t say I recall Cleopatra’s hairpiece flying off in a speeding four-cylinder vehicle
—Empire of the Great Somewhere, but never.
And the flying fish, the flying fish—hither-flopping, hither-flopping—
The carefree palms, twerking, injured.
The bald, unyielding sun, giddy.
Tentative feet in knee high water, gripping.
Have I forgotten the name of that triple IPA—something like
—Rondez The Moon à la Batshit.
And the ample sized black pockadots—in my eyes, twerking, carefully.
Empire of the Great Somewhere
But for a moment
Then
Then
Explosion Rocks Springfield* is Rodrigo Toscano's new book. It is even wilder and weirder than these*
* sections suggest, and you can pick up your copy **from [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Explosion-Rocks-Springfield-Rodrigo-Toscano/dp/0986437344), [Powell's](http://www.powells.com/book/explosion-rocks-springfield-9780986437342), or your local poetry shop. *
*Only the first four of these sections appeared in the magazine. *
* *
Poetry • Spring 2017
On this day of our choice
we have collected
at forests like
some insect
varietals
beetling their way
to the heart of
the copse. We have
coalesced for
the moment as
dewdrops do
bivouac in the
abdomen of leaves
pooling tensility
against atomizing
sun or its reflection
sprung from mica
pieces studding
the sharp loam.
The tenderfooted
will wince
the shod shall
advance this day
of our choice when
we pass separate
through the wood
to track in packs
paths whose blaze
is merely what
we toss ahead.
All hopes into
mouths of our
beer cans are fed
crumpled jettisoned
and come upon
twenty yards
down the trail
as though left
to augur for
us there. But
no other has
before stood
here with legs
spread open as
a pair of shears
pin-stuck in the
soil like sign
of a miracle.
Here the trees
are deplumed
limbs mangled
and gray like
stone jali hiding
others gone other
ways this day
of our choosing
foreshortened to
evening already.
No two paths
cross and were
they to they
might as wires
sparking this
night of our
choosing to fire
but uncovering
a charcoal plain
across which we
might see one
another again.
2026