Poetry

by Julie Weiss Ivan Aleksic Even though the camera won’t be turned on, apply a tinge of lipstick before your class: bombshell pink or scarlet work best. When he joins Zoom, sing a sweet note into your good morning spiel and smile as if sashaying down a catwalk. Just because he’s married with kids doesn’t mean head tilt and hip sway aren’t boxes on his mental checklist of requirements for a good teacher. Ask her to tell you about her family, the easiest and most enjoyable top

by Ruby Dunn Immo Wegmann For Catherine T AND THE KITCHEN IS FOR ROMANCE // AND even after everything, I find my muscle memory still betrays me; That half-beat breath before I let the gate swing to, because in that moment I still half expect to wait for you. How long must we keep loving the old things that we know? Five years gone, since I left my parents’ house - and I can still take the stairs two at a time when the lights are off, because they used to be mine. Just like I’

by Muiz Opeyemi Ajayi Thomas Griesbeck for Deborah Yakubu “& you sister of my country burning & i am sorry & i am sorry & i am so sorry” — Othuke Umukoro quell the flames. rewrite the violence in crimson. there’s no sweet synonym for lynching. no metaphor adhesive enough to gather grey ash into brittle white bones. girl a crushed petal. arsoned garden. black girl flayed. noir dreams writhing. papers reading like a dystopian novel. eunice slain. bridget beheaded. names of girl

by Hassan A. Usman Kenrick Mills When we learn to spell joy , we lose our lips — our tongues perforated by grief. They said home is a place for merriment, but our meals poison the hand that made them. My mother applies a thick blush on her chin to withhold her cascading tears, yet is called tears of joy. This is the house that produced an album of my first cry, this bungalow, a nightingale; its strongest pillar, my father’s voice. It’s questioning how a bird sings, but spread

by Christtie Jay Dami Akinbode Mother, I can not call because the darkness that has befallen is brutal. Yesterday, walking my bicycle to work I almost lost an eye weighed by how hard it is not to throw a stone at the man you love when he says no to you collecting his coat and breathing in his hair every morning. Now, crouched over a coffee cup I am losing my breath chewing my tongue, trying to remember never to call for help because at this age, goodbye shouldn’t be a dress t

by Ren Gay Dustin Humes I pulled up each blade of grass by the roots from this manicured lawn and realized there was nothing except cigarette butts and wilted four-leaf clovers. Nearby mud daubers build hives from crumbled asphalt, trip the bicyclist and take the skin from her knees as payment. Recognize this untamed lawn for what it is -- the earth taking back its own name -- but know this all comes at the cost of never truly being home. Our front yard reforms as a rippling

by Victoria Nordlund Joshua J. Cotten After Dorothea Tanning Accept it: We all let someone else christen us. I am here. I have arrived. Don’t be fooled —  I am not the coiffed bad-ass staring you down with one hand on a knob of a door that leads to another & another & another —  Promising all the answers if you follow. I admit, the resemblance is uncanny but trust me, I would never be caught dead half-dressed in a purple brocade jacket: A Jacobian garbed perky-breasted versio

by Despy Boutris Masaaki Komori is it takes away your excuse to bundle up and stay in bed. Sure, around here, even winters feel like summers, but it’s the rain that’s the real savior: the excuse to stay in, to avoid friends, to avoid your mother diagnosing you with dysthymia again. Once upon a time, summer was the first beat of the drum, the drop of the bass. Now it’s your life T-boned by another season, your hands fashioning a noose in sleep. It’s your skin turned dry and sc

by Remi Recchia Alexander Jawfox What would you say now, my first, knowing that I’m bigger? That my forearms’ muscles have muscles? That while I used to trim sparingly, I now cut nothing except the golden follicles crowning my head like an ostrich his plumes, blooming deep black and handsome cream. Soon I will resemble my whiskered father. I try his ties on in the mirror and always resist the noose. My eyes have laid perfect eggs in praise of the future. They tremble under

by Zoe Contros Kearl Viviana Rishe The palms leaned heavy in the drought of endless summer. We ate an expensive seafood lunch at a restaurant J Lo frequents. Late afternoon, we walked Santa Monica. Dipped feet and ankles into jagged cold Pacific surf. Back home, Rafe rolled cigarettes next to the pool while the Irish Setter puppy, still new to all this, chewed at the plants growing alongside the wall. Spitting gnawed pulp. You, on an adirondack chair playing solitaire, me in

