"Twee and Cringe" and "Why Does Sweater" by Emily Bark Brown

Twee and Cringe

i was told i was smart so often as a child i grew to believe it

and i could hide faults on my thinking 

emotionally flayed

the radiator sounded like breathing

beneath zoe’s heated blanket

i couldn’t get over motion smoothing

my voice modulated

i didn’t subject the room

snow on the ground

snowflake patterning on k’s car windows

i avoided love all weekend

Why Does Sweater

make you think of a garment and not a person trapped in heat?

something about me is so connecticut

sustained attention 

photo angelic

love does have a shadow

-

Emily Bark Brown is a poet from Alabama. Along with Zoe Tuck they edit Hot Pink Magazine at hotpinkmag.com.

"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.

"City of Confusion" by Peter Leight

All day long the dark part of our city is lightening at the same time as the light part of our city is darkening—the walls are creamy and lumpy, like tapioca, and every door is a double door, as in a restaurant, swinging one way then swinging back like the kind of interpretation that depends on what you think:  we’re not even sure where we’ve been. There are chairs in the middle of the sidewalk where you don’t usually find furniture—when you sit down you don’t even know what you need to get up for, is it time?   All day long the lights are bright then go out altogether, and we look at each other the way you look at something in the lost and found, something that belongs to you if you can only find it.  It’s true, we often mix up the fight and flight signals, covering our teeth and uncovering our thighs, swerving or veering unnecessarily, turning to the side or turning around—everybody says you need to remember where you haven’t been.  Narrow homes appear on wide streets and wide homes on narrow streets, like a kind of mirroring—it’s dark where it is light, as if there’s a dark source inside a light source we don’t even know where we are when we’re right here!  People ask you where you’ve been when they don’t even know where they’ve been!  Of course, it is easier when everybody is close together, walking around together, checking on each other or holding onto each other, like a microphone that picks up everything, I’m not even sure what this is an example of. 

-

Peter Leight lives in Amherst, MA. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, New World, Tupelo Quarterly, and other magazines.

"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.

"holding a grudge for years bc i’m wifey" by Meagan Dermody

for k, part 1

I know we are situated in this hour
stretching in all directions to every hour
at each moment        I see us
and do not grieve like a dog I want you to fix
your attention here on me which is too much 
I am not careful and I cannot suffer getting
what I ask for I am growing 
a little fungus of revenge 
and cannot wait to eat it 
and let it rock through me and send me swaying
out there to where I cannot speak
or even salivate   like a dog in high desert sun
I am dry and soft and slow
you are giving me freckles you’re burning me

-

Meagan Dermody is a Southern transplant writing poetry in the Midwest. Her work has appeared in zines including Emily Taylor Center's FEMINIST FRIGHT FEST 2021 zine and RABBIT, as well as literary magazines like PWATEM and Awkward Mermaid. A third-year MFA student at the University of Kansas, Meagan's work engages with trauma, ecosomatics, and the divine/grotesque/divine. She prides herself on being fun at parties and in the line at the grocery store, and is working hard to keep her aloe plant alive.

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.

"Day Log" and "Captain" by Emma Furman

Day Log

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

Captain

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

-

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

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

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

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

-

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

3 Poems by Ben Still

Lump Sum
Ocala, Florida, United States, 1982

fifteen horse
killings ordered

in from out of town
the specialists favoring

two strands of wire
clipped and a wall socket

an untimeliness
taken to be colic

or accidental knock-knee
the vet will take care of

a stable can                 be burned
to the ground

a dad never asks              his daughter
can you forgive me

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

absent            fuel tank
accidental          blaze
abandoned         mammal
                            detonation

the coal mine      its own canary

*

a thousand
obviousnesses

come down kilotons
scorching the earth

searing a permanent
crime scene

*

in the beginning we were
suspended in a jar

sought after for years
in one war or another

grew up to speak
yellowcake the atom

grasped at mastered
and split at its middle

our moral afflictions 
physical by dint by virtue

pounding on the table
red knuckle

an imprint etched in light  
all across the city

red carpet // purple dogheart
Argonne, France, 1918

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

at the awards for animal bravery

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

we dreamed up tractable war
games, rescue dogs 

words
to make
a man
a mess

military parade
pantomimic
our upstart
police horse

*

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

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

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

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

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

Refusing to Do Anything

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

Most of my life,  
six decades of busy. 

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

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

I’d

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

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

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

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

"Since Havana" by Suzanne Gardinier

Since Havana I can see under the hoods of new cars the boat engines the poor
will someday suspend there.
Since Havana I can see, beside the shiny tools, the rows of combs & shovels &
pencils on the dirt.

Since Havana I can see the gulls & the vultures & the seeps of dawn crossing the cordon.
I can see the cordon: an oregami of Benjamins, watched over by focus groups of
newborn Marines.

