Dirt my great-uncle drenches the headlines in honey; he watches syllables slur together and become illegible under a sunny ooze   my great-uncle doesn’t know that i wake up early to read the paper before him, that i let scalding sentences slide down my spine, that i coax crinkled commas into my ears   my great-uncle holds a skinned rabbit in one hand and a riffle in the other   when i beg him to dispose of the danger in his palms, he says i’m just a child   he says that forbidden words stumble out of my mouth, words about a world without weapons   he says he’ll destroy the dirt dancing on my tongue   he feeds me detergent for dinner   he doesn’t know that dreams can’t be disinfected  

Trucks flew up in the air like feathers in a final tarantella.… Read More “AT THE STORE by Rodica Stan”

I have a house in my heart where cloth napkins are folded in the shape of autumn leaves and dinner is served every night around a table set by a lively teenager who is still my best friend.… Read More “HOUSE IN MY HEART by Margo Dills”

When time hammers a horseshoe upside down upon a hoof.… Read More “ICE-BLUE STARS by Peter Verbica”

Replacement Theory The life of this world is but comfort of illusion.… Read More “REPLACEMENT THEORY by Kevin James”

Death seems less likely in the morning when you wake, if that’s what we do, in a new day, if that’s what it is,   but all this hinges on Time, doesn’t it?… Read More “WHAT YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER by Stan Sanvel Rubin”

Today, you have no loves for me, only urgent bells chiming for every other poet, my shy tribe of braggadocios.… Read More “DEAR FACEBOOK by Elya Braden”

A Better Mother In those days, I hung our moments together on the walls of the museum of I am a good enough mother.… Read More “A BETTER MOTHER by Elya Braden”

After Natasha Trethewey   I am nine in the picture, standing in front of the Berlin Wall as though it’s just another tourist trap   and not an actual trap holding back actual people at that actual moment.… Read More “BERLIN 1988 by Tanja Hester”

  Craving distraction from electronic communication – bright screens, phone Pings and notifications – I leave my desk and step into the Natural light, shedding the fluorescents that, I swear, bring out the purple Tones in my complexion.… Read More “SHINRIN-YOKU by Ron Hickerson”

I tend to my heart like a fire, with occasional poking and prodding, to be sure the spirit of the thing remains intact.… Read More “DUSK IN LAMAR VALLEY, WYOMING by J. Heimberger”

In a suburban backyard, green-garlanded darkand creekshine—in the case of Light vs.… Read More “BLACK CROWNED NIGHT HERON AND RACCON by Roy Bentley”

The ambulance sirens have a new tenorWhen my parents came to visit me,in my home, a foreign placeto them, they asked,“Do you ever get used to thesirens here?”,… Read More “THE AMBULANCE SIRENS HAVE A NEW TENOR by Jennifer Lentfer”

“When, now, that gesture means [an] idea behind it and it arouses that idea in the other individual, then we have a significant symbol…it has become what we call “language.”… Read More “GESTURES by Emma Gray”

It was such a long time since the last rain that when it started the other night I thought it was a truck rumbling down the street, and when it pelted the roof and rang the gutter it didn’t register so much as water as it did a broken chain of beads rolling over corrugated tin.… Read More “NIGHT RAIN IN THE DESERT by Molly McKasson Morgan”

Humans are composed of approximately 57% bacteria, 43% human cells, yet only humans have representation in Congress.… Read More “POEM FOR AN ECO-MARXIST by Meara Levezow”

After I graduated high school at eighteen, I thought I had outgrown my toy-box from when I was eight.… Read More “IN THE ARMY NOW by Jefferson Huddle”

It has come to my attention that the recently retired gray mare “ain’t what she used to be.”… Read More “CHANCES ARE I WILL REPEAT MYSELF by Edward Miller”

Diego Valeri, 1887-1976, was an Italian poet, journalist, writer, scholar, critic, and translator of French and German literature.… Read More “FIVE POEMS ABOUT VENICE BY DIEGO VALERI translated by Laura Valeri”

The older I get, the more I’m conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world.… Read More “WHEN CHANGE FIRST WHISPERED IN MY EAR by Ellen Skilton”

the airplane engine started up as powerful as forgiveness upward immersion into blue layers baby, light, cornflower Pacific in ultramarine below white plumes pause with deliberation before dissolving balloons, blooms, bangles of clean cream-capped mountains clouds and white boats pervade the beds of blues the same dimension as my headspace awakening as a white lotus soaring at an even pace with my false bravado he said to enjoy the flight home you too I thought holding his white, blue-veined hand I am resolved to enjoy temporary clouds, transitioning sky eternal beauty in doing what I was told

