Cover art by Koss.
A Journal of Hybrid Literature and Art
Cover art by Koss.
by Stacey Bartlett
She used to think she would find peace when her children were older, when people stopped being so difficult, if she lived in a different house, on a different road, or in a different country….
by Lorin Drexler and Beth Hyatt
this was an accident
i was drinking
yeah
i was using
but that’s not why this happened
by Danielle McMahon
I was born into that
conventional system—
powdery, crumbling, the constant
switching…
by Michael T. Young
Every summer my wife plants celosia in the yard,
a flower whose name is Ancient Greek
for burning….
by Francesca Leader
“Mommy,
Mommy,
Mommy!”
“Did you know
All rain
Starts out as
Snow?”
by Katie Robinson
Thick shells are a sign of a happy chicken, but our flock would never support that claim. They squawk at their gate with such conviction that I’d swear there’s a rooster among these hens…
by Katie Robinson
I am one for the structure of bedtimes without fuss so children are well-rested for school. This day, though, after struggling through uninspiring monotony, I threw the rules out the door…
by Diane Pohl
Poem about that little table
in our building lobby
Sometimes –
by Jhilam Chattaraj
In Kashmir, I bathe in the bright light of spring. I see valleys emerge beyond the shadowed routines of blood and war….
Art by Susan Barry-Schulz
Art by Susan Barry-Schulz
Art by Susan Barry-Schulz
Art by Susan Barry-Schulz
by Janis La Couveé
listen!
ps-SEET ptsick tseet, peeWEET
psit, high tsee, chek
low, slow, rich toop, plick-plick-plick…
Poem by Vikki C., Art by Robert Frede Kenter
We begin with a single stroke, expecting more. A smile or a furrow of implied grief
that common expression fails at….
by Diane Webster
You email me two selfies. One with shagging hair; one after your haircut. I don’t notice those differences. I am disturbed by how old you have gotten…
by Diane Webster
You sit like a young chicken on her nest. You don’t know what you’re doing with all the adult chickens. You were told to sit there until it happens….
by Diane Webster
You come early. In grade school. My best friend, Ann, was moving away to Washington after school let out so we vow to write each other during the summer. We keep our word. I write. You write. Until one time you don’t….
by Chuck Sweetman
You could say my story begins with a speech
by a famous colleague of mine, Thomas T. Delmonico…
by David P. Miller
Ethel and Charles, Willie and Phebe:
names with dates, without faces…
by David P. Miller
My kitchen window’s rippled glass: my picture of near-budded forsythia, pine top, flicking chickadee. A mild hallucination of view.
by Alex Carrigan
The plane hits turbulence right as I begin to pour creamer into my coffee. I quickly put both hands around the cup and freeze in place. If the plan goes down…
by Ossian Houltzén
by Ethan Cunningham
1,000 mile trek. stretches of tawny sand. of swaying wheat. gilt. mcdonalds
drive-thru. 5-minute stop. scalding coffee like chocolate ash….
by David Summerfield
On a riverbank strewn with line bait and tackle, under a midday sun on a polyethylene lifeless stream, amid litter of goodyear, mcdonald’s, red bull, and nestle…
by Cyrus Carlson
by Leigh Doughty
It was morning and light streamed through
the window as I sipped on my instant coffee.
The weather reporter’s mouth…
by Colette Love Hilliard
by Lucy Rumble
It’s time for my shift with the dead. For cotton-laced breaths taken through the mask I bought during Covid, repurposed…
by Sam Rasnake
I wrap my body into the walls
and this could be anywhere
but here—and is…
by James Diaz
by James Diaz
by James Diaz
by James Diaz
by James Diaz
by James Diaz
by Kip Knott
He could see that as he grew older he was drinking far too much. He could see that his drinking was beginning to impact the way people saw him. He could see that the fact of his own nothingness…
by Fizza Abbas
I am a manufactured product,
whom they sweetly call the adopted child.
I want them to know I’m not special…
by Erika Eckart
The disappearing mothers of victorian baby photography
They blend in, scaffolding the still wobbly child in the foreground who despite their efforts is a little blurry, unable to stay still the length of time the shutter needs…
by Swetha Amit
I stood at the entrance, watching the girls wearing pearl earrings play with dolls…
by Ariana Leon Krieger
They’ve transferred me to another part of the Department, piled high with folders, and had me fill out the dreaded hiring packet once more. Single, no dependents, the bare minimum exceptions…
by D. Seth Horton
priority is mass destruction
mission unchanged
clock in communities…
by Rina Olsen
in a prologue to this, a girl stands outside of the schoolhouse pounding dust…
by Christie Grotheim
with ten minutes to spare
until totality, after fighting traffic for hours,
on-ramps inching onto an interstate crowded with…
by Adesiyan Oluwapelumi
memory is a pool of water.
an ocean drowning us into its depth.
by Heidi Zeigler
by Koss
by Koss
Clever and quiet, he burgeons in the freedom of extinction. The Caspian tiger bides in rumor….
by Ann Fisher-Wirth, Wilfred Raussert, and 4W International Women Collective Translation Circle
Nobody but you
can cross the street
and enter the field…
by Michele Worthington
What we found in the dirt:
fragmentary adult inhumation
laying within a burned, bell-shaped pit…
by Michele Worthington
My daughter brought her bones home
for me to store.
I tried to reason with her…
by Elizabeth Frank
by Elizabeth Frank
by Elizabeth Frank
by Elizabeth Frank
by Elizabeth Frank
Cover art by K. Albasi
Contributors: Sam Rasnake, Rachel Coyne, Sean Ennis, Erik Kennedy, Anna Abraham Gasaway, Joshua St. Claire, Katie Beswick, Taylor Franson-Thiel, Sheri White, Martheaus Perkins, Athena Melliar, Jenny M. Liu, and more.
by Sam Rasnake
“It is a heartbreaking time to love this
wretched world and fellow humans.”
– Alina Stefanescu
by Rachel Coyne
by Sean Ennis
Oh, achy days. The whites of my eyes are virus gray. The dog is nervous. I’m screaming at myself to find peace.
by Erik Kennedy
The quotes in this piece (and it’s all quotes) are drawn from various genres of writing on war and the environment…
by Anna Abraham Gasaway
Toddlers can make guns out of anything, banana gun, cheese sandwich with a bite taken out of it-gun, spoon gun….
by Anna Abraham Gasaway
Donna Summer shrugs with her sparkled shoulders and asks Why would I be culpable?
by Joshua St. Claire
Thank you for calling the Gigantomachy Corporation customer service hotline….
by Joshua St. Claire
Remember when Chuck Berry was the new old?
3 Poems by Katie Beswick
In the tall blue fridge, there is a hunk of unwrapped cheese. A bloom has erupted on the surface…
by Taylor Franson-Thiel
The people of Pompeii died before the lava passed over…
by Taylor Franson-Thiel
There are animals which must eat, deserve to devour, and consequently become killers….
by Taylor Franson-Thiel
It starts near a stream, as many dreams do. Babbling softly at me, words of safety while a fog rolls in….
by Taylor Franson-Thiel
Of whom we know nothing.
Of whom we do not even know the birthplace.
Of whom we know almost nothing. 56 years, one town….
by Sheri White
My mother smoked every day of my life with her…
by Martheaus Perkins
Content warning: child abuse
by Martheaus Perkins
1. Every Black woman has a vote of affairs of Black bounty; has equal title to the freshest provisions…
by Athena Melliar
In the end, this isn’t final, if it just casts off its lines
and even more than that, its lie…
by Jenny M. Liu
Right down the line
is a gravy boat
filled with starch…
by K. Albasi
searching tides
the last, faint reach…
by K. Albasi
these lines
of our story
yet obscured…
by Lance Manion
Watching her disrobe felt very much like watching a snake shed its skin….
by Cyrus Carlson
by Court Ludwick
This is a eulogy for the x number of spiders who will crawl into my mouth over the next sixty some years….
by Marlene DeVere
I have absolute power and free reign over this terrain. I am queen of the realm.
by Heide Aungst with artwork by GoldFaceMoneyWatch
Nature holds
infernos within…
by Sam Moe
Content warning: suicide ideation
by Jen Schneider
My father wouldn’t eat for 24 hours prior to our monthly visits to Queens….
by MK Aisenberg
Playing out below me, O brave new world. Fog and Scotland drift. I’m awake and watch my fellow passengers sip on orange pulp…
by Carla Sarett
Morning waking in London and you no
longer near me…
by Carla Sarett
After Father’s death, heat overtakes us, the skies sulk. London’s graveyards are full…
by Sara Lynne Puotinen
I am in a blue chair silent waiting watching as the drs computer keys click…
by Wendy Mannis Scher
a cloud of desire in the left breast on closer surveillance reveals possibility–a benign growth…
by Howie Good
I’m a cancer survivor – for now, anyway. Every three months, I must have half a dozen tubes of blood drawn…
by Ivan de Monbrison
he was not an easy man
my father
he never smiled
he never spoke to us…
by Michael Kerr
He began a new life after his near-death experience. Part of him had died while another part went on living….
by Shawn Rampaul
When I died on the 5th of September 2022, I entered the vagueness….
by Nam Tran
*For optimal experience, listening via speakers is recommended.
by Liz Manning
Both of these pieces are about the experience of my father’s dementia.
by Martin Indars
This knot jumped from a board I was cutting.
