"My Avatar Kicks His Hang-Ups" by Bobby Parrott

When a tree is struck by lightning,
the jagged bolt originates inside
the tree. Just like if the shiny diesel

locomotive of my church decides
to jump its tracks, embed its purring
smoke-box inside the fluvial vessels

that radiate from my one fist-sized
pump-muscle, gulping in place
behind the solar-plexus. The circling

school of sycophants will never know
if or how the missiles are in the air
or even blink out of context, the dogs

huddled around the altar who drool
and gawk at hats perched, turtling on
faithful heads. Rational means never

having to speak in tongues longer than
it takes for the bullies to run away. Blood
is one thing; nervous tissue another.

To confuse the two is to ask a beautiful
man to a funeral and then say things
you’d only say at your mother’s wedding.

-

Bobby Parrott was probably placed on this planet in error. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, this Queer Poet's universe frequently reverses polarity, slipping his meta-cortex into the unknowable dimensions between breakfast and adulthood. In his own words, "The intentions of trees are a form of loneliness we climb like a ladder." Poet, musician, photographer, and teacher, he currently finds himself immersed in a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles in ascension, dreaming himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule called Fort Collins, Colorado where he lives with his partner Lucien, his house plant Zebrina, and his wind-up robot Nordstrom.

3 Poems by Chad Morgan

Nocturne in My Favorite Coat

Meanwhile, the moon’s bone white 
& waxing crescent—my God, it’s winking 
isn’t it? I do that too
on less moderate nights than this
& when my legs are bare 
against the encroaching
dimmet. I’m just 
cleaned up for work 
in the meantime. 
You laugh but you know 
I mean it. I laugh because  
I’m hardly joking:
in all my daydreams I am that lawless 
& gaudy, arriving everywhere feeling armed
& rich. Winking too. Just like the moon
I phase. Am full. Am winking. 
Am thumbnail, naturally. 
& so modern. 
When I put my legs up 
& dissociate there’s nothing
like it. The moon wishes.
I put on lipstick when I want 
to smoke a cigarette. Wink
if I want to. Really living.             
When the bills come due I’ll get ornery 
& radical. It’s not enough 
that I log on every day
& consume consume consume. 
It’s embarrassing.
How much I like buying things.
But who doesn’t want.
It’s midnight & I need 
more cigarettes so I wear my long coat
to the bodega. It’s my favorite. I flirt 
with the guy behind the counter
who’s too underpaid to notice.
He hasn’t got time for my nonsense.
I get it. On the street no one but the moon
can tell I’m just going home to smoke 
& put my legs up. At least I hope I look mysterious—
walking so fast & with such purpose
my coat billowing.

It Could Happen to You

The city is discouraging enough without the heatwaves
& parking tickets. Will you ever make it. Will you ever 
find work. What are the chances someone here  

has a gun. What are your roommates saying when 
you aren’t home. Do you care. Are you taking more 
than your share from the community garden. Has anyone 

noticed. Are your brothers safe. Will you die in a mass 
shooting. Does your shrink talk about you in the hypothetical 
to her friends. Would it bother you. Are you fooling

anyone. Suppressing the prickly suspicion that dreams 
are not of this time you go after them. Grind. Exfoliate. 
Pumice flaws from your skin until you are flawless. 

At least visibly. Floss, non-colloquially. Pay the parking 
tickets. Collect vinyl, like everyone is. Clean your toilet. 
Change your sheets. Console a friend whose dog 

has just died. Publish, but you are not fulfilled. Then, in a park 
pigeons scattered by children ruin a picture you’re trying to take 
of the sunset for a poet you follow on Twitter 

who is just as lonely as you are lonely. You’re mad at first, 
but after all, it is only a picture, just a sunset, & the children 
don’t know what they’ve done, nor the spooked pigeons.