Of course,   the dark thoughts come to me at dusk,   binding and unbinding like a continuum of blackbirds in the rain.… Read More “SMALL MOUND OF STONES by Peter Verbica”

Here where all the traffic meets angry the droning noise demanding my attention pounds & manners must be spun out to the rim, cursed ferocious & dodging the bites of dogs beaten frayed & closest to the phone leery betrayed & under the hood of my car overdrawn forbidden & snowed in for the winter unannounced unrewarded unremarked in my own back yard breathing & rising, breathing & falling dreaming in the time when my sleep should be & sleeping in my dreams, I am.… Read More “TOM C.’S WOMAN by Scott Hayworth”

By this time I have forgotten the smell of her linoleum, The oily organic vapors clinging near the floor That trapped the nicotine ash and tars & only partly reflected The sunbeams from the window, kept most of the yellow ones, Sent back the white & held hostage the rest.… Read More “MEMORY CARE by Scott Hayworth”

Mercè Rodoreda I Gurguí (1908-1983) was a Catalan author.… Read More “Mercè Rodoreda I Gurguí POETRY TRANSLATION by Alani Hicks-Bartlett”

i for private reasons I will take this journey much more seriously than is strictly necessary armed with a double dose of vaccine I am still convinced of a fatal weakness in my auto-immune defenses the sleek sublimity of an airplane seems like the ideal implement to penetrate my porous borders and this is the coward’s conviction that I have set a course to conquer with an eye to posterity never mind that I’m fleeing failure and shunning sadness on the way the second chance that I hope to discover may or may not be granted me and I will live in regret forever no matter how far the plane takes me ii already there is the first ill omen my driver distracted by the malfunctioning GPS but the stern rebuke I formulate mentally works like a charm to remind me there’s nothing wrong that some magical thinking can’t turn into reassurance the casual annunciation of a new bureaucratic challenge is just old fashioned security in a puzzlingly convenient form and the first refusal is hardly final even a stubborn app will change its mind given different data and the proper passport this is the benefit claimed in doubt by doubt itself to travel again as a Canadian affords me a secretly pleasing guilt as I see there are new pale flags to decode even at my right elbow while I wolf my food with atypical speed and the yearning glare of a handy soldier to meet or avoid [ctd over] I wonder who notices I’m double-masking one worn two years ago made waves and though I am slight and compact on the plane I am man-spreading arm-rests, neutral zones, are mine so I am a teenager splaying once again albeit in pain iii finally the unlikeliness of airborne flight takes pride of place and I understand that this is no banal occurrence we are risking something by our very absence from the earth’s surface population we have ascended beyond the imaginings of kings and emperors while getting a tissue from my back pocket seems to be something of a production so how far should I say we have really come?… Read More “(FREE VERSE) LETTER FROM A WARY TRAVELER by Brad Buchanan”

In my dream Leonardo DeCaprio turned into a rat after falling into a storm drain near where I slept.… Read More “I WOKE IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE, UPSTATE NY, LATE JANUARY by Svea Barrett”

Capitulation East or victory West my uterus may come to rest splayed and flattened on a surface smooth as a petri dish where dreams of conception slide into an oblivion of laws on my body or yours, under the gun for resisting the artificial implantation of a monster’s rotting seed.… Read More “CHOICE by Sarah Wyman”

Trembling, I miss another passing train At the station where napalm mornings bleed Through windowpanes, misting shadowed Crosses on my checkered path ahead.… Read More “TRANSPORTS by Samuel Armen”

the thought that thinks itself reductionist nightmare beyond looking glasses & semiotic classes curator of worlds & stars sunny days, moonlit nights orbital phase changes univocal Master of the Uni-verse   momentary vision on a mission come hither or not it’s all the same shimmering membranes of space-time portals passive footnote to shoals of phosphorescent corals artifactual realms coding variant energies into virtual synergies   overflowing abundance seeking its own substance correlation without causality lacking lineage & parentage gifting a given without giving default for the vaulted Real my own, my own surreal epiphenomenon no matter how beloved short lived or acquired my own

