M. Wilder

a hidden cricket chirps

in the dusty darkness the streetlights skim your eyes searching
for anything other than the blue quiet.
i tell you about the fog of it; the stuttering snowball
of confession clumping through my throat,
of me and my quivering adrenaline rattled shoulders, my
migraines, and trembling needs, and the roaring memories
that i so gently tucked into a bed of quiet dark, and when i kiss you,
we tiptoe past their door, smiling, silent, careful
not to wake them, pressed against the wall between us—
i promise i promise i will find my boundaries myself
and rub myself against those uncrossed lines like the safest cat.
and i assure you that the trauma will not be the third person in your room—
the interrupting ghost of it cowering unsoothed in the corner alone, no,
perhaps the goat's head buried in the bottoms of my boots, sure,
or the echo of a performance of my stuttering rage i gave
to my houseplants, alone, unfurling towards bare light,
or just the cricket you stepped on one night, cold,
unsung, unnoticed, and never once softly touched.
no, don't worry, i will not ask you for help, nor abidance,
not even love, and so you smile and exhale and nod, and i assure you
i don't mind rocking myself to sleep in the night.

m. wilder hopes you feel better. A youth librarian with bedhead whose words may be found in Glass Poetry, Rogue Agent, Surj, School Library Journal, and more, you can find m on Instagram, Neutral Spaces, or lying in a puddle of sun near you.
Instagram: @hereistheend
Neutral Spaces: https://neutralspaces.co/mwilder/

Nardine Taleb

the naming of things 

  1. And, despite it all, this is how I imagine you:
    sitting on a hill, picturing god as a tree 
    and reaching for me like a fountain of water
    craving for palms 

    I wanted to name you, as all real 
    things should be named: lover, 
    partner, hope, home, unlocked 
    door, dark 
    basement, a fleeting 
    thought, a moment’s
    dinner, a word, a trashed lyric
    a wound in which I open & open & open 

  2. You didn’t know how to pray. You thought you did. Consider this: looking as a form of prayer. Everywhere we turn with our eyes we are trying to escape where we are. I looked at you long and hard once, you looked
    back. 

    Language ruins everything, you said. Don’t name. Just observe. 

  3. The women in my family are pillars.
    We are taught to hold. On a cold day, 
    I held you up, while you grieved. I carried that grief,
    dead skin, like an embrace. I knew we were
    Nothing. I knew, still, that Nothing 
    could be quite heavy. I hope
    you didn’t notice, after you’d driven off, 
    that I had left my hands in your backseat.


  4. : I’ll write you out of me, the writing a sprinting away — or towards — 
    truth. I only know language and how it peels, its commas just
    the edges of a knife. I try on all the mouths of my women 
    to hear your name again and again in different tones. Time heals but it never 
    forgets, and my body stops being a thing of worship, instead becomes
    an ocean with doors.

Nardine Taleb is an Egyptian-American writer, speech therapist, and Prose Editor of the online literary journal Gordon Square Review based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Passengers Journal, The Knight’s Library Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, Emerging Literary Journal, and others. She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow. You can find her at the following social media platforms: Twitter: @nardineta / IG: @nardineta

Courtney Skaggs

Business Insider Interviews MGMT’s Lyricist: An Erasure

insidious shadow “ / — , ”
Over a thinly veiled
rejection haunting a
psychedelic tongue-in-cheek ( )
political essay harvesting flashes of
:a
:narrative cosmically ridiculous

this inside-joke performance—
the absurdity of it [Laughs]
figure out how to sustain us

It’s kind of a crazy storyline.

always inside
an inkling
meat and potatoes
[Laughs]

it’s a
and a curse
As an artist you want to
to
to
to
to
to
[Laughs]

:?
:less appealing
negative
weird
weird
dip
Dark Age
last hurrah
[Laughs]

surprised
to see that
:brilliant new
vibrant visual
powerful imagery
:most eyes think in a really fluid way

:How did you find him?
:I went through a little hole.

wavelength,
:
:smashing a voracious deep :dark.
:postapocalyptic gang living surviving
“The world is ending”
“What are we going to do as humanity?”

the attacks
life-changing shock
cracked feeling
a new perspective
a new perspective
paranoia
suspicion
hesitance
wariness

fully embrace technology,
fully embrace technology,

savior raise your consciousness
isolating dangerous thing exposed

mass-level shock seeped into beautiful
people speaking into mirrors

:In part, delves into even darker matter,
like dying. What are your views there, and
do you believe in the afterlife?

:Well, I wish
, but I
. But I feel,
, that everything
, like
. ’s
. I
. So I don’t know.
. Or if
. But
.

:?
:—you’re kind of in these windowless
backstage rooms with a bag of Cheetos.

