i want to grab your hair
by the fistful
and cut each strand
with a knife
one for me
two for God
Emery Finch was born in Michigan, but has since moved to live in countries around the world. They are currently pursuing a MFA in Creative Writing and have a passion for telling stories of queerness, emotional growth, and creative characters. Though familiar with fantasy novels and short thrillers, a newfound appreciation for poetry has overtaken their current projects.
you can tell from the way i shift gears and i can tell
from the way grip that flat 7up wedged between your thighs, but
no one says anything. all those girls i have been are
piled in the backseat, gasping like a fish, and we’re
making small talk about changing lanes and i wonder
how many times, when you’re under me, you try on a different face
of mine like trying to find the right lid for tupperware. i know you're making up
answers for my questions because i can feel your tongue
masturbating against your cheek, i can feel the dead beetles ratting
on the dashboard, i can hear her in your vowels
as you touch my face with fingertips
as if it is a phone screen gone dark, cracked into a spiderweb,
and i’m having breakfast in a parallel universe.
Rowan Tate is an emerging Romanian songwriter, poet, and tree whisperer. Her work is visually fervent and deeply felt.
I was born at the deer latitude where men take
on the skins of shower curtains and crouch under
holly trees to execute groundhogs as school buses
spill children like runoff. At the horse latitude,
stranded galleons drove bloodstock Andalusians
into the sea. Hooves, flanks, muzzles settled
abyssal sand, slipped shape, became years-
long suppers for congregations of isopods, bristle worms, sleeper sharks.
Abyssal nations birthed from jettisoned manifests:
men, women, children, horses, salt-packed dodo carcasses,
barrels of limes, history’s
cruel regard. So much to feed
us boys who congregated in finished basements,
dipped in manhood’s violent tricks, to watch horn porn
on DVD. Our prey-eyes luminous with night-vision videos,
the buck of the AR-15, the breathless impact, the buck’s
ragged tumble. Each of us harshening with animal
desire, empty countries filling.
C. Rees (he/they) is a queer Pennsylvania-born eco-poet, writer, educator, and New Writers Project alumnus living in Austin, TX. His work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, Bat City Review, The Shore Poetry, Territory, the Action Books Blog, and elsewhere. You can follow them @17_yrbrood, and read their work at https://linktr.ee/c.rees.
This body needs oceans, or more tending to.
A boy leaves an empty bottle on a nightstand—
I see myself. I understand. What
a throat feels and says are two different things.
My throat feels containment but says I
have chosen a life now. It’s funny how close
containment lives to contentment, in sound and
in execution. A monarch is unveiling
a roadmap, a woman watches
inside—content. All is nature, all is place— A word
felt in the throat. For what it is, it is and
is not. It can only thrive in this vacuum. It binds now
as thickening agent, or festers as inspiration. These days
It’s hard to even know the difference.
Laura Faith is a writer, teacher, mother, and claircognizant empath residing in Redondo Beach, California. Her work has been featured in Narrative Magazine, Sixfold Magazine, Eunoia Review, and others. When not writing, Laura is raising her bilingual children, exploring the vegan scene in LA, healing her inner child, and forging friendships in the most unexpected ways. Her work can be found on Instagram and Facebook under @poems_by_laura.
She won’t retire to Miami,
open pizza stand by the beach,
enter an all-night dance-a-thon,
start an unauthorized Elvis fan club.
She won’t enjoy cheesecake
in the middle of the night
while solving problems.
(Thanks Mattel privilege!)
Ken says she’d be a total Blanche.
You’re total Stan, fuck boy,
Barbie mumbles under her breath.
She knows she’d be a Rose.
(Barbie’s so goddamn loveable!)
When the credits roll,
Barbie tries not to think about
the truth of it all—
even with all the fans,
the Mattel universe
will not allow her
that kind of sisterhood.
Dustin Brookshire’s (he/him) chapbooks include Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, March 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) & To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He is a co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023.) Dustin hopes you’ll visit him at dustinbrookshire.com to learn more about Limp Wrist and the Wild & Precious Life Series.
What did she know
of apples & poison?
Skin barely pricked
by the needle, venom
into flesh.
Echoes of Eve.
What did she know
of jealousy?
There were seven men
& when she bled, she bled alone—
no cycles with which to sync
except the moon, suspended
from its dark ceiling.
Suspicion haloes the moon.
What did she know
of women hating women?
That apple, so sweet, so crisp—
her perfect bite—
a white circle,
so stark against the red.
