"The residual anger of erotic dreams" and "Catalpa sphinx" by Brita Sauer

The residual anger of erotic dreams

This backyard sprayed and sprayed again.
The cochineal has come back, ravenous
in its slow moving ways. Not quite fixed,
this moment: the neighbor shooting a bb gun
at a cardboard box. Propped, it will remain
for weeks. I smell rotting meat and it fills me
with alarm. It routes through, untraceable,
feeling strangely like desire. Not the thing
itself, just a likeness caught: the reflection
of a window or the eye askance. But to be
clear, the meat is still unsettling, the smell
a fine catalog of threads for pulling: an eye
running, a salivary gland in excess, a thing
we return to soft and in syllables. Calling a
name when it needles the mind.

Catalpa sphinx

mothlight mutualism

there is but one feeder
and host a delicate balance
they return

pupal sphinx
buried collar
round the old
marks
cloistered thorax

catalpa
sphinx
resting spindling
feeding

feral spoiler

among leaves
on a notion of two-wing                        delights

guaranteed
midge
streetlight exchange
within
disruption

-

Brita Sauer graduated with an MFA from NMSU and is also a librarian. She has worked in libraries in New Mexico and is interested in the intersection of collection and ecology. She has work published or forthcoming on The Academy of American Poets poets.org site, Plant-Human Quarterly, The Listening Eye, Gone Lawn, and a short film shown at the Feminist Border Arts Film Festival.

From ROME DAYS by Ann Pedone

From ROME DAYS

Day Three

The milk is spoiled by at least a week

(Motives unclear)

(bellymemory, lurid, sanctified or

Pontic)

I look out the window and

on the door of the building directly across

some one has spray painted

femme d’intérieur

Day Four

All motives are

unclear but then green and

somewhat calloused

all cluttered around a

small studio apartment or “figure”

Day Five

The bed is unmade

The cows in the hallway are still gentle grazing

I have nothing else to show you

Day Six

Rome is an alternating

cycle of groin & doubt

Cottonlandscape

The clattering of Twombly flounce

-

Ann Pedone’s books include The Medea Notebooks and The Italian Professor’s Wife. Her poetry, non-fiction, and reviews have been published widely. Ann’s project “Liz” was a finalist for the 2024 Levi’s Prize. She has been nominated for Best of Net and the Pushcart multiple times. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal and small press, αntiphony.

"Dream" and "Superlunar Daydream" by Chloe Bliss Snyder

Dream

One of those old, old-world
sort of church-wise libraries —
(high-ceilinged / vault-sealed / arch-vaulted.)

Striated spines or one
sort of corrugated mind —
(furrow-bound brow of the thinker. Leathery.)

And at most as many dust motes as mots, though
in window light hovers one, th’other, in covers —
(shutters.)

A tourist in short, I’m on tour with a sort of religious order
in which I’m impermitted from sitting with the elders
of it, its deep rituals all screened from me,
certain scriptures obnubilated from my viewing.

Then upon some inner structure, some splendid shed,
door open to what dark I don’t know, of what carved dark
wood I don’t know, I don’t know, I didn’t grow
up in places like this. (Oak, I suppose.)

I go inside alone and inside is
a woman from my hometown
who I had forgotten had died.

Is this her little ‘brary, then?
within the bigger where
every book is open, so
dangerously splayed open

like double-doors or casement windows pinned
to walls like wings under glass?

And a boy in the corner,
we whispered how we
played each other’s
cousins or lovers or simply each other
respectively on the British and American
versions of the same show on TV.

Lingering, this whisper elongs from his ear,
red tensile thread that sways
as I walk away from my mouth,
a murmur my tongue braids.

When I glance back, he’s become three.
(This thrills me.)

*

Where would I be
without my you
flipping me through —

a spine in splits, enwinged,
eclosing the part of me that’s always open.

*

The narrowed air, snake-like, traces
the invisible in labyrinthine slither, amazes
the puzzle-box locks
an empty room collects.

