Rukmini

Allah i got dumped

who is listening to this 
song, sometimes opening
that channel on radio to only hear
voices of men singing  
only women

walking through desserts 
of foreign flowers crowding 
streets full of action
dodging those grey-blue petals
falling on me endlessly
peppering already white 
black 
sequences

don’t bother hiding those 
bitter cries in divided rooms
better if you can pray
instead but which room will you 
now find me in

i will trace you with 
those slippers you keep forgetting
since i cannot
write poetry to help glance at your
moon face Allah hasn’t given
any permission to extract that
perfume from your presence yet

change of scene would mean 
arid lands of a tomorrow 
becoming dusty and bleak only
fragrance of plastic burning skin
those infinite lands can
give the blessing to become
one with the dump
landfills garbage
but this time not 
to sprout a new seeking 
to remain within earth of 
lowest quality of most
barren places reached by me

Allah my dump went on
for years or it felt like that
to come and really pester
me and let go of that 
old mansion with floors
of imagination and expectations
shattering great women
to the grand submission 
finally looks and smells too
good to be true and gone forever

your voice floating 
from some other side of disappointment
like a bakery on the side
of winding roads leading to
small towns beside a huge mountain
coconuts and cream puffs 
will you come back to me you
wandering love
no ustads can bring back to me
you are going to remain thirsty inside 
my unfragrant tears vacuum packed

koyels slightly dying rotting inside and out 
even seeing that you will never travel to distant lands
and lover you will stay 
outside of a field i pray 
not to find you anymore in front
just beside me when no one will adore
my ankles or my diminishing curves
scratching your dark skin 
just beside me unlike Allah 
how else do i call out to your heart?
how else?

when we sat in triangles
refuge was bordering us 
our names circling us
our lives kidding us 
just the perfect combination 
to call upon one who doesn’t belong
one who cannot be real
one who is by definition 
among the heartiest and loneliest


Rukmini is person who sometimes wants to be AI who sometimes wants to be person. She is interested in landscapes, cityscapes, bodyscapes. She writes poetry only when she feels like a Queen. 

Zoe Grace Marquedant

lesbian sex explained via excerpts from the stanford university psychiatry lecture on “the value of girlfriends” (chain email) I was forwarded by my mother 

an evening 
the last 
the mind-body connection
the relationship between stress and disease
head
other things
one of the best things
to be married to a woman
for a woman
her
nurture her 
relationships with her girlfriends
first
serious
.
with each other differently
provide 
deal
life experiences
physically
quality "girlfriend time"
more serotonin
combat
a general feeling
being
relationships around activities
from our souls
form
with our sisters
VERY GOOD
spending time
just as important
working out
a tendency to think
"exercising"
for our bodies
hanging out with friends
wasting our time
productively engaged
not true
fact
failure to create
quality personal relationships
with other humans
dangerous
our
smoking
every time
with a gal pal
on the back
doing something good
indeed very, very blessed
toast to our friendship
with our girlfriends
to stay in touch
like I just did
!
all the women in my life
helped me 
stay 
very loved


Zoe Grace Marquedant (she/her) is a queer writer. She earned her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence and her M.F.A. from Columbia University. Her work has been featured in the Analog Cookbook, the Schuylkill Valley Journal, the School of Commons, and Talk Vomit. She is a fellow with the Research Ecologies & Archival Development lab in Zurich. Follow @zoenoumlaut

Aliyah Curry

Water to Me

I come/offering 
tea when she offers water
ever taking notice of her lips 
molded to the cup
I want to kiss her. 

I win her over with a foaming 
matcha she has never tasted
such a gentle sweet/blow into the lid
I am going to kiss her. 

I do not count the kiss
I finally get the courage 
to meekly plant
when I learn she does not do morning breath
I am mortified/she chuckles
offers me a cup of water on her way to the kitchen

I am so thirsty/the kind where I gulp 
three glasses of water then a juice
tea/nothing quenches/staring, 
her lips slick after a sip of water
ice I imagine sliding behind her front teeth
there is an oval of pink where the top/bottom meet
a tiny pool/the perfect size for a dip

she smiles down my body
finger over my nipple
playful and finally, we kiss,
my tongue, as I drink, 
freezing to hers. 