  “Let me confess.… Read More “TO THE POETRY ELITE by Walter Shulits”

that our forest is inseverable, fabric and boring   Autumn arms threadbare clothing eager to be cut with scissors modeled by a swan   her job prospects are booming, humanity is cosmetic, mascara will not cling to feathers   she is an artist in the gravest sense: velvet roundtrips over the cemetery gate sans filigree   commonly known as: without decorum   a yearling in my own practices, an apple head of blood shivers from my thumb, my needle, I was only trying out embroidery on myself, fingers a lace web pattern   and when I don’t feel confident in every scrap of work, I produce worthless, leafy doodads   our coin jars repurposed from espresso tins insufficient our rent goes down and I’m fine, hungover in the garden patch.… Read More “WHEN I FIND OUT WHAT THAT MEANS, I’LL LET YOU KNOW by W. C. Perry”

No, they do no such bother.… Read More “BREAST EXAM by Zola Gonzalez-Macarambon”

“May  I come in?”… Read More “THE TREE LADY by Diane Valeri”

Ghosts don’t haunt the dust in attics, crammed behind the crusty boxes of pop music cassettes left behind by some stranger.… Read More “IF GHOST HUNTERS ONLY KNEW by Lisa Kendrick”

My brother went to the desert— Some called it war, others, a campaign, Counterinsurgency, Nation building.… Read More “MY BROTHER by Sarah Lass”

“The most fitting subject for poetry,” Poe said, “Would be the death of a beautiful Woman.”… Read More “REFRIGERATION by Chris Mikesell”

Under a white popping sky, constellations  buckle together.… Read More “PRIVILEGED BEAUTY by Keith Gaboury”

In those days, a milkman serving Comanche Drive in Kettering delivered clink-clanking bottles from his bubble-shaped truck.… Read More “THE SIMPLE TRUTH ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MILKMEN by Roy Bentley”

Video footage from December 2008 captured an exchange of I love yous  which proves that I was good at pretending in front of the camera.   By 2009 I was abandoned in Vegas without a phone, ID, or money at a club we waited for hours to get into which you got kicked out of for threatening a bartender another patron me.   I wandered out drunk walked the strip wandered back in to loiter about the nickel slots in search of change.… Read More “MY DIVORCE IS A DEAD BUG TRAPPED IN THE LIGHT FIXTURE IN MY SHOWER by Shyla Shehan”

Pool… Vengeful sun relentless knowing how it emanates solar radiation cruelly deviant knowing that each of us radiates infinitely pulse pulse it’s a wave rave gamma, x, radio and ultraviolet piercing bloated brains sizzling pig fat on the spit like Sylvia I know that “Dying Is an art, like everything else.… Read More “THIS BODY HAS TASTED CHERNOBYL SHAKEN NOT STIRRED by Mark Hammerschick”

The death winter came and was deepWith white on the purple mountainThe Tiwahe’, the Standing Rock PeopleBegged for warm fires from Iktinie the Sun SpiritOur mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  Iya’ the Snow Monster had taken us farther to the southTo follow Capa the Beaver SpiritA long journey into early winter’s nightFor there was much labor to keep warm in our Thipi’Our mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  When Iwoblu the Winter Storm whispered his cold storyTo the Aicita, the Ghost MessengerShe tricked Mathohota the Grizzly Spirit with her wailingTo haunt the sky with growling windsOur mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  The Wahupakoza escaped on icy feathersStirring the winds with their flight of fearsAnd within the SunOthi’ earth dens, the wolves Sungmanitu’Howled with their starvationOur mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  The stone figured buffalo, Wankan Tanka’s, blood was cursedWith ice and their coats were bitten with HeyumkaMothers were caged in the hard frost, while their calves fell and diedOur mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  Gleska Wowayazan, the spotted sickness, harvested our soulsWe were prisoners of Wichat A’ the sickness that takes allOur boldest warriors, Zuya Whichsa’ were taken from usTo follow the Wanagi’, the spirits of departed human beingsFar to the Milky Way to stand before Hihankara’ the judge of soulsOur mouths were hungry and bodies were weak  We mourned and chanted for the loss of our children Wasigla’!And… Read More “THE LAST WINTER OF THE GHOST ROAD by Lonna Blodget”

Shh! Trying to silence the narrative in my head.… Read More “SCRIPT REVISION by Joan Penn”

They say it’s distance – the stars so far, the planets near – the weak light bending as it hits the atmosphere, and the planets lacking their own light, instead reflecting the strong light of the sun.… Read More “WHY STARS TWINKLE AND PLANETS DON’T by Judith Mikesch-McKenzie”