It dropped to the floor, circled on its edge, slowed and fell over….
by Janis La Couvée
mountain freeform windtorn skyslope branching eastward treetops scaffold…
by Daniel A. Rabuzzi
“Before I’m a poet I’m a mystic.”
by Richard Leis
We might press through fronds, find the viridescent pool…
by Peggy Heitmann
I imagine my hand
lightly resting, bolstered
by yours as you hold
your brush above the canvas.
by jillian mukavetz
always surprise me
send a poem without remembering…
Cover art by Mels
Contributors: Christopher Shipman, Jason Sebastian Russo, Anna Spence, Ben Nardolilli, Kenneth May, Mels, Jayadratha Suna, Pitambar Naik, Eileen Oldag, Suzy Eynon, Conor Barnes, Melissa Nunez, and Mark Spitzer.
by Christopher Shipman
If in the forest it grew it could carve a door. Could build a bridge to cross the river. Could forget its haunt of snakes. If any eldritch shape could uncoil. If it could fashion a field beyond it. If in that field a dance of wind in the grass….
by Jason Sebastian Russo
sorry I called your salad transgressive
sorry I thought you said “garbage sale”
sorry I vowed to love you “like time loves a face”
sorry I hissed “redefine elegance” between reps
sorry I said “form is emptiness & emptiness is form” instead of “those jeans look great” …
by Anna Spence
LISTEN. I AM AFRAID I’M GOING TO LOOSE MY MIND.
*Lose, I mean.
Lo(O)se
*lose!
by Ben Nardolilli
Looking at my life and thinking, “oh cool
a bored sticky child made this”
A mouth and an eye, the reflection is really
affecting me…
Poetry by Kenneth May and Art by Mels
There’s this construction worker
who walks around and writes stories,
from southern California, grew up
picking tomatoes. He scoots in…
by Jayadratha Suna, translated by Pitambar Naik
Oh, maidens, you can’t walk your way in a dream
oh, young men, you can’t live only on hope; come, let’s
go to collect mahua flowers…
by Jayadratha Suna, translated by Pitambar Naik
Mountains of welfare policies remain
on the A4 size paper
yet under your nose millions are dying
no artist can portray so lively
what colour is the hunger…
by Eileen Earhart Oldag
Li Po leans to kiss
the Moon reflected in the River
his Body is there where the boat left him
drowning in longing
Adrift he gazes
up into the unreflected universe…
by Suzy Eynon
I’ve had dreams involving the apocalypse.
I knew it was the end of the world. It was Christmas.
(This does not surprise me.) …
by Conor Barnes
When you had the panic attack it was on the floor of one of the washrooms / They were still gendered then but you can’t remember which / All the customers were gone / It was your first job and you messed things up more often then you go them right…
by Conor Barnes
the Minotaur is hiding in the labyrinth
the Minotaur knows he must lose his head in
the center…
by Conor Barnes
(for David Jones)
my riders are from my cousins court / on elk and boar and dragonfly / I come to ask the king under the willow tree / I come to claim his daughter…
Visual Erasures by Melissa Nunez
living
fossil
long
shining leather
war and
war down
the ache
by Mark Spitzer
“Investigative Creative Writing has expanded the call of my manifesto on Investigative Poetry…all creative writers should utilize Investigative techniques and practices.”
― Ed Sanders
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”
― Muriel Rukeyser
by Francesca Leader
I first tried to create this image almost 20 years ago, in 2004, while living near Tokyo, Japan as a student. My method is usually to start with a pencil sketch, then layer on gouache and/or acrylic paint, then go back to pencil again (sometimes brush pen) to outline and shade at the end.
by Zainab Kuyizhi
Before I learned of my life as an edgeless wound
stretching across walls of lies, I’d listened to men
open my heart to doors of desire with many
tongues. I begged for silence each time they said…
by Stacey Yu
At six I witnessed death for the first time and it was a duology. First came true death: my dear fish Getty afloat in the tank, and second came sepulture: the toilet bowl. Getty was a slice of orange…
by Stacey Yu
When I feed my cat I crouch very close,
sit on my haunches to watch her eat,
see her head dip then snap back quick
to stare at me, kibble mashing in tiny teeth,
eyes slightly annoyed but otherwise empty….
by Stacey Yu
On a day so hot the sidewalk sweated,
my grandma hailed a taxi the color of aquamarine.
They looked like that in Shanghai back in 2004…
by Tanvi Jeph
Home is not the same without you, but
The stairs are painted with the mark of your footsteps
The glass is stained with your bindi gum marks…
by Rachel Coyne
I like layering paint onto the paper — I create a more abstract background painting, then add the images on top of that. It creates a bit of randomness in the process and adds mysterious shades and lines.
by Marceline White
Lemon. Sour pucker face. Make lemonade. Oh how my grandmother loved that bitter fruit sweet skin. Thin veins on her arms made a red and purple map. Collapsed like tunnels, her blood unmoving under the rubble. She ate lemon cake for breakfast…
by Marceline White
The budget hotel near the bus station now seems like a bad idea. Down alleyways, the familiar smell of urine rises this hot, humid day, reminding me of home. Turn towards the river in search of a breeze. Small children wrap around worn, weary women…
by Marceline White
fade away
fine summer
fold
my
heart…
by Marceline White
lightning
in sunlight
the bird
stars
the stream…
by Sylvia Santiago
‘Home’ such a scattered, damaged,
concept
can we expect even a pair of magic shoes
to take us home…
by Sylvia Santiago
the end of
meaning
my heart beat
a squall a poet
out of water…
by Laura Davis
Throughout the pandemic, I had been working on a series of visual poems inspired by the Victorian classics, Brontë, Dickens, Gaskell and so forth, and found myself unable to leave Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, and its themes of landscape, belonging and return…
by Karis Ryu
Imo clucks her tongue at a group of white-shirt black-slack uniformed high school boys huddled so closely together it looks like they are smoking, dirty dambae nyeoseokdeul, but they are only reveling in their ice cream cones…
by Adeva Jane Esparrago-Kalidas
The work ‘Ruminate’ started with one panel. That single panel seemed lonely- in a sense, so I added three more. They all depict different women in different instances, with different expressions.
by Kara Dorris
Red cloaked & microscoped, a lady is never so well dressed as when you cannot remember what she wears. The non-secret is we forget lady(bugs) can be predators….
by Santiago
Hey Stu, what’s the deal with that house on the hill?
You haven’t heard the story of Dr. Jelly?
No. Do tell….
by Wendy K. Mages
Silently, I watch. My new boss, a toad of a man, croaks thinly veiled threats disguised as braggadocio. His tongue darts in and out; at any moment he might trap and swallow one of his lowly staffers, his prey…
by Koss
I think a lot about time, how people pass it, and how we perceive it, the artificiality of it. Also, how art comes from ordinary moments and might be found anywhere (including in puzzles).
by The Nutshells Writing Collective
As an exercise in letting go and flexing the collaborative muscle, we created platforms for freedom of expression where each individual added their own layers and interpretations onto shared works.
by The Nutshells Writing Collective
The renga was built through a fluid process in which we did not know who had written the preceding part to which we were responding, and for the first half we were unaware of where the piece stood in its entirety.
by Bethany Jarmul
Two hundred ovulation tests dipped in urine in a plastic Tupperware container once used to hold black olives. Nineteen negative pregnancy tests that taunted me with their one pink line. Twelve months of menstrual-cycle data—disappointment marked with blood drop icons….
by Bethany Jarmul
Chicken-hearted, craven, cowardly, faint-hearted, fearful, lily-livered, spiritless, spineless, timid, trembling, quaking, unheroic….
by LeAnne Hunt
Trigger warning: stillbirth
by Gina Maria Manchego
Life is different when you’re the mother of a black boy.
Late for dinner.
Wringing hands.
Racing thoughts.
…where could he be?
by Linda McMullen
The kid’s birthday was coming up, a mere month away…I thought, well, a cake, and a little something nice…I thought about how we’d unearthed a copy of The Secret Garden…
by Nancy Himel
She hangs from the skeleton
of a cholla, placed in that exact spot
by her keeper just three days ago. By day
she hangs unmoving except for her wings
eight inches of captive beauty…
by Maria Garcia Teutsch
In the chemo lounge,
my husband would bring me anti-oxidant smoothies—
and then I’d shoo him away….
by Carla Sarett
Brother lives in a special school, its name is unspeakable. No one is dead yet. At night, we listen as Mother shuffles furniture around and peels off the wallpaper….
by Maggie Rosen
A trapezoid of power.