Aliyah Curry is a Southern bred writer, focusing on Black female sexuality and mental health. When she is not writing poetry and short stories, she makes film, theater, and photographs, travels, and has dance parties with her niece. Her words can be found in Port City Review, Permission to Write, Cathexis Northwest Press, forthcoming in Call + Response Journal. Keep up with her and their daughters at https://theirdaughters.productions/

James Gaynor

Romantic Evening for One


Twilight birds turn into frogs 
or they in their voices do
singing secrets known only to owls —
as dead-eyed in the darkening
a snaking silver fish with teeth
listens to its next meal 

While on another shore
In a different forest
it’s hard to tell
under the feathers and tulle
who’s a swan and who’s a princess
because here in some confusion
so often they are both
There’s a wizard there’s a queen —
always a wizard always a queen — and
her pale flock dances in military formation
while one of its number molts into
her human other then into yet another other
perplexing a prince unaware
he’s half of an interspecies couple
At this lake nothing ends well
but time after time I hope
just this once —
love might triumph
because well you never know
and
at least until now
stranger things have happened

but then 
              there are evenings  
of uninterrupted music 
when the indifferent unseen 
fills with fractured light and

the end of everything isn’t


James W. Gaynor is a poet working on surviving his third pandemic. His most recent book, I'll Miss You Later, is a collection of 20 poems written over the course of the AIDS epidemic in New York City from 1986 -1997.

Hallie Fogarty

Untitled

Unsympathetic crier, heart dried up, 
only reaching out to take,
only loving on my terms.
Never twisting my limits for you,
never jumping off the fucking boat.  

Maybe it’s just 
a love language you never learned, 
because something without a definition 
must not exist at all. 
If I’m asking for too much
maybe you should ask for more. 


Hallie Fogarty (she/they) is a lesbian poet and visual artist currently creating and studying in Northern Kentucky. Her work deals with themes of lesbian identity, queer relationships, mental illness, and introspection. When not creating, she can be found reading or spending time with her three dogs.

Lily Meyersohn

100 Days with Sophie, 1997

after Lee Mingwei “100 days with Lily, 1995”


sophie putting on her belt her pants are always too big. sophie soaking the beans overnight. sophie slow to start on her broken bike. sophie upset after work all day she’s a computer. sophie biking not turning back around the corner at wildenbruchstrasse with the construction I’m stuck behind the gates. sophie her arms long wrapping around me twice. sophie her words fast too fast slow down while you’re telling a story okay. sophie her words so slow they mean she’s falling asleep. sophie don’t fall asleep. sophie are you asleep no I’m awake. sophie begging I don’t want the night to end. sophie in blue in the tall grass her eyes closed. sophie chopping garlic only one sharp knife in the drawer. sophie her hands are in bread she’s squishing it together it’ll be better that way in her mouth. sophie peeing be quiet I have to focus okay now I’m peeing. sophie more I want more. sophie I’m so much taller than you. sophie taking out her hoops every night when they start to poke her neck so she turns from me with her fingers on the lobes of her ears. sophie going to bed I need to turn she turns away. sophie leaving out the milk on the counter I put it back. sophie sponging down the counter it’s so late for that. sophie twitching her body is numb I want you to breathe. sophie keep reading. sophie at lidl picking out wilted arugula that’s the one thing never buy wilted. sophie listening to autumn in new york again. sophie taking off her dirty socks. sophie folding her shirts in the closet metallic with sweat. sophie coming home with disinfectant lozenges for my tonsils I don’t feel okay today. sophie jacket around us and the movie not the right language. sophie rubbing sleep from her eyes and it’s yellow caught in the creases. sophie scooping mustard out with a cucumber. sophie pulling me down to her face there are cups stacked and crumbs on her computer and no one wants me to leave so I kiss and then again, I kiss, a last time, I kiss before I leave and we say good luck today. sophie I’m ready to leave. sophie did you lock the door. sophie the key is stuck we have to go around to the front. sophie ice cream is on the way. sophie pressing her fingers into my brainstem I have a headache again. sophie smelling of apple cider in her hair. sophie setting her tea on the pallets while her stomach sloshes with liquid she’s so full don’t touch her. sophie thank you for doing the laundry. sophie that’s too much butter. sophie I love hearing your thoughts. sophie your sweater matches your eyes. sophie grinning back at me on her bike and look up there’s another rainbow. sophie going for a swim alone and the water is cool. sophie watering the plants but she’s moaning they’re dying we don’t know what she’s doing wrong. sophie switching sides with me so I can see the clouds. sophie how can you be my baby and I can be your baby at the same time. sophie watermelon dripping all over her hands and eating the mealy bites for me. sophie kissing the good part of my arm I watch her lips. sophie have you eaten yet. sophie are you hungry are you going to be hungry should we pack food before we leave. sophie filling water bottles so we won’t get thirsty. sophie dancing putting her hands on my waist asking is this okay it’s always okay. sophie her eyes across the room just a second longer while everyone talks. sophie rubbing her chin to get rid of the acne. sophie I’m sorry I have to pee. sophie asking me a question I never thought of that question before. sophie stopping to examine a broken rained-inside computer on the street again. sophie listening to blue moon again. sophie how was your day. sophie I’ll help you honey. sophie what. sophie nothing. sophie bring a coat I don’t want you to be cold. sophie her back pale. sophie slowing down so I can stop to see the river red at sunset. sophie wake me up if you can’t fall asleep. sophie rolling around and we can’t stop laughing my legs are braced against the wall. sophie I’m sad we won’t remember this. sophie looking at me like I’m beautiful so I get reminded. sophie looking at me like she loves me so I get reminded. sophie pushing her bike up the bridge my back stinging with scratches and sweat pouring down no water left and we’re going to die. sophie weaving in the dark through the pillars at görli and follow her I think sometimes follow this woman to the ends of the earth okay yes sure. sophie warm against my body when the train arrives with its wind and it’s time to get on now. sophie what a great thing we did for ourselves. sophie I had so much fun. sophie I love you sophie. 