I run my fingers over the surface of my sleep,
hollow old hazel globe I know from home
oceans up deep under breathing
of the morpho’s lucid blue —

what efflittles by flying,
o unpinnd eyes.

Superlunar Daydream

When I go to Sleep,
when I go to She
in my wind-shirt’s weft with
my feather fetish, sylph-lifted, it
wafts my essence better to Dream:
the Book in the lap of my
Illiterate Queen.

(All thoughts flock in her fields
of the forbidden red-green.)

Within a robin’s shell-of-the-welkin
an adularia eyrie descends —
warp of its spectrum sheds from a heddle,
flashes like the face of an Actress —

as of Chasse
& Rassemble:
the Goddess who hunts the atmosphere,
her Husband
who gleans the moon.

Surely a Virgin, the strength of the unicorn
protrudes —
his hymn-milk skinning her lap.

The tongue of a kitten’s the sound of a feather:
this moondrifts
across a granite face aslip.

Some dove’s marbled voice scoons babbles
and adulations of iridescence.

I dawn on nothing firmer meant for me —

the deer run ruin through the heavens.

-

Originally from upstate New York, Chloe Bliss Snyder now writes poèmes de terre in Idaho, where she studies and teaches poetry at Boise State University. Some of her recent work has appeared in Mercury Firs, Tagvverk, Noir Sauna, Grotto, and Annulet. Her chapbook Ekho and Narkissos was published by the pamphlet series The Swan and its recording can be heard on PennSound.

"Mutation" and "Morass" by Sophia Leenay

Mutation

The DNA
The sewing needle
The buttonhole
The blueprint
The mitochondria
The handicraft
The tablespoon

The fabric
The surgical instrument
The aorta
The dropped stitch
The rupture
The petition
The interpretation

The decomposition
The rot
The riff
The silk
The speech
The throat
The variant
The uncertainty

Morass

There’s mud tracked into
the house again,
damnit,
get the mop
out
and get on with
it.

I look at the
mess and think
what if God
is really more of a
floundering?

This holy morass,
this wondering,
that everything fights
to keep away from you.

Because this kind
of God abhors
making a factory
out of life
and prefers
to sink,

for mud could never
be efficient

sticky,
oozing, and
unformed. Just a
thought and image
out the lips

more of a feeling
one’s way around
things &
a neverending umm

-

Sophia Leenay is a copywriter based in New York City.

"Misrecognition" and "Conversation with friend" by Yuyi Chen

Misrecognition

I thought a white
guy stumbling
were you 

the same faces
disarm contraries

will the ants
find a way
to a hand full

of queens                                                                        
I give? or

in any migration
only nuisance
multiply willingly

Conversation with friend

exhaust political
lexicon to account

for an annoyance
in your tone

a fury eruption
closing in

it pleases yet
yet it calls

for an escape

when the statue
of order as cold

as your volcano
stands in

between rebuttals
and these lowly

rebels I birth

am I still
your friend?

-

Yuyi Chen (they/them) is a poet, fiction writer, and hopefully-would-be scholar from Sichuan, China. They are now in a PhD program in anthropology at Johns Hopkins University.