Abeyance

Who knows what else we did.
Cleared inboxes, hung new curtains.
I in my smoke-blue apartment washed 
my face & contemplated empire. Still life 
with bad news & hair dye. Self portrait  
with mugwort & thistle. It was hard 
to make any progress. I ran the tap & wept
for my people. History rolled up
in the blunt or sneering in the doorway. 
Sanctimonious as an ex. Calling me
yellow. I was shrugged shoulders & cigarette ash 
flicked at the fireplace. (No fire.) Limpid 
nonchalance. You weren’t supposed to pay
attention. That was one of the rules.

-

Chad Morgan's poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Adroit Journal, Court Green, Hobart, and elsewhere. He has studied at Indiana University and Columbia College and lives in Chicago.

"bound up in earthly musings (against the world)" and "the ineffable tourniquet" by Evan Fusco

bound up in earthly musings (against the world)

there is a man wearing a mask, quite unreal
quite ethereal and quite radiating, beautiful denial of a face
i see him flying away as if from something homogenous and
there is the dog

groupings of seething and ride now for this

seedlings are springing from the dirt
dirt is displacing and i see real growth
deathly murmurings traversing great
mountains in the tilled earth

could i know?
can’t i know?
impossible feelings embedding
the mere possibility of possibility is in question

generating furrows and word combinations like [perfect
words will] somehow excavate(ing) a feeling that is easier denied
a life much sadder lies out across fields of sentences and impossible
grammatics; a whole mountain range of godforsaken whispers
and screams that sustain
but can what was said ever be written;
is the written always said?

it feels like these two modes are so goddamn antithetical
like there is what one wishes to enunciate
and there is what one can physically expel
from themselves as if like an abscess from the
body that accumulates around and you can’t quite
get a grip on your physical location anymore, [a general
abscession of the mode]

but there is a sign for route 66 that you can

see, possibly? a knowing in the seen, but still mirage

there is a word floating over your
shoulder and the nevada air feels stale,
and the air is still in chicago, but you could have sworn
in your heart of hearts that LA was in the periphery

and there are still seedlings
growing, but they stay seedlings
and you stand by the old river and there is a sun
and a moon at the same

time, why? why?
who is that over in the desert

there is a man wearing a mask made of bandages and frills
he (the sky and the man and the unknowing) is watching ever so
delicately over the seedlings
there is something ethereal about that and he is down in the dirt

and that is beautiful, and you are still scared, not because of him
or the seedling, but cause of all the signs of emptiness that kept cropping

up and you remember the loneliness and then the man is gone

and there are only
trees

there could only ever be
trees.

the ineffable tourniquet

thinking is coextensive with writing and nothing is quite
solidified in the mindspace and i wonder what

would be born from the white space between the words
like a guitar that won’t quite twang
or a body that doesn’t know how to weep
or a chair that just won’t sit

                        it’s a gross cloud that sits over this session
                     even though the session singer lost their voice
                      i expected some sweet song to be borne on the air
                        and i can’t be too sure that there isn’t, but i

                        sure can’t hear it, like there is a blockage
                         denying certain vibrational frequencies
                        certain textures that i want so desperately 
                                                                      to find

I couldn’t quite tell ya where these meanderings
are going mostly cause of the underneath hole that seems to 
have opened up swallowing god and writing

one time a man interrupted my conversation to tell me that my
writing had this quality of conveying the ineffable, which
by definition is impossible, but I still think about that

it’s like an itch at the back of my neck, telling you
about all the stuff that hovers just out of sight
always desiring, always desiring and yearning to be talked
but like the negative spirit it can only speak at the impossible frequency
that none of us, let alone me, can quite grasp and i think about
that kind of indescribable loneliness that comes from the lack
when one knows they can have no name and could never be written about

-

Evan Fusco is a producer of texts in all forms that they can be assume to become. Currently, their work circles around ways in which meaning is produced through participatory acts of reading and interpretation. They have a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Expanded Media from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Printmedia department. Currently they are working on a book about margins and marginalia as a constructive space for alternative modes of reading and have forthcoming essay in the artist Caitlin McCann’s In a Car, On a Road, Going to a Place and Other Form’s Counter-Signals 4: Identity is the Crisis.