To the fairest—
O fruit of the fallen,
at some point we all
plummet
to the ground
windfallen,
& bruised from impact.
Someday
we awaken
to find ourselves wholly encased
in glass.
Tara A. Elliott’s poems have appeared in TAOS Journal of International Poetry & Art, The American Journal of Poetry, and Ninth Letter, among others. Executive Director of the Eastern Shore Writers Association, she is also the founder and director of Salisbury Poetry Week and co-chair of the annual Bay to Ocean Writers Conference. A recent winner of Maryland State Arts Council’s Independent Artist Award, she has work forthcoming in Cimarron Review.
My small body on the rim
of a decaying flower bed.
The gravel driveway
leading to all the silent pavement.
The soft rumor of poplars.
The low danger gathering.
And then the ladybug
crawled into my open mouth
and died on my tongue.
Who knows how long
it had been there.
The acid dark taste.
The fields brushed together
and pushed out a hissing sound.
The waves curled and curled
and are still curling.
The drawbridge moaned under tires.
The chalky library steps.
The splinters held tight
in the grip of squeaking pond ice.
Bloodroot. Brownblack
owl nests. Wintergravel
stuck between our teeth.
Lucille Walker is a New England poet. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and has been most recently published in Stonecrop Magazine and Bodega Magazine.
there is a dead bird in my hands
it is dense and fetid and
I do not know where it lived before this.
it rests on my life line
like a kidney stone,
which I must miscarry
it has been dead for some time.
its feathers bristle dry and green
the way pine needles fall to the rug in January
I’d love to stay, actually,
but I’ve got a very important place to be,
quietly mourning this dead bird.
the despair of the bird does not reveal
itself to me.
I wonder if perhaps I brought it to death’s door,
whether to stuff it and hang it on the mantle, or
ferry it to the back porch in my mouth like an unabashed dog.
sadly I know nothing more
than that the bird’s fate and mine
are now ineluctably intertwined
(the bird is dead and it is in my hands)
I’d love to carry on with you, really,
but you cannot see, I’m carrying this dead bird.
and I want very badly to look to the clouds
and the shimmering sky and sing,
to let the great weight of my body float among the waves,
and to love the delicate arch of your being with mine
but I apologize,
I’ve got this bird to mourn.
Grace Rademacher is a Fulbright Research Scholar at the Democracy Institute in Budapest, Hungary. In May of 2022, she graduated from Georgetown University, where she studied Government and Spanish language and literature. She is a Boston-native, an avid runner, and very big fan of her dog.
A nurse
younger than I am—
we are both seedlings
doing the work
of full-grown trees—
her hand is shaking,
my fingers grip
the arm rest
like I’m holding
onto life—
but the syringe
is solid, calm,
as if it’s been injecting
people for years—
then a prick,
a trickle of blood,
like sex
but with
a Band-aid covering.
Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Mixed Mag, The Mantle, and The Art of Everyone.
have you ever ever’d a river until their name was yours?
many have eaten oceans whole & never had a name
to lose except to gain – so don’t come at us denoting
any walls or towers without first spelling out enough air
to breathe within them. this thing of seeing everything
outlined with red isn’t about errors or anger, it’s only surmising
shifts & swiftness, & there are many things that move too slow
to see, & the tantalizing part is how any of them could be me,
like time or each passing river in their sacred processions downstream,
stuck there to ever & ever the continuity of a river until our names dissipate,
to disappear into some great delta & be consumed by the sea –
maybe someday someone will eat that whole sea, which also ate me,
& afterwhile, when none of our names remain: sea will be our name –
& we will flow away in instances & shed into the next sea
& at some point nothing will signify anything
but by the way the light hits it at a moment of grace
Mathew Yates (they/them) is a poet & artist from Paducah, Kentucky with roots in Mississippi & Appalachia. Their poetry & art can be found in Protean Mag, Screen Door Review, Malarkey Books, Barren Mag, & more. Their art can also be found on the cover & inside the 2021 release "stanzas for four hands: an ophanim" by Mathilda Cullen & Dominic Knowles via woeeroa.com. (@m_yates) (www.etsy.com/shop/mathewyatesart)
for Suzie, again
It was always the dream part
of summer, the lit moment
that persisted.
We said, “Shall we eat
the soft skin under the rind?”
We said, “Leave the mud-green
tadpole where it lives.”
