"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.

"Free Pretzels" and "Mysterious Refrigerator" by Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo

Free Pretzels

a man excuses himself from the intimacy

of spending seconds in my space

space is relative this high and

pressure is cabinated

we are explaining ourselves

formally and boxlike

and my hat has a bill that cages

my sightline like a hand arced

for cover. i have paid for access

to a rectangle of space. i tilt

my rectangle backwards

parallelogramlike

i am in control

of whether this man may relieve

himself in an irregular shape

of a room. whoosh

fluids go somewhere no one

knows (our pilot incidentally 

late a tiny god called forth

to hurtle people, dogs

through space as fast as

possible commercially

full throttle navigation

button activation

peering down at blips

in the abyss below

cranking levers backwards

halting bodies and metal

from motion)

objects in mirror 

are really really close

Mysterious Refrigerator

someone is sneaking into my basement 

and turning off my heat. the heat becomes

cold. i am a person predisposed

to coldness. i shake with it. 

a lover buys me slippers.

upon being plugged in they glow

supernaturally warm. this is the sort

of supernatural phenomenon in which 

I am interested. albert camus 

said something about autumn.

how it is “a second spring

when every leaf is a flower.”

i learned this quote from a leaflet

sent to me in the mail. it is possible

this quote has been misattributed

or even manufactured. it might be

supernatural. flowers and leaves 

seem to fulfill different roles. 

just because i happen 

to be cold i am not

preparing to fall down. collapse

is not always imminent. obviously.

i am uninterested in heroic journeys

or what it means to fly overhead.

who is tunneling into my basement? 

flowers in ice water

they say, live to bloom 

longer

-

Juliet Gelfman-Randazzo is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Camden, where she has recently written about deer, hand models, and trees. She is the author of the chapbook "DUH" (Bullshit Lit), and her work appears or is forthcoming in Passages North, Barrelhouse Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, and Bedfellows Magazine, among others. She can be followed @tall.spy (Instagram) and @tall__spy (Twitter) but she can never be caught. 

"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.

"Sprig" by Cameron Lovejoy

Sprig

Who owns the snow? A dozen sown corpses
underwater falling slow, slowly down
below the bowel. Here and there a whale
fall. The head aches. A hagfish. These hatreds
are the hardest things to be trashed, you know.

Jung’s shadow. I am stuck between a rock
and a harpoon. Little blood in the mold.

By saunas of nausea a sodden ghost
grips a sprig, a flick of green in the mist.

The/rap/its said many times over—mine

said this: tell me, what sign posts do you sea
on this terrain you said needs retrain-ing?

Crack open the door, throw slats in the wound.

Talking—the bloomiest lobotomies.

-

Cameron Lovejoy is the editor and publisher at Tilted House, a small press in New Orleans. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Xavier Review, North Dakota Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Barrelhouse, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere.

"Nausea" and "Demonstrations of Humanity Ensue" by Bee Morris

Nausea

An object, location, or idea is not an object, location, or idea. It is the self’s latest extension into
real meaning. We were all, just prior to ourselves, entering the world through a wholeness of
bodies. I said to myself, “Now this is it.” Myself replied, “It always has been.” In this order, I
was in love with the reputation of joy, then with the representation of joy, then with joy itself.
“Art is a lonely faith,” I said to the mirror. Then it dawned on me that this world is none of my
business.

Demonstrations of Humanity Ensue

Light and shadow are the only intelligent beings in this world. Do you remember when you were
dreaming of unstained glass and retired altars? How the present congregation then became a
surreal object? We are distancing now from the narrative, forming a moat around conscious
thought— the organs of our hearts taken out and dissected, one by one.

-

Bee Morris is the author of Alive on Planet Earth, released as part of Ghost City Press's 2021 Summer Series. Their recent work appears or is forthcoming in Wax Nine, Poet Lore, Underblong, Hobart, and elsewhere. Bee also runs the newsletter Blackout Fascinations: blackout.substack.com.