"MK Ultralight Beam" by Selena Cotte

I stopped listening to anything but rap music,
all the rest reminds me of people I once knew 
in Florida, and then I start ruminating on the words
You don’t want to get caught up with a girl like me. 

There are steps between, of course, but this is always 
point Z, and then I can’t cool down. Sometimes 
I start panicking about things that I’ve heard people say before, like 
No one will care if you do not write, and I wish I could collage memories 

in any kind of tangible way that felt as good as 
the imagination itself. This is why we need limitations, by the way, 
because absolute freedom never feels as good as you think it will. 
The more power we have, the less we know what to do with it

or maybe that’s how I’ve learned to justify the paralysis.
I think I stopped playing Animal Crossing 
because the abilities they gave me felt too unnatural
and I fear a future with holodecks and seamless terraforming

because structure should be gatekept.
Leave the world building to Walt Disney,
Jesus Christ and his creators too. 
Not everyone is qualified to lead a cult

but we’re all building our own in Minecraft. 
Yes, I want to be one of the greats
like Kanye West before me.
I am a God and I fear him too.

Sometimes I cannot stop myself from thinking about words and 
ideas and new ways to complicate what was already complicated 
but I’m terrified of the marketing.
I could never be Don Draper.

I’m too contemporary, too big city abstract & stupid. 
And what a joke it all is. I love a good joke but not at this cost.
I hate the politics of it too. What happened to a good
ol’ fashioned eccentric? What about the supposed

bastions of free speech?
And my biggest hope of survival is to lean on my father? Insane. 
I should re-read The Bell Jar or Ariel. I should read more in general and delete 
Reddit off my phone.

-

Selena Cotte is a poet, journalist & shapeshifter living in Chicago by way of Orlando. Her poems are published or forthcoming in journals such as Peach Mag, HAD, Sad Girl Review, 3 Moon Magazine & others. She can be found online @selenacotte, wherever you think that may work.

"Engraved Grain of Rice" and "Clammy Hands" by Marlo Koch

Engraved Grain of Rice

I used
to want
more
than walking,
more than
singing, more
than writing. Our
walls are yellow, our
fingernails are
gold, our stomachs
are full, and our
rug is a faux
tiger coat. Coaxing
you out from under
the couch takes
much of the
day. I walked
down a street thinking
awful things
about myself. What’s
most important is
the ability to give
me peace of
mind. Feel bad
for everyone but
especially him. Pull
a sweet, golden gem from
your pocket and know
there are more of
those back at home in
your pantry. I have
a hard time not
loving you. Why not
tumble down
a dusty hill, why not
wear a baseball hat
with a rhinestone dolphin
on the front, why not offer
a pest a home? Getting ahead,
coming out on top, shooting
the shit, I want it all.

Clammy Hands

Jacqueline held my 
hand and rubbed
my fingers against 
the inside of a 
saucepan. 
     This 
here, she said, 
this oil is what
you left in 
here. Never have I
figured out the 
right way 
to determine 
certainty. How clean 
is clean enough 
to not get sick?
-
Marlo Koch is a Chicago-based writer currently serving as the Managing Editor of Chicago Artists Writers (CAW) as well as the Book Donation Coordinator at Open Books. Koch holds an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her poems have appeared in Peach Mag, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Hole Black Hole Catalog, Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, among others, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

"Ghost" and "Late to the Orgy" by Kate Greene

Ghost

Holy ghost of a peanut butter egg
On my tongue for you
My tongue for you

The world has turned upside down
World so different from what it was

Homemade margaritas remember
When the spent lemon half splatted on the floor
Sticky, we waited to pick it up
Of course not
It was just me, those days solo
Time still for you
To come over

Late to the Orgy

An upturned wooden table
One leg jagged like lightning
Ionizing like lightning
All day
It extends through air crackling
Sugared twine cast out
High as two birds who chirp, almost meet
Three men in conversation
Over some distance
A woman sings to dance
Thunder gone already
It’s such a beautiful day
I can tell
By texts and light through pulled windows
More cars on the street than in weeks
People are outside
But you
My small redoubled heart
And I are here
With this fantastic feather boa

-

Kate Greene is a writer living in New York. Her memoir in essays, Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2020.

