poetry

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.

"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.

"Western Suite for Trading Fours with Some Semblance of Something Having Happened Before" and "Western Suite for a Book Beginning Massed Disguise and Ending Adages" by Kyle Harvey

Western Suite for Trading Fours with Some Semblance of Something Having Happened Before

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four.”—John Cage

Under the impression 
that some kind 
of tuning was going on
the audience continued 
their small talk
and in the process
the history of art happened—
if you have to ask 
you'll never know
some semblance 
of something 
having happened before:
a musty accordion in Miami
a wadded-up newspaper 
stuffed into a speaker
Howlin’ Wolf in Memphis, 1951
there’s no doubt about it
about any of that anyway 
saying one thing
but saying something else 
with the same words
the impracticality of conversation 
no real idea of what to expect
stopped short of
some loose furl of
some lost future of
polyphonic spores
the software of your heart
wear it in your sleep
hit the snooze for your part in it
a few atmospheres up your sleeve

warm sympathies without melodies
a lack of closeness, and yet
closer together

Western Suite for a Book Beginning Massed Disguise and Ending Adages

for Clark Coolidge

The so
below

so what?

So so sailor
so many salads
not always so
sometimes
you might say

so that being said
it’s so

did you hear about so and so
my hair got long
and on and on?

So if
so what?

So it goes

such a gift
such death
such living that goes on

-

Kyle Harvey is a poet, filmmaker, and musician. He is the author of Cosmographies (Cuneiform Press, 2022), as well as the editor of Coolidge & Cherkovski: In Conversation and Neeli Cherkovski's forthcoming Selected Poems 1959-2022. A finalist for the Colorado Book Award and winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, his work has appeared in A Dozen Nothing, American Life in Poetry, Entropy, Heavy Feather Review, Pilgrimage, SHAMPOO, Think Journal, The Wallace Stevens Journal and elsewhere. He lives in Fruita, Colorado, where he manages Lithic Bookstore and designs books for Lithic Press. Read more at: https://kyleharveypoet.com/.


"The Predator" and "The Past is the Future is the Present is" by Jon Doughboy

The Predator

You’re the Predator swinging through trees and over buildings and across planets and time in search of a thrill, a kill, a sense of meaning, and you set your little triangle of red dots on a mammoth except the mammoths are extinct and even if some scientists in a lab are trying to revive them you don’t have the patience, the hunt is on, the hunt is always on and the great rotating saucer you call home is really just a trophy case skipping across countless skies and it calls you, it’s hungry, must be fed, filled, so you’re hunting now on Hollywood sets and through tropical jungles and viewers’ minds and coke sweat 80s LA saying “over here” like Mac in a menacing whisper and laughing deep and loud like Jesse “The Body” Ventura except his body was blown apart and the prop team was blown apart as our lives are blown apart, blowing apart, but yes, he went on to govern those ten thousand lakes still in another sense he’s dead, you’re dead, we’re dead, dying forever towards deadness, and in another sense we’re jittery prey, running and fleeing and hiding and still in one more, a thousand more senses, we’re up there with you, swinging from tree to tree, hunting ourselves, our many messy selves, and hunting for the Other, some beautiful, perfect, sensitive Other, aiming our little triangle of red dots of hope and need and fear into the vast jungle of human night, searching for our next kill.

The Past is the Future is the Present is

The past is prologue but is this book any good? and the past isn’t even the past and the past is what we’re doomed doomed to and the past is a foreign country and we don’t speak the language and some goon at customs stole our passports while the future, well, the future is now and trans and female and people are warring with sticks and stones and the icebergs have melted and the polar bears have sunk and the futurists are unemployed and futurism is long dead and the ecomodernists are hooking their hearts up to modular reactors and the degrowthers are getting their tubes tied and our big debts are coming due and posterity’s condescension is of course enormous, these little futurinos running around throwing their pasts to the dogs and pretending to pull rabbits and theories and systems and ideas and modes of communication out of hats ex nihilo but I pay neither and none any mind, no siree, because I’m here now, being here now, in the now, baby, I’ve got a Roth IRA fattening up in micro increments and 20/10 vision, piercing the veil of time with my baby-blue Paul Newman eyes, just watching the river flow and the ships come in with Bob and Otis—quick now, now, now, now, or you’ll miss it. 

-

Jon Doughboy is a lowly clerk at Bartleby & Co. Prefer not to with him @doughboywrites.

3 Poems by Benjamin Niespodziany

Extinct Swamp Light

A woman sells watermelons to veterans without mouths. She leaves the library and sleeps in her car. Not far away, a coyote prays beside a dying man, both so patient not to howl. The plague doctor’s eyes are canine, reptilian. She loans him her skull for a wholesale price. She lights a candle that laughs at her squirm. The pier here is what we fear the most.

