By Jimin Lee I mankind my neighbors: I transfuse their blood / into my own, hoping / to mend mypast / and to reincarnate. / Every organism worships / unconscious: dogs for bones,humans for gold, and I / for sacrifice. / Always craving, I embrace myself / for war,trade teeth / for bullets. / In this country / survival is ownership of the language. / Idrown words / and ritualize silence, the sour...
When Your Mother Asks If You’re Seeing Anyone and No Longer Means a Therapist
By Cindy King It’s tough to find a cardiologist who datespatients from the Ward of Cracked Hearts, butthere’s always the bariatric surgeonwho thinks you could drop a few pounds. If it’s too latefor the death row inmate, try the child predator, you toocould date the would-be senator, or even the President of the United States.If you can’t have the priest, don’t give up.You too could fall for the...
Compromise
By Romana Iorga A flask empty of wine on the table.The table wanting for foodin a house missing its people.Things are meant to be filledwith other things. The sky, empty of birds, has clouds,at least. They carry no rain.Far below, the earth is barren of life.Metaphors—easy and flawed.We use them to fill up the silence. I’m that earth that cannot bear fruit.You, the rain that never comes. Doesn’t...
Homeschool Chemistry
By Christopher David Hopkins The first time I dippedthe point of my fingerinto bleach, I learnedhow pink my skin is.It is always like this,never knowing softness until I dry outand crack open, never knowingmyself until this blister-kissedprint is the only texture I feel. Homeschool Theology We give thanks for the grace of granolaand ramen, the foam cup that doesn’t burnin the microwave. We give...
Autumn Begins in Pico Rivera, California
By Shane Eaves The geese betray me.The moon is huddled in tree limbsand across the city I hear the bounceof norteña music, palms slapping tortillas,truck tries flogging roads.The ditch on vine is growing.Pumpkins grimace all over town.We can never know the leavesthat are falling, the feeling of water evaporatingtheir bodies. It is cold, and still the moonis tossing in its sheets. The hookers on...
White Women Eat Misogyny for Breakfast
By Katelyn Delvaux I don’t mean we chew through itlike so much concrete chiseled from the path, but a spoonfuleach morning stirred in to keep us regular. A helpingadded to the sandbags of our bellies, the weight locking history in placebecause if we are still, the world will churnaround its center. Cabin Aubade I ate a peach...
AmericanEyes
By Joe Costal We wait in line for half-priced Broadway tickets.See a kids’ movie adapted for the stage, notHamilton, not even Evan Hansen. The blonde girlfriend, she’s pissed now. I feel her “good-bye” like itcomes from my own body. The tingle of a mouth sore.Familiar as Christmas on this chestnut wind. By day’send, I’ll be alone, again. I judge this from her walk, herstare up at skyscrapers...
CEMETARIOT
By Ian Cappelli The sparrows sort of rejoice atop the giant stonecrosses. Nobody has a human-sized plastic iPhonefor a grave. I like to think that the sparrowswould enjoy that too. Lichen is the combinationof moss and fungus, and also doesn’t really growso easily on plastic. It’s a product of symbiosis:the moss part provides the food, the fungus partconsumes the moss...
Baudelaire’s Bad Poet
By Sherry Bollero Please overlook my mud dressed diademsloping above my head. Plucked from the ebon glass— passed in the street my dreamy daylight desires scooped up the golden sorrowcradled and nursed until rest safely a cock-eyed crown in braids of black feathered hair— hail queen of...
Workshop
By Terry Hall Bodine The poets stake their places at the table,take the outlines of their experiencesand dress them: supercilious foxtail stoles,a rabbit’s head and shanks, the outsizeshoes and rubber nose of cheap suburbanangst. How succulent the shapesthey make! How adipose, how rich! I have eaten nothing for eighteen daysbut red radishes and disdain. A stickfigure draped solely in abdicationof...