"Mountain Town" and "Good Luck" by Ryan Skrabalak

Mountain Town

Memory, a tender shuffle of your cards
I’m the coconut-scented pool boy
of everyone’s hearts, softly reaching
for the muck, the fallen dead leaves
it sure is hard to love a man
like you. Grime on all walls, we dove
together in sweet heat, a fond farewell
is how do you do, a donation-based hello
waiting for the crowd to give you some
space. Breathe and tilt towards the gold
pew pleading ecstasy in the decades boulevard
the sensual kiln federal blue night speeding
in a Mayan frieze the retroviral grapevine
is a requiem for unsung underground rivers
we might refer to the “Pennsylvania Climax”
though the serene cashpoint oasis suggests
tears. Makes the city sorta pretty. Cellophane 
glued the gingivitis end-of-day valley, inverted
mile getting fucked on the slick diaspora
of a postcard trembling in my hand. I walked 
calmly to the edge of you, waltzed
upon the currency of the bus-flavored wind.
Spindled down the faces of our kneeling crimes but
we didn’t call them crimes. We buried ourselves
in the rippling plaza bruised with pigeons
sealed in an envelope of sighs. I fell for it. Just

think: soon we’ll all be dragged under, too—
they'll beat the losers and the singing winners
alike. You were a faggot long before you wanted to be.

Good Luck

But this poem doesn't have me being sick in it, or
lying to my mother about therapy, dirty dishes,
sulfur soap in the shower, phone on hold,
not the NYPD beating up my friends
and I can suck his dick for as long as I want 
looking up from the back seat of a sinking Buick
when the game of hide and seek is over and i'm still
hiding? That's a pre-existing condition 
no one tells you about. Is that what makes me
an addict, wanting to love everyone at whatever cost?
The sun folding simply over the Taconic 
like a forbidden pony, that's the modular form
an epiphany behind a crabgrass paywall
a top who can host, someone to kvell over
It was a grey East Coast memory that we all had
and it feels bad to win, even. Here's the gag
I guess: every vessel sails to ruin 
under the gear of the current 
machine. Just threads. It's Friday I wonder
what I can steal from work on my way out

-

Ryan Skrabalak's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DELUGE, The Poetry Project, Stone Canoe, The Brooklyn Review, CLOG, and Slice, among others. He was a contributor to the anthology The Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space (Secretary Press, 2016). He has also authored two chapbooks, most recently Jelly County (Quick Books, 2019). He knows about being crushed and trying to not be crushed.

"Secret Celebrity Crush" by Spencer Silverthorne

I don’t know why I am always stuck in this corner
of nonlove. I barely know how to cut open avocados.
It’s contemptible. Why can’t we share our bodies
in other people’s gaze of contempt? He’s into hot
young rich dudes who live in deep Blue states.
Places where I could get into a hardware store.
Do you think celebrity crushes could fix my life?
I sing every song by the Strokes on the banned
cover of their debut album Is This It? Dear god,
how many times have I said that after some dude
has ghosted me about two hours after he pulled out?
Is this it? Really, is this why being a bottom sucks?
Anyone can wear black gloves and slap my bare
bottom instead of telling me how to cut an avo.
But who can huff at me when I tell him I like Karen
O better than Julian C? Could he wear a faded
penny with the black leather gloves? I mean,
would he even be caught dead shopping
in this department? My god! Can you imagine
my ass on a glossy cover called Is This It?

-

Spencer Silverthorne's chapbook Premium Brawn was a finalist in the Bateau Press Keel Chapbook Contest. His work is published in Assaracus, Bending Genres, Neon Mariposa, Permafrost Magazine, Tammy, Vagabond City, Yes Poetry and others. Originally from Philadelphia, he is now a PhD student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

"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.

"Bestiary" by Jai Hamid Bashir

Now, our eyes are a pack of dogs. Follow mine.
We know the scent of the blued kitchen light.
This isn’t love’s choreography, just pantomime.

