died in 1891 at Tenerife,
on his way from exile.

I’m visiting my son who lives on a boat in a marina in the San Francisco Bay. The movement of the boat is almost imperceptible until I stand outside and it seems like the boat is still and it’s the dock that’s moving. I am so sleepy and although it’s 10 AM I crawl back into bed and pull the fake Sherpa cover over my head. I sob for a moment into the nubby polyester and consider sucking my thumb. I try it but get no satisfaction.

Those familiar with Lindsay Ellis likely came to know of her in the context of media criticism. Her snarky and infinitely meme-worthy video essays covering Disney and The Hobbit, among other topics, draw millions of views on YouTube and netted her a Hugo Award nomination in the process. But behind the scenes, Ellis has been brewing up Axiom’s End, a sci-fi thriller that grapples with timely questions about our civilization while its hero grapples with aliens.

“The Wind Will Not Carry You,” by Jordan Evans, is an honorable mention for the Columbia Journal’s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.

My neighbor, Willow, lights up when she sees me. Her face explodes into a wide grin, her eyes squinch up, and she ducks her chin into her roly-poly neck. She waddles over, twines her fat fingers into the wire fence, sticks her bare foot through one of the gaps, and wiggles it to say hello since her hands are otherwise occupied. She looks back to her mother, disengages one of her hands to point to a latch, and squeals gay! gay! Gate! Gate! She wants the barrier between us to dissolve.

“No One to Call a Friend,” by Jim Ross, is an honorable mention for the Columbia Journal’s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.

It’s midnight and I’m still awake, writing by a halo of lamp light. I glance up at my bedroom window and the apartments across the street have vanished into the night. The city is asleep in the gloaming, and I am the last one awake. The world feels gone and lonely, so I go inside my tent.

all the tattered things all the broken things hidden behind a sock stuck in drywall to keep out the cold a hole burrowed to store plunder hold ill-gotten gains stash secrets things crumbling down as hours slog away decomposing things heaped one on top of another on top of another dragged there by vermin into final rest into the thing-graveyard under the thing-night where light never unfolds its rays all the moldering things treasured by rats shiny this bits of stuff shiny shavings bits of that await some final release or re-assemblage amidst damaged things with parts seized up half a child’s toy wound down one last time a nest of silky grey hair pilfered buttons paper clips bottle caps all flung onto the growing thing-mound waiting like skeletons unburied unredeemed unfound should light break through exhume this boneyard-of-things when a cat hungry for prey strikes slashes the rodent’s doorway claws sharpened like shards of stained glass things might be freed blessed open unfettered rescued from their rot

After four days of fever, I want to unzip my skin, abandon this body too ripe with sickness and strange. I feel wind-dropped and boozy, but I force myself toward useful action. Tonight, I will cook dinner, the way a good wife and mother should. Poor inferma, my husband says, we can get take out, but I will not be deterred. Go rest, you’ll feel better. No.

“Lapse,” by Anna Foran, is an honorable mention for the Columbia Journal’s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.

My body is powered by internal combustion.
It is a fruity cluster of lust near the office cactus,
especially in that unspectacular moment
it becomes clear, like a snail learning to ignore
instances of sudden pointless touch, how much
not giving a shit takes the wind out of
cruel sails.

“Who in their right mind uses a credit card to buy thousands of toy cars? It ruined our trip to England.” Laura turned to April, waiting for her to ask questions to keep the story going.

My German companion and I sing as we walk. She’s into the Backstreet Boys; I go for Fats Domino.

“empty beautified,” by Zanib Naeem, is an honorable mention for the Columbia Journal’s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.

“‘You tired, runner girl?’ They all call me runner girl,” confesses the narrator in the opening of Lynn Steger Strong’s second novel, Want. Having lived a former life as a competitive distance runner, this immediately brought me back to my college locker room, where we had a poster of Lauren Fleshman, runner-writer extraordinaire, standing on an empty track with her arms crossed. “Objectify me,” the poster read. “Look at me, study me, and understand me. Then, and only then, can you make my running shoes. Don’t give me small, pink versions of a man’s running shoes. I’m not a small, pink version of a man.” I looked at this poster every time I left the locker room.

Are you having difficulty getting started? Experiencing frequent urges to go? Has your prostate ballooned to proportions that defy the laws of medical science?

After “Elegy with Sympathy” by Emily Skaja

“Fall,” by Enid Smith Becker, is a runner-up for the Columbia Journal‘s Special Issue on Loneliness in the art category.

The week before Christmas, an Italian guy from the Internet scoops you from your white house in a red car. You climb in and fold your hands over your legs, wishing they were bare so you could feel the warmth of your skin. It is cold, though people keep saying that winter here doesn’t begin until the solstice.

To read Clerk of the Dead as a collection about death is to see these poems through a single lens that doesn’t take into account the many facets glimmering in the text. Death is merely a specter haunting the lines, much as Death’s specter haunts us, especially as COVID-19 continues to ravage the nation. Alan Perry’s poems do not only reckon with death or dying; they reckon with what it means to lose something.