Luke Kuzmish

CRM

our customer relations management software tells me
it's 79 in Phoenix. night, the moon
illustrated as a toothless smile,
the way mine might look in the morning
when my dentures are soaking
in lake-water claustrophobic,
the dusty shelf of our first home—
my first gift of getting clean
was having my teeth extracted,
pulled from me like rotting secrets.

I am this customer, pretending
in the desolate sands of Arizona, crying
like a coyote to a private moon. testing
things like idempotency, a word
I learn through condescension
from people I've never met
whose job titles even are an ungloved fist,
who cut their teeth, natural
in egg-shell condos, waiting
for cable repairmen and alumni mail.

my therapist tells me to remain
curious. my sponsor tells me to be
compassionate. these directives
find me behind
barbed-wire thoughts—when
the bloodhound exhausts
his legs, trailing.

Luke Kuzmish is a writer from Erie, Pennsylvania. My Name Does Not Belong to Me, his fifth collection of poetry, was published by Weasel Press in 2020. You can find out more about the poet at http://lukekuzmish.com/. 

Sarah Wetzel

Diagnosis

Call her in because it’s almost too dark
for the birds and squirrels, call her in 

for it’s time to eat, to feed 
what’s standing at the locked door, staring

while we shift what seems to her
furtively between plate and pot,

between sink and supper. Call the dog
and call the friend who, still 

in hospital, called yesterday and the day
before when she called

I was home, but I didn’t answer,
couldn’t even call back.

Call the dog. Call the vine-choked oak,
the caterpillars crawling, chickadees

and crows. Yes, call the crow
and ask the way and what’s after.

Call it what it is: 
harbinger.

Sarah Wetzel is the author of the poetry collection All Our Davids, released from Terrapin Books in 2019. She is also the author of River Electric with Light, which won the AROHO Poetry Publication Prize and was published by Red Hen Press in 2015, and Bathsheba Transatlantic, which won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and was published by Anhinga Press in 2010. When not shuttling between her two geographic loves—Rome, Italy and New York City—she is a PhD student in Comparative Literature in the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She holds an engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a MBA from Berkeley. More importantly for her poetry, she completed a MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College in January 2009. You can see some more of her work at www.sarahwetzel.com.

Ayush Mukherjee

Empathy

I know
they forget me
between wars, tests and weekly homework;
they see me
confined in my raised chair, sitting
always opposite,
my hands of vine that envelop the room
keeping them from wild sunlight;
so they tell me
(their words tumbling like chains of skittles
and scattering across my high desk):
you are not fit to teach.

I think
their answers
are dead ground, with headstones marking dates of passing,
their questions
are sea-froth—all bubbles no substance,
their faces
are beyond the aid that eight-to-two public schools can provide.
I reply
you are not fit to learn.

like an ant impaled on a toothpick,
wriggling between life and death,
I see this aggressive world
diverge from my perspective,
stretch to the horizon with the promise of a bridge,
become a giant, vexing stick.

so I tell them
(in a classroom, laid out flat,
with corners nibbled by heavy sighs)
you will learn Empathy
before you learn History.

I decide
to forego lecture, dialogue and example
and teach them through periods of
exhausting silence: we hear
  school-bag zips like race cars,
  the hourly bell;
    brooms, barefoot on mosaic corridors,
    shearing clacks of autumn's teeth,
    the hourly bell;
      footsteps, through a false ceiling,
      the music-room, first asleep then awake,
      the hourly bell;
        impatient engravings on pinewood desks,
        the hourly bell;

the school coordinator:
thin, pencil-eyed, precise,
buzzes on my desk with a reminder,
chimes in my inbox with the syllabus,
accosts me in the elevator one day
taking us down
into talks of terminal exams and marks.
 
we know
you are a good teacher
but
(we hang in space as feet shuffle in).
 
they survive
through borrowed notes.
 
complaints.
deliberations.
a letter of regret.
 
on monday
the coordinator addresses the students.
he tells them
we found you a teacher
who will teach you history
before they teach you empathy.
 
when he leaves
the students whisper a reluctant apology.
1 month
3 weeks
3 days
after that incident,
they are a little too late
for any of us to win.