Much of the day was spent
skimming the deep end,
which meant we were barely
human: amphibious, mythical,
more and more shimmered.
Now she seems like time itself
before time went wonky,
before things happened
we didn’t intend to happen.
But there she is, under the sprinkler’s
arcing triumph in her
psychedelic two-piece. The sky,
well it’s summer, so it’s impressive,
the grass, smelling of tea,
our feet, tough as a dog’s, river-clean.
We didn’t think we should stay
that way: loving each other
without knowing we loved.
It’s strange now, because she’s gone,
but still, on the longest days,
down a barefoot road
in a messy house,
she waits on my call.
Dion O'Reilly’s debut collection, Ghost Dogs, was runner-up for The Catamaran Prize and shortlisted for The Eric Hoffer Award. Her second book Sadness of the Apex Predator will be published by University of Wisconsin's Cornerstone Press in 2024. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, Cincinnati Review, Narrative, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. She facilitates private workshops, hosts a podcast at The Hive Poetry Collective, and is a reader for Catamaran Literary Quarterly. Most recently, her poem "The Value of Tears" was chosen by the poet Denise Duhamel as winner of the Glitter Bomb Award.
After Kevin Young
You are the sun in my mouth.
Three golden yolks swimming
at the bottom of the bowl.
When I pierce the clear membrane
with my fork, the unborn flow
out, waiting to be beaten,
their shiny, viscosity whisked
into ether. You are cloud.
You are smoke. You absorb
whatever I put inside you:
fingernail wisps of scallion,
velvety skin of mushroom,
the pink and white toothy grin
of thinly sliced kamaboko.
But I like you best when
you are pure, light.
A pale-yellow silk river slipping
down my throat, the comfort
of chicken broth, diaphanous
protein. You show me that food
can be air, rising from within, lifting
my spirit up on cardboard wings.
You fed me the day my grandpa died,
floating on a bed of red paper lotuses
inked in a language I inherited,
but is not my own. Soon, our hands
released him into the fire.
Then ash and bones. Chalk-white dust,
lighter than even you. For now,
you are the soft sponge of memory
that burns inside of me. Like a paper lantern,
I drift up into the night sky, only to fold
back down to earth again, a tattered prayer.
You wash over me like music, in waves
of regret, or grief. Or both. We were never
close. Will he see me now? In between
pauses, I hear the sound of Bach’s cello suite
swelling in the background, rocking me
back to the morning of his funeral, as we all
sat still in the dark hall, looking up
at family photos flashing across a screen,
above a constellation of orchids. With the last
bite, you cradle me into a fever-pitched
crescendo, and then I unravel—
one, long, quivering thread of a note to hold
us back together.
Anny Chen is a writer, designer, and illustrator living in Paris, France. She grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, and has lived and worked in New York City and San Francisco. She often finds herself in between languages, identities, cultures, and countries. This mixed-up, beautiful mess can be felt in her work. When she is not tinkering at her desk, she enjoys reading, going on walks, thrifting, eating, and spending time with her husband and three-year-old son. She is a lifelong learner, who loves the thrill of chasing a new creative endeavor.
That first week of college, I invited you
into my dorm room. The walls were bare
and woundless. You told me the tale of the girl
who held your hair back as you threw up memories
in your bathroom. How she helped you scrub the chunks
of ache splattering across the white tile.
We went to CVS the next week, and you stole chapstick
in your favorite scent: juicy watermelon.
It’s not that I can’t afford it, you told me. It’s just that the world
owes me. That was the moment I knew you
would steal parts of me next. You turned me against the rest
of the world, fed me fables about how your
neighbors who lived across the hall were out to get you.
You told me that I wasn’t like the rest of them.
You called me loyal, but what you really meant was afraid.
When no one was looking, you scooped out
my past from my body like seeds from your favorite fruit.
You held my hurt in your palms and called
yourself my saviour. At midnight, I helped you line the walls
of my bedroom with photographs of my wounds.
I didn’t know they were wounds, then. I only thought they
were photographs of you and me.
Annalisa Hansford’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, Emerge Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. They are probably listening to Gracie Abrams.
I wake up from the bird
that becomes my alarm.
Became.
I hear it bouncing inside the date.
To realize I don't want this man.
I'm the someone outside my body
watching my body
like a bird.
I am the bird.
Was.
He finds me in this moment.
I've been caught
waking up. I dance the forced laughter
like balloons.
Dancing.
He is actually my Ex.
Water pours from the pipes.