Lily Meyersohn is a narrative nonfiction writer and prose poet based in Providence, RI. Her bestselling audiobook, "Exit Interview With My Grandmother," was published in May 2020, and other essays and prose-poetry have been published in Entropy, Peach Mag, Little Pharma, and elsewhere.

Cai Rodrigues-Sherley

Someday Cai Will Love Me

after Ocean Vuong



rough & tumble boi,

let me whisper into that nostalgic burst of body
let me interrupt::deepen your mending

i know blood’s citrus 
reminds you of those first stings

gravel & your tender head 
& your prom dress like dust

like dead skin & mineral
coral fabric & glistening transatlantic ash

let me sermon::atone into all that disjoints you
into all in you that is hollow with(out) reason

you think yourself a smokestack
but darling you are air changing

i say I love you
through each lyric omission

i say I love you
through each tense schism

each hesitation, each ink spilled fingerprint
each creased omen of biological determinism

you are afraid
though you will not admit this to the public

you can     not 
bring your         self
                                                                                                                                                                       
to touch me::be touched
to write me::be written

my love please
let me kiss you clean

return to my primordial puck
early in the midnight hour

or high sweet morning mist
collapse into my impenetrable bosom

sad & tender boi
trust my infrastructure

surrender to the unmistakable script
of my lifelines

& i will carry you
slow & steady
all the way 
home


Cai Rodrigues-Sherley (he/they) is a Black queer poet, teaching artist, and lover of 1970s youth poetry. He cares about trans childhoods, queer bodies, mortality, heritage, and love. He is a Sagittarius Sun, Gemini Rising, and Cancer Moon, which means nothing and absolutely everything. He was the 2019 recipient of the Smith College Emily Babcock Poetry Prize, and their work can be found in Cosmonauts Avenue and on the Brooklyn Poets website, where they were a featured Poet of the Week. They currently live in Queens with their partner and are an MFA candidate at New York University in their Creative Writing Program. You can find him on Twitter @caifieri and on Instagram as @thatcaifrom96.

Andy Motz

The Years Together

when i think of us
i don’t know what I love more

the wild nights of self abandon
or
the quiet nights of tenderness

it is

a delightful balance
a happy meeting
a joyful dance


Andy Motz is an independent filmmaker and writer whose works have been featured in various festivals and publications. Andy is constantly exploring nature, beauty, queerness, and mental health throughout all his artwork.

Richard Carey

A Change Is Coming

I watch men
plunge fingers in mouths
and think
you should never unbury the dead.

I watch men
unearth desires and fear
my depths are nothing but a wasteland. 

I imagine:

You say it’s okay.
We unbutton my pants, though
my hands follow yours.