The lines are cursive, flowing, written with names long
dead. Sheridan, Williams, Spell. 139 Acres….
by Maggie Rosen
Near where Parker’s Ferry Road and Round O Road meet
and
the Edisto river curls into a horseshoe.
There,
my ancestors forced people
to build and maintain a plantation….
by Lane Chasek
Instructions:
This exam is to be completed on your own sweet time. Use a pencil, No. 2 or otherwise, or a pen or charcoal stub or your blood. Convenience is king. Paint brushes work too, especially for those with a taste for color. Answer truthfully and answer correctly if you so choose. No peeking, please.
by Shannon Frost Greenstein
My father should never have told me this story, but he once tripped over a dead body in the woods….
by Refael Paul Arenson
Black lava startles.
Fingers and knuckles
Clutch cobalt sky.
Rocks and bones bleached,
Skulls picked clean….
by Melissa Lanes Brownlee and Cherry Lou Sy
The woman cloaked in stars dances under the waxing and waning moon, flowers sprout from the earth as she steps in a rhythm long forgotten by man. Her thoughts flow to a time when there was no moon, no tides, no stars, no flowers, the dark, an embrace…
Cover art by Gustavo Gómez Mejía
Contributors: Elizabeth Joy Levinson, Jen Schneider, Wren Donovan, Tim Walker, Charles J. March III, Gustavo Gómez Mejía, Howie Good, Devon McConnell Bacon, Mike Wilson, Pam Sinicrope, Matthew Bullen, Halle Preneta, Claire Hampton, Moshe Wolf, Ami, Linda M. Crate, Francesca Leader, Philip Wexler, and Mark Spitzer.
by Elizabeth Joy Levinson
It was a massive complex, with more units than we could count, our own roads to walk down, our own security. I did not know this was more cage than castle, did not understand that a person could live other places and not see an entire family’s belongings strewn across the grounds, even their bras, their silks and laces, even the basket from the dishwasher that held the silverware…
by Jen Schneider
1 :: she’d man the diner daily. from the stroke of dawn. for a group of irregular regulars. her strokes predictable. navy button-down. black trousers. our steps varied. stewed & stirred from overnight shifts & morning meters. clothed in cranberry wools, brown plaid overcoats, & cotton tees. …
by Wren Donovan
In D.C. I saw a work of art at least two times removed from its creation: A grainy film on repeat, of a woman digging rock, a self-sized hollow where she rested, fit her body (nude) into the space she’d carved out in the stone. Beside a river. She is no longer living, she died young. Cause of death uncertain but suspicious. …
by Tim Walker
It always makes me thoughtful, driving on the 101 freeway past the prison at Soledad, past the chain link fences and razor wire, the guard towers, the buildings—many buildings, laid out in a kind of campus, with lawns and exercise yards and flag poles and parking lots….
by Charles J. March III
I was like an oscillating leaf that’s blustered up the street, constantly bungling back and forth onto my falling face, and then propped up again by gusts of God, with moments of brief flight before sojourning on again, whilst staying out of harm’s way and trying to do what’s right, in a city that’s first (in my heart/mind). …
by Gustavo Gómez Mejía
This A-B-C triptych is part of an ongoing series offering dialectical visions of our tech-driven world. Angels, sphinxes and readymades–alongside third-party archival materials or bot-curated artistic excerpts–are supposed to allegorize the special presence of sponsored contents and more mundane promotional posts.
by Howie Good
The heat has been rising all day to an incinerating pitch. At the designated hour, I arrive at the address on foot, exhausted and dusty. It’s an old, dingy residential hotel on a sunbaked street in a rundown neighborhood prowled by starving dogs, their every rib sharply outlined. When I look up…
by Howie Good
Anyone who knows me knows I dedicate at least part of each day to thinking my own thoughts. I like to walk while I think. I’m thinking while I walk about the echoes of Socrates in Plato’s Cave. A yellow road sign says Fog Area, but there is no fog. Trees have begun to put out leaves. …
by Devon McConnell Bacon
My work reflects both life and death and how they interact. The dead plant’s skeletal remains appear to still reach up and out toward the sky. A reminder of how it once lived. The spirited young bird rests in its presence singing notes of life and happiness. The process that I used removed all other information allowing only what I wanted to be seen. …
by Mike Wilson
I’m teaching an unwilling teenage girl how to
search courthouse property records when I see
Aunt Jo
she’s lost weight and regained her
sanity in the afterlife and hugs me with
sunshine rarely felt in the world of clouds…
by Mike Wilson
on top of a white maple table
a kind mother has arranged bottles
tasting of green heat and orange sweet
by a soft daybed that is my nest
in a room of milk with moonlit
eyes…
by Pam Sinicrope
Down:
1. increasing in size and changing physically to maturity.
2. the universe seen as a well-ordered whole.
4. caused (someone) to feel mild astonishment or shock.
5. timing of a set of things within an interconnecting network.
9. outer covering of the body of a person or animal.
by Pam Sinicrope
I don’t know what people mean
by talking about talking about it,
fractal rage lost in translation, hands folded in prayer. …
by Pam Sinicrope
She used to be beautiful on the gold-dappled pond,
feathered and light,
long loping limbs, folding and unfolding.
She took her gifts for granted…
by Matthew Bullen
Nobody sees the frog under their feet
as he pops the valve of an inflatable pool
toy. One shaped as a palomino, naturally.
This is how knights fought in medieval times,
you know.
by Halle Preneta
I persuade the King
it is no misfortune for me to die.
They spoke to each other in hurried whispers:
“No. I love you–
I will not leave you here to die alone.” …
by Claire Hampton
I find Dragon Tree at the hardware store, serpentine emerald tongues acid yellow, fresh against smooth orange ceramic. I place my prize on the mantle and it is the beating heart of my home. Visitors awe at its vitality, how wonderful, how perfect. How it feeds me. …
by Moshe Wolf
We stay in our own lane, especially at night. It is cold even for January. In my head, I wonder about the low-hanging full moon that follows us out the door. The Celts call it Quiet Moon. The limo driver enjoys our silence….
by Moshe Wolf
Today the world ends. I’m not talking apocalyptic tidal waves, raging fires, or record-breaking temperatures. If you want a poem with spit-firing volcanoes and rock-tossing ground shakes, look elsewhere. Today the world ends, and it is Friday, mid-March….
by Ami
Created from a handmade collage (paper, glue, scissors), then photographed and adjusted accordingly in photoshop, then from there, transformed into multiple videos using a group of images of the same collage to reach very different ends.
by Linda M. Crate
there’s this war inside me, i don’t know how to ignore; it wants to tear down all their walls and break their ceilings—i cannot escape the thought that i shouldn’t be living life this way…
by Francesca Leader
In the house that is your life,
You went from room to room,
Turning off lights, locking doors, one at a time,
And left those parts of your life forever behind….
by Philip Wexler
The loop extends
endlessly
making
mortality
a part of
the infinite…
Book Review by Mark Spitzer
This is that very tradition re-envisioned for a twenty-first-century pandemic corndog in which “getting away with everything” means… well, that’s the question underneath the microscope. En route to address this mystery, we hit all sorts of glittering veins radiating lines like: “it’s a turtle eat / turtle fuck / terrarium / out there;” “sometimes stars / are sharks lost / in any river crossed;” …
Cover Art by Irina Novikova
Contributors: Milena Maksakova, Galina Itskovich, Dani Salvadori, Tal Nitzán, Irina Novikova, Paul Ilechko, Charlotte Hamrick, Ariyo Ahmad, Beppe Cavatorta, Ann Pedone, Ceridwen Hall, Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra, Gabriela Denise Frank, Lorelei Bacht, Michele Worthington, Jan Ball, TS S. Fulk, Maud Lavin, and Erika Lutzner.
by Milena Maksakova
translated by Galina Itskovich
Today, Russian aviation
Bombed to ruins
My Uni
There, I studied
History of Russian literature…
by Galina Itskovich
I am one of the bombs in the cluster. The bomb next to me looks like the metal version of Humpty-Dumpty, with its blotched face of unhealthy yellowish white…
by Dani Salvadori
The Bear in the hut awoke from a dream
that far and beyond in the thrice ninth land
lived a maid whose hands of flowing water
would make all Bears much younger. …
Written and translated from Hebrew by Tal Nitzán
The weak, forgotten, soft-hearted saint
omitted from the list of saints in the scriptures
whose voice is not heard
who does not speak the language…
by Irina Novikova
Now I am coming to a certain mythological component in my work, since the beginning of 2021 I have been constantly writing Sirens. For me, they are like half-humans, half-birds, it’s like a dream. Poets and many creators describe that they would like to have wings and fly, the poet Maxim Bagdanovich has a poem “My soul is like a wild hawk.”
