Poetry

by Kimmy Chang Matheus Ferreira i blame the erratic pulse of social media. a wondrously flashy line of dialogue. the man whispered it from the master closet, where he lay on the linoleum beside his wife’s pink poof. starved, folded in some forgotten sock —  i sat in silence. he rubbed his toes together, then crossed his legs. sweet lily, i have only you to talk to. the man rattles through his to-dos —  spray herbicide, buy butcher steak —  all of it circles back to the sweet

by Gbolahan Badmus Sinval Carvalho — Lagos, May 2022 You considered death as an antidote to hiding, but your silly friends proposed life instead. They carry you on the back of the city, past streets bent like clenched fists — ready to strike or extend a handshake, to a lounge seated by the Atlantic. Through the clouds of shisha and cigarette smoke, the sea unfurls in waves, swaying to the wind. Your body cannot match the fluidity of water. You ferry away their pleas to mingle

by Scott T. Hutchison Stephen Poore You slip, right into it, on a low moment’s non-notice. Mysteries of bottle, but no glass. You survive on scant: stolen watermelon sugar, a trespassed swimming hole with rocky falls to lie in. Underwater. Eyes open. Counting how long the breath holds. The world bubbles and froths cleanly above you. Angelic separation. The flow changes with Not-so-Fun-House mirror distortion. Worthless would be too much of a compliment; less is the better,

by Ziqr Peehu Chris Curry I When the jawbone stumbles into my dream, I shriek first and greet later. It doesn’t introduce itself — just leans its 2.8 million years against my bed frame till it’s acknowledged. I stare at it. It stares back, its sockets are empty & the silence is prolepsis. The jawbone gets annoyed. It calls itself orbit — (says 3bodyproblem — says solveit) but it’s a drunk stumbling through zero gravity, teeth foaming at the gums, a rabid dog chasing itself. I

by Mary Simmons Melody Zimmerman In the summer, in the woods behind Mary’s house, the woods not owned by Mary’s parents, we searched, without her parents, for snakes. When we searched for snakes, we were jungle explorers, and one of us would always die, though we never found any snakes, and sometimes we would touch dead birds, study their dark eyes, touch our lips, take turns laying in the grass. When we laid in the grass, we were no better than the snakes we never found in t

by Meredith MacLeod Davidson Thom Milkovic Elaborate sprawl of heartache you are memory carrion rattling a tin of shiny things over residual iMessages. Symbolist jewels lost among an Olympic verve where last season’s blizzard still eclipses the trails. When the parallelograms settle across my chest I know I’ve invited a Secondhand News sort of curse. A Never Going Back Again string pattern of tea glyphage yielding small broken pieces unrelated over a lapsed Instagram irony. T

by Quinn Rennerfeldt mana5280/Unsplash I explain the dream to my therapist: I found a large, purple chrysalis affixed to a suitcase, abandoned on the sidewalk. She says it is a container for my gender transformation. The chrysalis, not the suitcase. When I hear container, I think tupperware. Less sexy than the sleeve in which a caterpillar melts and resolidifies into a winged thing. But sturdier. A container that women share. Tupperware parties, saving food we made for the ne

by Jeffrey Hermann NASA An old friend moves home but I don’t reach out. Months pass. I look around for him when I’m in a crowd. Nothing yet. Some people keep diaries, some watch history documentaries, and some think the past can fuck right off. I know myself well enough to only read self-help books halfway through. Tomorrow can be a better day but the day after that there will be a hurricane. A journalist stands on the beach and says winds will exceed 80 MPH. She explains the

by Nicole Fegan Simon Sun what i am looking for in love is shelter — from the rain, from myself, and even from the sun. our home is inhospitable. woodpecker trellis; evergreen tree. i complain. this we know —  laughter over cold toes, winter heat, the crack of light between our doors. and i storm; i storm. i cannot build the vernal dam. wherever i am rock i blame the river for erosion. i want to vacation in your life. soft, fragile kisses far beyond our view. let me build up

by Brandon Shane frame harirak In the hideout scurrying for things to do, as rain hits dirt, trees sway and leaves become leaflets storming the old stone of a city upon a hill, the worms have done their part, but I’m struggling to find a reason to exist, and last summer I saw a stray dog watching cars beside a highway, as the sun swept hope on a six-hour interval like tides in Brittany, or certain blocks in Los Angeles, where two-by-fours strike at the same rate they build. M

