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.

"true or false, more or less" and "tonight i'll settle for anything" by BEE LB

true or false, more or less

can’t be a false spring because the equinox already came. so what do you call this? sun rising at seven parting clouds just in time for it to set. i’m hiding from the watercolor of it all and what’s new. my brother got covid in the quarantine facility. in the quarantine facility, they assign you bunkies. when his bunkie was diagnosed he was separated from the rest of them housed in the quarantine facility, but he didn’t get moved to the covid ward for two days while they waited for him to test positive. it’s spring! it’s raining! the birds are chirping through it! he doesn’t mind, he’s asymptomatic. i told him I told you so when he told me he’s positive. he thought you couldn’t get it without symptoms. he doesn’t believe me despite or because of my status as immunocompromised. i’m the only person i know who hasn’t gotten it. as far as i know. i’m still waiting for the trees to put out buds. i can’t remember if the grass is still dead. the birds won’t stop chirping til they go to sleep for the night. at seven, i want to go to sleep. i want to start the day. i want to write but i trace circles all over the page instead. my brother asked me to buy seven books from one of the quarantine facility’s approved distributors and one book of mazes. mazes? i ask. like tracing your pencil to get out of them? like working the labyrinth backwards? with no eraser? yeah, mazes. and suduko, he says, using the mispronunciation our mother gave us as kids. my credit card bill keeps climbing. only one of the distributors doesn’t upcharge. his last set of books was marked delivered a week ago and he still hasn’t gotten them. the letters we write are scanned in and re-printed. think of all the wasted paper. when we were kids, he climbed trees. i watched, too scared to fall.

tonight i’ll settle for anything

bleached my roots in the hopes of unearthing a new person— missed a spot, now i’m still me. don’t talk to me unless you’ve had an identity crisis over a broken tiara. shattered glass. ripped clothes. wasted money. i’m kidding! talk to me no matter what i say, i’m begging. my therapist tried to find a way to ask gently if isolation was worse than enduring presence and failed. at being gentle about it, I mean. it’s okay! we don’t all get what we aim for. i’m living alone and paying the price. my credit cards are racking up debt but it’s fine. i found another card that offers no interest for a year, and i can just keep going like this. did i tell you my answer? to my therapist, i mean. isolation is better than presence but loneliness is worse than anything. don’t talk to me unless you know what i mean (unless you’re asking me to explain it because you want to know, to have a reason to talk to me, that’s fine). i’m surely not the loneliest person in the world but i have not touched another body since the new year started, and isn’t that saying something? that means something tonight, while i’m writing, but after today “since the new year” could mean anything. don’t you just love the ability to be vague? to be interpreted not only by what you mean, what you’ve said, but also based on the position (in time, in place, in mind) of the reader? assuming there is a reader other than myself, which i do. assume, i mean. i have a big ego and a small sense of self. even smaller place in the world. i’m delicate. i’m fragile. i once balked at being called transparent and my partner didn’t trust me for days. i’d rather be beveled. or frosted. etched, even-tempered. anything but transparent. i want to choose what of me can be seen.

-

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in FOLIO, Roanoke Review, and Figure 1, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co.

"interspecies domestic life" and "relations of" by Austin Miles

interspecies domestic life

a rock stands accidentally:
i’m in a room w/ u
chairs, a rock
soil
we get
in each
other’s way
deliciously

relations of

i am only a
thing made
of u —
in apt. depths
urinating

later we wash dishes

-

Austin Miles is from southeast Ohio. He is the author of the chapbook Perfect Garbage Forever (Bottlecap Press) and has poems published in Tyger Quarterly, Clade Song, Cobra Milk, and elsewhere.

"This Time, Time Is the Esophagus Full of a Dark Light" and "Shed" by Adam Edelman

This Time, Time Is the Esophagus Full of a Dark Light

I believe in irreparable misplacement
and the eternal presence of unnecessary wires.

A seven-season show about a rotting tree stump.

I want to be so versatile, strangers invite me
into their kitchen. Make me new
with all the usual accouterments, the gorgeous machine sulks.  

As I step into the hollow of expensive permanence,
my mind clears and glitters like a pool; love and time
throw down a rope and say climb.  

I give you the remembrance of secret places, the green animal
of sleet falling up through a midnight’s untraceable gloom.