I’m stapling anger by its ear to the corkboard but it refuses to stay put I’m thumbtacking fear and nailing jealousy but they wriggle and writhe on the wall Duct tape works well on shame and regret but even extreme stickiness won’t fix them in place I’m running out of supplies to keep my emotions in check Hope and love better get here soon  

I left home, I drove and drove Beyond the town Through desert dry; A man was walking By the road As I went speeding by; I waved my hand And he waved back; The moment passed And he was gone.… Read More “THE DESERT by Walter Weinschenk”

Listen, listen.… Read More “THE SILENCE THAT IMPRISONS ME by Joan Penn”

I know what they told you About me.… Read More “COVID VOICE by John Sime”

not always a serene serendipitous flow at times startling surprising saturated with submerged highs and lows sensation of sailing and sinking shipwrecked stranded exposed   as mind’s eye is flooded with images of existence’s many what-ifs as if arising on a tidal river current reversing flowing backward unsettling sediment of buried history refuting revision it is what it was time and tide have not altered it   the joys the sorrows the passions the regrets the successes the failures life’s trash and life’s treasure unconsciously salvaged manifesting as sensory seeing hearing tasting touching feeling a recognition of self comprised of   former selves swimming swimming swimming in a stream of consciousness somehow surviving startling and surprising

Tell us your whereabouts when the blue macaw went extinct?… Read More “INTERROGATION ROOM A by Chris Banks”

From a decade away I could see the Shimmer of heat from your Barbecue.… Read More “BEFORE WE MET by Julie Benesh”

When you enter a hospital You are in a new world requiring adaptation to navigate the environment Curtains on rolling tracks Provide a modest nod To privacy.… Read More “HOSPITAL WAYFINDING by Jennifer Dotson”

How to Carpe Diem or scarper tedium put on your walking shoes let your feet carry you where they will follow sunshine follow rainbows enjoy the steady rhythm of planting one foot in front of the other take a break take a breath just go

Dear Mr.… Read More “MR. GUTENBERG RESPECTFULLY DECLINES MR. ZUCKERBERG’S FRIEND REQUEST by Gloria Heffernan”

An imposing edifice, an iconic set of steps.… Read More “TREX AND THE ASTRONAUT by Rebecca LaFontaine-Larivee”

I Magnificent Africa.… Read More “COME SEE THE GRAVE OF CECIL RHODES by Andre Peltier”

They know what they’re doing Putting windows above sinks Or sinks under windows For when our hands are sudsy The mind likes to wander.… Read More “KITCHEN SINK by Leslie Hinson”

I stand (a flower dripping rain off petals to roots   as we hang the man who built the gallows, and   I bite my fist to save my tongue) an emotional   amputee, sifting the sky for someone to rely on or at least someone to blame stopped   in the middle of the street, brain tangled like cold sheets gazing like a gravestone feeling gloriously temporary.… Read More “I STAND by Joe Volpe”

i.  it’s happy hour friday night time for small talk   i lace up combat boots  zip my slight self into a lycra  knockoff   doesn’t matter which one as long as i shimmer   ii.   later in the back  of everyone-knows- my-name bar my dress           seams screaming   black buttons       between breastbones burst blacker   wish they were less                         breakable   sees you   iii.   on cue i join you grab a shoulder              the one not offered   espy erasers on ends of chopsticks  eating sushi    words spill  from cheap plastic cups  splintering between us   forgetting we are no longer we   i ask if erasing me was as easy  as swallowing the shrimp roll  no one erased you—  we stopped writing you  in ink  couldn’t be certain who was going to show up    sad mandy   manic mandy   as if i had any more choice  than sunset has a choice  not to slam the door  on daylight    iv.   i wait for you to digest   mix saltwater in my martini  so i can wash down  voyeuristic views knowing more than my shrink    your eyes jump  across the teetering cocktail table   pluck paper from some soggy fortune cookie dripping mayo clinic wisdom,             stop existing like this             stop gratifying sadness .… Read More “I KEEP ASKING MY LITTLE BLACK DRESS WHY SHE IS CRYING UNTIL SHE SLAPS ME by Andi Kaufman Horowitz”

In puddles I search for reflections, Counting colours as water becomes Her own palette, Paper, Her own bruise of blue.… Read More “THE ARTIST by Emmy White”

Large warehouse.… Read More “CORK SHOES by Lawrence Bridges”