"Force Perpetuity" and "Leech Screed+" by Zach Peckham

FORCE PERPETUITY

in to narrow
-er narrower

tunnels funnel
-ed down along

a line
lifting

rips
up aside

split ten
-sing

div / id
ed field rings

compu
-tational

sense

the lens
the lift
the lend
the sift

spend
for what

assist
a cyst

grift of

the gift

aligned to much

too narrowly

LEECH SCREED+

dumbfounded
into dumbness

fully dumb
+dumped

of speech
numb in the lungs

unplussed+dechartered

non sequitur sung
out un
+in
+on
to each

anon
along
aloud
among

a moon
rippling

in deep

creek of bile
chorus beached

I am just trying
to congregate here

reaching in
to fire

fir branched
+petrified

woodland fossil
of a dis
-carded tonsil

tensile wrench

of a worm’s
arms unfurling

corded

+chorded

+chortled

+lorded

prone to reptile
lances

thorax engorged

shining corked
on the pile
+crooked

delayed in the weight
I can’t help
but be

the way
down which
the winding-to
leads

the wait
to which
this fire
recedes

encircles

enscreeds

layers of leeches
suckling to a beat

this reach
this reelaround
this hoping
for a breach

-

Zach Peckham is a writer, editor, and educator. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in jubilat, Territory, Poetry Northwest, Always Crashing, Oversound, American Book Review, Annulet, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in poetry from the NEOMFA and teaches at Cleveland State and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the managing editor at the CSU Poetry Center and editor-at-large of the Cleveland Review of Books. He also runs a small press called Community Mausoleum and a journal called Coma.

Three Poems by Ayaz O. Muratoglu

MIRACLES OF PROFIT

Someone once told me they built these fences
on accident—

rocks deposited by a slow moving
mammoth whose knees
grace town greens now, plucked from the earth.

Farmers placed them at the far edge of the field
to avoid contamination with other forms of labor:
this, not that. It goes on.

In the New England woods you will find these
linear landfills: remnants of the first phase
of the settler colonial project

farms abandoned for sheep
serial thinking

sheep for cows
cows for the promise of more land
west
out

a path, clearing.
You speak of heartbreak here,
memory that formal feeling pulled
from volcano depths—
the brave one toeing the edge of the ghetto

dynamite hidden under nailbeds.

I’m pulling the marrow from a bone,
my fingers tormented by a
silvering dove, mourning at the ledge—

The beloved sits at the window
reading of dolphin skins stretched purple to build
a desolate and impractical ark,
god promising to fill the space between the two cherubims’ wings.
It is winter and god is far from here,
though perhaps right over there

holding between mountain peaks
in the middle distance.

What of the man carrying his son’s remains
in two plastic bags after the camera shuts off?
How for the sun to rise over Gaza?
What for bread be made of animal feed?
How for anyone to look away?

But of the witness beating
by the winnowing creek
for the traipsing footsteps
by the streets filled

concrete crumbling under the dry sun
accidental fences in moss
desecrated boundary wall

the black and bottomless chasm of
a Coke ad

it’s the real thing.

The olive trees burning,
not by afterthought or accident
but a project bent on destruction.

You unfold the alphabet into your lap:
here the river and here the sea
and here a Palestine free of occupation
of horrors—
markets and bakeries
children baking layers of knufeh, just
breadcrumbs and cream, browning in the oven.

A middle distance sets it
callousness too

like the moon
rising
again and again

over the city
with the reddened sky

no ochre

and the birds
they are returning

how silly was I to forget

INFINITY QUILT

Weaving sets the timekeeper’s bedroom askew,
Twenty-four clocks, one for each setting, click on the wall—

Does god measure time?
Or just infinity?
Each unit stretching out of itself

Then absorbing its tendon: each still spindle
makes its way to an impossible edge

I wake in a postcard bed, feet tucked under your knees—
Counting the stamp’s perforated fingers
a window spilling out of itself.

Nighttime: the room hovers
Daybreak: the sun
cracks the window’s height

Weaving splits the timekeeper’s bedroom—
Twenty-four clocks sutured to the drywall

There are no bosses in the quilt
but there are in this building
off to view the merchandise

May you sit at the beach
counting clouds on the far horizon
trading feet rustling for sparrows hopping, waves bodying

From here to there, twelve cubits
A dinosaur forcing its way out of the sky

BHERETI

The star bar is full of stars
heavenly and gracing
under a full moon

Each door opens into another one
then the rooms face each other:
we must have a mind of calendars to find the one we’ve been looking for.

One after another, the stars fall into dates—
punishment, then release.
Lies told to protect someone from something.