Why does stuff happen? I feel the shifting immense
gyres, their influence on the maze of leaky branches,

first gulp of hot noodle soup. I know there’s an afterlife
because I was there during the feast of particulars
sipping afternoon whisky, I know not a lot 

else: a lighthouse is in operation, people
are transmitters, there’s a beaming tree

in a crater on the moon.

Shed

I uncovered a burgundy folder
marked Big Hurry behind a false panel
in the armoire. When I opened it up,
you guessed the contents correctly
from across the room. I laid the folder
on the nightstand and started reading
the newsfeed. Momentum was building
for a rail strike when suddenly
a business card slipped from the folder
and came to a rest on the carpet beside
the bed. On the back of the card facing
the ceiling was written the words false
positives lightly in pencil, in quotation
marks, with aggressive cursive handwriting.
I’d had just about enough of these hidden
messages from nowhere. I went downstairs
to consult with a gallon of milk. 115 Z6
CSI—I found this written on the cap’s
underside when I went to pour a glass.
Sunny September morning, feeling terrible,
I decided to go back to bed, but couldn’t
bring myself to climb back up the steps.
Some close friends stopped by thankfully,
but didn’t stick around long; they
had the wrong house. I puzzled
about what to do next. An Astro van
backfired as it scurried up the avenue.
The driver’s seat was unoccupied.
The license plate read, shed.
I’d been recently inspired to build
a shed, but had yet to start drawing
up plans. I’m content, for now,
to imagine myself lying on the metal
floor of the just completed shed,
just staring at the ceiling as the light
scribbles fade into the ridges’
plush textures and something else
that wounds even deeper than that
from inner cracks down the drain
or wherever one might still grow
unrecoverable.

-

Adam Edelman’s work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Fugue, Forklift, Ohio, decomP, Bridge, DeLuge, Barnhouse, and The Raw Art Review. His chapbook, 'It's Becoming A Lot More Difficult to Feel Unchanged' won the 2020 UnCollected Press Chapbook Prize. He holds an MFA in poetry from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a fellowship from the Michener Center for Writers, and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He teaches at Berea College.

"We All Want to Be Remembered as Worthwhile" and "The Only Ontologies I Remember are the Ones in Which We Lose Everything" by Lucas Peel

We All Want to Be Remembered as Worthwhile

Though history can be a fickle scorekeeper.
A general recounting: first there was tree
and then feather and ever since screaming.
We could name the sound but then it would belong
to us. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Who’s counting? I remember, along the way,
stonelung, snakesong: red touches yellow,
you’re a dead fellow. May we all be happy Jacks.
Deadly greens. An eclipse of grasshoppers.
May all that we build be asbestos-free but equally
flame-retardant. Early Renaissance painters
discovered that painting faces with a green 
undercoat gave them a more realistic hue.
The only suitable exit strategies are faith
or hoarding. In this future the horizon will be
remembered as a patina of stars. Appliance
graveyard. The cost of convenience is polystyrene,
chronic gout, pale complexion, loss of teeth.
There is much that we do not know about forever
chemicals. Like how to alchemize history 
from poison and apology. If green pigments
are not sealed with a binding agent, they will
slowly leach a dose of concentrated arsenic
gas throughout their lifetime.
Are we running low on ears? Here, take this:
My blue, chunky flowers. Mailman’s 
unsatisfactory news. All distance is marred by
greenery. Pantone’s toxic cocktail.
How are we to see if not by overcoming
blindness? If you as me, the greatest tragedy
is that we still dance to a song but no one
can remember what it means. If you were to
believe the television, it is that all the world’s 
windows are broken, and thus useless
for self-reflection. Lightfast, this stubborn
opacity. We speculate more than we believe.
We convince ourselves that this is not prayer
painting the canopy of our skulls. Let us not 
curse the trees for their obstruction. One day
we will write about the forest. 
Let it be, again, soon.