  Motherlands, Fatherlands, Holy Lands, Promised Lands, Homelands, Dirty Hands!… Read More “NON-IDENTITARIAN EXCEPTIONALISM by Kevin James”

reechoed in my urine soaked sheets   as I thought the lights blinking red and blue flying outside my window shade   were UFO’s for in the 1970’s   that was a thing on TV and in movies   greys probed in the third kind   and where the neighboring Humdinger   dive bar pilots drank from the nearby base   next to the Stop n Go where I stole   Butterfingers cinnamon sticks and candied cigarettes   nuclear weapons aimed red east rest on seal’d beaches

Cut the paper.… Read More “PANDEMIC by Sharon Lee Snow”

Who lives on the other side of the pond I see through the corkscrew willow?… Read More “WHO LIVES ON THE OTHER SIDE by Sheila Bender”

At night she sleeps on cardboard near the concrete station entrance.… Read More “HOLDING COURT by Wendy Blaxland”

Lotion Tonight From her blue armchair I can still hear mom yelling for me to massage her feet with lotion.… Read More “LOTION TONIGHT by Donna Weaver”

Dementia’s Innards   Talc rains down on him in slow storms in every room of his house.… Read More “Poetry by Teresa Sutton”

The Excuse: an Email   Still not certain how my schedule will unfold   I am confronted by a roiling combination of previous promises weather events   miscellaneous omens now conspire to leave me dealing in a world of 18% grey.… Read More “Poetry by R. A. Lucas”

Unexpected   What do I do with this love, lighter than air?… Read More “Poetry by Moira Walsh”

Her body squat, solid, thick, a Three Pigs’ house of brick, Lissa leaned heavily against me flute thin taller by a head both of us, seventeen, the pair of us a listing ship as I steered her down steep hills cobbled streets to local doctor then translated English to Spanish Spanish back to English.… Read More “LISA, 1969 AND 1979 SUMMERS by Ellen Ritterberg”

Some days you forget despair’s tractor-pull long enough to see some little boy go vroom vroom with a toy car.… Read More “OPTIMISM by Chris Banks”

During the waxing of the sturgeon moon the bay stretches and contracts with ever-increasing drama.… Read More “THE ARGUMENT by Edward Miller”

What can you do with a line in your mine in your mind mined maybe full stop maybe perhaps not.… Read More “POEM: WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH by Ellen Ritterberg”

Your success depends Squarely upon how much you Value playing fair

State Your Specific Intention Here I’d like to go back to an ordinary Sunday afternoon where we played pinball on a Sopranos-themed machine in a dark bar in downtown Detroit.… Read More “Poetry by Michelle Brooks”

Pink wet robin, a baby perched on the end of a shoe, plucked right back into the nest, to be rejected if the oils on my hand aren’t too human.… Read More “GROWING WINGS by Mickie Kennedy”

An unease tries to clamber up stainless-steel sides, will not drain with the dishwater.… Read More “SILENT TREATMENT by Joseph Hardy”

‘Steada perusing for the next latest greatest killer application to count my pulse or blood oxygen level now we are looking for that newfangled savior app which waved in front of folks registers if they have coronavirus.

When, thrust out of, rousted from billowy somnolence, while nuzzled, nosed into by heat-seeking missile while asleep, their protestations, imprecations ignored, and   all demurrals having failed, some women do what they feel they must do and give in.   The giant enters.   Once goaded, Compliant, docile bulls, they remain silent except for maybe a snort or two which may just be breathing.… Read More “LEAVETAKING, A GUIDE by Ellen Ritterberg”

A dear but distant friend sent me the link to a camera on the Platte that captures, live, during sunset,   upwards of 100,000 cranes returning from far fields to roost midstream on sandbar sanctuaries.   Countless chains of gliding shadows cross a red bandana sky, swing  back, hover, drop, safe in numbers.   How astonishing to see so many birds becoming islands in a river while I, far removed, anticipate a virus flocking in.   Last April, I saw songbird silhouettes fly across a bright midnight moon, counted shad on underwater video   heard the first redwing trill from branches high above a parkland pond.… Read More “THIS SPRING by Raymond Byrnes”

