"at night when i walk the sassy pomeranian inside of me" by Chelsea Tadeyeske

i suck the dicks
i have to crack my jaw to fit

being a small thing is a privilege
i’ll sometimes borrow
impression marks are ugly
when they’re irregular

my soul is cockeyed
horrible at math
spends too much time crying
over plastic bags
readjusting to the environment

i want someone who
does the things you do
but isn’t you

when you leave
i make everything into a bed
and die in it

my cat kneading on me in an act
of pretend needing
the electricity surging and
everything just staying on

-

Chelsea Tadeyeske is poet, performer, and bookmaker from Milwaukee, WI where she publishes poetry under pitymilk press. She has released many chapbooks including her most notable recent works, if you bend it backwards nothing really happens (Rabbit Catastrophe, 2016), the short story collection Princess Diana (bathmatics, 2019) and the floor of a cage floating above the floor of a house (bathmatics 2020). You can find some of her work online at Pretty Owl Poetry, Delirious Hem, Smoking Glue Gun, and Leopardskin & Limes, among others. She is a Virgo sun/Aquarius moon/Libra rising born in the year of the snake. Peek a semi-up-to-date archive of her work at chelseartadeyeskeblog.wordpress.com.

"i didn't know before but now i know it's real" by Greg Zorko

when i found out

that you buy chunks of mango

twice a day

at Trader Joe's

i was so impressed

by your ritual passion

i told you all of my theories

how we should make cash edible

in case we are hungry

and don't want to drive to the store

i build the world around you

i'm like a knock off

Steve Nicks

i remember in text messages

you used to spell it

Steve Knicks

like New York Knicks

i remember too

the eggs in the pan

the manes of all the horses

at the farm outside the city

i feel the movement of the sound around the room

but i don't hear anything

my heart is a hot corn bean bag
-
Greg Zorko was born in 1990 in Albany, New York. He is the author of Ghost in the Club (Metatron, 2016). He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Every other summer our house would get hit by a tornado" by Joshua Bohnsack

Every other summer our house would get hit by a tornado
That would dip into the valley of my parents’ backyard.
The first time my sister was paranoid because she lived through one
But I shrugged it off until the closed windows swoll and the plate flew out of the closed
     microwave.
& it opened us up to what can go wrong in our world as the dog was sucked up from the deck
     and I watched it through my basement window and told my little brothers, Don’t look out
     there.
Their swing set was wrapped back to a tree and the trampoline floated down the
Mississippi
& it might still be there
I don’t know.

& they kept hitting.

& I went to Ireland
& didn’t hear from my family
But saw the pictures.
My mom wrote me
She had a bad feeling
& moved my records from her den the day before
The basketball hoop would have splintered the vinyl
Where it landed through the window
& I would have never came back.
-
Joshua Bohnsack is an MFA student at Northwestern University, a reader for TriQuarterly, and the managing editor for Curbside Splendor Publishing. He is the author of Shift Drink (Spork Press, forthcoming 2018) and Burnt Sienna (Throwback Books 2017). His work has appeared in The Rumpus, Hobart, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and others. He ran an ice cream shop in rural Illinois until he moved to Chicago. @joshuabohnsack

"Penn Township Revelation" by Brooke Nicole Plummer

We are still young, vertebrae like Silly Putty & it will all be used up.
Pupils like tumbleweed on a stimulant. Delirium with a body length.

The livestock are surveying morning light. It is a sign of continuum.
They graze like paper cut-outs from the juvenile section. We talk like

sugar cookie dough by the spoonful, eggshells indiscreetly folded in.
I heighten myself into calculated disembodiment. Dreamily underwater.


I want to be somebody’s muddy diamond.
-
Brooke Nicole Plummer is a rural-focused poet from South Bend, Indiana. Her work has appeared in Analecta, New Views on Gender, Horror Sleaze Trash, and the upcoming Wordplay anthology. She is the cofounder and coordinator of the artistic collective called Speak Michiana.