I close my eyes.
Wish on a night sky black.

Feel a coldness
a prodding
the drowning under
a creak of bones.

Resurface 
in one great breath 
with silver ribbons
commemorating our war.

In the bed of our ruins
a boy once lost stands
with a skull erupting
blue iridescent butterflies. 


Richard Carey lives on Nantucket, Massachusetts. He came out as gay five months ago on his twenty-third birthday. 

Noelle McManus

Wedding Song (excerpt)


There are
so many things I haven’t yet done. Your hands
moving up my spine. It’s been so long
since someone touched me. It’s alright, I hear you saying,
look how the sky has changed. I look up.
It has.
 
It has, and I think it’s winter now, though I don’t know
enough to be able to tell. You hold open the car door for me,
laugh when I thank you. I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you,
your orange hair, your willowy limbs, the way you don’t look away.
I want you to hold me. I want you to remember me. I want to
forget some things and learn others, I want to shed fear like
an old skin, I hate it, I hate it, look now, the sky’s changing again,
the water’s lapping at the dock, I’m tossing my head back 
behind a low-hanging branch and finding leaves in my lap,
it’s nearly raining again, and I want to kiss you. You touch my cheek
with your lips. Un adios argentino, you say. I only look at you.


Noelle McManus is a twenty-year-old writer from Long Island, New York who studies linguistics, Spanish, and German. Her work has been published in The Women's Review of Books and UMass Amherst's Jabberwocky.

Jessie Lynn McMains

to try & burn


and all across this great country, seventeen-year-old girls
are reading Kerouac for the first time, turning on to try and burn.
— Sarah Zoe Mondt


at fifteen we were unfinished & glorious; a snarl of skinnylegs, muddy hair, dirty elbows, skinned knees & dreams of escape from the sort of lives our parents had plotted out for us / we were drawn to songs that seared our skin & goosepimpled it, the bonebreak beat of hardcore drums & the sizzle of loudfastrules guitar, everything at maximum volume; we were drawn to books about drugs, kicks, wild wildness—we ignored the way those boys treated chicks like us because we saw our selves in the movement of their bodies, go man go they said & so / we did, shot ourselves back & forth halfway across america, from the mid-atlantic alleys graffitied with history to the quaint smalltowns of the upper midwest / along the way left crime scenes of red & black hair dye in roadside bathrooms, pierced each other’s noses with safety pins & felt hip for a week or two until the wounds festered, turned tender & hot to the touch; along the way we kissed boys & girls in the dank-dark bathrooms of punk clubs, & yet imagined all the real adventures we’d have one day when we were all grown up / we made each other braver; I taught her to tear down her walls or at least put a gate in, I who fell in love ten times a day & gave myself to any girl or boy who crooked their fingers & offered a wink or a beer to my illegal self; she gave me permission to hook a thumb and catch a passing car, to rip my jeans on the barbed tops of keepout fences, taught me how to bust open / the padlocks on abandoned buildings and break into construction sites where we hunted ghosts & sprayed our feral names & o we were best beat bloodbrothers & psychic punkrock sisters of the soul; this was all a whole person-who-can-legally-drink ago so why do I yet write odes to these still-sore pangs, the toothy aches of my younger yearning? because because because / no matter the miles I’ve kissed & the bodies I’ve travelled, no matter the girls & boys, girlboys, boygirls I’ve handed my photocopied heart to, she’s the one that owns / the original; I remember her in my twin bed, fingers twined in mine, as we read aloud, Kerouac & Ginsberg, us two madgirls who burned burned burned like the lighters we used to blaze our popcan weedpipes & holy / the peachfuzz of her teenaged legs, holy our lips touching on the French inhale, holy our heartbeats and the howling explosion of our becoming.


Jessie Lynn McMains (they/them) is a multi-genre writer. Their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in many publications, including Okay DonkeyPetrichorTiny EssaysMoonchild Magazine, and Barnhouse. They are the author of several chapbooks, most recently The Girl With the Most Cake and forget the fuck away from me. They were the recipient of the 2019 Hal Prize for poetry, and were the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Racine, WI. They are editor/publisher of Bone & Ink Press. You can find their website at recklesschants.net, or find them on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram @rustbeltjessie.