Ayush Mukherjee is a Bangalore (India) based writer who has recently been picked up for publication by The Threepenny Review.

Natalie Owen

holy infant

24 hour mcdonald’s eats up your rearview and the peach flavored sky
is choked by the prison lights.
i want to grab the hand next to me and dip our fingers in.
glow stick bleeds down into the trees
like a head wound on a man standing upright
(why are his friends pointing? he only feels warm egg-yolk running down his collarbone)
and threatens to surge over the road. it licks the lane lines.
pushing pulsing like the voluptuous magma lip
purring down Kilauea in the National Geographic volcano special.
her bulging pimpled veins brooding and steamy.

i’m blushing into your side and remember clouds of color
and my cherry cheek pressed into your fir colored smoke smelling flannel.
it’s not romantic, i’m blind,
i can move only to slip my fingers under the edges of the drying sky and curl it up
so that darkness shows beneath and i can sleep.
wet feet in bed,
and what could be minutes later,
i wake to pumpkin glow pressed against the japanese paper screen
and voices downstairs.
big eyes and you’re beside me
peach smelling curls bleeding onto soft pillow. peach sky peach hair nectar night.

Natalie Owen is a student in California. Her poetry has appeared in Canvas Literary Journal. In her spare time she enjoys reading everything she can get her hands on, particularly on the topics of cult history and archaeology.

Shannon Kuta Kelly

Off-Duty Hearse

The flat roads of home
and the beginnings of rain
spill nowhere into every direction
at the onset of dusk, the blue flax
growing in the ditches. Why is it
no one ever writes about places like these?
I spent a plane ride buried
in a brochure about invasive species
that have begun appearing on the highways,
the absinth wormwood and plumeless thistle
that now grace us with their refined faces
amidst the golden cornfield sway.
Today on the quiet commute, I hug the curb
to avoid the off-duty hearse, whose tired driver
is sighing inside as he heaves the empty dark home.
I think of the turkey vulture some farmer’s daughter
brought to biology class, his bald red head,
how he shrugged dispassionately in his sinister tuxedo.
I don’t begrudge him for his slick carrion neck,
for the way he has evolved to take nothing with him
when he goes. We are all just trying our best,
I suppose. We are all just passing through.

Shannon Kuta Kelly's work has appeared in such places as The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, The London Magazine, and BODY Prague. She is a current doctoral student in literature and Slavic studies at Queens University Belfast.

Gary Leising

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)

Right after the album came out
Jimi Hendrix learned the song and played
it as if it were his own. There are 
enough witnesses to know that’s fact.
Myth: at a show he released two parakeets
that flew the venue and now their descendents
overwhelm the square. Every bird of that ilk
in London came like magic from his sleeve,
his puffy hippie shirt sleeve.
Wouldn’t
it be nice if those stories were true,
if there were green and silver flashese of Jimi
in the Soho sky, not just a photograph,
fisheyed of two white Brits and one black
American in Kew on a rock, not just
vinyl, CDs, and whatever streaming services
save sound on, but heart-beating, song-singing,
peach and happy-love parakeets fluttering wings
above the city’s Spring. Those first two birds’ DNA
still spiraling in thermal updrafts or Hendrix
with this song, not even his. Imagine the 
sharp bite of a bent guitar string in
his calloused fingertip—a thing
he couldn’t feel. Imagine hearing that song
that night live, a note curves into air, carves
cuts, its steel blade pressed on our childish,
virgin, yielding skin.

Gary Leising is the author of the book, The Alp at the End of My Street, from Brick Road Poetry Press (2014).  He has also published three poetry chapbooks:  The Girl with the JAKE Tattoo (Two of Cups Press, 2015), Temple of Bones (Finishing Line Press, 2013), and Fastened to a Dying Animal (Pudding House, 2010).  He lives in Clinton, New York, with his wife and two sons, where he teaches creative writing and poetry as a professor of English.