Since Havana I dream the night traffic stops, the sans-weapons police & the drivers,
discussing tail-lights as they stand together on the shoulder.
Since Havana I dream not a single citizen murdered by a uniform where those watching
can see.

Since Havana the smell of money is inflected by the smell of mangoes.
Since Havana the burned drums sometimes interrupt the advertisements, just before the
signal fades.

Since Havana the charter made by slavers talks over the one banning the latifundio.
Bans & liberties weave their ways like smoke through the castle ruins where I live.

Since Havana ay chica & oh girl answer the news together or is it the olds:
old wheels, old snipers by old wells, old bought stories, old annointed gangsters,
interchangeable.

Since Havana the changeable has expanded to include castles & casinos, real estate
agreements & the river.
Since Havana possibilities of contagion rise from the last public pool across the street.

Since Havana I discuss the weather with bike messengers & cooks at the back & waiters
& the women cleaning the toilets.
Since Havana I can see the former royal marina made a place they could take a vacation
someday.

Since Havana longing for Cadillac convertibles & suitcases of appreciation for the
senators & a woman convertible to a vehicle : not so much.
Since Havana longing for Víctor's laugh describing the box in which he escaped the
mercenaries & how he calls his wife compañera : more.

Since Havana so much plastic, so much feasting on the way to the famine, such rising-
tide revels, so few eyes meeting mine.

Since Havana the neighbors with their pint of garbage call across the straits to my
neighbors, throwing away a palace wing's worth of furniture.
Since Havana the 5 Marianao forks & 10 plates shared among 50 at Leo's birthday true
the pitch of a bite of steak.

Since Havana I sit in corners of exiles' restaurants, waiting for the delivery
of the address of the paid ghost who killed the poet, & of the package of an unpaid
ghost's severed hands.

Since Havana I look under the emperor's edicts
for the rolled scroll transcripts of the future tribunals.

Since Havana the glints of the new day shimmer from the cars in line for the tunnel.
Since Havana I carry something to gather them. Since Havana I waste nothing.
-
Suzanne Gardinier is the author of, most recently, Amérika: The Post-Election Malas, Atlas, and Homeland. Other works include Iridium & Selected Poems 1986–2009 (2011), Today: 101 Ghazals (2008), and the long poem The New World (1993), which Lucille Clifton chose for the Associated Writing Program’s Award Series in Poetry. She has also published a collection of essays, A World That Will Hold All The People (1996). Gardinier’s poetry has been included in the anthologies Best American Poetry (1989) and Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (1989). She is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Award for Excellence in the Essay as well as grants from the Lannan Foundation and the New York Foundation. Gardinier lives in Manhattan and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College since 1994.

2 Poems by Justin Lacour

Dear Naomi,

The woman who sells bootlegs never has a copy of Marat/Sade. I’d press the issue, but then I would be the asshole. People here crave a bete noire like Theresa of Avila pictured a tiny Christ living in her heart. Usually, I’m happy to oblige. Daddy said you don’t get to pick your penance, just like you don’t get to pick your nickname, which sounds stupid, but it’s his laconic code for “things don’t get any better from here.” The self-pity is bottomless. I spent a quarter-hour staring at my reflection in the coffee like some character from beatnik mythology. The voice on the radio says this is Water Music by Handel as opposed to Water Music by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, I guess, and the stick figures in the restroom will turn absolutely carnal by midday. This is the third poem I’ve read this morning where I’ve found the alcoholism insincere. If I read stuff like this when I was young, I would have been afraid to ever fall in love. It’s all backyards and tearful birds and phony salvation. I wish you best of luck in your art. I aspire to be the Olive Garden of Letters, where the portions are so overwhelming, the low quality is beside the point. Please keep writing. You’re the only person that I miss. I can see the last pay phone on Williams Blvd. from here. One day, I’ll light a candle there in memory of our conversations.

Dear Naomi

It’s not Mardi Gras where you live and probably too cold for parades anyhow. I’m up to it with pacification disguised as noblesse oblige, though maybe I’m looking at it wrong, maybe every year the streets fill with fulmination and portent, and I just miss it. I’m far from the brightest and the best. In the new photos of you by the bead curtain, your house looks ghostly, by which I mean, it feels like there’s someone else with you in the photo who doesn’t make their presence known. It’s as if the image of you now is superimposed on the image I had of you then, plus all the times I must have missed, yet, on the surface, the picture looks uncrowded. It speaks to your elegance, a burden you wield well. Someone at work said prima nocte is all made up. Is that true? That sounds like something you would know. We had an early and intense spring, but now the cold’s returned. When it gets dark, I like to imagine I’m wounded and a little edgy out on the streets of large rodents and bicycle thieves, serving some obscure principle that, if it has a face, keeps it hid behind layers of transparency, and any residual nobility comes from never knowing if you’re actually being noble. Your letters give me a spit of land to stand on. Thank you. There’s no cheering section out here for the ruminative soul; you’re right to stay away. I should be more hard-boiled by these little life lessons. I shouldn’t be afraid to stop writing.
-
Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Susan / The Journal, New Orleans Review (Web Features), and other journals.