The Only Ontologies I Remember are the Ones in Which We Lose Everything

Let me speak to the Meaning Police.
Big light ball:  Eureka! Closed loop.
A thousand tiny suns. We must get
the externalities under control.
On the Nth morning, we let there be
an understanding of light.
How generous. Semantics;
our silken co-conspirators.
We missed the Words Convention.
Let the sentences run on so long
I forgot what it means.  Hbu?
Any seedlings sprout between your teeth?
Fresh carcass splayed like a tumor
on the mind’s interstate? A murder
of Myna birds and their wicked crow
hop. Proclivity for roadkill.
Sinister, how to add weight
via wet blanket. Warm embrace.
All endings result in arbitration.
Ask a phoenix: featherfriend,
pigeon baby. History undervalues
the importance of tiny hands,
views from high places. The impact
velocity of various forms of currency. 
Daily we manufacture small miracles,
shrink-wrap every slain sun
for ease of transport. We are quick
to refer to the onion by its dirt
rather than its tenderness.
No one like a sweet stink; angel.
Their arrogant glow. Bitter leaf.
Tail-eater. All futures are dependent
on access to protein. We mortgage
our children for refractive surfaces.
Our most sacred geometry is presence,
not pattern. The extant politics
of a shorebreak: for a moment,
the earth will not be lonely.
For a long time it will be.

-

Lucas Peel is a big dumb baldie. He is sorry for everything.

"fantasies about cowboys" and "that's the thing about queerness and sinkholes" by Lemmy Ya'akova

fantasies about cowboys

the meal of cruelty this jury has
served me. this horse, horned for ready 

me in this arena. has the world made
me imposter? has it taken my property

of grace? it’s fine if this is my canvas—i will
paint it hunting lung in my denial of their feast.

that’s the thing about queerness and sinkholes

they forgive. they give.
the things inside bend
toward the light or learn
to live without it,
drink from many lakes.
a sinkhole half a world away
revealed heaven on earth.
it has been drinking, they say,
from rivers between the beds
of rock, soaking up slivers of sun
coming through the fractured
surface. the irony of heaven
underground, hidden
is not lost on me.

-

Lemmy Ya'akova is an advocate for y2k low culture, a film photographer, a popcorn enthusiast and a cat parent to their son, Moose. Their work is forthcoming in SAND Journal and Sobotka Lit Mag and can be found in Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine, Hooligan Magazine and more. You can keep up with their jokes on twitter @lem_jamin, their life on instagram @ashkenazi_yew and read their work here: https://linktr.ee/lem_jamin.

"chicken alanine" and "reddened monkeys-in-a-barrel" by Vanessa Couto Johnson

chicken alanine

Life is other people
entwined too much

in table hockey,
double-fisting sticks,

a leg to mouth.
I’d pick with you

the bouquet of sporks
we synthesized

beside the wire.

reddened monkeys-in-a-barrel

So much generic brand
diaper

needed among
undigested hendiadys
that chain without fiber:

I mean we all have
clucked rhetorics
when our bottoms felt lumped, cloudy.

Let that tell a joke.

In all truth, the unit repeats
an enormous model of compatible
until plot lost.

-

Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length poetry books Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018) and forthcoming pH of Au (Parlor Press, Free Verse Editions Series 2022), as well as three poetry chapbooks. Most recently, Vanessa's poems have appeared in Pine Hills Review, streetcake, Scrawl Place, Star 82 Review, and Superstition Review. A Brazilian born in Texas (dual citizen), VCJ has taught at Texas State University since 2014.

"Sun Dogs" and "Forcing Consciousness I Slide Between" by Margaret Saigh

Sun Dogs

One knows the future is a myth that is always happening
a murder case reaching national news
circumstances we don’t tend to picture
lopped heads of the parasitic and the cruel
served on beds of parsley
it’s not realistic
to be happy every moment of your life
a couple of quick tips on
the battery of ourselves
the dislocated jaw of every girl I ever was
was once a girl once had
trace the path back home
but home’s a minuscule shoe
kiss mwah fucker
as you sullied your mind, the future happened
I was performing tricks along the fence
we watch while the city was bombed

Forcing Consciousness I Slide Between

Consider

all the things I have done wrong

my inadequacy and laziness, how rapidly I fall prey

to the algorithm, how easily I envy friends. To sculpt a body

is one manner of speaking. Channeled energy

beaming towards a useless solution. Light, a sudden death.