Euphoria and suffer and ferret
all come from the same root: bhereti
I breathe it into bedtime

bhe
re
tii

bher et i

the light is on low
cars sound like water
in the failing starlight I carve it

Then flying above California,
a slowly developing edge

The mountains as enclosure
the hills as more enclosure

A coloring book, so blue and flowered,
open on the table. Tea beside it.

The moon opens, and with it, a flower grows—
the shape of the sweater you wore at twilight

graying sky, stuck at its pre-darkening

A net
holding a net
is another net

-

Ayaz O. Muratoglu is a poet, essayist, and translator living in Brooklyn, New York. Work can be found in the Poetry Project Newsletter, Critical Flame, moero, Hot Pink Mag, and elsewhere. They were born on a Tuesday in April.  

Three Poems by Leo Dunsker

MASS MUTUAL

how do the charmed ones think
they must remember everything
singing with a mouth stuffed full
as children drink the banquet beer

THE SUNDAY OF LIFE

for the child, there are no weak passions
his little teeth are white as salt
so in occasional chaos, there is an ideal
not rude or wicked, but full of humor

the happy man might yet be evil
his character and those of others
could be different, but for now
we have met them and to us they are the same

CORN BOY

a long way he came 
to collapse in your house
with shapeless years to live
knowing that the gods are far away

-

Leo Dunsker lives in Berkeley, CA. His writing has appeared in pdf.mag, Smithereens, Foundlings, and elsewhere.

"Oh Well" and "Banger" by Yves B. Golden

OH WELL

oh well

born

all wing and thrown voice

cicada why now?

discarded from yourself
a copy blood-eagled in squall

delivering your cross-bearing
through the borders of limerence

to touch
vestals to lictors?

forbidden.

who guides you here by hum
out of summer?

even if I learned

I couldn't know

BANGER

spoils

grimming afternoon

with many lemon seeded

drain guards.

spoiled

today’s wash again

slept through an earthquake

i’m sure tomorrow

is gonna be a banger

sequins

pocket change

line the fish cage

giving eye candy

it‘s a slay

looking past me

when the world blinks

the girls I know say

you’ve got it all

a face hinges wingspan

a tin foil safety net beneath you.

you are

a queen seed resisting arrest

everything is yours

to sneer at

-

Yves B Golden is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her recent collection of poems and lyric essays was published by Tabloid Press (DE) and La Esconcesa (ES). She is the Feminist Center for Creative Work's 2024 artist-in-residence. 

Four Poems by Miri Karraker

-- 

fricative step grinds leaf scent wetted on stone 
you hesitate a question 
it would be that even so as it may 

to be that rustle of leaves 
(goldfinch slips through) just somebody 
gone before my gaze’s arrival 

that particular yellow, I wish I had believed it when I saw it (the first time)

-- 

no, not that it would be 
no, not the same 
no, not a thing 
no, not them there
no, not it there 
no, not you 
no, not anybody but me 
no, not anyone without 
no, not somebody with 
no, not someone in 
no, not everyone out
no, not everything with 
no, not nobody there 
no, not nothing

-- 

Why was the fact lonely?
It was too ugly to be believed.

--

no not goldfinch that’s house sparrow
don’t ever fuck
you that force: air between lip and teeth
a flex

poetry is not a luxury nor is grief

I believe it all, goldfinch after goldfinch
you can lie but I’ll know
how many I know too many
gone I know

-

Miri Karraker lives and works in Minneapolis. 

"No Barrier Reef in Sight" by Julián Martinez

What’s that Simic poem
where he’s a boat
lost at sea, floating into fog?
Or was he the fog?

Me I’m a landfill. I’m not
going nowhere, been lost
since the start, damned
to see the worst—

to smell ranker and ruder
and more mutated and rotten
‘til me and the sea
are something new entirely—

crushed Coke can for an asshole.