Florence Heap

these teeth are like chicklets all over the floor

hysteria is an incubus
my house full of seducers 
playing these fake axe games 

like I don’t know
I hope to give you my good ankle in return 
if you won’t accept
I’m filing for bankruptcy

no one mentions the word theft
which becomes the fish I can’t care for 

the witches say I need to accept my value
more than FACE OF THE BUSINESS
the sheriff says to think on reputation 
speaking from deep within the sex-dream

if I don’t win this time
banish me to the well
along with the horror movie sellouts

upstairs my wife hosts the dinner 
multiple stuffed swans 
whilst I practice my aim
space of condensed hands

revenge is a feast
one of our friends dissected 
for the path to victory

a whole pack of underdogs 
is no use at all 

Florence Heap is a recent Philosophy graduate. She is a past editor of Icarus Magazine, and her work has been previously published in Smithereens Literary Magazine and Uppagus. She currently resides in Vancouver.

Xiaoqiu Qiu

The 3rd Graders Go to School 

How far am I from the truth? 
All I have is two LED screens of opposite news
glaring like unsheathed blades 
and some broken words of a phone call
from a friend who still lives in Hong Kong.
I am two worlds away, and the 
birds here sing so differently in the morn.
I can never get used to 
a turquoise colored dawn
but every time I want to hold on 
to something like a truth 
I think of them. I remember 
how they marched down the narrow roads,
chilly and quiet in the early morning,
how they have to pass 
four times the customs,
two in Shenzhen and two in Hong Kong
and walk two hours straight 
just so they can make it 
to the morning recitals
their school classrooms at Kowloon. 
I imagine them marching down 
the burnt street, 
in their snow-white uniforms 
and flapping red scarves.   
One of them got peanut butter on his dimple
the shape of a tiny star.
I imagine 
tiny shoes wobbling in concert, 
like dandelions barely holding on 
in the bland wind; 
and the colorful lunchboxes! 
Teal green, navy blue, 
blue, blue with stripes, yellow and red 
packed by their moms at 4 a.m.
4 is before the birds and bikes, I imagine,
before the honks and engines,
roadblocks and sirens,
chants and shouts,
locked arms and bent knees; 
before the “we”s and “them”s 
and the smoked air and the startled pigeons. 
Before anything. 
They march from their average homes in Shenzhen,
and I imagine it is not a crucial difference
for any of them, that things
don't mean something.
The flags roaring in the wind
have an ideal to teach.
The smeared plaques on the ground 
did an age wrong.
The giant strokes of characters 
clinks and clanks on…
I imagine they walk on
and their feet know only 
the next firm, solid ground.
I see their little but sharp eyes 
waiting at red lights,
reaching for the world.
One by one and always before,
not after, a decision, they take it all in:
the smells of a steaming baozi shop
and of a dewed roadside rose 
are equally curious. 
I imagine a boy could pick a rose
as they wait in the traffic, and put it 
in a girl’s hands, 
well before they will learn the name of it at school; 
And before the redness 
takes hold-- it is already safely
in her palm--I imagine 
they march on, perhaps singing 
a song knowing only half the lyrics,
a song that neither the chess-playing old man
nor the bulbar birds,
will recognize, but can't help to hum along.
A song sung and mostly out of tune, 
or even jarring to some. A hurrying figure going
to the metro, I imagine,
moved by their earnest and simple tune, 
might stop, and give it a listen—
In my imagination, truth is not hard. 
It does not ask you anything 
doesn't ask you to swear fealty, or be its gunman, 
nor does it blockade you 
or hold a grudge against other truths. 
In my imagination, truth 
is not far from the third graders,
infallibly every morning,
go to school.

Xiaoqiu Qiu is a Chinese MFA student in UNLV.

Ashley Edwards

Origami

I’m really good at origami 

One time, I turned his entire box of red flags into roses

This other time, I made my body into a graveyard 

I’m a rest stop for deadbeat lovers 

And half the time 

I’m folding my no’s into yes’ 

I’m always trying to turn things into something they’re not 

Change them

Alter them 

Thinking that maybe if I just tweak them a little bit, I can fix it

Do you remember when I tried to mold your anger into orchids?

