Congratulations to Julie Platt!

Congratulations to Julie Platt, whose poetry chapbook, In the Kingdom of My Familiar, has just been published by Tilt Press. The chapbook includes "Les Yeux Sans Visage," which appeared in issue #42. Visit the Tilt Press catalog to place your order.

As added incentive, check out Julie's poem...

LES YEUX SANS VISAGE

What I am now has much to do with the number
of diamonds left in the world. There’s been an accident,

and I am the child of a scientist. My father lays the phases
of my face out in his mind like an undressing

interrupted. He’s looking for one among the many.
I think all diamonds must be raw inside, like the girls

he carries down the dark staircase of ether
to be mined. When I surfaced from that same numb

dusk I was a multiple, an infinite pack of dogs,
the red crawls of my raw face naming themselves you,

and you, I am you. Did you know skin keeps that wild howl
down below the surface? Sometimes you hear it when you die,

if they flay you, if your face is turned toward the dirt.
Did I tell you I was born with a caul? Caulbearers

cannot drown. My nurse pressed it between photographs,
and father kept it with his mother’s diamonds.

I am to have them on my wedding day. I am the bride
of a scientist; it has something to do with my face,

with the number of faces left in the world, with the number
of times a name stretches over a gaping hole

and snaps back, that wretched sound shocked
back into the raw cawing. My diamond, father weeps.