Hatred corroded in the open destination of the knife

Will you adopt my baby? Last month was a woman

calling me a bitch. Today is a thigh muscle

lapsing in a comma of cellulite, the clay predominant soil

of warm afternoons melding into solidity

plunging fingers into pussy

the hair in your eyes

-

Margaret Saigh is a writer, dancer, and educator. She is the author of the chapbook CROSSED IN THE DARKER LIGHT OF TERROR (dancing girl press 2022), a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and the creator of circlet, a virtual poetry workshop and reading space. Her poems are forthcoming in giallo lit, A Velvet Giant, and Redactions.

"quick life" by Livio Farallo

shrink like a
raining cloud.
my heart between ribs of
sky and earth
squeezed hard
as the ocean’s
bottom by countless
tons of its pressing hands.
the world fallen
elsewhere is
unnamed, but battles
back, climbs trees,
coughs to the grave.
hands hold my
head. yours,
slapping the face
of wind like
midwestern straw,
and then from under a
chicken, soft as the
the young girl’s hand,
a story is taken away:
a child cooks into
adulthood, shrinking
down to nothingness.

i can’t read the passage in this light,
can’t taste the salted memory of meat.
an ice shaving glaciates
on my tongue.
these cliffs hurry by.
this
sorrow
is
incorrect.

-

Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream Magazine and Professor of Biology at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn, New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Blue Collar Review, Scud, Helix, Biscuit Hill, Beatnik Cowboy, Rattle, Spillway, Spelunker Flophouse, and others.

"Hot Couch" by Brett Belcastro

I was completely lost!
The weirdos following me with cameras—
they broke up,
and then I could only talk to phone scammers.

Something they learned is that I’m not a good cook—
I may not want much for myself
but I want a meal,
and I can no longer eat glitter!

I had spent everything on porch-bomb traps,
and all the drones would deliver were bombs
and 3d printers to print bombs
which exploded as soon as I’d print them, of course.
that was sort of embarrassing

But at least with their cameras
they would catch the moment that I,
waking up on a too-hot couch
in their unfinished basement
worked up the courage to cut through that haze
and rasp: “I’ve had enough. Come to my porch
and I promise, no more bombs. All I want
is for us to gather and show some love.”
That was in the golden age of YouTube,
don’t ask me when. Probably 2008.
It gave me chills.

-

Brett Belcastro lives with his partner and an enormous wolf-dog. His work has appeared in the Cobalt Review, Platform Review, and Tupelo Quarterly.

"Sex Toys" and "Sex Toys 2: Isle of the Dad" by Peter Milne Greiner

Sex Toys

In a special treasure
chest the false
phalluses and false
orifices and the ceremony’s
unguents and the ceremony’s vestments
suggest and even verge on a kind
of homunculus
A shadow or better 
yet a hologram
of a shadow
Like light or better
yet the proxy poverty of light
or better yet the illusion
of light it doesn’t need 
me to be alive
It fucks and is fucked in the effigy
in the rough and it is I who am in fact its
rough rough
reanimated
goose outline
skulking across
the moonlit
foothill
in fruitful search of the one
who made most
of me
Who made me these concealed
objects here
Who pursues me through
the shadowy and desolate
keyhole
to the land where I was born
fissures and recesses fitted like fine
masonry into the cliffaces 
and whose ruined edifice disguise
comes to face me in all its brutalism
all its balance and from the putlogs and transoms of its scaffolding
shrouds billowing
and whose upwelling of closure has an analogue
in me I know all too familiarly is obscure
Who nears me now
Toward the pool in current gushing as the saying goes
preparing its deposit of closure
its depository of closure
its haunt
its autohaunt
its supercomplex
its ultimate
self-effacing 
irreversible 
encryption

Sex Toys 2: Isle of the Dad

Reviling as I did my own visibility
I searched for the good caves and found them adequately
near to the only thing I reviled more and in
them I found and took up my position
The mouths of these good caves faced north
I erected my bergfrieds upon their outlying heaths
when there were as there were then mists at the edges of the known planet
I built a beautiful surveillance
satellite and placed it at a great distance from the mouths
as I understood them to be different from outer space and I advanced
my thanks to it in murmurs
Thank you Cordycep for that is the name I gave my satellite
Thank you I repeated each night when as Spica sank below the horizon
Cordycep spirited down to me as through a taproot 
in what one might say absolute or terminal resolution and granularity
stories of clear coasts
indifferent isthmuses
tiny islands off the coasts of other tiny islands 
palpably remote
stories of abusive and unspeakable
unassailable 
tranquility and grace
There is no I in sleep but there is an eel the satellite said
There is no black hole at the center 
of my attention
gobbling up prized assets
No feeling of anticipation crawls out
of my woodwork like a form of exhaust
but if as with Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead
the cliffs’ orifices are optimized by masonry
and mystery is better bereft of floorplan
the satellite said
I suggest you listen closely to me
I’m repeating repeating and repeating repeating myself 
and I must be heard each time
I speak only once
fall silent
and speak again
Closely
Listen closely
Closely
Closely