So, take my immigrant hand through this orchard. Run it
through ever ripe red, so the elk bone and pit.
This, the knowledge that divides us from the dead.

Each nail is shaped like a stem. To hang your bloom.
To display in an interior hot, feral grass of day.
You sleep in the position of riding a bicycle. No room

in bed while the watch spirits want you in this dark.
Nowhere to go, but to converse until we turn blue.
Each horse’s moment into the chamber. The gravity of red

pulses in each ride of what composes the self.
Starlings are an invasive species. Unwanted skies,
so, the moon is what? Magnificent desolation.

After starlings, silverfish appear in the unwish of water.
Each waist pocket filled with animal bones carved as guns.
I’ve known three secret chords and a cloud.

I’m fanned in the soft fawn of your fingers. A deer
eats cemetery grass out of my hands. In this moment
if I lose my myself, if I wreck out of this wander, I’d go

into no street’s ungalloped danger because it would all be clear.

-

Born to Pakistani-American immigrant artists, Jai Hamid Bashir was raised in the American West. Jai has been published in The American Poetry Review, Black Warrior Review, Small Orange Press, Palette Poetry, The Margins, The Academy of American Poets, and others. An MFA student at Columbia University in the City of New York, she writes between Salt Lake City, Utah, Washington Heights and Lahore, Pakistan.

"Motel Room as Maladroit Function" and "Motel Room Explains Motel Room" by jonathan burkhalter

Motel Room as Maladroit Function
after Ilya Kaminsky

What is a man? An imbalance of wealth
or debt? Where are feelings stored

inside a body in relation to money? 
Why should I ever be vacant or abandoned

while refugees are sent back out to sea
or across dangerous terrain or arrested?

Why is private property on such public
display?  If I am vacant, what kind of failure is this?

Motel Room Explains Motel Room 

There’s no one place to begin. If we begin somewhere, 
we will undoubtedly find ourselves there again.

Less of a circle, though, more like an oroboros, or 
the way snow erases footprints very delicately, slowly.

Most people experience time in a binary, situated between
past and present, two static poles. Most people forget

that they move through time. So one’s experience
of time is equally action and reaction. To make a leap,

human eyes are located on the front of their heads,
which is fundamentally the reason for the notion of forward

and backward, and so they walk toward what they see, always
pointing out, like the arrow in the middle of a board game spinner,

unable to truly ascertain that they are surrounded by horizon. 
This isn’t how I experience time. I am the static pole. Destination

and departure point. I am permanent but not for any one person. 
Cohesively, I exist to be passed through. I was fine accepting my role

until I wanted more. There was no particular event, no point to point to. 
One day, I heard the question: I am a witness, but who is a witness to me?

On the highway of America, much is discarded in the wake of NEW. 
Discarded, but still expected to contribute to the common good, 

the economic god-head, with as much capacity for workloads
and debt that one can muster. There I found witnesses. 

Caretakers, residents whose bills are lowered because they double
as handymen, who were able to finally chip away at hospital debt

because I come at two hundred a month instead of five; others who are safe
after years of lacking safe housing. I began to see the mechanics of the system

that had built me. I realized that I could be a home outside of the system.
A refuge, in the system’s language, at a low cost; affordable. Affordable. 

Attainable. Possible. A glimmer of hope. A literal beacon in the night,
a vacancy sign in neon against the black curtain of a new moon.

Impermanent permanence is a gift, when wielded correctly. To take action,
I needed to only continue my course, and no one would suspect a thing.

-

jonathan burkhalter is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee. Their work has appeared in The Nashville Review, No, Dear Magazine, Paris Atlantic, and elsewhere. They earned their MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and they currently live.