Tried to flip my father into full time 

The thing about origami

Is once you make the fold 

You can’t go back

The crease stays there 

I’m learning that people are like paper 

You can’t get the creases out of them 

No matter how much you try

You can’t make someone be where they don’t want to be 

You can’t turn stones into stairwells 

The hardest thing about origami 

Is you have to take the smallest pieces of something and try to make it whole 

Which is why half the time I’m left with unfinished projects 

Which is why half the time I got all these paper cuts on my hands

I remember I tried to turn you into a swan 

Used all the scars you had from previous artists

But that’s the most beautiful thing about origami 

Is That you can take something hideous 

And turn it into something it never thought it could be

Even if it’s just for show 

Even when you know that the swan is not really a swan 

When I say I’m good at origami 

What I really mean is that loving you is a trick I’ve mastered 

Creases and all 

And I know that this doesn’t last forever, 

That eventually the swan turns back into the ugly duckling 

That I will no longer be the person you need 

So I guess that makes the both of us good at folding

Did you know? 

Japanese tradition says that if you fold a thousand cranes, you get one wish 

I’d fold a thousand more 

To love you one more time

Ashley Edwards is a poet from Richmond, Virginia. She began writing poetry at the age of 16 and has been writing ever since. She’s currently working on publishing a poetry book of her own. She enjoys writing on subjects such as love, betrayal, friendship, racial injustice, and about strong, beautiful women. She also enjoys performing her pieces at local shops around the city and hopes to inspire people with her words.

Lauren Turner

Marriage is a Man-Made Lake

We learn that the lake we love to hike around was man-made. Still, turtles sun themselves on logs that fell in at some point. Still, a lake; still waters also animate. In the mean time, we can make anything mean. At the trailhead, I told you: I’ll love anything but a snake. We make the loop, reach the beginning, you take my hand gently and say: Hey, it’s okay, but look: there’s a little black snake, there. And I greet her as she clears our path. We’re getting married. Tonight, we fry up potatoes to spruce up leftovers. Only one match left and we use one candlestick to light the other. Did you notice how our worries became our wonder? How our dread loops around toward delight? How the end calls out to the means.

Lauren Turner is a writer and musician (Lou Turner) in Nashville, TN. She is the author of Shape Note Singing, forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2021. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Image Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Chapter 16, and more. She serves as a blog editor for the freeform community radio station WXNA FM in Nashville, where she hosts her literary program, The Crack In Everything. Her recent album Songs for John Venn (SPINSTER) was called 'winsome' and 'quietly imaginative' by NPR Music. 

Hannah Matzecki

A Quick Portrait

All of my old poems
Contain too many adjectives
(most of them
came from
the thesaurus
but that’s a secret
so don’t tell).

I wonder 
what would it look like
if the words were left
Bare
with only the page
beneath them?

If the words
were left
to mean what they mean,
And for that to just be that?

If mother was just mother.
If cat was just cat.
If cookie was just cookie.
If scared was just scared
But also lonely too
And some nights
Unable to sleep
And not for lack of trying.
If small wasn’t so earnest a description,
If forgotten weren’t the truth of what it’s like in there,
If delicate was not an insult
But just a thing
That some people are
Sometimes 
And maybe even
A beautiful thing
At that.

Hannah Matzecki is a writer and mother. She lives in California with her husband, daughter, and two cats. In addition to writing, Hannah likes to spend her days dancing barefoot in her living room and concocting new recipes for pie.

Hope Engel

Driving Home from Work on a Thursday

The sky above Euclid Avenue is gray.
I wonder if it is the sky or Euclid Avenue.
Her mouth ran down, down,
all the way down to hell on the street corner.
She's the story I witness everyday that becomes lost
in cement slurry right before the light turns green,
before I roll up my windows and put on the air.

Gray, gray-yellow brush line the trolley tracks.
No trolley cars this minute, just hollow echoes of hope in decibels
and a taco stand next to a row of dilapidation half mile from the freeway.
The sign reads, "5 rolled tacos with sour cream and guacamole $1.99."
They could be delicious for all I know 
Does someone live in the basements below?
Bars on the windows, man of Christ selling his newspapers of doom
near my exit at the ARCO where gas is 12 cents cheaper a gallon.