by Paul Ilechko
The invasion began on a Tuesday morning which for some reason felt strange as if something so important would have been scheduled for the beginning of a new week…
by Charlotte Hamrick
Paper snowflakes / wood shavings / well-worn muslin
Doll-baby hands / damascene lips / doleful eyes
Minutes live then fly / away on the wind…
by Ariyo Ahmad
Let’s start by getting hurricane lamp
To throw a pale and feeble light on our path
And then arrange our bodies
To be able to trek the journey till end…
by Ariyo Ahmad
In this poem, you will see bodies struggling on words, but the living don’t understand the
linguistic approach of the dead, but I guess they are foaming on a question again and
again, why were we tried with genocide?
by Beppe Cavatorta
and while saul
on his way to damascus
fumbles around in the dark
of an unexpected conversion
somewhere
lights go out…
by Ann Pedone
And three days later, out on the shore alone, she will / confuse the sound she hears coming down the mountain / with the mountain itself. (Understandably) She will note / that sound exists only to parody our sense of mastery / over the earth…
by Ceridwen Hall
USS Squalus, 1939/Present
They hammered reports against
the steel hull of the conning
tower, repeating themselves…
by Melissa Wabnitz Pumayugra
That year when my baby brother joined the Marines, I did not know he signed up, I did not know that the decision to take up arms was cemented decades earlier as we grew taller and cut teeth. …
by Gabriela Denise Frank
I created this collage during lockdown while taking a class on Jungian psychology and creativity with the brilliant and delightful English artist Eleanor Crook. Formally, this piece combines an inkblot (the wings) and a mixed-media collage (images, found text, iron-on patches, a postcard remnant).
by Lorelei Bacht
blood-moon-tinted silence on the front
one by one
stars needlepoint themselves
meanwhile boys dream of beforehand
sleeping like beasts…
by Lorelei Bacht
we left paper monsters under children’s pillows.
we feathered their mothers in flames.
we followed their ghosts to the lake, showed them shallow waters…
by Michele Worthington
I looked around my yard at scrap metal, rocks and clay pieces (made by my daughter as a child), rearranged them, added paint, took many pictures, and added captions.
by Jan Ball
Mine are Japanese Tea-Stained
Scrimshaw Ivory: a miniature
dragonfly on a textured pair
of woven straw flip-flops, signed
Koshido; two tiny amber bees dining
inside a pear…
by TS S. Fulk
There is an unusual tension in the air, even though the tuba player is cracking jokes with the tenors and me, as if this was just any afternoon concert. Yet behind the laughter, a cool professionalism mans our psyches as we focus for the task at hand…
by TS S. Fulk
It was Ursula
the wise old woman of Earthsea
Hain
Portland Oregon
and other mystical locales
who taught me…
by Maud Lavin
On a dissertation grant, I worked at the Berlinische Galerie’s Hannah Höch Archiv in the Martin Gropius Bau. The Bau neighbored the Berlin Wall, really two walls with a death strip in between. From certain windows, I could see the East German guards stationed in the watch towers. …
by Erika Lutzner
Hope is a waking dream.
We were dead and we were able to dream.
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own, and I am not who I was.
We’re all curious about what might hurt us.
The thrilling wire…
by Erika Lutzner
Take me with you, and out of our joint misery,
you make among the trees a nest for our love.
But look at the flowers you’ve crushed.
Our embrace lasted too long.
We loved right down to the bone. …
Cover Art by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Contributors: Garrett Phelan, Erika Lutzner, Edward Michael Supranowicz, Whitney Vale, Raquel D. Bailey, Susan Barry-Schulz, Matthew Klane, James Belflower, Ivan de Monbrison, Socorro de Luca, Edward Lee, Elliott Orchard-Blowen, Jessica Purdy, Gabriela Denise Frank, Mark Danowsky, and Cheryl A. Passanisi.
by Garrett Phelan
A wind blows through
a hollow that was us,
the habits we’ve become…
by Erika Lutzner
We’re all curious about what might hurt us—
I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a paper bag.
Digital Painting by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Digital Painting by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Digital Painting by Edward Michael Supranowicz
by Whitney Vale
A mitral valve prolapse: description involves language botanical, mechanical, architectural and anatomical. It is a story of rhythm and blood. The poet has a small prolapse….
by Raquel D. Bailey
dementia
she fluffs the clouds
and folds the seas
by Susan Barry-Schulz
begins and ends
a finger’s breadth behind ascends
by Matthew Klane and James Belflower
Muttered the adventurer…
The Royal Caroline’s
wrinkled mouth
I recall
We were swallowed
by Ivan de Monbrison
We keep our eyes open,
clouds pass through the sky.
You put a window on the air,
it stands up on its own.
by Socorro de Luca
Without a moon, the lack means new.
We swim out to sea, unseeing, unseen, and unpredictable….
by Edward Lee
by Edward Lee
by Edward Lee
by Elliott Orchard-Blowen
in the kitchen
I am living for his love…
by Elliott Orchard-Blowen
what I write isn’t poetry
I swore an oath to the mountain lions
I was in the garden
and we talk about poetry and writing and
every boy I’d ever had
Photo by Lorie Shaull, Poem by Jessica Purdy
When you’re a Jane Doe
you don’t have to be married.
You can leave your kids
and go to a rooming house.
Photo by Lorie Shaull, Poem by Jessica Purdy
Found 4 days after she went missing.
Her mother had sent her to buy hamburger
meat from the market
and she never returned home.
by Gabriela Denise Frank
burned
his
sweetheart
and
he don’t care
by Mark Danowsky
Michigan’s in the rear-view now
This is the place you end up when you lose the chase…
Review by Cheryl A. Passanisi
Glass Bikini begins with the declaration in “Overcome” that “art is extinct,” setting the stage for a startling voyage through the looking glass allowing this predicate to enforce its ominous lens over every line…
Cover Art by Samuel Haecker
Contributors: Samuel Haecker, Francesco Levato, Heather Ryan, Kip Knott, Orchid Tierney, Wren Hanks, Beverly M. Collins, Danika Stegeman LeMay, Mike Sikkema, Kristin LaFollette, Ingrid L. Taylor, Charlotte Hamrick, Paula Selis and more.
by Samuel Haecker
flitting, long and sweet. it is as water does….
by Samuel Haecker
Find a small piece of square paper.
Color unimportant. Red if you want, but only one side, preferably. You know, unlike you….
by Samuel Haecker
the valley fold is possibly the simplest of folds,
a minuscule crease which
folds the paper over itself…
by Francesco Levato
It is spring the year
so small
things you can’t see can’t
know…
by Heather Ryan
Admit it, part of you enjoys this, enjoys the warnings and watches, the text message alerts, the evacuation orders, the smoke, the planes dipping in the water, the flashing lights, the breaking news updates…
by Heather Ryan
New patient Aquella Lewis presented with complaint of localized pain in lower right leg. Bruising evident, approx. 4.5 cm. Patient indicated she “fell off bench at beach.” Inquired about trip to beach, as nearest is approx. 241 km away, and environmental impact regulations…
by Kip Knott
HIGHLIGHT: Correspondent Roger Bellingham reports on two people in one Midwestern city who find it necessary to sell their own blood in order to survive.
by Linda Hawkins
by Orchid Tierney
how does kin prepare for an end of one world and the continuance of another?
by Wren Hanks
There were violet edges. A bird breathed against his cheek, pushing past. A bird breathed against his cheek, the sound drowned out. Perched sparrows made of tin, smashed bread, jewels we know are made of glass….
by Beverly M. Collins
by Danika Stegeman LeMay
“Will you light my cigarette?” the girl asks. I say “girl”
because her frame’s small, her sleeves are balled up in her
fists, and her pupils are dilated, empty and wonderstruck….
by Danika Stegeman LeMay
and it’s a cut that misses, a cut made clean,
the clasp of a snapdragon’s jaw. I mouth
the words “corn hopper,” “hair combs,” “hand-painted
flowers,” “grayscale photos with Exacto
knife edges”….
by Mike Sikkema
Solving crimes against birds
by Kristin LaFollette
With my hand on your forehead, / I know the stillness of your /
seven cervical vertebrae…
by Kristin LaFollette
My favorite birds are newborn,
their small faces quiet collections
of light and bloom
that must be pressed to parchment…
by Kristin LaFollette
Words of belonging sit on
my tongue as scored pieces
of clay awaiting fire & glaze…
by Ingrid L. Taylor
No mater how many marbled or rustic steps I climb,
no matter how many secret skyline thresholds I cross,
there is always another greedy-mouth sparkle boy
who demands my alchemy…
by Ingrid L. Taylor
In the land of longevity, I eat apricots with every meal and drink curdled goat’s milk. The sweetness of the fruit mixes with the sour tang of the milk, a confusion of taste that I carry on my tongue…
by Charlotte Hamrick
by Charlotte Hamrick
smell of jackfruit & sweet orange
semolina cake under crackling palms
glass shattered
into harmless pebbles, puddled…
by Paula Selis
The residue of war,
plastic runners on the gold wall-to-wall
creep filthy through the house.