-

Julián Martinez (he/him) is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Rejection Letters and elsewhere. His micro-chapbook, This Place Is Covered Head To Toe In Shit, is out Summer 2024 with Ghost City Press. Find him online @martinezfjulian or www.martinezfjulian.com, or IRL in Chicago.

"aware" by Corey Qureshi

There is no intentionless,
Even fun is an angle,
It comes with expenses…
False comfort in
Expecting water, then
Turns out to be liquor,
Visible or not expenses
Illicit this jolt that lays
Across tastebuds
And I wish things could
Be regular. Sure I can
Follow these tasks their
Length then pick it all up
Accordingly. I will work
Slow so you can’t find
Mistakes without expert eyes,
But false comfort’ll
Always find out about itself,
Takes a while to really
Tax these gestures down
To believable science,
Can you even tell
What I’m going for?
You’re a sweet person
And I hope your heart rate
Slows to an afterthought
Cause knowing about
Yourself is so taxing,
Having to be told about
Even more so.

-

Corey Qureshi is a writer and musician. He is the author of three chapbooks of poems and runs BOXX Press. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and child. @q_boxo

Three Poems from REND by Geoffrey Olsen

*

crease. we fling spring utter abandonment flits spent eyeward

went unheard, the spells, our shudder creases bleak days paring

watching as it turns to diffidence self-figures all selfishly

individuated amid the grid, arrests the pigs, stern so it: worth

waits on worthless, a spot of land arbitrary and blued

pent and spent suspicious, eyes the cross, hating hating blent

and spent, crèche shuddering, there between knee a sentencing

*

psychopathetic given to the grease, grins sneering

hardens as sound thoughtful truce pieced from sine waving

each accident tapped digital warping feel, then my pen

failing fascisms darlings automata, emanate prediction as death

ditch sprawling fibrous mass delightful feeding receptors

exceptional: can this continue? can the sound enfold? can that extend

of pervasive shattering pleased each squeezed prize

*

into our peels of doom song desperate and of use to no

one in no form broken, crashing, shambles, benched

barriers our desiccated fields, not ours, uncedes

then scaly flesh, pressing cicatrices in time debt to the physical

blooms medium accent for mediums, modulate in marrow

twice writ bound as that turns. sentience

it’s as pulse so it reads or rends as pleased

-

Geoffrey Olsen is the author of five chapbooks, most recently Livid Remainders (above/ground press 2023). His first book Nerves Between Song will be published by Beautiful Days Press this spring. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Three Poems by AM Ringwalt

MARJORIE

Marjorie, we make phone calls about you
I still picture the Pacific

We drive your Toyota to the ocean when you are too old
To take yourself, how quick the view

How abbreviated, your window up
And the bells in the church in the canyon

And the eucalyptus trees, spines, the lone cloud
The street smells of jasmine, Marguerite all the way to the ocean

I wonder if the piano keys are like flowers to you
When you hold a memory, how long does it stay

Question without punctuation, time without limit
What you see, now, is a kind of magic

Even as it takes you from us
Even as your end is in sight

I pretend otherwise
Otherwise, grief-wracked, your pink towels

Your lamps from other countries
Your radio on

I pretend and here we live together
And here you tell me about the chills and about good words

There is something about your survival that makes me love you more
How you squeeze my hand with more force than I’d wield

For anyone, anytime
Bells, now and then, and your hand

Like you’re giving me your life, like you’re asking me to see
The ocean again, the one sailboat white as the one cloud, asking me

To wield jasmine wield windows open
Wield love how it’s glowing

THE BIRD IN THE BALLET

The bird out the window is not as blue
as the bird in the ballet, silkened and
turning. I hate that I still think of those
nights driving down your street,
the photos you take without
me, the candles burning
in paper bags, the musical instruments
we play in a field,
xylophone reverberant, and the stab of
being in body: my pelvis recoiling
as we walk in the park. Memory,
active. Tea, chamomile. Pain, profuse.
There was wonder
(whether I drank water from a glass jar
across the room as you slept or
I stayed close, mouth dry,
pressed to you) (and the nature of the light)
(and what was the song you played
in December), an inchoate question
or two, a thought of beauty and
what is deserved.