Gardner Dorton

Outside the Ark

Let’s say it: we’re drowning
in this urgent minute. the god-
hands, wringing out the water.
We are dead
center of the storm, surrounded
by the drumming of rain
and the smell of spores
lifted by sudden humidity.
 
Face it, our bodies are broken
and covered in each other’s sweat.
Our bodies are covered
by the last embarrassing lock
of sunlight as it closes, and we
are closer to each other 
than a shadow to skin.
 
How many times do we have to
drown standing upright? How bloated
will my fingers be when they catch
the angels jumping from your tongue?
 
I’ll say it: I don’t regret loving you,
even under the thunder and cold.
Even the heaven bound saints
have never felt this before.
 
Promise me, when it’s done,
you’ll know that the water
that buries us will remember
everything. Maybe bodies float
because the ocean is hungry 
for something else. Maybe ours
will lift over the horizon like dawn. 


Gardner Dorton is a graduate candidate at the College of Charleston for an MFA in Poetry. His poems have been published in After the Pause, South 85 and Rattle, and he has work forthcoming in Homology Lit as well as Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Betsy Housten

MY BROTHER LOVED STEPHEN KING

Books lined his shelves, worn mass-market spines of one-word titles, 
Carrie and Christine and Misery, It with its thumb-soft cover of a paper boat 
 
nosing into a storm drain where three green talons hinted at something 
much worse. Shining hardbacks for his Christmas pile in my parents' closet, 
 
stories I was too afraid to read bound for his precise, chronological rows. 
My brother presided over a remote like a monarch, forever lording it 
 
out of my reach. The night I couldn't sleep after watching horror movies 
at an older girl's house, my mom said Say no next time, like it was okay 
 
to tell someone what I did and did not want, like I could even know that 
myself. Twenty years after I first feared it might be true, I said the one word
 
girlfriend
at my brother's house, my heart a paper boat in my throat. Afraid 
of nothing, he tossed me the remote and asked what I wanted to watch
 
for once, and did my girlfriend have a name? Andy, I breathed, looking
at his shelves, fuller now with even more stories – just words some writer 

like me put to paper, his own nightmares laid bare in the light of day. I said 
her name again, made it real: a dreamscape, a needful thing, a talisman.


Betsy Housten is a queer writer and massage therapist who earned her MFA at the University of New Orleans and makes her home in Brooklyn. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Autostraddle, Yellow Arrow Journal, Rogue Agent, Lunch, Bone & Ink Press, Little Red Tarot, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. You can find her at betsyhoustenwrites.com.


NOTE: This poem was previously published by Maudlin House.

Aoife Riach

Summer Holiday

11 June 1852
Emily Dickinson to Susan Huntington

“I have but one thought, Susie, this afternoon of June, and that of you, and I have one prayer, only; dear Susie, that is for you. That you and I in hand as we e'en do in heart, might ramble away as children, among the woods and fields, and forget these many years, and these sorrowing cares, and each become a child again — I would it were so, Susie, and when I look around me and find myself alone, I sigh for you again; little sigh, and vain sigh, which will not bring you home.”

Beneath the ornate arch of Canada's
oldest Chinatown, we're playing house
again. Walking out with noodles you slam
your own hand in a security grate like oh
god we've been left unsupervised. I carry
it all home to kiss it better and now we're
giddy on a bus with fizzy drinks, taking naps
at noon, telling ghost stories on the beach.
I want to spin you around til we're dizzy, roll
down hills and bruise my knees and weave
you necklaces from daisies. What wouldn't I 
pull up by the roots to get a grin from you, 
your sunburst freckles in the light like sherbet, 
reading me to sleep. If we met as children you
would hate me, and so used to adoration I 
would talk about you all the time. I get braver
when I'm with you, like I could hold a spider
right in my palm, breathing secrets across
your pillow in the dark. We wail at home-time,
like there's a teddy forgotten in a shopping
centre or why you should never give a toddler 
a balloon. I wished I could have floated away
with it then, I’d let it lead me to the moon.