"Helix in Profile" by Nicholas h Politan

I want
            want
to feed 
            my feed
the want
            I want
others
            to see
in me
            and not me
ideally
            not in me
to be seen
            as me
I need
            a screen
to screen
            reams
of 
            iniquity
to clean
            me
suds
            me clean
what’s 
            me
keyed
            on a scene
where
            it all stops
the lie
            I want
to want
            a want
free
            of me
-
Nicholas h Politan works as a wine merchant and lives in Brooklyn. What on Earth has he become?

"iii" by Lora Kinkade

i snagged

the neck i wreckt

the ringer at the crease

a wrinkle timed

immaculately full spine lurch

the 13 pointed teeth gleams

my image like the dart

of crick-hid scales

u knew well

to straighten the teeth

but couldn’t wait to jingle

the coin icy in yr

swollen palm the fat

kernals of corn

the minty floss threaded

blanket stitch n the smell of

winterfresh & blood

u knew better

but yr voice won’t topple the

babbling motor

they touch your arm without asking

call you sugar

yr jaw sore from the clench
-
Lora Kinkade is a queer, rural poet and farmer living in Freestone, California. She received her B.A. of Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was a founding member of the Omni Writing Collective. Her most recent publications include The Bombay Gin, Matchbox Magazine, and The Red Wheelbarrow.

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.

"seam" and "sometimes I move the way sex is supposed to feel" by Peach Kander

seam

an edge shaped
asks be where

the deer who are not afraid to cross
begin to eat, shimmy their heads
strands of hair coming loose

my hunger nymphomatic
I wander the cobbled halls, in wool robes
the crown of my head clean

a reluctant mother
this voice a cypher
of yarn knotted in its bag

the shimmer tells you
more than its casing

in a dream
where your brother dies
the sister you never knew you had
is unreachable

no, your uncle is the dead one
and it’s a forest

the end of fall, and you
spend hours turning over leaves
to find the slug
who is your family

the sister is your aunt
who died from a hole
in her heart
when your mother was a child

the veins are seams opening
I step out of my skin
a metamorphosis in reverse

it’s summer
a body sends a record of feeling
from a distance

you accept it
as a form of defeat
the notes ornaments melting

I pull the petals off
all of them, all at once
they’re tongues
rolled around my fingers

you could be the bulb
it just burns itself to wire

curl back to the deer
your face tucked into a doe’s

sometimes I move the way sex is supposed to feel

all my joints
properly oiled
in heat
post work post
stretch mid st
rut pre prance
air on the other side
of the subway
is just different
that way
my slutty summer
playlist
filtered through
faulty headphones
pausing
at random
like can
you have
a slut
ty summer
if you
re not ac
tu a lly
fuck ing?
well it’s more
an existential
openness
to the possibility
Summer’s
voice cuts out
after ‘I feel’
and I think
there’s the problem
touching my
self every day
for years
like a tree
falling
-
Peach Kander is a queer poet and current MFA candidate in poetry at NYU. Current projects include an (auto)biography set in a dystopian North Pole and a translation of Georges Hugnet's 'Childhoods'. Sometimes they go to karaoke to sing classic pop songs in the style of Bob Dylan. Poems can be found in Peach Mag, dirt child, vol. 1, and Fugue, and other creative property can be found in the Sephora archives.

"ontological centaur" and "i love my dad, pt. ii" by C.T. McGaha

ontological centaur

i can't help but meditate
running tongue
along chips in my teeth
till i get lie bumps
tiny red aching things
sores on the palate
that you just gotta
wait out, they say

when i was younger
i wanted to be a youth pastor
now i sell wine for a living
but none was ever water

heard a story once a man
killed a little grey wolf
on accident skipping rocks
across a frozen lake
grieved and gutted
refused to wear its pelt
paid penance with hypothermia
in somewhere's tundra

the idea of being
is much better than being
and that's just a universal constant, motherfucker

i love my dad, pt. ii

slowly rolling down windows
in the old volvo wagon
the perfume of autumn country air
lilacs and lavender and sheep shit 

the blinding brightness of sun
cast out across the lake
sneaking under the car’s visor
blasting my forehead
steaming with sweat

i cannot die, i say
i will never die, i say
aloud to no one
fingerfucking the heavy rocks 

packed in my jacket's pockets
-
C.T. McGaha is a writer from Charlotte, NC. He loves wine, pizza, and his pets. He used to like Sun Kil Moon a lot but he doesn’t as much now.