It's all about the exit and the song streaming-
acoustic guitar, keys, the sweet voice of a woman
who touches my soul.  Where does the grey go?
Along the I-8 all the way down to Midway Drive
the homeless slowly pedal their rusted bikes
while holding large garbage bags that are older
than the trees on the McDonald's front lawn.
I stop and buy them each a Coke then drive to the dock,
try to filter the day, the choices we make, the gravel and the brush,
the gospel man that shouts as he violently shakes his anger
onto rooftops, churches, abandoned stores,
abandoned minds.  I am so lost and it's not even dark.

Hope Engel received her B.F.A. in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University then was admitted to the M.F.A. program at the University of Arizona where she had the honor of studying poetry under Richard Shelton. She currently teaches high school in San Diego and has co-written lyrics with her singer/songwriter husband, Rusty Gordon.

Madeleine Crowley

Elegy for Patience

My family’s dog loved fried eggs
and we used to feed them to her sometimes –

crispy whites still spitting with oil from the cast iron,
my father fruitlessly yelling savor it! savor it!

as she enveloped our hot gift in her mouth 
and devoured it whole. If it burned her, she hid it well.

Praise yourself for a triangle toast point. Praise yourself
for the intention of a well-made breakfast. But now,

who among us would stop to chew 
when the fullness of our lives awaits? The dog was right.

When our exile is over, I think we’ll swallow up the whole world,
we’ll scorch our mouths on the yolk, we’ll never say it hurt.

Madeleine Crowley lives in San Francisco and recently started writing poetry again.

Anita Bermann

He at the Edge


Seascape with Lovers and Cat

The cat was soft and sat by the edge
of the sea. The day was soft and dripped
onto the cliffs like wax. The cliffs were waxy,
the sea was blue-green, the clouds tore
through the sky like fat fur tails.

He opened and the sea
opened with him, white plumes, wet stacks
and the white walls. Into the sea
and his heart pounding, a dizzy hissing.
A feline wail. Wanting he wandered, he and he hand 
in hand, damp lips and the moorings
all adrift, thick limbs sinking
in. The washed out light, the deep dark
of the cat's eyes.

The cat's fur blew around it like a cape.
Down by the water some warped boards, a narrow 
man slip-bumping across the beach, fisted metal 
dowsing for spare change.

They sat at the shore swelling 
to fill the whole place like the water 
in the rock. They touched their faces
and thought of sea lions, their sharp wet whiskers.
They swelled and talked of simple things: knees 
hinged backwards, seagulls rising, asexual 
reproduction. Submarines, those small round windows.

The pebbled shale stretched for miles. A bubbling 
of anemone, intestinal pink. A flash of sulfur 
and the cat shrinking seaward, sharp little cat teeth 
grinding salt all the way down. He and he 
were not for swimming or climbing, never
to skip stones across the jagged surf, never to penetrate
the caves. He clawed his hand across his face
to clean the salt from his skin, 
the salt came off in thin 
white sheets.

They balanced starfish on the tips 
of their fingers, trying to hold back 
from squeezing, tongues thick 
in their mouths.

He stepped out of the sea with his heart pounding,
a hissing making him dizzy, a feline wail. 
He closed and the cliffs melted 
like wax. No, never to the edge of the sea, never 
to walk into the waves; never to feel
the sun hot blue-green and fluid, cords 
of light between rock.

The day fell on the beach like grey leaves.
It could have been November.



The Boy

He sits in a whitewalled room, blue-green
light waving across the plaster. Outside 
a flat stillness, polished city. Like a pile of leaves
the grey buildings press together into one mass.

Pale flat light. He presses his feet together
in black shoes, a void
between where the shoes narrow.
He stretches his legs, it is fall but
if he leans back to the narrow slit 
of window he can feel the sun on his cheek,
tiny flame. He runs his tongue across the edge
of his mouth and thinks of the muscles 
in a man's back, those thick cords.

