Poetry

by Shannon Frost Greenstein Reggie B Breakfast: Three (3) 24-ounce coffees One (1) cigarette Childhood was rough. Nature and nurture conspired to sabotage my brain. I never learned to care for myself; I never learned to care about myself. Lunch: One-half (1/2) Lean Cuisine Two (2) 20-ounce Diet Cokes One (1) Hershey’s Kiss Two (2) cigarettes The eating disorder stuck around. The darkness of deprivation and self-loathing defined the next decade. To overcome the voices whisperi

by Richard-Yves Sitoski James Ahlberg The moon, they say, only looks bigger when it’s close to the horizon. But this morning I say it truly is bigger, swollen at the end of its shift like a factory worker’s ankles. Meanwhile, birds I can’t identify begin their programming day, and this lake that likely has a name is getting choppy, hinting at what the wind could do if it made an effort. This is worth drinking Sanka from a thermos for, as I fish for trout I wasn’t taught to cl

by James Diaz Obscura Odessey There is a hole In language It moves like a lantern Caught in wind caught in a tree Near the off ramp where a man on crutches asks of us a small kindness We deny him because he is not ours But nothing is The pine touched by snow Lets it all go While no one is watching Lit by televisions They sleep with one heart closed Our people Sadder than we remember them No one says what they mean It’s only fair that we pay for each unkindness With our bodies

by Luke Wortley Geranimo/Unsplash You can find the son at the back of a father’s throat if you’re listening. If you’re listening, it’s possible that you might hear the father’s complaints, the undertones of regret. Regret the self-effacing need to file down to the skin, to wear your wounds so red and open, even beneath your clothes. Beneath your clothes, your soul is a flight risk. Risk the absolute worst when it comes to immolation and renovation, the way it all comes crashi

by Jared Beloff Natasha Polyakova Cleopatra kept her lovers waiting as Caesar died. This afternoon, I spotted a black bird sitting on a fence, his larger mate waiting a space away. I wanted to know their names, identify the rituals that hold them in place. Your eyes were already scanning the faces of mountains breaking the sky beyond them. We will sleep separately tonight, enjoy the sprawl, cool sheets. The birds in the palms outside mate without symmetry, pursuing, pursued u

by Leigh Chadwick and Adrienne Marie Barrios Jesse Bowser “Sometimes, I Think I Can See Right Through Myself” Leigh Chadwick has a spine and she thinks that’s weird. Leigh Chadwick has a spleen and she thinks that’s weird, too. Leigh Chadwick has an orgasm and she thinks that’s good. Across the street and six states north, Adrienne Barrios stares at a wall. The wall is beige. Or maybe eggshell. She should be able to tell, but she can’t—she’s too focused on the Ritalin she too

by Joel Worford Ludovica Dri Words—around whom, I’ve built my entire identity—keep failing me. Or perhaps I’ve let them down. Who knows? Every single day is an opportunity for more words that will not come. More imaginary lives that will never breathe the imaginary air that will never blow. Entire generations of imaginary families erased from a history never created. I can only imagine what it must be like—to sit in Heaven’s waiting room while some Angel, the author of your l

by Jake Phillips Liana Mikah We take the back roads, point out the windows at reds and yellows, the arch of autumn guiding us to the orchard. Let’s buy a bag at the store, pretend we drove the hour  — but no, you say, it’s just not the same. So we go, get a half peck bag and wander the hills and fields, get lost questing for Fuji and Gala, and I subject us all to a day’s worth of gay-la jokes. Soft and steady, we are not. We knock a ton of fruit loose, take down whole branch

by Taiwo Hassan Aleksandr Popov from a friend’s WhatsApp Status on 23/10/21–12:14 in this poem, a boy is a butterfly, joy replacing his (wings) nakedness, ready to pollinate the world with full smiles, with reflections of wholeness. he sets out to be a testament of bloom, to be a mirror of a stranger’s void, a wall smeared by the rays of a morning sun, to be everything that speaks the language of lushness. but how does one convince these pregnant clouds to not carry ironies,

by Carolee Bennett quinguyen/Unsplash to see how high it may get, a detail we won’t know until we know. Most rivers burst their banks at some point. And while we’re being honest, let’s agree we have no choice but to trust a body that can’t be trusted. No one gets out alive. And yet surprise. How something on a scan grows. Why a cough lingers. Pound your fists all you want, but don’t pretend you can carry on forever. Every picture of the pelvic bone a Rorschach test. Don’t let