The terror of stacked bodies…
by Paula Selis
Hair dryer hood
crisps curls,
soft whirring background
to the mostly bald man…
by Kristina T. Saccone
It was overcast when I walked into the pet store down the street from Council Bluffs Senior Living. The young man in the aquatics department — his name was Josiah — greeted me at the door, and I told him I wanted a pet to keep me company…
by Cat Dixon
I want to send this before midnight,
but my internet’s been cutting out.
The router and modem blink red and white—
little sparks and flickers—a Christmas
tree beneath my desk…
by Cat Dixon
With a red bucket stuck on my head, I don’t leave the house. Sneezes and violently shaking my head do not loosen its hold…
by Cat Dixon
Be a darling and fill a jar with jellybeans and
exhaust yourself searching for fancy cocktails
and cigarettes. Every vice is a vice whether it’s
this or that…
by A.K. Shakour
you yell over the whir of the cheetah print wedding
have you heard this song? i nod back in response…
by Peter Donnelly
“We are at a distance to them.”
In these wars of information
and digital listening
-in, datasets quantum-compute…
by Ivars Balkits
I picked up a stone here in the creek that reminds me of the Antikythera Mechanism. The stone is older, of course, but much resembles the largest most-representative scrap of that mechanism…
by Ron Tobey
snow blasts oaks’ deep crags
puffy pillows by window
under blankets you
by William Doreski
After the first snow the pond, still unfrozen, becomes a lens through which a great blindness peers. As I walk around the edge…
By Samuel Ace and Maureen Seaton
My abdomen jolts open but I can’t figure out what’s inside a swimming pool? an orchid? a family? I am 99 percent bright viscous intestine…
by Seamus Filcarah
We gathered in a lodge beneath the shade
Of Arlene’s highest peak and shivered in
The chill as daylight soon began to fade.
How cold it was! A day as none have been
And I believe that none shall ever be!
Cover Art by Elena Valdés Chavarría
Contributors: Precious Uwen, Karla Van Vliet, Lorelei Bacht, Maya Alexandria, Jake Kendall, Edward Michael Supranowicz, Ayokunle Falomo, Moses Ojo, Guillermo Rebollo Gil, Z. D. Dicks, Sarah Ozanne, Jane Orange, Lathalia Song, Bojan Đurđević and more.
by Precious Uwen
TW: suicide ideation
/you can’t save a person who won’t participate in their rescue. what if this
fire i feel goes out?
by Karla Van Vliet
In the spaces between silence and the word there is asemic writing, that for me bridges the distance. …
by Lorelei Bacht
Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin.
I don’t know what it means, that I
should sit so sad before the trembling…
by Lorelei Bacht
Still sorry for himself, David laments the loss of bingo nights…
by Maya Alexandria
What was your process for creating this piece?
I usually focus on a singular idea or theme and then choose a corresponding crystal to help amplify the piece. For this painting, I wanted to focus on masculine healing. I chose David as the subject because he is an easily recognizable masculine subject for most audiences.
by Jake Kendall
TW: Violence
I kept a long knife and a torch at my bedside as I waited breathlessly for him in the dark…
by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Titles: The Cruelty of Fate, Almost Out of the Picture, and A Box of Armageddon.
by Ayokunle Falomo
In the beginning, there was a garden.
And then, a fire. Except it was no fire.
But what to say of the furnace that was
my mother’s womb…
by Ayokunle Falomo
I must’ve desired to be a poet
the first time I heard my mother
speak. Of course, that’s not
the truth, but let’s say it is…
by Moses Ojo
Titles: Locked in the picture, African woman, Resilience, and Father’s love.
by Guillermo Rebollo Gil
My dad would not let my mom out of the house
in a skirt higher than two fingers
above the knee…
by Guillermo Rebollo Gil
Chris Benoit vs. Raven
[WCW Thunder, 2/12/98]
Raven dressed like a grunge musician.
He would quote Edgar Allan Poe.
Benoit committed suicide in 2007…
by Z. D. Dicks
(Odin recounts his hanging)
In the great gap was the tree
before I was blinded
it was firmly planted
and I laid my noose taught…
by Z. D. Dicks
He/She led in nothingness
polyglot of potential tones
all words carried in scream…
by Z. D. Dicks
She loosed a death rattle
raking up from mask ribs
a wide echo circle
cavernous as a vowel…
by Sarah Ozanne and Jane Orange
TW: Animal death
by Lathalia Song
i flew in my dreams through
a cave of tears
in oceans of tears
the tear tries to change its shape
sharpens itself…
by Bojan Đurđević
Let me draw the middle for you
There’s my family
Which has a captured appearance
Trapped they live in mold walls…
by Bojan Đurđević
There on the other side
There is a cemetery of lost souls
The sailors covered by the sea…
by Bojan Đurđević
Sometimes that day shows up
When nothing happens
Not even the wind vibrates…
by Howie Good
Titles: Truth Is the God of Last Resort, Saturday Matinee, Drone Pilots Do It Remotely, and Sick, Sick, Sick.
by Lisa Periale Martin
Grainy black and white
TV screen on a rare night, everyone
asleep but me, Orpheus
and Eurydice, set in a favela…
by Natalie Korman
Everything seems whole and completely formed. Like a Hollywood movie, you don’t know what they leave out. It looks like it’s all there on the screen…
by Natalie Korman
The way he asked me to come over makes me think he has waited. I think I saw him looking at me as I approached. He is in his pickup truck. It felt like I was being inconvenienced, forced to walk over…
by Jason M. Marak
Tree knows her nature. She finds the forest unbearable. She doesn’t dislike her tree-ness. She casts an impressive shadow. She’s happy with her foliage. But immobility gets her down…
by Wren Donovan
Deadfall chestnuts idiotically signal the arrival, come June, of the messiah. Wood-grainy voices of old acorns and walnuts combine to roar imminent salvation. Black oak, crabapple-blossom, ironweed and sweetgum, angel cap of death and rambling roses…
by Mike Sikkema
What was your process for creating this work?
I take daily walks with my small daughter around the parks, preserves, and green areas where I live, and many of these places are watery in one form or another. I look for charged areas of reflection…
by Matthew McGuirk
“I thought they only dragged bogs when they needed to find somethin.” My mind began burstin like some of those pop rocks we always get on the fourth of July.
My brother leaned in, his friend Slingshot twistin a long strand of brown hair. “Not drag the bog, the bogdragger.”
by Carrie Elizabeth Penrod
Curly hair wild thing hides in the raspberry bushes, hands clasped
over mouth to hide snickers as the crow circles above…
by Jay Gandhi
I watch my mother
washing clothes
in the cramped bathroom.
She often sits in the balcony
waiting for her mother
(draped in a sky blue cotton sari)…
by Michele Worthington
by Linda M. Crate
TW: suicide ideation
i understand demeter’s pain,
of making the world cold
and frigid as she felt
with the loss of her daughter…
by Agata Maslowska
They say the devil slept in your daughter’s womb…
by Agata Maslowska
A female fig keeps its ovaries in confinement.
It lets a wasp in through an ostiole to polinate
its inner florets. The wasp dies, unable to lay eggs…
by Hannah Land
God became the first surgeon when he carved into Adam’s chest to form Eve. Of course that’s why so many of us end up broken, I think as my doctor pushes my dislocated rib back into place…
by Hannah Land
Evil springs from the uterus, is a truth that gods and doctors can agree on. I see it in their faces each time one emerges from between my stirruped legs like the sun…
by Elyssa Tappero
These three pieces were all part of a zine I made called “Worship the Monstresses.” Each one belongs to a different piece of prose or poetry which inspired it.
by Kendra Preston Leonard
The snakes licked my ears.
I told you about the war.
They danced with me and whispered.
I told you about the horse.
I gave you the libations of the funeral,
and my brother gave you the food…
by Tara Campbell
Light flickers warm and orange on our faces. We walk from one blaze to another, from fire to fire. We walk and listen to the melody at the heart of each bonfire.
One fire sings the wind, rushing at various pitches and strengths, ebbing from frantic to mild, then back to tornado…
by Charles K. Carter
O Sappho, player of lyre,
raise up your voice to accompany the strings.
Share with us your untamed philosophy…
by Charles K. Carter
In 2019, the Westboro Baptist Church congregation protested outside of a Kansas theatre where lesbian rock star Melissa Etheridge was performing.
“God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”
by Edward Lee
Titles: You, Revealed; Yesterday Refusing to Relinquish Today; Ever You and I; and The Kiss of Skin.
by John Yohe
TW: Sexual assault
by John Yohe
the anger of a woman
who gives everything for a man
and asks nothing except he stay…
by Anne Leigh Parrish
Titles: Seedhead on post, Sharing space, First Sunflower, Headland, Mussels on rock, and Shell on Oregon beach.
by Jacqueline Doyle
Horace warns us to eschew hybridity in writing, lest such unions give birth to freaks. Each genre “has its place allotted,” Horace advises in his Ars Poetica
Cover Art by Shareen K. Murayama
Contributors: C.Cimmone, Lorelei Bacht, Koss, Winston Plowes, Alicia Fernandez, Nancy Himel, Cole W. Williams, Shareen K. Murayama, Wilson Koewing, Angela Dribben, Glen Armstrong, and more.
by C.Cimmone
The baby is screaming. I turn to the kitchen window, hoping you are mowing the backyard, but all I see is overgrown green. …
by Lorelei Bacht
When you touched __________,
you commissioned me to bring
before your eyes the history
of “__________ and __________” …
by Lorelei Bacht
Un de perdu, dix de retrouvés.