by Jason D. Ramsey Heather Gill we drink in a bar, where smoke sticks to walls like honey & throats burn from rye. your words are rain drums on bedsheets, hammerfists, bough-breaks for cradles, tethers for ties. kitchen doors creak like crib rails that wake babies from sleep. your lashes flit, plumes rise above grease. it’s okay, i’m not pregnant. it takes years — I’ve tried everything. four men, three scares, two blades. one shoebox full of film strips & ink stamped feet. yo

by Jeremy T. Karn Priscilla Du Preez april 2003, of the many nights, this one i dreamed of my mother — her name steaming hot in the song of a bird. outside, the rain throws itself into the arms of the glass window like a lover. ask Liberian where to find God, then we will show you the mass graves of God’s children in them. it has been two days of nonstop fighting & raining in Monrovia. the sounds of bullets could be heard in a distance like a tumtum laying in my chest. someon

by Auden Eagerton engin akyurt I can trace the tree rings in my palms back to your sharp-toothed head. When my mother blinked, I saw you glinting back at me. As a child, I took the resemblance as creation myth, proof of every axe-beat in my blood. In the Fall River house, there’s a bed and breakfast now. I could lie down in the roost bedded with dead pigeon feathers and feel right at home. At my parents’ house, they make a museum of their own. My father splits his eye over di

by Danielle Rose Walter Randlehoff Epistle on Water The point is to make distance between yourself and everything you desire but I am so full of leaking. Around me there are facts that are flowing like a faucet: How we are now in a small cave not dissimilar to bread baking, how the monk’s cell is carved from a tall rock-face that reminds me of my father. How I am traveling alone. How far I am from my home. The Tour Guide sneezes each time he tries to pronounce the word solitu

by Adrian Dallas Frandle Philipp Pilz Nothing converts one to an augur faster than an abdominal ultrasound on Valentine’s Day. Anointed into the priesthood of interpretation with one swipe of warm gel to the belly. Or, perhaps it was the juvenile eagle one would be tracking on one’s drive home from the appointment. Maybe one would watch it circling, and slow down the car to try and snap a picture (the danger meager — the situation benign — there are few other cars). One would

by nat raum Adrian Dascal let it be known: i am not grateful for tragedy. i hold no love for the years that have worn me thin as lived-in cotton, down to my memory who chose to keep only silence. the spaces within me that can still well with joy are reserved for the hours between midnight and four in the morning while the world stirs in their beds and i am aching i’m so alive. faint pulse rallies my muscles after i trudge home past two, but only for the glory of japanese whis

by Mitchell Nobis Karsten Würth after Buffalo Tom The first year, I walked a lot. Saturdays in sun, nightly when the kids finally fell asleep after screens. The black dog & I went miles, found the spots where the river winds its way around cul de sacs & oil slicks. People disappeared in new & old ways. I appeared under stars, satellites, Venus, tree buds generating, making positive space in the waiting air. The moon threw the sun’s reflection at midnight, trying to spotlight

by Ayokunle Samuel Betiku Mathias P.R. Reding As if unaccustomed To sound, the brogues Echo lonely down The paved throat Of the hallway at Which end the parlor Holds the mind Of what once held it; Fairy lights, gossips, Cats, her voice Slightly raised above The rest, somehow Managing to coax Shufflings into concord. The air crowded With roast and Jollof. In one room, she hangs On the wall in dust And monochrome, Two maternal epochs Away, frozen Mid glow, light Years behind th

by Ashley Hajimirsadeghi Kyle Head we buried dog bones, grabbed a rattlesnake by the throat, thought we could cry without ruining our makeup, checked our pulses each night after brushing our teeth to see we’re still here, rolled dice & prayed for snake eyes, chased lost monarchs, stole the light of day & flossed our teeth with it, danced around lanterns swinging on the breeze, sung a love song we knew ended in tragedy, called ourselves lucky ones, performed short plays on the

by Anne Panning Casper Westera Asked the genetic counselor. Your father was a scratch-off gambler who never beat the odds. But Careful Watch Dog is your animal spirit. Besides, Angelina Jolie has whispered in your ear: “Don’t blame the mutants! Be brave!” Genetics is a black & white totem pole. A slender staircase made of ribbons and blood. Lie quietly at night and decide: to be or not to Be a woman who amputates her breasts. Carry a wicker basket containing your ovaries, tub