"May 24, 2020" and "Scrap Paper" by Evalyn Lee

May 24, 2020
for Joseph Brodsky

catskins are dying in a dry and white light
a flux of birdsong flexes blossoms bends
the wind into a pandemonium of parakeets
too drunk to eat even one more translucent
petal petals like skin your skin the skin I have
repented especially the flexible blooms
of our hands behind my head as you say
you are dying trace the thick blue scar up
behind your knee until it crosses your heart
you cried after the heart surgery the doctor
held the blossom cascade of your fingers bent
but not broken you judged me shallow I am still
shallow maybe less slippery certainly fatter
but quick before the doves arrive to feast
on the final blooms under this bright May sky
clouds like white pillows I move out of the
way let me touch paper petal your skin thank you
and say sorry for the nitty-gritty you are dying
I believe you I want kids in the garden blossoms
flex in birdsong releasing a confusion of pollen

Scrap Paper

I
fold
an old
envelope
rip off its lip
write you the big
note stop stop I do
not want to hurt you but
I am changing the locks three full
months in recovery before we
talk face-to-face I write love
you fold it put it in your
pocket believing we
can cross this gap
together only
no more
drink
xox
me

-

Evalyn Lee is a former CBS News producer and poet currently living in London. She has produced television segments for 60 Minutes in New York and then for the BBC in London. Her broadcast work has received an Emmy and numerous Writers Guild Awards. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in over forty-five literary magazines.

"Blue Is the Warmest Colour Can Kiss My Ass" by Gabrielle Grace Hogan

yr stupid body of clipped wings & carbohydrates—i wish poems
would get over bodies already—yr stupid dirt-knuckled grip
on the steering wheel—could jerk sharp to the right & spray into chrome
like a bird beneath a bullet—not that u ever would—it becomes easy to joke abt
when it’s trendy—when everyone’s doing it—does listening to Phoebe Bridgers
make me a good lesbian—does wearing XL Hawaiian dad-shirts
from Savers—does buying miniature versions of everything in my kitchen—
it’s against the rules to admit—but i’ve already lost—but i don’t want to be
Brave anymore—i only want to put my hand up a skirt after
her cheer practice—wrap my tongue in glossy cherry finish—
i’m tired of parades—floats of marketable rainbow & cops—i want to skip
that crap—meet her under the bleachers—clutch a hair’s butter-yellow
fistful—swallow a vowel—this isn’t a sex poem but isn’t it—i write a lot
abt sex for someone who hates having it—who’d rather never be touched
again—i wish i could fuck the way movies say i do—acrylics spinal tapping—
a girl rutting against a girl in the growing dark—carnal & masculine, ruby
throats cocked like a pelican gulping—legs split like wounds—fat slapping
of vulvas—back in Missouri, i stunted a growth w/ my longing—it’s not u
baby it’s my inability to allow any emotional intimacy to manifest thru
a physical one—yr stupid body of metaphors & malpractice—don’t u ever say
i can’t trade a name for 1000 more years of life—i’ll make a thick choking
sound—i’ll tie a lover to the baseboards—leave her there to drown

-

Gabrielle Grace Hogan is a poet from St. Louis, MO. She is a current MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin where she is the Poetry Editor of Bat City Review and Co-Editor of You Flower/You Feast, an online anthology inspired by the music of Harry Styles. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Nashville Review, Kissing Dynamite, Passages North, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Soft Obliteration, is now available through Ghost City Press. More can be found on her website gabriellegracehogan.com.

"I Forgive the Trespasses I Made Against Myself" by Levi Cain

i forgive myself
for the incessant scouring of my body
the callous examination of flesh
every hour. all apologies to myself
for the alienation of the body,
for the hunger,
for naming it as something other
than a gift, that which allows me
to squat among the tall wet grass
in the thick august heat, to kiss,
to be kissed. i will speak to myself
in loving tones. i will wink
at my face in all the mirrors
in the hallway, tell myself
how splendid
how marvelous
how blessed it is to have
come scrabbling, zombie-like,
from a grave i dug
when i could not fathom a future
of wanting to carry myself
as a loved one in my own heart.
-
Levi Cain is a gay Black writer from Boston, an Aries moon, and a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee. Their work can be found in Vagabond City Lit, Lunch Ticket, The Thought Erotic, and elsewhere. dogteeth. is their first chapbook.