This Much

Instead of this cup of water,
you could reach for
the window. You could
exhale and think of—
what? It was always
going to be hard.
So you put fog
around it, you
soften and veil it,
obscure it with silk
and steam and cotton,
you light every candle
and take every bath, you
walk down every path,
she told you about a bridge
you could cross so
you cross it. To sit
by the water. Does it
matter if he meets
you there? He won’t.
A few other scenes:
the baby blue car
the night of your
wedding, sudden rain,
blood smeared across your
face. Bleeding hearts
in your childhood
garden, pearls of
flora, lakewater
holding every
absent ocean.
Somewhere, someone
wonders
what is wrong
with you, beyond all
the pain you’re
already salving
and all the life
you’ve already
saved. It could take
another life to
understand. Meanwhile,
some candle wicks,
cheap, are drowning
in wax, and you’ve lit
every match. You’ve
even lit your own hair
on fire on accident,
blowing on flame in
the dark. Tonight, and
tomorrow, there isn’t
a lullaby—silence,
silence, an oath to
yourself to quiet,
to bend again but
only for yourself, to
spread fabric down
the forest trail, to cross
back over earth and
wrap its shape around
your shoulders, extend
and recoil, untangle
your body as thread.
He won’t, he won’t.
What else: the past in its
vat, the tires worn down,
the lighter out of fluid,
the trash won’t take itself out
and the laundry won’t
wash itself. Your own
hands in your own hair,
wet, in the morning.
This much is a gift.

-

AM Ringwalt is a writer and musician whose work appears in Jacket2, Music & Literature, and Black Warrior Review. Called "rich with emotion" by Pitchfork, Summer Angel is out now on Dear Life Records. What Floods is forthcoming from Inside the Castle. Currently, she is a visiting instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy.

"Acoustic Cover of Flipper's '(I Saw You) Shine'" by Glen Armstrong

Acoustic Cover of Flipper's “(I Saw You) Shine”

I’m not used to this life yet. Pink light falls
on any wet surface, and I’m never ready
when the waitress approaches to take my order.
School was mostly about filling in blanks
and being kind until the teacher turned
her back. I’m not prepared. As the rain continues,
the neon signs have their way with this whole
town. The parking lot needs love. The windshields
reveal their imperfect smiles. I signed up
for paperwork and light investigation. What I
think I know drips from what the faithful
are content to know someday. School was mostly
about auditioning for plays and running to hide
in the trees beyond the gate. I point at a picture
of poached eggs on toast. Different sized piles
of money could very well be equal.

-

Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, BlazeVOX, and Another Chicago Magazine. 

"To Name a Few, Buffo" and "For Parts Unknown" by Joel Dailey

To Name a Few, Buffo

Must clown car
Must trance
Must Norwegian strumpet
Must spork
Must fill horse
Must lilt
Must lady finger
Must Oklahoma perimeter
Must EXIT NOW
Must indicate presence of mind
Must wallow
Must cheese geese
Must see thru
Must Bent Bug, Wisconsin
Must idle
Must step up your burger game
Must chemise
Must elongate brig
Must joust
Must landfill

For Parts Unknown

Confusion say
Loose connection
Need not apply
Nor abrogate
This life insular
Unshaven unseen
So directional
V sectional
Nothing furbished
No pre-supposing
A palpable hit
Minus the ennobling
Life changes
Its one polo shirt
Doffs windward
This day is ours
The field taken
Then marginalized
To a .

-

Joel Dailey is the author of New Details Emerge (New Books, 2023). He publishes SWOOPCARDS from New Orleans.