Is how we calculate precisely how many fishes remain when one has departed…
by Lorelei Bacht
where there should be an ache there is a blank a hollow square the texture of grey clouds I poke at it test its absence lack of substance…
Poetry and Photography by Koss
Someone online asked me how you died, then quickly vaporized. Protons and neutrons reverse direction and switch connections. We meet like ghosts; synapses trail our devices. …
Poetry and Photography by Koss
along the stone-lined path, her body surrendered
leaning against the west wall, she slid off her birks …
Poetry and Photography by Koss
everyone is your best friend
when you’re dead …
by Winston Plowes (Poetry & Film) and Alicia Fernandez (Voice)
No country is really sure
how many it has lost
and in Madrid, Spain is recounting its dead in the Ice Palace. …
by Nancy Himel
erased from This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangaremba
You decided to escape You vow / you will launch into my life ….
by Nancy Himel
To the scattered stalks, Vincent asks,
“What if the road is the rifle
the only way to wander these hills of grass
to feel the warmth of solitary sun?” …
by Cole W. Williams
the sound of one voice / slips from the strands of her hair / jounced by dust at the speed of sound …
Photography by Shareen K. Murayama
by Shareen K. Murayama
When I realized I could be a victim of an active shooter, I asked my partner to accompany me when walking the dog….
by Wilson Koewing
TW: violence, active shooter situation flashbacks, suicide ideation
Alison chose to move to Asheville, North Carolina and leave her corporate career behind…
Visual Art by Angela Dribben
by Angela Dribben
Run the brush fibers between your lips, girls
Get a fine point
Paint fine numbers on the clock dials
Our boys are fighting for you girls…
by Angela Dribben
obliged
to join
girls
16 and over …
by Glen Armstrong
I fear photography in that it is more than a suggestion. About a girl. About reality. About face and light. …
by John Rodzvilla
Make me whir-r-r, whir-r-r, whir-r-r … !
by Fred Gerhard
Sun going down / almost still / moving / sentinel trees stand / feathery filament / testament …
by Fred Gerhard
I think of Pennsylvania on days like this.
The arching sunsets over a bowl horizon…
by Gaby Benitez
imagino cada abuelo es mío
los que están tomando jugo de zanahoria con jengibre en la
panadería, the one at the house on the corner …
by Sheree Shatsky
solitary / woman / striking the stars above …
by Sheree Shatsky
something strange about
air
…
by Sheree Shatsky
to this world
devote attention….
by Elyssa Tappero
the chiropractor says my ribs keep popping out and i wonder if that’s from my heart trying to break free…
by Christian Garduno
We used to walk down Shattuck
with the textbooks we couldn’t afford in their bookstores
we would make a left, down Bancroft Way
stop and share a smoke with a few friends along the way…
by Kip Knott
Dear Jenny,
Today marks the 30th anniversary of our divorce. …
by Peter Mladinic
On a part of the army airbase that crosses
long air strips once used for planes, now
for gliders, I walked towards the prison…
by Peter Mladinic
This was the 1950’s. I get sentimental
remembering Jake, a dachshund.
He had all the freedom. He was smart. …
by Daun Daemon
it was a wiener dog turned my drunk daddy sober;
all them cats all them years couldn’t do it;
mama couldn’t do it no matter how hard she begged…
by David S. Anderson
My mother said she wished I would disappear.
Not die, because then she might carry it—
no, worse. She asked that I fade away…
Comic by J. Bradley
by Shiksha Dheda
Could I
be trying to be
more than what I am …
by Shiksha Dheda
unadornedunadornedunadornedunadorneduna
BarrenBarrenBarrenBarrenBarrenBarrenBarrenBa
by Dr. Sarah Gundle
When we began our work, my patient was a full-time martial arts instructor. Something drove him to therapy. He wasn’t sure what. …
Art by Shilpa Bharti
by Nikki Clayton, Mark Goodwin, and Rod Duncan
you can
not
clove
hitch mist…
by J.I. Kleinberg
if you are
a cloud
What do you
Keep
…
by Sheldon Lee Compton
He planted plugs of zoysia grass last summer. Now that’s what all the yellow is about. Everywhere that’s yellow this morning…
by Sheldon Lee Compton
A new couple who became pregnant by mistake. Neither of the two young parents wanted a child, so when the baby was born, they placed it in a remote location, a mud and grass hut some thirty yards from the main home. …
by Jonce Palmer
(from If this planet once again becomes swampland)
& we are left with wasps mingling : with poppies still rising out of our pots …
by Avery Lane
Purple light backs the drummer, and from his left ear dangles a single feather, swinging wildly with each wallop of the snare. …
by Avery Lane
The voices of her mother and the doctor were all but muted.
Their words like minnow, silver and languid…
by Avery Lane
a fire lights up their faces.
Food is passed, from hand to hand
sinew and fiber unbound by heat.
…
by Tanvi Nagar
I sat in a dimly lit room and began to flip the dusty journal’s pages…
by Janet Kozachek
In the spring of 2011, I was asked to submit some images of a mosaic “work-in-progress,” Subclinical Harpies…
Cover Art by Josh Steinbauer
Contributors: Josh Steinbauer, Emily Ann Salles, Angelica Mejia, Rebecca Andem, Joy Alexander, Maurice Moore, George White, and Foster Trecost.
by Josh Steinbauer
“Suffering is both a barrier and a bridge.” – Kao Kalia Yang
by Emily Ann Salles
My great-grandmother used to terrify us by taking her teeth out. With a flick of her lower jaw they’d pop out into a shark’s double smile. We would shriek. The youngest of us started to cry. She would chuckle and chomp them back into place.
by Angelica Mejia
Not having much of normal necessities in the kitchen had not phased me until my adult years. My parents did their best at raising us while my mom was fighting a battle none of us knew how to deal with or talk about. She hid it from me and my siblings for years—cancer.
by Angelica Mejia
It was on the 9th of August the evening that my great-grandmother passed. It was the last week of monsoon season, the favorite season all Arizonans are familiar with. The weather podcast for the day was no chance of rain, but later on, when we knew she passed, it rained, and it rained hard.
by Rebecca Andem
Fields that blossomed at dawn faded by dusk, as though a million blue butterflies had landed and lifted. And her mother, her mother fluttered on the thin edge of shadows.
by Rebecca Andem
As a rule, Jamie steered clear of Fat Tuesday. The MTV clones with their bedhead styles and tribal tattoos were bad enough sober. Tossing back Jell-O shots and moving in packs? No thank you. But three years in the Keys, and he was restless. He’d been through every waitress and barback from Key Largo to Key West.
by Joy Alexander
I was really not suicidal. But in that murderous instant, I was trapped. And the way, as I saw it, after long harried minutes of despair, was to just jump and end it all.
by Joy Alexander
There ought to be an asylum for such as me
harassed and haunted I am.
Thermometers blaze high temperatures of suffering COVID patients, while
I gripe at sunburn on my pampered potted plants.
by Maurice Moore
Only one copy of Roberta William’s 2133 text “Blood Rituals and Monsters of the Postbellum” exists. It was recovered from the excavation site after her disappearance back in 2138. Reports state that Williams disappeared while doing further research on the Purpura Demon legend for her second book while on expedition at the Neuse River.
by Maurice Moore
Roberta: -Knock, Knock-
Alfreda: Stop yo monster drawing Junior and get de door ya Momma still getting pretty fa de Doctor.
by George White
Honestly, Mark, picking you up today was nearly as bad as the funeral. Time for a brew now. I think I need a nice decaf tea. I might even treat myself and put some honey in it.
by Foster Trecost
I came upon a young boy who sat upon the ground. At his side lay a blue Schwinn, lent from an earlier time. His hands were stained with grease from the chain, which had popped from the sprocket, and his shirt stained with grease from his hands. I watched for a moment, then knelt next to him.
Cover Art by Brenna Wuillamey
Contributors: Garrett Gomez, Lucy E. Allan, Suzanne S. Rancourt, Brenna Wuillamey, Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani, Jen Schneider, David Estringel, Mary Hope|Whitehead|Lee, Stephanie Powell, Megha Nayar, Ken Tomaro, and more.
by Garrett Gomez
crawled into a shell
this afternoon xcept
it was a cocoon…
by Lucy E Allan
There are two types of water in the sea, and there are two sadnesses in the body.