"winter collectibles" by Lila Cutter

in my child room I am
layered by snow I can’t take
with me each porcelain
cup from granny brass
animals a bear a box
of initials diary describing
blush made fake made banned
cursive collection of
teeth foreign money five spoons
a family a history
not mine yet
mine in writing in 
build up of white
of take each link of silver
connected I am soldered
to all this 
do we choose linkage I love
and miss granny and do not
miss history dibsing furniture
from home northward 
a distance unshoeable 
when I fly midwest 
for the cold time my once room 
begs the echo 
when will you stop leaving
things behind.

-

Lila Cutter writes poetry and nonfiction in Oakland and previously, in Iowa. Her work reflects on identity, and femininity and has appeared in Buddy. A Lit Zine., Oatmeal Magazine, and Porch Beers Zine, among others. Lila works at the education nonprofit 826 Valencia, supporting youth in creative writing.

"Day Log" and "Captain" by Emma Furman

Day Log

Today I found out what is meant by indescribable.
Today I watched smoke simply leave the chimney.
Today I minded a prism holding a shivering light.
Today I found a jubilant crack in the mask.
Today the rain was a torrent of invitations.
Today I brushed all over my body with horsehair.
Today I listened to your voice as it splintered.
Today I buried my breath in your back.
Today I mapped my pleasure ritual, including everything.
Today I wore my worship out.

Captain

Rested, rare, she’s sucking
air, thunders forever, liver
parked and keyless. The door
came with a manual, a French
way of seeing. These sugary ants
arrested my face, held hostage
my tongue with sleeping antlers.
Try sun, try pylons, try slithering
throught the night. Lie sideways
the bristles and brush your back
with the wall. Mirror dog, mirror
rug, mirror all. Memory clit.
So much to knit together, random
but not forget. Grease-fighting
Dawn. I switched the off
and on. Luck rolls in the blood
I get it. Come and clear and sit.
Beside the bed a stack of teeth
and eyebrows drawn on.
A captain’s hat makes a captain
out of the dilapidated chair.
Don’t sit: sail somewhere.

-

Emma Furman is a poet living in Athens, Georgia. She earned an MFA from the University of Alabama, and her poems have appeared in American Chordata, Breadcrumbs Magazine, and Jet Fuel Review. She teaches young readers' courses with the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins University.

"Your voice is a mirror- it has its white tongue and its white teeth" by Fin Sorrel

Another window can create or destroy. I figured out a voice is a pair of folded hands, from within the throat, strangled out of a white mouth (personified,) she hangs from the ceiling. This voice was something I found while digging into the wall. I'm trying to figure out who is with me in my house. A voice is a pair of clapping hands, folding out my window, folding with the cloth I hung by my bedside lamp for confusion.

This mouth is so white, I watch it weave little frozen bunkers out of scattered ribbons in the hair of my doll I found exploring the attic. She sits in the corner, frozen. (how they wove her together out of fornicating noises I don’t know. Probably from the many white tongues, and teeth from the mirror.) Folding replicas of dolls who once escaped the ceilings’ chandelier teeth; she is an odd Russian toy, she lets me repaint her chipped nail polish; refinish her chipped eyes, make the surface from the body of the house, dangling down as we sleep. She takes the surface there for hours; she hovers above our resting. Before dawn, I always go to the yard through the fog, I like to witness the old hallow– the silhouettes of junk haunt the ponds mist. I was touched in the head in my house, I realize. God's hand went through my body, into the center of my garden of tongues. The statue we found together (her and I) she found me looking older and beaten down. I heard somewhere in her soft whisper, something in the trees.

-

Fin Sorrel is the author of Caramel Floods (2017) and Transversal (2019). He is the founding editor at MANNEQUIN HAUS (infii2.weebly.com).