"Jim Langer" and "Larry Seiple" by Sean Pierson

JIM LANGER

A veering between exposing and hiding, in the place where rich people go to do nothing, the old pig’s bladder to hand all I jam together how much to hike, coagulated timeshare, a necessary sunset blotting speed hog, no one is exactly sure how much heft the language has in physical earth terms so we go line by line averting to the beach. Commendatore calls large-mouthed from atop the knoll extending himself for 20 to 30 yards in the southerly direction I pretend to have a good time but I was a solemn ranger not permitted to know life from the living and I’m not very good at pretending honestly it’s why I never get any lines only those with his credit he emptied of money like the dog’s clarity is any nobody’s certainty a new martial plasticity today itself’s too late. The meaning is unseemly, angering people, I betrayed my loved ones for the chance to do His work, get kilt for His weekend function and crouching made merry with the minor animals, blitzing over the mechanics of our loving we are also unwilling, the wooden bag it splintered got me in the side, you pulled my hammy for a break in tradition and he bankrolled the prison guards sportscasting the shadow of the final days of the Intellect, complicit in its death-making exceptionalism, the english translation executes perfect first pitch causing actions negating each other blink with pleasure twice for an issue with your delivery, the irrigant malfunctions and the western decade returns as nostalgia, in a win-win bid for sunlit sincerity, braindead in arrivals.

LARRY SEIPLE

 Florida is happy
Pennsylvania is west:
both get their kicks 
from Larry
 Herakles, prince of punt.
  Why am I laboring
     in this way?
Tom, Dick, and Harry extort me,
       and the sons asinorum, wager
            to take what the defense gives us
edifice of the old world’s operatives
                       floating into on the money.

 For he deploys the clock like a science:
   he spoils measures in units of corn
       sustain, strengthen, build, resilience!
            throngs the mountain
                 the rate hike in the double race.
            The end and the beginning,
      O dashing Seiple, glazed over in the House
of Donkey Noise laureat gilding.
     What’s done is the poem’s descant toys
             self-same slant of super least smithereen.
State-sponsored fuss machine
                                                white winter woodlouse.

 acclaim outwore positivity
old story my trumpet blew up.
                                                Favor, wafted, yoked
neologic piehole leghorn aristocrat
very manly your freaky wealth.
May sun and runners run
                                      mea cowpat civility
unreturnable bloom tomorrow as today.

-

Sean Pierson is a poet and teacher currently living in Ireland. He has published poems in Trash Ladder, nite creme (zine), and trilobite.bond. 

"The Beginning" and "Winter in Fox Point" by Jane Freiman

The Beginning

The beginning is just beginning 
to color. The edges turn golden 
brown. I feel myself ripening in 
the little room with the curtains. 

Outside, at the rickety table, 
the air becomes thinner, cooler. 
Knowing and not knowing—both 
are devastating effects of the way 
we choose to live. 

At the beach, the kindly 
uncle says to the shivering child, 
“We’re gonna warm you up 
like toast on butter.” The tulips at the 
tulip garden have names like “Secret 
Perfume” and “Red Magic.” 

There is a sound of geese flying 
overhead and grandpa says, 
“Oh. Change of seasons.” I scrunch 
my knees up to my chest and 
balance my laptop there. 

Outside, the rickety table. The sound 
of cicadas droning. The milkman 
is never late. In tracing the edges of my face, 
I find that everything is always in flux.
On the other hand, the sense of
knowing is devastating. 

Winter in Fox Point 

I am in my slushy city 
flaunting my dexterity 
on ice for people in cars 
who don’t care. 

My ass looks good 
in these pants I bought
from a girl who doesn’t like me.
My arms are tired 
from carrying this bleach 
to take care of 
the mildew above my bed. 

I am waiting for two packages. 
One is a love letter from a boy 
who I dumped two weeks ago. 
The other is an indescribably bad outfit
I bought to take pictures in. 

Nothing is not worth a description
but my ears are cold and 
there is a strange smell and 
I want to make this tomato sauce

-

Jane Freiman is a writer, oral historian, and archives practitioner based in Cambridge, MA. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in the Brooklyn Rail, The College Hill Independent, Clerestory Journal of the Arts, and Syntax Magazine.