"I disobey" and "I forgot the time" by Nicodemus Nicoludis

I disobey 

the wind 

when examining 

this interglacial verse

and the way 

I am 

in truth 

so human 

set to hum 

my palinodes 

like a riverbed 

Gigantic 

I am not going 

to call this 

resistance 

but maybe the actual 

slipping into 

darkness like 

the cigarettes 

the men outside 

the deli smoke 

between pulls 

from a bottle 

of mamajuana

But I am only just 

reading into this 

radiance as the 

defiant soliloquy 

made exactly 

as it should be 

alone and quiet 

lasting only 

for the last 

of us who 

will cash our 

paychecks for 

a view of the 

stars uncostly 

and totalitarian

I forgot the time 

I needed to be

at work 

while making coffee

It’s early

enough to know 

that without asking

the Earth keeps

breaking into

smaller parts

I name the morning

consumption

Or the unbearable

call to be productive

I just want to think 

about us in bed 

as we roll closer 

into each other 

and I see the scar 

on my knee

from falling 

on rocks at the beach 

trying to be brave 

for my brother

as he walked 

the tide pools

for the first time

after moving

from Pittsburgh

to New Hampshire

I wonder

were they 

always this

purposeful? 

We never found

a lobster

Never understood 

how lungs work 

Do we just

keep going?

Should I keep going?

I don’t think

that’s philosophy 

Can I slow down 

for a moment now?

See life for

its exchanges

The fission of

wage-time 

free-time 

time-to-destination

labor-time

divided by 

value-time

We get closer

to a revolution 

when we start thinking

about time

as pleasure not

commodity

Its value a temporal 

ghost haunting life until

we stop time

as material 

and bring it back 

from its exchange 

That is to say

from the time

it takes for you 

to read this poem

I will have made

approximately $ .50

-

Nicodemus Nicoludis is a poet, adjunct professor and the managing editor of Archway Editions. He is the author of the chapbook Natural History (rot house books, 2018) and his work appears in Potluck Mag, Small Orange, Maudlin House, Chronogram, Reality Hands, Burning House Press and elsewhere.

"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.

"Ghost in the Train Car" by Camille Ferguson

Ghost in the Train Car

I.

Can I be nothing? Who would love
nothing? Who would lose them-
selves on purpose.

II.

I was born.
Who could be anything.
I was born.
One thing?
I was born:

III.

an intentional ghost.
In the train car (cool, stainless steel) café (
smells of amaretto) watching (first date) while
you fall in love with the boy.
I militant eavesdrop. I drink your giggle.
I cool stainless steel. I amaretto.
Who would cry at a stranger’s confession.

IV.

I could be the train car?
I could be the boy?

V.

I could be less ?lonely?
Who could be stranger.
Who would be weird/wired
wrong. I am not
right?
I could be a person?
I could be alright ./?

VI.

Espresso old-fashioned. Third wave
coffee. Coffee
can be anything. In the train car
with the jitters. I’m orange peel,
bitters.
I could be less bitter. I could perform
better.

VII.

I am more nerves than person.
Lose the plural & I am bold. I am all nerve.
I could be pluraled?
Volatile—every time you speak you strike
me. Who could be
softer./harder. Who could be happy.

VIII.

Outside, the rain, the grey.
The light couldn’t be softer. It is just right.
Outside, the boy lights the girl
’s cigarette. I could be them.
It is all a great performance.
(all gender is.)

IX.

I could be the lighter?
I could be lighter?
I could be the light ?

(I could be the boy?)

-

Camille Ferguson is a queer poet from Ohio. Their work has been published in Flypaper Lit, Zone 3, Passages North, and Door Is A Jar, among others. Camille was a 2022 Best of the Net finalist and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. You can follow Camille on Twitter @camferg1.

"In My Spare Time" and "The Table" by Evan Williams

In My Spare Time

I attach fins to roses. I set them off to swim but they usually sink. Soon I’ll have created a
continent of plant matter. It will be mine. I will let everyone live on it, then it will be
ours. I want an ours, an us. The roses keep drowning. They are a part of the us too, the
part that always seems to be there, holding up everything else without a breath.

The Table

acts like a tree but he’s not
one. The table is a table.
The table only thinks he is a tree.

When it’s cold the table invites squirrels over for cocoa.
I think the table keeps the squirrels
inside of him. I think the table does not like being alone.

The table is perhaps a tree, undercover indoors.
It all means nothing except that life is living where it can’t

go on. The squirrels have been dead for a long time.
The tree encourages them to dance
with his branches. The tree feels less a tree
without his squirrels. The tree is becoming a table. By morning,
I’ve chopped him up and thrown him to the woods. Inside,
I get on my hands and knees to hear a squirrel chattering in my ribcage.

-

Evan Williams is a Chicago-based writer. His work is in DIAGRAM, Pleiades, Joyland and other spots. He wrote the chapbook Claustrophobia, Surprise! (HAD Chaps), and co-founded the prose poetry journal Obliterat.

"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.