The room swells with the sound of pants,
parallel tongues aching to touch. A low echo
rising. He throbs 
like invisible signals through wire, 
a loose handful of wire
spilling like caterpillars to the floor.
Sweat clings to the inside of his legs 
like seaspray.

Papers waltz from his desk
to the floor in the last light but he does not bend;
stares at a blue screen throbbing. How warm
it would be to be inside himself, he thinks,
and swells. He closes his eyes just in time
to watch the sun set, sinking like a huge round tongue
into the belly of the ocean. 

He strokes a piece of paper
like a feather 
against his skin.

From somewhere far off, a white 
surging, the waves of sound 
arching together 
into one mass, like a swell building 
higher and higher-- that low echo rising
from the sea-- Here 
kitty kitty. Here kitty. 
Here kitty kitty--


Seascape without Lovers or Cat

Clouds at the edge of the sea, white plumes.
A continental shelf narrowing, salt leaking
from the surf. Some warped boards, washed-out 
light. Shale stretching for miles, light 
cords between rock.

The tide, some change, 
a handful of birds.



A Final Fragment About the Cat

A quick blur
past the window, 
a whiskery face 
falling, eyes
wide, questioning,
fur expanding 
into a cape.

Anita Bermann is a proud 2008 B.A. graduate of the Oberlin College Creative Writing program, after which she frittered away twelve years in an inexplicable combination of love, marriage, farming, and becoming a registered dietitian nutritionist. She is excited to be starting her no-income career (writing) now that the appropriate attention has been given to the other kind.

Kristin Garth

Method Acting in Mormon Moanz 

Some leave the state of their religious 
oppression at eighteen.  This porn star stays.
You fit in anyway — no tattoos, pious 
posturing of eyes, quiet downward gaze 
in childhood memorized, the first time men — 
your father, bishop call you “little whore,”
sense memory at the church bookstore when 
you buy the small details, CTR rings for 
“worthiness interview”/deflowering 
scene.  Cast the men to look like them, square jaw,
dippled chin who lay on hands, removing 
garments, Sunday dress.  Cash for you, grandma’s 
specialist.  Won’t ask how you afford to pay. 
Bishop, himself, donated, you could say.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of seventeen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Crow Carriage (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), The Meadow (APEP Publications) and Golden Ticket from Roaring Junior Press. She is the founder of Pink Plastic House a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series. Follow her on Twitter: (@lolaandjolie) and her website kristingarth.com.

Kyra Rooney

A Pocket’s Hole

Humans are the deepest pockets
Sewn of teaser hiccups and major failure
The southern tip of discordant love
Poisoned fingernails from forbidden caresses
Abominable memories from New York City’s handcrafted Yeti
Who windowshops down 5th Ave. and finds opulent headstones of extinct Manhattan socialites molded into mannequins 

Kyra Rooney graduated from The King's College in NYC in December with a degree in English Literature, and was fortunate enough to be a part of the Lit Mag there.

Yvonne An

The World Was Already Sleeping

with a gun under its pillow

now it is in slumber
a coma
under disinfected roofs 

a story told in a room with no furniture
in a cafeteria with no plates
of a musician and a soundless violin
who gave a wave or two behind the Nintendo
giving a hesitant kiss between the N95
wearing a speckless pair of shoes
having his occasional dosage of raw sunshine
– then in just a blink
where the earth spins slower than usual
he is weeping for his grandfather’s captured lung
coming back to greet a pattern in the headlines
“Virus Death Toll Jumps” “It’s ‘Inevitable’ Here”

we cursed that we lost paradise
when the fruit
was bitten by Adam

Korean poet Yvonne An was born and raised in the Philippines. She is currently a senior in International School Manila. She spends her days inventing projects to advocate for zero poverty and social justice, birthing imaginative characters and their stories, hammering her black velvet piano, and portraying our current world by communicating through a universal language, music. Her accomplishments include gold keys by her poems admitted to the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, publications in Aerie International and WhatRoughBeast Indolent Books, investigative research papers admitted to NRCASH, ISMB conferences, publications in APJMR, IJAR, and non-profit organizations accredited by UNESCO.