Three Poems by Ron Riekki

The boss comes in with a crowd of knives and warns me of my death

and the boss is a mess and the boss does not know
that boss comes from the Dutch for ‘master’ and
the master has a skillet in her hand and an axe in

his hand and they are the opposite of shining and
they stay and they hack and I sit in my office made
of ice with the lights turned off so that I can pre-

tend that I’m dead and I’d died and the fine print
says that I must be lit on fire and mowed and we
are so good at creating hell and one of the corpses

at my feet whispers to us, all of us lying there,
whispers, If you have someone kind, you have
everything, and the phone rings and we wait.

Those who have quit life all seem to be packed into this elevator with me, waiting,

a feel that if we get trapped in here, it won’t matter, and it won’t matter,
so we wait and the numbers light up and we don’t even watch the numbers,
just watch the floor, numb, and dead, and secretly understanding that we

have quit life and we are old and not old and medium-old and we hide in
our memories and some of us used to gush our traumas, but now we just
hold them in, the way that a balloon holds in air, an old balloon, lying on

the ground, most of the air gone, not moving, and the woman next to me
quit life the longest amount of time ago and we can tell and we don’t look
at her and the floor doesn’t look at her and the nails all look at her, hungry.

In the prison, when they threw urine in my face, it reminded me

of when I was in the psych ward, the first night, exhausted, and they showed me my bed
and I collapsed into it, not realizing someone had pissed all over it, endless piss, all over

it, my face hitting it, in the dark, that feel of piss, the smell, God, the smell. It reminded
me of that. And it was good to be reminded. You forget sometimes. Then, I remember.

-

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, and 2022 Pushcart Prize.  Right now, Riekki's listening to Alan Silvestri's "Logo" from the Back to the Future film score.

Three Poems by Barrett White*

Abigail’s Order

One kilogram green mix
One kilogram blue mix
One kilogram tropical slices mix
One kilogram marine mix
One kilogram fizzy mix
One kilogram peach mix
One kilogram cola mix
One kilogram May the 4th mix
One kilogram watermelon mix
One kilogram sour mix
One kilogram summer mix
One kilogram dolphin frenzy mix
One kilogram animal mash-up mix
One kilogram swamp mix
One kilogram horror mix
One kilogram jelly-filled mix
One kilogram pride mix
One kilogram rainbow mix
One kilogram purple mix
One kilogram classic mix
One kilogram strawberry mix
1.5 kilograms prehistoric mix
500g minimix
500g desert mix
500g fairytale mix
500g forest mix
500g wizard mix
500g cherry mix
500g forest mix
500g sweet slam mix

Carl’s Order

2.25 liters Mountain Dew
2.25 liters Mountain Dew
2.25 liters Mountain Dew
Cheetos Puffs
Monster Ripper
Monster Ripper
Monster Peachy Keen
Monster Peachy Keen
Fanta Tropical
Calypso Tropical Mango
Calypso Tropical Mango
Calypso Kiwi Lemonade

Kevin’s Zombie Order

Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Zombie Takis
Giant Lifesize Gummy Skull
Brain Licker Soda
Four Candy Zombie Brains
Brain Sucker Lollipop
Brain Sucker Lollipop
Brain Sucker Lollipop
Two Boxes of Sour Boogers
Two Warheads Sour Body Parts
Two Zombie Eyes
Sour Patch Kids Zombies
Brain Blaster Sour Candy
One kilogram anatomy mix
One kilogram anatomy mix

*These poems are transcriptions of AI-generated voiceover narrations for package fulfillment TikToks on the Poppin Candy TikTok account. 

Poppin Candy is an online candy store that produces ASMR-adjacent candy sorting and organizing videos for their social media accounts, as well as videos in which boxes of orders are packed for shipping.

-

Barrett White edits Tagvverk.