swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

from Stanza Trades
Zebulon Huset & Carson Pytell

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DEPTH OF FIELD

Never forget old acquaintances. Always
bring back to mind their moment’s meanings,

allow bokeh to fade their failures along with yours
into a soft focus backdrop. Celebrate the small

successes of knee-jerk selective memory. Use
of too much past tends to tire the present,

wears on the weary still-living folks with the future
to still consider. To still be apprehensive of.

TEMPORAL BURS

Someone once suggested gouging
out an eyeball to better make my point

because I and no one else can see it all—
but, hey—I’ve always liked Hammurabi

and there’s nothing like the erosion of
three millennia to smooth out cultural burs

at least enough to where we can imagine
it’ll only take three more to raze for good

all of civilization. Cleopatra is closer to us
than the pyramid builders—temporally—

we are taught. Yet time is only all that we
experience, like the next Tower of Babel

with quantum calculations inscribed
in each slice of futureproof carbon fiber.

FLEISCHMANN’S THANATOLOGY

When yanked from existence
by the tentacle of some immortal
being, whether Lovecraftian
or something far more ancient,

another one older than weather
or history that you’ve known exists
for that you do and you’ve watched
Nova and tell people you love Sagan

and can even stand deGrasse Tyson
when you’re a couple shots into
the ether, a few sips sloshed past
the softened gates of sobriety

you’ll be had. You’ve had it, so
of course it eventually gets back
at you. Always count on whatever
is immeasurable, let alone unfathomable—

consciousness flits like water
in a mountain stream. Meaning
undulates. Coherence resides mainly
in the being making the utterance.

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Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Swifts & Slows, Rattle, North American Review, Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence and many others. He publishes the prompt blog Notebooking Daily, and edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked.

Carson Pytell is a writer whose work has appeared widely in such venues as Adirondack Review, Sheila-Na-Gig and The Heartland Review. He serves as Assistant Editor of Coastal Shelf and his latest chapbooks; Tomorrow Everyday, Yesterday Too (Anxiety Press, 2022), and A Little Smaller Than the Final Quark (Bullshit Lit, 2022), are forthcoming.