Aoife Riach is a queer feminist witch with an MA in Gender & Women’s studies and a post grad certificate in Sexuality & Sexual Health Education. She has worked as a writer for BUST magazine in NYC and her poetry has been published by College Green Journal, Nothing Substantial, Sonder, Impossible Archetype and other magazines. She was a finalist in the 2019 Inter-varsity Poetry Slam and was a 2019 Irish Writers Centre Young Writer Delegate. Her poem “Vancouver” was chosen for Hungering, the latest curation of the Poetry Jukebox currently installed at EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

S. Yarberry

Of Figure and Field                 

On the phone you say: 
I wish I could forgive you, 
but I can’t
. I stare across
my apartment. There’s 
a bowl a girl had given me— 
appalled at my lack
of kitchenware. It’s white
and blue and thin. 
I shudder at the rotten
emptiness that any bowl, 
especially this bowl, 
today, prompts. 
There is no such thing 
as forgiveness— 
the shadow of error 
is terribly permanent. 
How can this be? 
That it isn’t us 
sitting there on the ridiculous 
beach— with our naked
thighs pressed together,
tragically in love— 
the whole city
some sweeping mess behind us. 
Who cares? I keep thinking. 
Slur of nights. 
A car alarm starts. It’s almost funny, 
the gravity of loss, in moments like these. 
The phone hums against my desk,
it’s not you, I tell myself—
bewildered and undone, not you.  
The air is so crisp, 
the radiator so loud, 
I cannot even forget that I am alive,
I am here, right now, I am missing you. 
Come back.  


S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared in Tin House, Indiana Review, The Offing, Berkeley Poetry Review, jubilat, The Washington Post's The Lily Magazine, among others. Their other writings can be found in Bomb Magazine and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. S. has a MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis where they now hold the Junior Teaching Fellowship in Poetry. They currently serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle.

Hannah Karpinski

breaststroke backstroke

you come in from the cold sloshing
puddles in your too-big boots but you’re naked

in no time, gangly limbs slipping quickly
into lycra. flip flops forgotten again, your feet prune

to match the drain grate in the middle
of the floor, only softer. you are so soft, 

smacking along wet tiles with your towel
and your goggles. in the shower you’d like to glance

around, but you cast no lingering looks in that
dimly-lit chamber spilling over with steam and chlorine

from hissing shower heads that only run for a few seconds 
anyway. girls ask for help putting on swim caps and your hands

fumble; you’re all wet when you come out on deck and giddy
to dive in. the pool is a two-way mirror: you can ogle in goggles

at bums underwater, but wiggling and flailing won’t land you in the meet. 
the coach says “be a dolphin!” but you’d rather be a sloth—

sloths can hold their breath for 40 minutes; dolphins 10.
you can’t do one length, but there’s nowhere you’d rather be 

on a Wednesday. some girls here look like water striders,
slim and gliding—you can never keep up. you are literally treading water

and that’s the best part of practice: when everyone is stuck 
heads bobbing bodies undulating under the glassy surface,

staying afloat. but what if you pretended you couldn’t? what if
you splashed, gasping? who would give you mouth to mouth? 

back in the change room the grade 8 girl is wrapped in a towel
when you walk over and offer her gum. you never look below the neck—

change rooms are full of eyes. the girl accepts the gum with a bubbly 
lilting thanks, and then your moms pick you up. at home you float

in the tub, and the tub feels bigger than the ocean, and you
overflow the tub because you’ve changed the taste in that girl’s mouth.


Hannah Karpinski is a queer reader and writer who lives in Montreal but often floats back to Toronto, where she's from. Her work has appeared in publications like Bad Nudes and Lemon Hound, and she is one of the founding editors of Ossa Magazine.


Note: This poem was previously published in Hannah’s chapbook, Beach Seasons (April 2018)

Joshua Garcia

I Will Tell You How I Love You in the New Year

Today I saw a man who walks just like you,
and I turned with a breath,
with a sense of coming.
 
Cat’s claw blooms on the vine
like hands held open to a promise.
Your name means gift from God.
 
We were sitting on rocks warmed by the sun
when you turned to look at me. 
 
Your eyelids will close on me soon.
Let me keep them there,
those moments dripping with amber,
 
while thoughts of you still comb
through my hair like fingers.
I will be grateful forever.
 
My palms spread out like drum skins.


Joshua Garcia lives and writes in Charleston, South Carolina, where he is pursuing an MFA at the College of Charleston and is an editorial assistant for Crazyhorse. Joshua’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Nashville Review, Ekstasis Magazine, and Ruminate Magazine.

Mary Foulk

WITH BUCK TEETH. WITH BRACES.

