February 13, 2025


Winter Sunlight, Glenn Stuart Pearce, ca. 1939. Gift of Pennsylvania W. P. A., 1943. From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Losing the BandPoetry by Ashley D. Escobar

I spot a bug on the wicker chair           across from me.
        I should be somewhere                             three hours ahead from
now.                Nobody wants                  a novel about a girl
swept in Christmas.                       Mine would be called Losing the Band.
I try to make out last December            through the fog            in my glasses.
        All I taste is a stranger’s                        breathy vocals.
I climbed up loaves of bread        breaking fever        to hear the last
of the reverb.        I haven’t wrapped your present yet.        I let the bug
       crawl up my translucent tights.        I remember our first snow
and the way the streetlamp lit up        streaked in paint thinner        white.
I kept your tulips in the ice box        and the tambourine        in the fireplace.
       I won’t sleep on your side        of the desk        when you’re not here.
We’ll hitchhike        back to our world        of airmail sailboats
and wind-up toys        and have teeth        on the same day.
        I leave a message using         speech-to-text
as the bug leaves        my line of vision.        I’ll wait all night
in thirty degrees            if it means icicles     on spidery branches
and pure                                                                                            noise.


Ashley D. Escobar is a writer and filmmaker from San Francisco, residing in New York City. Eileen Myles selected her debut poetry collection, GLIB (2025), as the Changes Book Prize winner. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hobart, and The London Magazine, among others.














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nyc / san francisco

ashleyxescobar@gmail.com

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