Bliss Road: poems by Joshua Zeitler. Number 24 in our Rane Arroyo Series.

[ cover image courtesy of Patty Paine’s Wrecked Archive ]

Publication:  July 31, 2025 [100 copies]
25 pages
ISBN 978-1-960693-28-0
$ 12.00

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Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Impossible Archetype,  HAD, and elsewhere. This is their first chapbook.

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Bloom

The man who wasn’t a man flew to the moon, looking for other bodies that formed slant rhymes with their souls. Instead they found lonely bowls of dust that floated when kissed. Since they weren’t getting any younger, they decided to fly home. I should have told you they made their wings from the discarded purple feathers of chicory blooms, which was not an issue since chicory had no use for feathers. However, they only open with light’s first kiss. They had to wait for the sun to bloom. When it did, they flew home to discover their house was now a larger, lonely bowl of dust that could not float. They had never felt heavier. Maybe I am looking for a body that forms a hard rhyme with the soul after all. Yes, the man who wasn’t a man was me. I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner since you are not getting any younger. Now it is too late; I am already opening.

[ Thanks to the editors of Pithead Chapel for first publishing this poem ]

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