Evan Sandifer

On the stairs outside

On the stairs outside

my parents room

Slinky & I have our

first dance. I extend

my hand, help her begin,

roll over her twisted

spine. She leans down

to the step below.

Her next movements

come naturally as she

remembers the beat & down

again. I follow & arch

my back, let my arms take

my weight, together we

drip a heavy

pour, up over &

down to the first floor

drain. We are puddled

there, settled at the

bottom on our stomachs. I take

her up again where

the gravity has

shifted, still Slinky & I love

to dance, she loves Maroon 5.

I play it for her. We

fall away again spit

& sweat sticks

to the back of my neck this

duet makes me nauseous. Someone

is cursed out behind

a closed door & I wish Slinky

& I had a home of our

own full of stairs. We take it

in reverse, she learns how to go

up alone. I still crawl

back on my hands & knees

she’s a step ahead of me

& I wonder if this is where it begins.

Slinky is the most beautiful.

I watch her dribble down

without me & I nearly

throw up. The music dies,

songs about Jane falter.

I know that Slinky knows

that I know she’s dead

or is, or never was.

“I forget about myself all the time. What poetry gives me is a memory of things that I may otherwise lose the potency of. When I am soil and earth, these pieces will be my biography. Not a retelling, but a spark of what once was. People are fascinatingly good at getting the details wrong, but what clings to us, what remains buried in the skin, is the feeling. I hope that when I am old and so forgetful, I will remember those feelings, and I will feel the fullness of everything. Life is full of slinkys and wolves, but really, life is full of you. Through writing I talk to myself night and day. That is something that poetry has helped me with beautifully. These imprints can be read in so many ways, and in that, I can be remembered as a body of water."

Songs About Jane

Evan Sandifer is a creative that can be found cutting new looks into their wardrobe and frantically rearranging the art on their walls. They have found a particular home in poetry, where their joy for words, their emotion, and their curious spirit can play in unbound territory. They have received several silver and gold keys from the Scholastic Writing Awards competitions, and their work has been featured in The Kenyon Review Literary Magazine. They recently published their debut anthology Body Mechanics (2024), and they are excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what they can achieve in their writing. Evan is a lover of good company and will take any chance they can to dive into a range of topics, from the ethics of Dark Souls to the intricacies of rap.

Why are these pieces your Trace Fossil?

I Watched Wolves Play in Snow from a Bench on the Side

Excerpts from Body Mechanics

Evan Sandifer

They look so calm between

They look so calm between

the white lines. Laughing like people

do. I am the guardian

angel this time, waiting for violence, for a nip

at the neck. I wonder

when manhood begins for them, if they

stick their tongues

where they don’t belong. If they bury

dead bodies, like people do, under rocks

& river beds. One of them rolls on its back, saying

look at the pink parts of me, I dare you.

Dare I?

I’m still on the bench because

that’s what the poem asks of me. When fur hits

bark, knocks teeth, & the red starts to drool

into the white static, all hell. & my knees clank

with the vibrance of tin cans, not standing.

Still wading. & the babe starting to peak

from under its mother’s belly, the other’s

still playing in their own shifting wounds, choking

on each other’s necks, laughing like birds

mimicking

people. The mother is

on her back, bleating like a lamb. She asks

for a chance to redeem herself, to return the

child from which it came. Of course

I watch

it unfold, some sick voyeur. A recreation

of a biblical painting sprawling out

in front of me.

The winter babe is a cursed thing. You cannot tell it

to stay hidden until spring. It’s head

melting what is left of a pure

renaissance.

I am the ugly newborn

& the wretched mother

& the wolves laughing like birds laughing like people underwater

& the god who stayed in place.

They look so calm between

They look so calm between

the white lines. Laughing like people

do. I am the guardian

angel this time, waiting for violence, for a nip

at the neck. I wonder

when manhood begins for them, if they

stick their tongues

where they don’t belong. If they bury

dead bodies, like people do, under rocks

& river beds. One of them rolls on its back, saying

look at the pink parts of me, I dare you.

Dare I?

I’m still on the bench because

that’s what the poem asks of me. When fur hits

bark, knocks teeth, & the red starts to drool

into the white static, all hell. & my knees clank

with the vibrance of tin cans, not standing.

Still wading. & the babe starting to peak

from under its mother’s belly, the other’s

still playing in their own shifting wounds,

choking

on each other’s necks, laughing like birds

mimicking

people. The mother is

on her back, bleating like a lamb. She asks

for a chance to redeem herself, to return the

child from which it came. Of course

I watch

it unfold, some sick voyeur. A recreation

of a biblical painting sprawling out

in front of me.

The winter babe is a cursed thing.

You cannot tell it

to stay hidden until spring. It’s head

melting what is left of a pure

renaissance.

I am the ugly newborn

& the wretched mother

& the wolves laughing like birds laughing like people underwater

& the god who stayed in place.

About

Donate

Submit