— a nod to Chen Chen


With buck teeth. With braces. Without a night guard, which even now I refuse to wear in middle age, despite my dentist’s plea. With my parents’ glasses, oversized bottle lenses. With a Dorothy Hamill haircut. With clothing sewn by my mother in Lily Pulitzer style. Without interest in Barbies or Lily Pulitzer. With skinned knees and a desire to be the boy my father wanted. With my brother who liked pink and listening to LPs of Cher. With red hair and freckles and sunburnt skin. With cutoffs I still fashion from old jeans. Without models but in hindsight perhaps the great aunt who never married. With feelings for the girl with long brown hair from second grade, whose name I inked across posters scattering my room. With pink grapefruits, both sour and sweet, dusted lightly with sugar and traces of Palm Beach, where all good WASPs originate. With awkward shyness. With boys chasing girls. Without ever wanting to be chased by a boy. With silences at the dinner table. With final Christmases at my grandparent’s house. Without the safety of their acceptance. With my college roommate. With my mother accusing me of becoming a liberal at that school. With a move to New York, an inherited dream. With my brother, navigating the East Village. With hide and seek. With that girl’s electric lips on the Clit club dance floor. Without midnight remorse. With the morning’s battle of shame versus guilt. With coming out, going in, coming out, going in. With the towers falling in 1993, in 2002. With darkness and burning smoke and it will happen again and mortality. With the searching. Without the knowing. With Sunday dinners at the 11th street bar, my brother and I sharing stories of who we really were. With a tightening closet. With an anxious heart. Without him, trying to imagine a new world.  With anger. With shattering. With fear and an honest letter to a broken family. With their reaction. With my partner in our Queens apartment. With the morning light draped across our mingled arms and legs. With the risk of feeling again. With love and a legal marriage. With a platinum band from Tiffany’s, engraved like my grandmother’s. With my father’s champagne toast. With our children, placing daisies on all their graves. With a vow to live the life my brother was denied. 


Mary Warren Foulk is an educator, writer, artist, and activist who lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. Her work has appeared in VoiceCatcher, Four and Twenty, Hip Mama, Curve Magazine, and Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press). Currently, she is completing her MFA in Writing at VCFA.

Caroline Grand-Clement

on why i stayed the night

maybe it was the curved staircase
or the jesus paintings lining the walls
 
maybe it was the never ending corridor revealing room 
after room 
after room
or the mirrors in every one of them
 
maybe it was the tea cup on your desk
the way your bed was framed by an alcove
how the flowers bloomed on your sheets
 
maybe it was the light pink glow of the curtains
or the sound of fingers hitting silent piano keys
 
maybe it was the poem written on the wall
or the mattress on the floor
 
maybe it was your grandma's faith 
or her movie collection
or your mother's girlfriend’s photographs
 
maybe it was the missing cat
traces of it on the couch
 
maybe it was the fresh mango
& how in that rainy museum
 
we bit into it.


Caroline Grand-Clement is a queer eighteen-year-old studying English & Scandinavian literature in Lyon, France. She dreams of art in any form, falling stars & late night conversations. She hopes to make a change in the world one word at a time. You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram @octopodeshearts.

Zenobia Frost

Peripheral Drift

After the Australian Marriage Equality YES vote

Turns out you can still pash in a graveyard
at 28, though by now my fear of spectres
has faded into a more realistic fear of people.
There’s a torch in my back pocket. Her hands
smell of headstone moss and bug repellent.
mosquitoes hunt us: hot, damp figures scuttling
on the edge. Later, the sceptic tour guide explains
how we interpret threats in our peripheral vision:
shapes in the rear-view could be anything,
but they’re probably not the undead.
 
Right now, we’re waiting for the tour to start, 
deciding whether holding hands is a thing.
The night this country tallied its paper yesses,
that’s what we were finally saying to each other.
This week was the first time someone yelled
a slur from a car since I was a teenager.
“If only people would mistake me for a boy
when it’s convenient,” she said, not taking
her hands off me then, or now, even when
we hear a branch crack, or blink at torches
fluorescing the trunks of gum trees.


Zenobia Frost is a poet from Brisbane, Australia who recently won the Val Vallis Prize and a Queensland Writers Fellowship. Her next collection, After the Demolition, is available from Cordite Books.


Note: This poem was previously published in Overland, and also appears in After the Demolition.