[vc_row row_height_percent=”50″ override_padding=”yes” h_padding=”2″ top_padding=”3″ bottom_padding=”3″ back_image=”56863″ back_position=”center top” overlay_alpha=”0″ gutter_size=”3″ shift_y=”0″][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ position_vertical=”bottom” style=”dark” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ zoom_width=”0″ zoom_height=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_custom_heading heading_semantic=”h1″ text_size=”fontsize-338686″ text_height=”fontheight-179065″ text_space=”fontspace-111509″ text_font=”font-762333″ text_weight=”700″ text_color=”color-xsdn” sub_reduced=”yes” subheading=”by Patrick Holian”]Canteen[/vc_custom_heading][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space empty_h=”2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A graveyard, but for vindication. A memory, but of something that hasn’t happened yet,
but not a premonition.
A rotisserie chicken, but also every item on the dollar menu, but also water in our cereal,
stretch it out babe.
A miracle, but experienced by a fifth-century atheist named Scott, who declined the mantle
of mystic and refused
to associate his tears of jade to divine intervention, choosing instead to blame his fatty diet.
A tryst, but
observant or kosher or halal or etc., but like, also, a mellow affair conducted for the sheer joy
of feeling terrible.
Crepuscular, but chartreuse. The moment of the recognition of love. Psychedelics, but
your friend’s dirtbag
older brother’s cocaine cut with whatever they use to put down rabid animals. A dream
of a party,
but a gathering of all your ex-lovers eating caviar and fried bologna sandwiches and
enumerating every
single one of your flaws. The truth is, I will fondly remember no one but you. What haven’t
we unlearned,
under the guise of citizenship or allegiance or affection? I assure you it’s not dementia,
I’ve always put
my housekeys in the freezer. I tell you that in the oppressive, suffocating heat I will rush
you inside, take off
all of your clothes, and suck the heat out of your pores like a venom. Just as I fall asleep
each night my love
whispers to me of thalassophobia, the fear of deep water, assures me that this and all of my other fears are justified and holy.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_center” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space][vc_separator sep_color=”color-184322″ el_width=”30%”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_right” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”59784″ media_width_percent=”100″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. His work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, 2020, and Salt Hill Journal, 2022, he was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Contest finalist, and a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]