Sexually Transmitted Spinach, or Awaiting Rabies on Ice

There was a traffic jam on the way to the landfill. A hill of bad batteries. Body cast bathing. When I wake, my last name is embroidered in the pillow on your therapy couch. All who sat collapsed into gardens like dying inside the diner. In your cavern of standards, the toothless horse exhales. Customs becomes a cough. An old pierogi in a Polish gut. A cold war formed between the two four star hotels. Years later, a clown buys a high chair and a space heater and eats a deer. The feathers were everywhere. One hundred husbands who want my blue shoes. Maroon moon rocks consumed by rude gods. A stick bug eats a pill bug as the slug watches from the tree. I fire an entire town. They love me. They’re free. Martha’s stars apologize for missing the rain. I open the world’s first book and look away. Many of my best friends rap against the clocktower’s window. I boil my compass and call my mom.

Worm

The wormhole in my skull is aging in reverse. It’s the pacing of the wolf that attracts the famished. Packrat is the Latin term for hurried unlearning. In this globe of grown poster children, skimming for fish in the dirt is a present.

-

Benjamin Niespodziany is a Chicago-based writer and circus enthusiast. A former Olive Garden waiter, his debut collection of poetry was released last November through Okay Donkey and his debut novella, Cardboard Clouds, is out now with X-R-A-Y.

"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.

"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.

"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.

"You Can Have Any Tattoo You Want, As Long As It's a Tiki" by A. Pennington-Flax

It was gang of four
then it was the smoking popes
it was the one song by frightened rabbit
that I can't bring myself to listen to
(but will not stop singing)

It was someone else who said
"you don't understand how I love you"
when I had contingency plans,
before right and left hand
went separate ways

I was too busy building a reputation
to know what it meant

-

A. Pennington-Flax lives, works, and occasionally reads poetry in front of people in central Illinois.

"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.

"Three Animals" by Henry Goldkamp

1

I have an extra shoulder blade. Some call it a “wing.”
Exactly 50% of angels have this defect.


I like it when I catch God looking.
He looks away.

2

I have a missing stomach. Some call it a “miracle.”
About 95% of these particular surgeries are successful.


Eating solids and drinking liquids with a lover like you is easy.
We dine. We dash. All done.

3

I have an optional hair. Some call it “rat tail.”
What’s a buncha fly-eyed zeroes like them gonna do about it?


I mind my business.
Shit.

-

Henry Goldkamp rehearses his poetics out of a small garage in New Orleans. His poetry appears most recently in Narrative, Indiana Review, the minnesota review, DIAGRAM, Denver Quarterly, and Best New Poets 2021. His public art projects have been covered by NPR and Time, and he reads poems for Tilted House, The Adroit Journal, and Bayou. More and more at henrygoldkamp.com.

3 Poems by Dalton Day

TO SAY ANYTHING TO ANYONE

When faced with overwhelming
calamity or tenderness, the man said
oh, wow. I loved the man for this.
It wasn’t even morning & yet
I myself was faced with something,
an understanding perhaps,
of the way stacking works.
I should’ve told the man this,
but I didn’t. I was too overwhelmed
to say anything to anyone, except.

THE TREES ARE FULL OF CONSEQUENCE

See, me, standing beneath
what light makes it through,
wound without wound.
I am kidding.
I am impossible without
a wall that is cool
to the touch, a window
that looks out over various
griefs. See, you, sitting
in the kind of dark
that only wants you to know
how a decision gets made.

THE PLUM

Because of the sweetness of a plum I shall be taking the afternoon.
I will take the afternoon to the lake, & I will teach the afternoon how
to swim. The afternoon will be invigorated by this new possibility, &
will move through the water for hours & hours, which mean nothing
to the afternoon, the lake, or the plum. When the afternoon looks to
the shore for me, I will be there. Why would I abandon it? I am not a
person who is convinced of the ways of the world. I am like a
pebble, in that way.

-

Dalton Day is a preschool teacher and the author of Exit, Pursued and Spooky Action at a Distance. He can be found at tinyghosthands.com.

"The Dog That Resides Above Me Knows How to Cry When it’s Quiet" and "Space Off" by Benjamin Niespodziany

The Dog That Resides Above Me Knows How to Cry When it’s Quiet

In the morning, I’ll paint
the very top
of a lighthouse. It will take me
all day. I’ll arrive
home late. The lake
this time of year. It’s why
they call it a mirror.

Space Off

To pause the opera
he bow ties bow
ties. He tries
on wine thumbs.
The man’s helmet
looks like a spelling bee.
His daughter wants to be an explorer.
She knows the desert is not dead.

-

Benjamin Niespodziany's work has appeared in Fence, Fairy Tale Review, Hobart, and others. Along with being featured in the Wigleaf Top 50, his writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. His chapbook The Northerners (2021) was released through above/ground press and his chapbook Pickpocket the Big Top (2022) was released through Dark Hour Books.

3 Poems by Evan Nicholls

Knight in an Old-Fashioned Book

I am actually very apprehensive about
getting on the horse.

Eaten by a Tiger

I am actually really enjoying getting
acquainted on a personal level.

The Sharks Smell Blood

I am actually not the chum I am
the captain’s beautiful son.

-

Evan Nicholls is a poet and collage artist from Virginia. His chapbook of poems and collages, Holy Smokes, is available from Ghost City Press. Find more of his work at enicholls.com.