Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 36
Spring Equinox, 2020

Featured artwork, Broken Tulip, by Andrew Davis.

New Works

Gabriel Coffman


Buried by Leaves

Four hands join together. From a parent and child out to soil for a while and stop when going deeper is unnecessary. They plant a seed inside a skull. Then discard leaves on top. After, the child is weakened and ensleepened, rests on the ground by the hole, dreaming with the corpse in parallel. The parent walks back to the car alone. That burial slot bears the weight of the sleeping child. Because of this strain, the soil's tendons break and the skull tilts, acting alive. The parent returns to find bones wrapped in roots, skin replaced by topsoil, organs moving by way of insects, a few centipedes falling off the vertebrae. The undecaying skull and its termites smile, follow up by saying with its teeth that it was happy to sleep here. It wasn't too soft or wet, not too warm, not much of anything at all, not much to feel in the ground.


Cathedral Feedback

I take a few days off
All there is to it. This part stocks the shelves. Holidays have more breath devoted to them. The part could feast. Or fast. The ability of frame. Travel? What could it reveal? Does sustenance at times need to unpack? What is there to unpack? Geometry and containment relate (to quarantine). To snow on the ground. For all can be seen is thermos, piston, wrinkle. Lavender in growth-spurt has a discovery of joints. This part shelters with a mild give. The tennis racket? It slaps the back. By default this part invents clouds. From behind and stationary. Idling and burning? It's all for the seasons.
I play a one-string lullaby
Waves are melodramatic. Whispers over whispers. This part diminishes the bus ride. The roof was home to rafters. The chains? Near the ends? Those are loops. That bore the weight. Passing through. Holes that pass holes. Tie up and keep aloft. Steel cages could house a few. Some drip. Others have been for some time. Individual floors aren't unnoticeable. That liquid that lived on top? Going up and down? This part drinks as much for the hour as possible. Goes down easy. Those thousands of cages mean there're always cages involved. The distance and fog is from the liquid below. Water nourishing food is enough. Conversations click though holes. Dividers slide through holes. The numerical footprints are counted. The total number is considered.
I cut things short


Gabriel Coffman is currently an MFA student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a reader for The Timber Journal and Subito Press. His work can be found in, or forthcoming at: Five:2:One, The Hunger Journal, Psychopomp Magazine and Yalobusha Review.