I Never Skip the TV Intro Music

Zeke Shomler

because I tend to lose myself
in unreality: exploding planes,
wolf-torn faces, bodies snowed
into the long gray sleep of non-
existence. Listen: in this world,
all our tragedies are uninvented.
Even the claws of hungry bears.
Even the foxes furred with omen,
dreams forewarning canines
clung to sap-dripped skin.
Somewhere, there must be
a universe with meat that tears
precisely, without frayed edges,
organs that break down to bites
without a spurt of blood. 
Let me go there, now. Let me hold
a storm-cloud, shake the world
until it’s right again and all the sky’s
a blanket of white fur. A diagram
once showed me how a rabbit’s
skin could be removed like
clothing, like slipping off a jacket, 
and isn’t that what’s dangerous
about becoming? That one day
I will wake up undressed from my
outer self, naked as a moonbeam?
I must have been warned of this
so many times, this many stories deep.
Every story’s a beginning
with no end and every end’s
a river-delta sloshing 
into sea. Every night, I practice
my unmaking. I gnaw each narrative
with all my broken teeth. 

Zeke Shomler earned a Combined MA/MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. His work has appeared in AGNI, Modern Language Studies, The Shore, and elsewhere.

Art: Yongxi (Vivian) Lin is an illustrator and printmaker based in New York. She completed her undergraduate studies in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts and is currently pursuing Printmaking at Pratt Institute. Her work often blends illustration and printmaking, exploring themes of personal narrative, emotional storytelling, and cultural hybridity. Through her art, she reflects both visible joys and hidden struggles, creating imagery that is playful yet thoughtful.