spin your webs strong, your stories thick. send your words out from their corners
into the world and watch: they pull us along.
Summer 2026 Issue 4
CODY LEWIS
Kafkaesque
Those nights were nightmares //
ones worth forgetting,
but incapable.
Spindling
on eight legs
down 3rd Ave.
Those nights made meth
ubiquitous //
like the unmistakable
smell of fresh coffee.
Webs spun.
Strings pulled
as puppet masters
make wooden boys
real again.
Behind locked doors,
in the back rooms
of relationships
I’d ruin,
I stared into the mirror //
eight dead eyes staring back.
The insect beneath my skin
finally visible.
Those nights
make men believe //
in metamorphosis.
CODY LEWIS is a Seattle-based poet whose work lingers in the nooks between devotion and decay, often drawing from addiction, memory, and the redemptive possibilities of the pen. When not writing, he works as a case manager, supporting Seattle’s unhoused population. He believes the mistakes of the past can be transmuted into a deeper faith in humanity. These are his first publications.