[fearnotes] | alison thumel

  Alison Thumel is a Chicago-based writer. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, and Ninth Letter. Her first chapbook, LIFE OF, won Salt Hill’s Dead Lake Chapbook Contest in 2016.     _____________________________________ [you are a near-death experience]  If you have a reason for your fear, it doesn’t move the pebble in your throat, smooth  not like breath-rattle like deep death dropping a ripple in the well. You are breeding reflexes & finches.Your little potbellyboils over. The room of your heartrimmed with skinny streamers  breezing when a window openslike follicleslike smoke falling  from the floor above.