The first sadness lives in the muscles between your ribs…
by Suzanne S. Rancourt
This wind shoulder bumps stacked droplets. They tumble down branches / fall off cliff tips shining green with wet….
by Suzanne S. Rancourt
The bull waggled his rack tips while feeding on submerged water lilies and pondweed….
by Brenna Wuillamey
by Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani
Hannah and I, listening / to the cacophony of noon / while cocooned in this stillness / as the rest of the world / cycles on what is their norm….
by Brenna Wuillamey
by Jen Schneider
Locks turn right. Keys clank.
Huddled whispers. Spilled secrets….
by Brenna Wuillamey
by David Estingel
Thumbing through The Borderlands, I can’t help but feel not “brown” enough. I’m Mexican Lite. Got a case of the “coconuts”. There are no rageful battle-cries inflaming this breast. …
by mary hope|whitehead|lee
by Stephanie Powell
They chew with soft-jawed mouths open; molars loose in the gums.
It may be post-war steak, grey under kitchen lights…
Poetry and photography by Stephanie Powell
This room as a picture, the Musician stands up, his lower groin occupies the space with the possessive masculinity of a Mapplethorpe. …
by Megha Nayar
Wife (Fully functional human being, veritable force of nature)
Me (Her troubled husband, hereafter referred to in third person)…
by Brenna Wuillamey
Photograph and poem by Ken Tomaro
it has been awhile since I’ve been home
the cat barely recognizes me
but it didn’t take long for him to warm up
before he went back to licking himself…
Poem by Silvia El Helo, photograph by Terrence Sykes
Ten slow sips…
by Jemelia Moseley
I am watching TV as the TV watches me
I see movement but I hear no sound
In my own head space, my own maze…
by Jemelia Moseley
As a black child growing up in the 90’s they said I was lucky because my hair was long,
when I cut it they said my beauty was gone…
by Red Sagalow
Story by Mark Blickley, Photography by Beatrice Georgalidis
It was time for Ralph’s first real haircut. Ralph’s mother said it was time, as did the next-door parents of his best friend, Emmitt. The only person who did not think it was time for a real haircut was Ralph. He did not want to go to the barbershop. …
by Mary Ledvina
by Timothy Tarkelly
God!!!!!! sloped shoulders, and the flat stomachs
of 1966…
by Hibah Shabkhez
I am a boiling pot of Englishes, bubbling frantically as they collide. …
by Dmitry Blizniuk, translated by Sergey Gerasimov
Sailing boats with bright sails —
lemony, orange, striped, —
flock by the shore,
dawdling at the water edge like burning giraffes…
by Mernine Ameris
my aunt’s 2nd wedding.
an august festival for some.
an all day marathon for those who know her.
a common cocktail for a haitian wedding.
by Perla Kantarjian
there is a bag of worn out peaches sitting
on my kitchen floor
that i cannot bear to devour nor to dispose of….
by Helen Bowie
Your beautiful stories of life in Kiev, when you were only / a child…
by Tamara Al-Qaisi-Coleman
Can you see how the river shimmers? Connecting states
I pledge allegiance to
the farm to market roads
Connecting rivaling towns
by Rudolf Alexander
A new bridge is being built over the river in Carpentersville
that will connect Longmeadow Parkway on the west bank…
by Jacob Nantz
Stand at the south end of the square and face the courthouse. DANMAR FAMILY PHARMACY casts a shadow over the white-bricked building to its left.
by Jacob Nantz
I grew up riding trains from the suburbs to the city, / then around the city, hovering on the EL…
by Jacob Nantz
…Middle and working classes fill in from the edges and meet downtown in an uncommon harmony: filthy taverns, charming Irish Pubs, an aging casino, an old roundhouse-turned brewery…
by Ronald Tobey
we bought an old used manure spreader
small holding 80 bushels
enough for one pass of 500 feet
faded red planks bolted to its steel frame
rust on metal…
by Howie Good
The relationship among spatially dislocated but simultaneous events is difficult for a lay person like me to fathom….
by Howie Good
You unbutton the top few buttons of your blouse. The doctor places a cold stethoscope against your chest….
by Howie Good
Because the horizon for humanity is so cold and sharp, the edge of an executioner’s axe, I try my best to stay up on the news, but today…
by KG Newman
The lunatic let his pet mosquito out of a matchbox outside our quiet house / as freezing eventide strolled over to see what’s up.
by KG Newman
I tried brewing a placebo/antidote in the garage over bottomless beers and drifting solitude, / while you read the first chapter of every self-help book from the library.
by KG Newman
The morning Stan Lee died I put my son in his Spiderman shirt for day care, wondering / when he’d comprehend each late-night kitchen argument…
by Cole W. Williams
I draw tik marks on the page—
wanting to see what hundreds of thousands looks like…
by Maia Joy
Marble bust goes to the emergency room
complaining of chest pain, loss of sensation…
by Alyssa Jordan
He goes where you can’t follow, like all
the dead do. You wonder…
by Alyssa Jordan
You buy flowers
wondering where
she has gone. …
by Jennifer Shneiderman
Bees riot in swaying lush lavender rendering jealous wild pink bougainvillea undulating dancing…
by Ahmad Al-khatat
We constantly question the things we do.
Living has become a harder question than death. …
by Tina Anton
by Shoshana Olidort
after Paul Celan [UNLESBARKEIT]
Unreadable this, unreadability of this, illegibility of this, illegible this
world, world, world, world. …
by Alvaro Enciso and Elizabeth Salper
by Rebekah Cheresnick
Remember the dirt
fragile in the sun so warm
on your back
and your shoulders
and your scalp.
Cover Art by Jorge Oyarzún Sardi
Contributors: Mary Hope|Whitehead|Lee, Pilar Rodríguez Aranda, Cole W. Williams, Jorge Oyarzún Sardi, Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta, Greta Pullen, Mark Blickley, Keith Goldstein, Maroula Blades, Lisa Periale Martin, Kim Baker, and more.
by Irina Moga
Art by Tatiana Arsénie
On some days the hazy, milk-white light draws me into a strange fluidity: it’s the wisdom of a wing-like, deceitful surface.
by Galina Itskovich
Translations by Valentin Emelin
The road is sad, saturated with poison,
And pricking with flat notes on my bare feet.
Impasto on canvas.
by Jack e Lorts
Color the
soft voices
a violet or
maybe a shade
not yet discovered,
a nuance…
by Cheryl Heineman
They are raven-like, dark-winged
moving toward a tangled nest
or like crows circling
seeking their own kind
against a fog-ivory sky the outline
by Kim Baker
Charley pours their coffee,
tells them they look good.
But they know they are just a couple of stiffs…
by Lisa Periale Martin
Wing man speaking
now he’s singing
layering images
coats curried
borrowed brush tips
by Mark Blickley
Photography by Keith Goldstein
I’ve had this recurring Bridge Dream for nearly fifteen years. It first appeared one night after being exhausted by cram studying for my Bar Mitzvah. In this initial fantasy I was a swaddled infant left on the very beginning of a long and twisting walkway through a vibrant yet desolate forest.
by Greta Pullen
Those drop earrings (doubtless pre-Colombian). Jade certainly. In any case a green stone Standard issue metal alarm clock, two bells on top. Hairstyle parted in the middle.
by Maroula Blades
On the 10th August 2020, I saw the totem pole out of the corner of my eye. I was travelling on the “Road to Sacrow” in Krampnitz. Krampnitz is a district of the state capital Potsdam (Brandenburg) in Germany. I asked the driver to halt the car. I had to take a photograph of this interesting object. There wasn’t a bronze plaque nailed on the painted bark. This artwork has no recorded history.
by Jorge Oyarzún Sardi and
Océano and Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta
Siempre soñó con el océano. Lo que se llama soñar, despierto y dormido.
He always dreamed of the ocean. You could say constantly dreamed, daydreaming or asleep.
by Cole W. Williams
He has found our child,
the boy–in flannel, TIED SHOES, and jeans, was not in the water for a swim. We know the boy is misplaced, we know the boy was head under, wet hair, too long.
by Pilar Rodríguez Aranda
What is it about a wall? About the action of marking or writing on it? What kind of power does it exert on the writer/painter/activist/transgressor, and on the viewer/reader/witness/accomplice?
by mary hope|whitehead|lee
7 june 1908: cristina hermanita mi alma mi corazón
(portrait of cristina, my sister 1928)
for sweet talk and useless coin
you will slay me
Cover Art by Jessica Dawn Zinz
Contributors: Kayla Rodney, Christopher Atamian, Joy Alexander, Yi Jung (Jolene) Chen, Michelle Villegas Threadgould, Jessica Dawn Zinz, Richard Oyama, Yuan Changming, F. Daniel Rzicznek, Satya Dash, Raphael Luis J. Salise, Guna Moran, and more.
Kayla Rodney: What it all boils down to is that people from New Orleans always want to be home because there is something about the city that draws you back to it, and many families from the city have lived there for generations, my own included. …
Review by Janel Spencer
Her talent with diction, music and the lyric is apparent in her first collection of poems, Swimming Home, which begins with a grocery list which very quickly becomes much more…
by Kayla Rodney
Over two-hundred years ago black feet
In shackles shuffled to shores they were unsure of.
