Poetry

by V. Joshua Adams Gil Ribeiro I am waiting to be called as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of my upbringing. The courtroom fills up. There is the piano teacher, neck ropy with veins, the housekeeper who fell in the pool, the wax pâte of the smiling headmaster. There is the coach with his tightly curled beard and the coach with his clean shave and sunglasses. The priest moves somewhere in the back —  I catch sight of green and gold robes, smell his aftershave. Kids

by Joan Kwon Glass Tim Winkler Do you remember in 1988 when North Koreans dug tunnels toward Seoul? We lived in that high rise apartment with mom and our jittery chihuahua. Under the bed we forged a resistance. Curious tourists can now ride a wobbly trolley through those border-blind tunnels from the 80s. Near the entrance they stand with one foot on either side of the DMZ. They take selfies. I read that Earth spins faster today than it used to. Atoms pitch themselves across

by Natasha Burge Bahador In the room with the clawback ceiling they gave me the serious news that my brain was a cloud. I minded their mouth, the muffled lunge of their tongue, and I studied the way they molded their words with bindings of mundane truth. The facts: I saw the world as a magical world, that for reasons of blood or salt or mineral imbalance, my mind revisioned itself in endlessly spiraling permutations of radiance. This was my factor, my secret contribution, and

by Kimberly Wolf Omar Hakeem They say it’s like there’s this hole like an absence of self where your everything leaks out and that the hole is in your heart dead in the center of you such an easy place to locate and why does the hole have to be in the heart anyway? such an elusive non-thing should take up as much non-space let the hole be in the mouth of the girl I was too afraid to kiss whose name I’m not sure I remember right or let it appear for a fraction of a second when

by Rachel Lee Etienne Girardet Of winning battles only to lose the war I hear them whisper. The ones in my mind, I hear them creep. Monday morning, love, I am not good enough. Friday night, darling, I think I’ve pushed too hard. I play at house —  the kind to live in, the kind to represent —  squirm on the same feedback: don’t put your soul into it. They say nunchi is a subtle art. The eye teaches you to feel in an airless room, seeking secrets writ plain in the in-between. H

by Sarah Lyn Rogers Hans Eiskonen All winter, men are yelling in the walls. The gas is out. Somebody smelled a leak. The ghosts of cigarettes waft stories high. This is how the year begins, already wrong. Was it in my stars that I would never think of now , that I would wall myself inside with looping thoughts? My brother lives here for only one season, flown back to his home coast at the onset of the plague. Don’t think I will forget how we cloister us indoors to hibernate e

by Preeti Vangani Ali Kazal My mother’s wig lived longer than what killed her. When she died, I fixed her consolation-hair onto my head. Then buried my head into her cupboard to sniff her on her clothes. All I got was naphthalene and perfect folds. Once again, I had encountered her care before her. Her, as in the woman who snipped off the loose ends of threads so close, the alteration would never show. I too tried repairing myself by sewing grief into a pattern. But grief, I

by Gustavo Barahona-López He sits fixated on an overly thick lampshade. Hand-stitched ambient light. Even his daydreams here are expensive. Wings shine from a disproportionate chandelier. The opulence casually bruises him. He gets up to check into his room. The manager sets down keys on the counter, already looking past him to the next customer. “Thank you!” he replies in a high-pitched voice coupled with a practiced, extra smile. Then comes the shiver. Patrons and patrons an

by Vismai Rao I made one this morning: last spoon of honey licked clean out of its jar — washed, dried & recycled for storing loose tealeaf. Not yet noon, I’ve already toured 23 — Just yesterday, we donated the dog-bed to the shelter & stood in the newly vacated place, assessing size, weight, how long in time will this one last? Recyclable or not? — The room inside my friend’s lungs is mossed with pneumonia, doctors restoring the bit of empty we all need to let the air in — L

by Nnadi Samuel Metin Ozer how warm you chew your tongue into disremembering the taste of a dialect. grief, the calm to soften your teeth, & sponge a weak phrase to its neat wall of pink. this is how you kill a mother’s worth: sludged wrists crushed to calories, lost from ceaseless count of meals by how much her darkness shortchanges you. your lips ramming into each other. you braid your head into a migraine, & let the style eat you. silence like mohawk, stands at ease. getti

