Three Texts

Joseph Young

Constant Math

Things he decided: ice was always bitter, time will append like cooking oil, he'd only been wrong once. That was as a boy. There was a girl, her small ear, purple in the mulberry tree.

Incorporated

His hands were covered in correction fluid, blotched white to the wrists. The man at the next desk watched over his computer screen, speaking slowly into the phone. With each jab of the brush, the photograph withdrew. Business proceeded.

On Not To See A Bird

The noodles boil to paste, blacken, catch fire. She comes home and throws the pot into the snow, a hissing startled crow. Upstairs, she finds him asleep, eyes clenched to the plumes of acrid smoke. She slides beside him, has dreams—acres of corn-stalk, winter rag—pinioned by the wing of his arm.