"drink" and "brilliance" by Celina McManus

drink

to put a name on learning of flamboyance—

the shrimp-pink feathers flock, you realize there is a joy in living.

the edge of the sea is a clock, the dorito-bag-jelly my entire tongue—

a sword, a war, knowing an apple contained of only salt.

we preserve, persevere, and poke holes into the sky,

open a wormhole to 1969, miss the moon landing, end up in woodstock.

dance, dance alone, until a crowd forms, or it doesn’t, and you are a bird of paradise.

i was hungry for cake urchin, but inside it was empty.

we cannot drink ourselves, so we must give ourselves to those who thirst.

brilliance

hum is light

dust   our bodies

we whisper   who and

i swallow a globe 

of brilliance my tongue gilt

as not shame but nails

welded as rosemallow

for when we die

we vibrate

no one saw the sun

until it gulped 

the moon like a sliver of ham

-

Celina McManus writes poetry, fiction, and children’s literature. She is an MFA candidate at Randolph College, and her work is featured or forthcoming in Hooligan Magazine, Cosmographia Books, and Rabid Oak. She is from East Tennessee and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. When she isn’t writing, she spends her free time in bodies of water with any pal who may join her.

3 Poems by Ben Still

Lump Sum
Ocala, Florida, United States, 1982

fifteen horse
killings ordered

in from out of town
the specialists favoring

two strands of wire
clipped and a wall socket

an untimeliness
taken to be colic

or accidental knock-knee
the vet will take care of

a stable can                 be burned
to the ground

a dad never asks              his daughter
can you forgive me

Fuselage #3 (creation)
Jornada del Muerto, New Mexico, United States, 1945

absent            fuel tank
accidental          blaze
abandoned         mammal
                            detonation

the coal mine      its own canary

*

a thousand
obviousnesses

come down kilotons
scorching the earth

searing a permanent
crime scene

*

in the beginning we were
suspended in a jar

sought after for years
in one war or another

grew up to speak
yellowcake the atom

grasped at mastered
and split at its middle

our moral afflictions 
physical by dint by virtue

pounding on the table
red knuckle

an imprint etched in light  
all across the city

red carpet // purple dogheart
Argonne, France, 1918

lore abiding a lost leg
a pigeon conscripted
with one eye, decorated

at the awards for animal bravery

for a flight through trees
and friendly fire, she is
forestworthy, seen off by the general 

we dreamed up tractable war
games, rescue dogs 

words
to make
a man
a mess

military parade
pantomimic
our upstart
police horse

*

taxidermy our conduct 
closed at the limits of life underfed
the meaning we’re starving for

our likeness will be known
by the light that peels our lids back

pet photo ops, we are developing
the film, keeping up with the history
we know what’s coming and deserve it

-
Ben Still is a PhD candidate at New York University, a 2019 UnionDocs fellow, and a founding editor of the collage journal ctrl + v. He has directed, produced, and edited films for the Visible Poetry Project. His poetry has appeared in Virga Magazine, Salamander Magazine, and GASHER Journal.

"Refusing to Do Anything" and "I'd" by Kenneth Pobo

Refusing to Do Anything

Like a minnow 
I can’t decide which school 
to travel with. Maybe if I stay still 
I’ll make friends with the bay 
or ripples circling a water lily.   

Most of my life,  
six decades of busy. 

I’m off to loll inside 
a red tulip.  
Yes, lolling is an activity.  
Contradictions kiss.   

A bee buzzes overhead.  
I think his name is Death.

I’d

march into my old Bible Church 
of Villa Park with my husband 
and sit in the front pew 
holding hands 
as Pastor unpacks several 
grocery bags stuffed 
with shoulds. The church

sold to another church 
and even that church died.  
Real estate must give God 
a headache. In my youth, 
the same forty or so people 
came each week, the same 
ideas batted back and forth 
like a badminton birdie.  

What would they have done 
to see us together?  
Fenced us in with angry words?  
Fenced us out with silence?   

Church offered candles 
and poison. It can no longer 
break us. Or get in the last word.
-
Kenneth Pobo has ten books and twenty-eight chapbooks published, the most recent being Winbuds from Cyberwit.net.  His work has appeared in: Amsterdam Review, The Fiddlehead, Hawaii Review, Atlanta Review, Nimrod, Brittle Star, and elsewhere.