by Pamilerin Jacob Javardh/Unsplash In my heart, a meadow, where all the birds are single-winged awaiting the bravery of the first to pluck his plumes, develop a finger, The truth is pouring through a keyhole, hot & dense. You could not make a martyr out of me. I know too much how to disappear when the blood gets hot. Galloping through morning mist, waiting for my wings for something ripe to compete with dawn’s bright. My heart, swollen like a bicep, throbbing in search of th

by J.E. Seuk Ksenia Makagonova Today the teacher taught her that smells are effective openers of memory. Honeyed milk to mother’s touch, tang of vinegar twinging at her tricky elbow heaved into walls of penance for that broken bottle four years past. It makes sense! She recently learned that while you’re asleep your nose can transport itself to other places, absorbing newer smells through newer faces — vacuuming up senses unknown to know. Now she wonders if her grandmother’s

by Holly Pelesky Mateo Krossler I watched them fall: the keys and all my keychains from the overpass. Car stalled on 520, couldn’t get home but didn’t want to either. Nothing worth saving but my stamp collection full of 25 cent stamps, so many birds — one outside my window who built a nest, pulled worms from our lawn covered in dew — it was so wet where I grew up, like a spooky movie: foggy and damp with no clearing. We tied rags to our feet when we jumped on the trampoline a

by Cydni Thompson Daniel Shapiro Shocked by my nipple in the mirror above the sink, I slept with socks and asked Jehovah for a re-alignment as my body had become the sound board in the backroom of the church with the stubborn knob. What does Pastor think when pencil skirt ladies fan the spirit into a tart froth, and do the ladies think at all before they yank my tights up beneath my dress with snap and gentility? Now the other nipple’s gone wild with conscience, having heard

by Jocko Benoit Peter Neumann The raspberries so delicious yesterday are graying. The boy asks me what potential means since so many people use it around him, the way it was once attached to me. Is it better to not lead him on? For him to just be what he wants to be? There’s more potential in the banned collector’s gaming cards I found in the basement’s forgotten realms last night — worth thousands. More than my body and all my poems. And just then out of the woods comes our

by Meghan Kemp-Gee Bruce Barrow On the eighth floor, the dishwasher’s groaning with desire. I wonder which sounds better, nebulae or nebulas. I wonder if there’s anything in the world less like nebulas than a drowning nuclear submarine, the last man standing, the crew all already gone, drowned or abandoned ship. Everything is bleak. Everything is an emergency. In movies, in such a situation, the lights blink sexy, copper-scented red. You have to do your duty, put all your own

by Candace Walsh Candace Walsh with gratitude to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty” All tortoises look ancient, even this baby one, wizened face looking back. Paused in his glacial-pace crossing of a road more often met with deer hooves, squirrel paws, turkey vulture talons, and my shoes than tires. Angled unwisely, taking the longest-fraught distance between two points of roadside wildgrass. I paused, stilled by his peril. Who would ever look at him and think soup or barre

by Sarah Mills Brigitte Elsner 1. C. In my dreams, I know whether you like grapefruit. I don’t like grapefruit, in case you were wondering. You weren’t wondering. But to answer the question, the red liquid that flamingos feed their young is not blood. It’s called crop milk 2. A. In this economy, nobody would drop a penny off any building, let alone such a tall building, so there is no way of knowing how soon it would hit the ground. When I was a child, my grandmother told me

by Sam J. Grudgings Kumiko SHIMIZU All the boys who never escaped have taken to caddisfly the streets onto their well past pupal forms. Their horrible whalefall & anemone ridden bodies hauled into the antiseptic of shore. You are so proud, you pretend you have never been them. Streetlights lining sea-sank chests gleaming. What possibilities a horrible tide will illuminate. But oh, not you. Oh no not you, boy of the waves, cinema of the cresting current, static star of anythin

by Brian Bruso Passing over the archaic Bourne bridge as the autumn shoulder season slips into mulled cider and leaf filled barrels ablaze. Buzzards Bay, dark before seven, dusk cracking open cottage pies, spinsters cobbling blueberry buckles ‘in fashion’. Hugo’s serendipitous melancholy soothing a night- cap hot toddy. Seabird cackles keeping steady rhythm for the wooden spoon smacking polenta against pot sides. Cheddar grated over top, maybe an egg, dippy to be fancy. Hawki