When the crow pixilates the bricks of the building no longer look bricks or even brick-like or some approximation thereof they look like velvet or is it velveteen wish I knew Wish I could create a word for every word that autocorrects creates for me opportunity for self-exploration or if not that then clarification of what I might mean counterintuitive though it might be autocorrection qua thought howsoever non-original it may not be The writing of it, the simultaneity of it, the whole hog full engagement thereof in the writing that is if you dig if you follow me that forces me to formulate the meaning of trees not the oxygenation or other life forms and humans the gaseous cycle or however that CO2 oxygen exchange tap dance works, the oxygen just out there for the taking or was or used to be with emphasis on the past and if not, what function might the term urban blight serve except to remind we are oxygen deprived clean air as dodo bird air as unwonted speck in the eye particulate matter perpetual glacial calving magma stewing.… Read More “WHEN THE CROW PIXILATES ON THE IMAGE by Ellen Ritterberg”

is the reason— lungs swelled to beasts,   legs to the grave, the joy of nothing happening—I,   strawberries & cream still cold under arm,   flick ashes to eagles whilst waiting for Hassle—   the name we assign our new bus/driver.… Read More “THINGS (BAGAGE) by Linette Marie Allen”

When               you tell me no,                   you are beautiful when               you show me yes—               the x pinks of                     your pain,                    I part                  your                 home like                  crab,                suck the secrets                    blind like choice                         meat meant               for hoar- smoke coming home in the rain.                                 … Read More “TWILIGHT OF BEOWOLF by Linette Marie Allen”

“Don’t ask me any questions.… Read More “How Late Was I, Ciudad? by Sreyash Sarkar”

Det er sommer og indeni den ligger en anden sommer: en sommer der fortsætter den korte sommer der blev kort fordi noget usommerligt afskar den fra at være sommer, fra at være en årstid, fra overhovedet at være en tid, men nu er det sommer: den anden sommer, den fortsatte bevægelse; en æske åbnes og sekunderne får en chance til.… Read More “Pandora av Mette Norrie”

Her kan man hverken komme ind eller ud ad natten.… Read More “3:00 av Mette Norrie”

The kindly night has taken in this body, pestered as it is with drink.… Read More “Buster Keaton by Joel Scarfe”

After a day spent attempting to impress those good-looking girls who were not impressed I would retreat into the company of boys and drink, and on one such night, sitting on a friend’s bed blowing smoke at giant moths driven mad with the light, I gulped down a pint of cognac, and by the fourth or fifth time that I fell off my bike in the dark, I truly believed that I had, at last, grasped the meaning of the word sublimation.

Early enough to hear the light whispering like a lover to the dawn I cross the street, evading Messalina’s grip, and find the pavement is already sick with pigeons, going at each other over scraps of bread scattered at the feet of Christ (possibly) who looks as though he hasn’t slept since all that Gethsemane business.… Read More “Commute by Joel Scarfe”

for Leon Stokesbury I was searching for a box To package a lovely jar Of Herbes de Provence to send you, An early Christmas present, When I heard the dreadful news.… Read More “Elegy for a Dear Friend by Paul Lubenkov”

I am the summer you burned for when the tedious school hours waned and I came running to stretch out the dusk just for you.… Read More “The Last Summer by Joshua Plack”

Hot meal, hot shower, or a safe bed?… Read More “What’s Your Pleasure? by Joshua Plack”

10 speeds kickflips & splinters— hanging on the post that flashed that orange hand, sliding down bannisters like it were a sled on a december snow day.… Read More “Blended Together by Adam Que”

After the dinosaurs lay down in their fossil beds and the ice ages shift from Pleistocene to Holocene, some eleven thousand years of weather ago, there walks into my apartment this millipede, no doubt as a result of the wettest month of May on recent record, Lakeland and Venice both reporting.… Read More “Millipede from Mars by Victoria Dym”

This place is all asphalt temple, a tornado of highway curling like smoke over an altar, but there is no ancient magic here.… Read More “STOP MOVING TO L.A. TO WORK ON YOUR INSTAGRAM by Morgan Nikola-Wren”

X-rays ain’t like in movies, you know.… Read More “Gladys Went and Busted Her Ass! by Joshua Plack”

[  because you know                 ] [  this is too beautiful               ] [  to try                                        ]

Rain against the earth’s surfaces, a million tiny percussions.… Read More “Paintings of Waterfowl by Alexandra McIntosh”

This strip of Friday night nowhere pulses for our baby blue Saturn CD skipping the third-measure bump, jump, falsetto cracks and we taste it in our jaws riding white and talking that shit like we run the pool hall with one leg like Kirby limping and shucking on smooth southpaw licks, watching VHS tapes from the backs of magazines with Grier and Roundtree and playing like we black cause we don’t know what that means just yet and now the lights are falling in Flatbush and all of us and Brooklyn are paralyzed.… Read More “Look Up Curtis! by Joshua Plack”