by Nicole Tallman Pop Emanuel Alexandru Where I come from, there’s a season for guns, as if rifles should be celebrated like Christmas. There’s a smell. I’d like to call it November, but it’s a special blend of blood, rust, estrus, and a winter so cold it freezes the hair inside my nose. There’s a ritual. It’s men dressed in camouflage and hunter orange. It’s the law. And they stay out late on the 40 and chug 40s, perch up in trees or shelter in blinds, chew tobacco and build

by Nnadi Samuel Herbert Goetsch We learnt the waters the length of our teenage year, brother and I. call me kayak in that lazy drift. call him the paddle wheel. Two of us — a perfect duo, racing past bison and tulips, past the sainted mist. once, I attempt speaking-in-tongues and brother cupped my incoherence in seraph palms, the way you size a demon before casting it out. once, I drove breadknife to his skin hoping to leave a scar — how tides leave their remark on our vessel

by Adrienne Marie Barrios Gabriele Stravinskaite When I think of your name, it is a breath on my lips, a whisper, something not quite formed: Hayden. Your name is a promise I broke at least three times. Maybe I’ll break it forever. Your name is an echo from your own throat when I tell you I’ve applied my lipstick three times now, four, and it’s still not quite right. I can’t keep my hand steady. Deep breaths, darling. Your name is the way I don’t stop as I drive across the ol

by Sihle Ntuli Snowscat an Ethiopian man sprints along the streets of downtown Jerusalem — shouting “the second coming is near!” — the locals barely bat an eyelid or flinch at the boisterous proclamations coming from his mouth : they will ignore his peculiar pace & the miraculousness of his willpower : borne from the skepticism of one deceptive boy who cried — here the old man is the lone wolf : his religious awakening is attributed to mental health delusions : two young men

by Lee Potts Phil Botha Exhausted but I’m finally on a flight and empty, for now, of all departures. I wonder what everyone crossing this continent with me tonight wants above all else. What will you want when I arrive? Every light down there is where it is because someone felt a stab of desire. How do any of us navigate to what’s always hidden behind the infinitely tender horizon? Our course set by constellations of our own want. We traced white lines like thread taut betwee

by Ariel N. Banayan Public Domain “To look at a thing is very different from seeing it”—Oscar Wilde A plumber once tore a urinal Off the wall Tilted it sideways Called it a dormant fountain Of porcelain and piss To taunt others By silently splashing and saying — Come and hydrate This stale seed with your sight Water touches it then vanishes inside Come and see what will change besides The bone white color Its endless white drawing The gaze inward like a black hole Bending and

by Kimberly Wolf Leonardo Yip It’s so beautiful up here. I mean, really. You can just about see it all. Look at the way the sunrise coming over that mountain casts the forest in honey light. Something like that looks good enough to gorge yourself on. But of course, I know. You can’t. The problem with the world is it’s just too big to hold inside of our bodies. But we try, don’t we? We are always attempting to gather it all together, trying to get some of that gold light to st

by Christen Noel Kauffman Jr Korpa Yes, he was just a man, but also the sum of every florescent bulb suspended above me, harsh as the Wendy’s sign across the street where I found myself in the dumpster trying to salvage discarded chairs. I commiserate with poltergeists called down from my neighbor’s floor, the grey cat who claimed me among the daddy long legs & miniature bottles of coke. I offer her my last cigarette while we wait for the man to impersonate himself again, tur

by Palaces Jon Tyson partially after Rachael Crosbie. I feel relief when I bleed—it’s that little piece of pleasure, the way it lifts up out of me like rising from a bed. I think I’d like it the same, you pushing down on my neck—please. It’s a perfect cycle—it’s sex—that perfection, that tight in and out. It’s me, choking and sinking onto the night’s street. It’s you, smoking on all these bright shadows and weeping. That sour, spoiled kiss: it broke my teeth. Palaces is Edit

by Rita Feinstein Lea Kobal Once upon a time there was a girl who was good at riddles. She solved her way across the world until she came to the mountain pass and beheld the terrible sphinx lording over his aerie of bones. His voice echoed like a fever dream, deafening, yet only in her head: if a girl is in love with her own mind, which one of them is crazy? The answer leapt into her mouth, but she bit it back, rolling it under her tongue like a morsel of raw lamb. Looking b