-

Peter Milne Greiner is a queer poet and science fiction writer. His first book, Lost City Hydrothermal Field, was published by The Operating System. A hybrid genre collection, Lost City Hydrothermal Field brings together poems, science fiction short stories, and essays. Greiner's work has appeared in Vice, Fence, Berfrois, TAGVVERK, Dark Mountain, and many other platforms off and online. He teaches high school English in NYC. Visit pmggoestospace.com for all the things.

"Segment in Stained Glass" and "Criminal Minds Song #2, What Happens in Mecklinberg..." by frankie bb

Segment in Stained Glass

Sheryl tells me hummingbirds
fight over red syrup
meant to taste like nectar, and love
playing in the rain.

In a prism of artichokes discussing the possibility
of guardian angles and arranged marriage.

Olivia says the elk’s bugling is like the opening of a giant metal door. Soon she will leave us
for a better job. A job where she teaches people to feed one another.

A certain percentage of plants are killed every year by the weight of the fruit they bear.
It’s been weeks since I’ve called my mother. Craig counts disingenuous smiles and chases
30-foot waves in the hurricane.

I’m talking on my back. I’m talking to the little brown mice scrambling above my dreaming and wading through the expensive sectors of my cupboards. They eat my bread. They eat my mug wort. I admire them and maybe everyone else wants a tail too.

An abandoned tomatillo home is fragile and empty, like a lantern of lace. My only pet goldfish jumped out of the bowl and died. That’s a lie, it wasn’t a bowl, it was an opaque green bucket. I’m sorry blub. I call my mother.

A beaver builds a dam in a river or a kitchen.
There is always a flood coming.

The night before you get on top of me
you smoke delicately naming facts I won’t check
apparently when an owl flies, its wings are silent
regardless of the destination or the prey.

Criminal Minds Song #2, What Happens in Mecklinberg…

I’m not proud of surviving.
Children never pay for torture.
Where is the toothpaste going with you?
Doors open and doors close.
Inside the monkey is a ringing,
an indistinct song masquerading as police radio chatter.
The real rage is just a hobby.
My face like a question mark, next to a face like a question mark.
No abnormalities, a.k.a. no mystery men.
Today 19 strangers came into my room chanting,
“tonight it will rain, tonight you’ll be lured out.”
Did you see what I did? I mocked the broken window.
Volunteer for negative feelings, surrogacy is an honorable calling.
Screaming always follows the whip cracking,
but the sirens
can split.
A decoy lights a church candle and goes, “oop!”
A bookshelf hides a secret
a hallway leading to secrets of perfect hair.
Albert Einstein swung by and stayed close,
but he doesn’t understand anything.
Severed sirens sing along sing along sing,
staring into space and touching arms.
I’m sorry I smell like saliva. I’m sorry for syncopating
but the house is creaking hard, shh…
…I’m a doll in another person’s house.
Cheryl is not your mother. Cheryl is extraordinarily lucky.

-

frankie bb is a map of eyes that have yet to assemble into a crowd, a jaw bone that dislikes being called "mandible" and prefers "crescent catcher." A guilty harvester who believes milk is best served wild. Words in and forthcoming: No Contact Mag (as frankie bruno), The Lickety-Split, Club Plum Literary Journal, and Maudlin House.