Gorgeous leak. You gorgeous,
gorgeous leak.
I must have left you running.
You must have ran away.
Run.
Amanda Adrienne Smith is a poet and actress living in Los Angeles, CA. Her poetry has appeared in Right Hand Pointing, One Sentence Poems, and Poppy Road Review. She can be found on social media at @amandaadrienne.
Nam Hoang Tran is a writer and visual artist based in Orlando, FL. His work has appeared in Posit, The Brooklyn Review, Tilted House, New Delta Review, Always Crashing, Diode, and elsewhere. More at www.namhtran.com.
green veins
shoot smoke
from mist
sun sleeps
as i sit still
thanking God
for praise
green berries stagnant, though
i wish to pick
them ripe/suck stems
from teeth
begging for
your taste
Sara Arabzadeh is a poet, painter, and photographer living in New York, NY. She is currently on a leave from attending NYU pursuing a Bachelors of Science in Media Studies.
fake trees in the airport. do you
know that feeling
when you’re too far away to join a
conversation, but they’d
love to have you?
delayed flight in my
front right pocket, rub-burn in the
crease
between my thumb and
pointer.
I hate how
people just mind their business. hate it
like how the skin on the
backs of my hands is
peeling off and I
belong in the rockies, with the big
mountains that say voiceless things in the
language of the dirt.
pine tree sap under the
cheap tiles.
I hope that I get eaten by a bear or
something like that.
eaten by an avalanche like Marc-André.
not because I need to be remembered but
because
I want the
soil to swallow my bones
the spruces a
rock face
god (all the same thing anyway).
there is no god in suburbia. at least, I
cannot feel it.
Soncera Ball is an aspiring poet studying philosophy at Princeton University. She has previously been published in Zeniada Magazine and in Arch and Arrow Magazine. When she isn’t writing poetry, Soncera can be found rock climbing, stargazing with friends, making music, and frolicking in nature.
Walk me back to this house
& kneel me into the dirt & at least
The dirt is mine, at least no one
Can mould me now except my
Ancestors. I insist on beauty because
They demanded pause & much more
& were granted instead the weight
Of losing the weight of language.
I owe them this bridge out of abstractions.
There is nothing to demystify;
This sky above me is white and alcove
& when l say They l mean interminable
Souls. I mean spill me across whatever
Divide &, listen, find me in the gap.
They owe me this. They forfeited their
Bodies & l make mine into fire.
See this last photograph in which
They stand shackled before They
were hung on trees by white men
& in their eyes you can see
A door and beyond that door
Is a cave and l love them for that.
Farai Chaka is a writer from Harare, Zimbabwe. He is avid reader who enjoys long walks and horror shows.
I don't know what the ghosts of my family are doing
except that my grandmother holds my face in her hands and smiles
and she is wispy and white and she has never been to new orleans
yet the tear on my cheek contains her
some days I feel greater connections with those I have never known than those who have watched me grow
some days I sit in the cemetery and brush the headstones clean
in the next room there is the ghost of my mother, her soft hands on my young shoulders:
she would have loved you, in abundance
across the street there is a hundred-year old house, its chipped bricks covered in ivy:
there is new life here, in abundance
Stephanie Holden (she/they) is a Halloween-loving queer living in New Orleans, Louisiana. She writes poems about love, trauma, gore, and the self. Her interests are fantasy books, body modification, and the South. She has two cats, a bearded dragon, and deep love for frogs. Find her Marxist take on Shakespeare in The Journal of the Wooden O, her poems at The B’K (forthcoming), her art at BEST SERVED COLD (forthcoming), or her narcissistic tweets at @smhxlden.
Lover, take your fingers
from my mouth
and untie me
from my shadow. Let me leap
from the suspension bridge
I have built
between my childhood
home and your hand
wrapped tenderly around my
throat as I ride you
on the porch bench, drunk
with worry over you
someday getting up to leave
me locked outside—
knowing if you do my wound would follow
you to the door, try to kiss the desolate
map of your boyhood
tattooed across your back.
Whitney Egstad is a poet, essayist, and educator in the Denver area. Her work has appeared in various publications including The Best of the Net Anthology, The Rumpus, and Bellingham Review. In 2014, she received her MFA from the University of South Florida, where she taught creative writing and composition courses. As a volunteer, she has served as a trauma-informed writing mentor in a treatment center. She is currently a PhD student at University of Denver, where she is researching healing centered education.