The jingle of chains a precursor to the jingle of change in coin purses
Used to purchase us.
But still we sang into blue skies…
by Guna Moran
translated from Assamese by Sadiqul Islam
I can see at night,
not in daytime.
After the nap
the ribs talk to the bedstead.
…
by Guna Moran
translated from Assamese by Bibekandanda Choudhury
Because they do not have a
permanent home…
Poem by Carl Scharwath
Video by Jeanette Skirvin
by Mike Knowles
by Zach Murphy
There’s a formidable stone house that sits atop Fairmount Hill. It’s been for sale as long as I can remember. …
by Raphael Luis J. Salise
I lied
when I said
“I’ll be home soon,
don’t you worry about me”
…
by Raphael Luis J. Salise
we are soldiers, right?
comrades, always there for each other
no one was watching us, right?
it was just you and me in the middle of the night…
by Thom Brucie
I did not want to watch my grandfather die
but I did
as surely as I watched him
prune his grape vines…
by Michael Buckius
When you were 12 years old you destroyed your mother’s garden. You used a miniature souvenir baseball bat that was purchased at Camden Yards two summers prior. …
by Penny Harter
Preparing the cup of coffee that leads off my day—one of just two cups, the second only half-decaf—has become a ritual. …
by Penny Harter
Recycled loss composts this garden. Loss of everything dear you’ve treasured since childhood: your tin shovel the sandbox swallowed. The mewing kitten your mother rescued from the white line. …
by Sean J. White
who knows the difference between lazurite and lamprophyre a rock is a rock is a rock is a rock
unless a rock is an answer …
by Satya Dash
Had to argue against tale of breasts
Curving to shape my narrative of breath
…
by Satya Dash
rope me by grips of mane vowels in my name
jealous in yearn feed me me
liver hearted God was I no skin or hair no wound
by F. Daniel Rzicznek
Limitless, compassionate energy between snow and tree, the fall of each, those several thralls. …
by Karen Loeb
Match the comment with the response.
Relatives/friends: Why in the world are you going to adopt a child?
by Howie Good
A Toast to the Dark
I search my sock drawer for a clean shirt to wear. On the subway, I pretend my briefcase is full of secret nuclear launch codes. …
by Roy Duffield
a reflection on the self reflection of a
self portrait of the poet as a young man as a self
…
by Ryan Greene
in the void
a whole lot of floating
old old light
…
by Yuan Changming
盲人摸象(the Blind Feels the Elephant): Another East Idiom
Here’s the elephant…
by Richard Oyama
It does not think of the boy’s bird screech and water pistol, the girl’s pas de deux and pursed lips. They batter each other’s head with flattened palms. …
by Adam Ai
Dear Orloj, My Wondering,
The last two dreams were not about her.
by Matthew Dettmer
I got home Friday night with a bag of potato chips because the woman working at the gas station a third of the way home saw me lurching down the aisle with the shelves of wine and said “no booze for sale now” …
by Jessica Dawn Zinz
full & complete
change is
by its nature
difficult.
by Marlene DeVere
She sat alone in a corner of the café, toying with her pearlescent necklace that for fifty years held a special place in her jewelry box. …
by Amanda McGuire
Three eyes in the back of the head but it’s impossible to see the reign beyond & above…
by Amanda McGuire
Leaves scratch the sidewalk again, and the air here is electric with possibility, according to the meteorologist. ….
by Michelle Villegas Threadgould
No hay reggaaeton sin ti
Tennessee is a black tree blur
…
by Michelle Villegas Threadgould
Not film / Not guns / Not you
But I could
and I did
when I outran you
by Robbie Curry
awaken your
body to your ancient future
celebrate
by Sandra L. Faulkner
Dear Mom,
I made your cake today
since I can’t see your face
…
by Sandra L. Faulkner
July 8, 2020 / Dear Alice, / Today would be your 112th birthday. They tell me that / I look like you…
by Jill Carpenter
Quilting develops an internal ruler—I know an inch, or six inches, or 36 inches when I see it.
…
by Yi Jung Chen
A ring, quietly stays
on mom’s little finger, passing down
a tale of frugal living…
by Joy Alexander
I had to laugh.
I just had to laugh,
my thoughts, a manic violin.
…
by Joy Alexander
It was late evening and the Jamaican downpour of rain made it seem even darker in the bus in which my mother and I were traveling. It did not matter that I could not see outside from the rain beating on the side of the window or glimpse the shadows of trees sprinting by the window. ….
by Christopher Atamian
Growing up in Yorkville in the late 1970’s, nothing thrilled me more than visiting my dear old Tante Angele in Morningside Heights. Manhattan had not been completely gentrified yet, so Yorkville still retained its mostly Hungarian and German flavor, and Morningside Heights might as well have been Tokyo, it seemed so far away…
Cover Art by Elena Valdés Chavarría
Contributors: Siobhán Scarry, Lyn Baldwin, Ellery Akers, Lauren Camp, Abeer Y. Hoque, Joy Castro, Wyatt Welch, Iris Orpi, Annelies Zijderveld, Rob Carney, Justin Kitts, Marvin Shackelford, Paolo Bicchieri, Edward Lee, Lynn Finger, Elena Valdés Chavarría, and Irina Mashinski.
by Siobhán Scarry
How do the thoughts move?
With whirring, with wings, with unthinkable thoughts.
by Lyn Baldwin
On a Sunday afternoon in middle March, I open my truck door and step into in the high, thin light of a spring afternoon in the upper Lac Du Bois grasslands, just north of Kamloops, British Columbia.
by Ellery Akers
After working for months banding seabirds on a rocky island, I lean over the rail of our boat and smell land…
by Lauren Camp
1. Moderate-stage Dementia, Most Likely Alzheimer’s
by Abeer Y. Hoque
Here I love you, New York.
In the neon-striped night, people rise and roar.
The sirens and singers vie with their ululations.
A hundred times I listen.
by Joy Castro
“…friends?
Now you use a word whose meaning I have never known.”
—Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
by Wyatt Welch
Birds are dying all over North America and I make a margarita.
Three green water-crisis limes, California.
by Wyatt Welch
I was,
I was each time,
conventional…
by Iris Orpi
Friday 2011, Chicago
Razor slices of red-tinted winter sky through the blinds, like verses of a waning fire.
by Iris Orpi
For eleven minutes, there was no God
by Annelies Zijderveld
1.
Pour the sugar and water into a heavy-bottomed pan set on medium high until the sugar roils in what resembles ecstatic agony—but don’t reach for the wooden spoon to relieve it.
by Rob Carney
Because The La’s were playing on the stereo, and the crescent moon looked frozen in the morning, and I wasn’t thinking about traffic because these phrases kept popping up and keeping me busy . . .
by Rob Carney
Just now, in the middle of a nineteenth email from OTL about Kaltura and their systems-training videos to help us “begin immediately transitioning” to teaching all our classes via teleconference . . .
by Justin Kitts
Get to see your face
In a hotel hell
Not much to look at
But it’s better than jail
by Marvin Shackelford
Along the tar-chipped road ponds dry at their edges, banks spreading, the streams and springs that feed them narrowing through their stones and winds, disappearing. The sun works at the earth unimpeded for weeks, sets each evening far behind the parched trees bunched across the horizon.
by Paolo Bicchieri
at some rodeo
you kissed my neck in front of my grandparents / it wasn’t that you couldn’t / everyone laughed / it was that five miles away / someone wept when they heard the crack…
by Edward Lee
From the series ‘(Un)Revealed’
by Edward Lee
From the series ‘(Un)Revealed’
by Lynn Finger
Cotton canvas is the most flammable, although poly blends can go faster because they melt.
by Elena Valdés Chavarría
En las calles del olvido
merodea un recuerdo de ti
que persiste
pese al tiempo…
by Irina Mashinski
Anyone who remembers, a lifetime ago, trying to make out new patterns on the wallpaper each night and being terrified by the dark frightening folds of that strange shape on the chair will understand what I am about to say.
by Irina Mashinski
a bird of glass,
a bird with a scratched throat,
a bird that tries to tell it all at once,
a bird that turns its head when called,
a bird that’s pinned with hopes…
by Irina Mashinski
I slept to you,
slept into you,
and then, to fall asleep, escaped from you
behind a cardboard wall, as if unbound…
by Irina Mashinski
November wind
sways you – bewildered lost
between two languages:
one a birch tree and one a willow.
Review by Lynn Finger
Rob Carney is someone who can find the soul in an empty room, or abandoned spot, and give it a chance to sing. His poetry explores the person in the emptiness, or the emptiness in the person, and shows how it is beautiful and enduring.
Rob Carney: People need their wildness back. Using figurative language to evoke the animal in us seems like it ought to be one of poetry’s jobs…. Personification is helpful because most people need to, as [Robinson] Jeffers says, “uncenter our minds from ourselves” and “unhumanize our views a little.”