Jes Battis

Winter Skips

We’re listening to winter
by Tori Amos, our discmans
burning our laps, as the piano solo
unbolts us.  You pass me a note that’s
just the number of times you’ve heard it
today:  21.

We get caught staring
at the Leonardo di Caprio poster.
We’re only letting ourselves 
go fuzzy for a moment.  Skipping
forward because we think
that’s the good part.

You’re typing with an Australian guy
on IRC.  You smile imperceptibly 
when he sends you files.  I’m jealous
of your internet package:
my modem a screaming brick
with ideas of its own.

We stage a scene from Sailor Moon
where Tuxedo Mask is stalked,
tenderly, by a gay alien.  We use
flour to dye our hair, 
making pancakes in the shower.  

Our manuscripts are crammed
into sawtooth binders.  You read me
a death, a birth, over the phone
until I can’t feel my cheek.

We’re unknown and furious
in hidden classrooms, plotting
while everyone fails to play Magic: 
the Gathering, or maybe just me.  Cards
in boxes like organ slices, red, blue,
black.  The spell that always wins
if you’re cruel enough to cast it. 

In the end, the only move I make
on the boy I love unspeakably
is to destroy his coffee maker.  
Flooding the kitchen, twisting 
in panic, as he laughs. Then hoses it off
in the yard like a dog’s empty cage.  
You’re lucky, he says,
that we love you.

Jes Battis (he/they) teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Regina.  Their poetry has been published in The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Poetry is Dead, The Puritan (forthcoming), and The Maynard.

Faith Paulsen

Shelter in a Place

If this is home, then let it have clean windows
that no bird ever flies into.

If this is a garden then I request sweet peonies and bleeding hearts
and herbs near the kitchen door.

If my hermitage, secluded, filled with art, and cats,
may the tourists be discouraged by the admission fee.

If my blanket, may its warm folds be sanitary,
may its warmth lend sanctuary.

If seclusion, will you come to me in dreams 
or in small boxes?

If this is my springhouse, and provisions are left
to be discovered, may they be Valentines.

If my cloister, then, may I be illuminated.
Let my background be gold-leaf.

If prison, may the house remind me, 
it has no slam locks, no steel doors, no roll calls.

If retreat, let me walk the labyrinth in solitude
until nouns and verbs can agree. 

If a fort, then may it keep out contagion.
On its hot iron threshold, may virus turn to ash. 

If therapy, then point to the place, say its name.
This is where it hurts. 

If this is the plague of the firstborn, no wonder I feel marked.
My children have no immunity.

If this is a lifeboat,, then let me root underwater
until I find anchor.

Faith Paulsen’s work has appeared in the upcoming Thimble, a recent Evansville Review as well as anthologies such as 50/50: Poems & Translations by Womxn over 50 (QuillsEdge). Her poetry has also been published in many venues including Apiary, Front Porch, Mantis, Terra Preta, and Stone Boat. One poem was nominated for a Pushcart. Her chapbook A Color Called Harvest (Finishing Line Press) was published in 2016. She is a native New Yorker but loves living in the Philadelphia area, where she and her husband have raised their three sons.

Grace Lowery

Trader Joes

Swinging shut the door of my Mitsubishi, I walk towards my home-away-from home,
Biding time before I have to think about a computer again.
My oasis, 
where everyone is attractive and full of gluten-free pasta and sugar-free cookies and has something to live for
You never think about death inside a Trader Joes.
The height of humanity in the form of artificially flavored laughter,
That red and brown hut which holds so many fleeting smiles and promises 
When I'm inside you I escape.
My heart beating, with every new item a surge of discovery, 
Rounding a corner, a cartoon font etched onto a sign reads:
Buy one get one free!
Buy it, before it dies!
The food I take home requires me to live another day
And so I do.

Grace Lowery graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019 with a degree in Communication Arts and currently lives in Los Angeles, where she has most recently worked at The Simpsons and spends her free time trying (and failing) to learn how to surf.