by Fereshteh Sari, translated by Parisa Saranj Amin Safaripour Sometimes when the day dwindles over the shoulders of despair, the dead missing their own memories sit by the window and the sound of their feeble joints cracking echoes in the blinds. They fall asleep on the hands of the clock, are crucified on the forgotten laundry lines and remember the days gone. By daybreak, they roll off with the old songs on their host’s tongue and depart. Fereshteh Sari (1956) is a writer

by Tolu Oloruntoba Florian Olivo By parakeet, I mean one of the books that speak to me in recto and verso blurs round my head, a songbird self, a voice I can bear to listen to. Call it budgerigar, its bungie hook coos talking, then strapping me down. By a parakeet, I meant more parakeets, levitating meathooks to halt my free fall. Next time. I am more prone to helium jumps, and osmium sways, and tightrope thoughts, now. Train platforms remind me of fragility. The laundroma

by Monica Prince Vaginismus Mag for J. Marion Sims Here—take it back with you. The scalpel. The sutures. The bill of sale. Don’t wash anything. Leave us on the table, in the bedroom, out back, in the bathtub. We know our way home. Take your white coat, and your glasses. Yes, your notebooks, too. Especially those. We will close up for you, the jagged stitches spelling our own names. Do you remember them? Don’t wipe us down, or rinse us off. The rags stay, too. Shine your sh

by Kalyn McAlister Taelynn Christopher The horsemen come to me spilling prairie promises of Manifest Destiny. That American fever dream of cowboys and Indians—though now they advertise Cadillac Ranches and turquoise jewelry along I-40. But still disenchantments lead us along a path of carved out nostalgia, sun-bleached billboards with yellowed seductions of treats and a *real* West experience amongst New Mexico’s brown terrain only to find replica adobe truck stops filled wit

by Nadia Gerassimenko Дарья Вдовенко dolores becomes we remember silence while abusers scream through it all. we learned that to protect and perpetuate —  become numb to abuse and trauma. but now we break our silence, become a revolution. become #ustoo. Source: Page, E. (2017, November 10). Retrieved from Facebook. dolores flowers still i grew against all odds, untrapped myself from vines and thorns of your rootless hands, behind me. before me lovely suns and waters grounded

by Sarah Wallis The Now Time Cinderella sips her wine, tries not to choke, breathe the liquor down, everyone seems to be looking, they all know her story, she doesn’t know theirs and he’s left her on her own again at a ridiculous party, she can’t handle, looks around at the spinning, smiling faces, finding her feet, plucking up courage to speak when a group movement takes hold like a dance, the twitchers and her Prince Charming are leaving the pub en masse, a swooping flock,

by Hannah Grieco Paul Johnston 45, but the body of a 25-year-old. Seriously, a perfect V and a six-pack. I work out when I can, less than I want, but I never stop moving, never stop metabolizing. I rest and recover while in motion. I work harder than anyone you’ll ever meet. I care very deeply about doing the right thing. My feelings get hurt pretty easily, often from things you won’t expect. I look like a tough bitch, but really I’m gentle, so kind, so interested in the good

by Madeleine Corley Michael Lai Last night I buoyed a lightning bug after it fell in olive oil. Forty five minutes, we sat, its wings soiled and incapable of flight. I counted hundreds of bright, glittered bursts while it preened on the tip of my finger. I’m not saying I’ll grow anything grand: piano, hyacinth, meaningful gestures. There are worlds I rarely watch. I do so little with my hands. Madeleine Corley (she/her) is a writer by internal monologue and adores her Myste

by Kirsten Reneau James Kern I play with the yolk-stained eggshells my mother leaves broken and empty on the kitchen counter. She tells me she never eats eggs; too many calories. My fingers search for my ribcage, look for a bone to cling to; I don’t realize I am biting the inside of my lip until I taste copper, blood. The shell rolls off the counter and shatters against the floor. Kirsten Reneau is currently working on her MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of New

by F.D. Hudson Muhammad owsama if i were to say how it was, it would be like a cool bite of the asphalt as the moon collapses: that kind of hard-shelled feeling, after all the other words have failed you; a question pressing like a thumbtack on your tongue. except all you can do is erect ladders to the fire, kicking tires until your toes bruise. even as the sky falls you’re there in the backyard, silently begging for a way out. and when it rains the asphalt shines like