"for s" and "count with me until i feel whole again" by Madeline Langan

for s 

you’re older than me,
but it doesn’t matter.
that tree you just put your cigarette out on
is older than any of us combined - 

that’s how you start wildfires,
you know:
taking ravenous girls with
hands scorned, ruddish
to streets that look the same 

so, tell me:
- how
i’m supposed to find myself
when you live in the sidewalk
(swear to god,
i’ve been here
with you -
asphalt planes collapsing
into one endless street.
rowsandrowsandrows of housesbarsrestaurants.
hey, 
i think we know this one)
- when 
i’m dizzy
and cold
and wandering around roebling
and everything is spinning
(you, in the sidewalk,
are spinning too)
do i stumble around,
throw up in the trash can
that looks like the one
you held me next to?
or should i just go
straight for the ground.

someonewillholdbackmyhair
someonewill -

count with me until i feel whole again

flugelhorns will not announce
that i’ve arrived
here to -

drop my bag on the doorstep
(so heavy
may as well be
sopping wet) 

hey,
i’m so sorry i just -
it’s my fingers they
fell off -
no don’t look.
it’s like that time i
got on your bed with the dirty socks and
i know you saw and
didn’t say anything and
i’m saying now that
i guess i
want you to
just look at me,
not my fingers,
the way you ignored my
dirty socks and
told me i
was pretty instead

-

Madeline Langan is an undergraduate architecture and creative writing student at Pratt Institute, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Pratt's literary magazine, The Prattler. She can also be found modeling tiny houses, rereading Wuthering Heights, watering her plants, and on instagram @maddie.langan.

"Hardi Pansi" by Nolan Parker

Petunia is a pretty name for a human
and an ugly sheath for a sword
You can’t always trust people with plants
but you can never trust a person with none

Pollinating myself with my left hand
is hard but I desperately
want to impress the
next bee that comes by

-

Nolan Parker is a a gender-fluid writer living in the Pacific Northwest and is a Master of Library and Information Science candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Their work has appeared in Funny Looking Dog Quarterly, Hex Enduction Quarterly, and elsewhere.

3 Poems by Chad Morgan

Nocturne in My Favorite Coat

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

It Could Happen to You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abeyance

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

-

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

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

Mountain Town

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

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

Good Luck

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

-

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

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

May 24, 2020
for Joseph Brodsky

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

Scrap Paper

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

-

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

2 Poems by Kolby Harvey

THE GENDER OF MY UNBORN CHILD IS REVEALED TO ME IN A DREAM —I TELL YOU, IT’S WHAT CAME OUT OF THE BALLOON!

person showing their hands with assorted-color inside room
man holding three leaves
multicolored floral flag
woman holding printed orange paper
person walking on wooden bridge near pine trees during daytime
green and white mountain at daytime
dessert mountain
brown tabby cat
two vultures
woman in multicolored skirt with bunch of keys
unknown person standing outdoors
black Pontiac Firebird
brown and beige gothic structural building

black sedan
field of trees

AT LAST THE ALGORITHMS PRODUCE A WORKING DEFINITION OF FAGGOTRY, CANDYLAND SNAKES GORGED ON THE STRANGLED (WHOLE) BODIES OF BIRDS

seascape photography of sea under half-moon
greeting cards on brown surface
man hugging other man's back
two humans standing in front of white curtain
people wearing makeup and masks
selective photo of flag
multicolored wooden closed door
man and woman standing near gray metal fence
two sitting men watching from smartphone
man giving rose to another man
multicolored textile
couple standing near floating shelf
assorted-color glass decor
two women sitting at the back of the car
two man's hands wearing gold-colored wedding rings
two men near body of water
two boys looking at sky
man wearing white button-up dress shirt near white petaled flower tree
unknown person lying outdoors
dog covered by blanket
clear glass cup filled with brown liquid
woman raising listen up politicians sign on road
woman holding Jesus Had 2 Dads sign on sidewalk
black metal chandelier turned on
people standing on road while watching traditional dance at daytime
people under white canopy
man smoking near green leaf plant
woman blowing
silhouette of person near window glass
woman wearing off-shoulder crop top standing beside sunflowers
woman raising her right hand
person wearing bee costume
person coated with gold-colored liquid, posing
eyeglasses with black frames on white fabric
gray cave rail station
woman holding artificial flowers
man wearing black skirt walking beside plants
two gold-colored rings on paper
-
Kolby Harvey is a gay space pilgrim who likes Queer Theory and video games. In 2018, he was awarded the University of Colorado’s first creative doctorate in Intermedia Art, Writing & Performance. His chapbook, The Mothercake Cycle, is forthcoming from Dream Pop Press. You can find more of his work in Birkensnake, American Book Review, DREGINALD, Aspasiology, and The Thought Erotic.