Current
Issue
Fall 2026 / Volume 13.1
Aleksander Zywicki
—
made strange
every day I think
of calling & don’t
& somehow I get
the sense you know
this & don’t call back
& time goes on & then
I’m driving & I think
his father is dead
his mother is dead
he’s a thousand miles
from any place
he loves what the hell
am I doing here
& still I do not call
& deep down I know
you know this
& when you don’t
call back I want more
than ever to pick up
the phone & say
you’re right not to
so slowly you hardly notice
you’re right not totime isn’t what it used to be
it used to be longer easier to fill
with mistakes we were so in love
what harms we could permit
ourselves to cause each other
seem laughably small
from here having hurt
each other so much since
having much more now to lose
one mistake & we who used to be
so in love & had always somewhere
to be going could really get there
& then where would we be
Aleksander Zywicki is the author of ZOUNDS! (winner of the 2024 Barrow Street Book Prize and shortlist finalist for the 2025 Julie Suk Award). Aleksander received an MFA from the New School and his work appears (or is forthcoming) in: Plume, swamp pink, Gulf Coast, Laurel Review, Seneca Review, Action, Spectacle, Hunger Mountain, Southampton Review and elsewhere. He teaches English and creative writing at The Hudson School in Hoboken, New Jersey.