Courtney Skaggs (they/she) is originally from Columbus, Ohio, but currently lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, where they are an MFA / MA student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Hybrid Editor for Permafrost Magazine. She was a writer-in-residence at the Appalachian Forest Stewardship Residency in November of 2019. Their essays can be found in Longleaf Review, Rejection Letters, and Lammergeier. Find her online at courtneyskaggs.net or on Twitter @corntea324.

Rachael Lin Wheeler

JFK International Airport: August 2019

A dark-haired woman in line is crying 
and a security man in a blue uniform does not care 

or he does not have the time 
to care or he pretends 

not to care, because what else is there 
to do? This crowd is so full of people staring 

everywhere but here. The man looks 
from the woman’s face (damp) 

to her open passport (dry). The images, 
he decides, are the same. Like any sadness, 

her yellowed luggage wheels drag through gathered dust
and no one speaks of it. I wish I could

believe this was the man’s attempt at some quiet
kindness. That the woman did not feel shame. I wish 

I could not so easily see myself in either. 

Rachael Lin Wheeler is currently a student attending Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her writing and photography have been recognized by Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her poetry appears in various publications. Serving as the editorial assistant for EX/POST MAGAZINE, Rachael Lin is also the founder and editor of Vox Viola Literary Magazine—an intersectional feminist publication—which can be found at https://voxviola.com. She is prone to 2 am laundry folding.

Jacob Budenz

Goth Bitch

“I’m goth as fuck, even when I’m not in black.”
— Princess Nokia

GOTH BITCH strutting through a pastel / ghost town, cat pausing in the street / to stare—gray-fading-black fluff silhouetted / against pink stucco at sundown—GOTH / BITCH making paltry conversation / with a butter-faced gym rat / in the liquor store parking lot off Route 1 /  just to feel like she’s still got it, GOTH BITCH / writing her novel on the end / of the world at the edge of the world—/ the constant  crash of Rehoboth winter waves / roaring beyond the open window, barely

visible in the misty rain—GOTH BITCH / going mad at the constant washing / of the hands each time she touches / any surface of her cheap hotel room / (with its coarse sheets & clamshell mirror) / for fear of the virus that will keep / keeping tourists away long after the sun / sucks the misty rain from the sea, / GOTH BITCH filling pillows with mugwort / & swearing she’ll dream of you, GOTH / BITCH giving head to coked up  strangers /  behind the sandy dumpster,  GOTH BITCH

flinging herself around you, stamping / out your light, & leaving—giving / new meaning to the term “star-crossed”—/ GOTH BITCH watching reruns of Rupaul’s Drag Race alone / in her black silk bathrobe texting / her goth friends about fracking & the disappearance / of bees, GOTH BITCH

needing more time / to figure out how to leave you on the cusp  / of a  pandemic,  GOTH BITCH

“blooming 4 u” / like the lips of the titan arum, / GOTH BITCH pouring honey on her / Jericho Rose (freshly watered) as she / films a time lapse of its opening tendrils, / GOTH BITCH wearing

jewel tones for the summer, / GOTH BITCH growing a garden beneath the fire escape / in her new apartment, / GOTH BITCH going gray / at the temples where she just stopped / losing hair, GOTH 

BITCH calling leather bears with / sigils on a waxing moon, GOTH / BITCH ignoring your long emails / full of pictures of your weird  sad / breakup art,  responding / three weeks later with four- / word replies, GOTH BITCH lighting candles / anointed with hyssop & then / fighting with her roommate / over when to snuff them out. 

Jacob Budenz is a queer writer, multi-disciplinary performer, and witch with an MFA from University of New Orleans and a BA from Johns Hopkins University whose work focuses on the intersection of the other and the otherworldly. The author of Pastel Witcheries (poetry chapbook, Seven Kitchens Press 2018) and SIMAETHA: a Dreambaby Cabaret (experimental play, Baker Innovative Projects 2020), Budenz has fiction and poetry in Slipstream, Wizards in Space, Entropy Magazine, Pussy Magic, and more, as well as anthologies by Mason Jar Press, Lycan Valley Press, and Mad Scientist Journals. You can follow Jake's performance, music, and writing on Instagram (@dreambabyjake), Twitter (@jakebeearts), and the internet beyond (www.jakebeearts.com).

Lauren Bender

you expect me to believe

I ask myself, can three birds in a box
survive months of dystopia?

and it becomes all I can think about,
the only question in my life.
 
Three green birds with the power
to feel evil approaching as if
 
it's a soft breeze and chime, chime.
It's here, here it is. Run
 
if you please, but let us fucking fly
first. Of course, what good is an omen
 
if one responds with mild fretting,
quick shrill acknowledgment
 
and moving on? Such a person
doesn't deserve magic birds.
 
Three small green birds with magic
zipping along under ruffled feathers,
 
crammed in a too small box, white
water rafting, crashing, clutched
 
close to chest, submerged. Now on
the rocks, now on shore. Birds
 
do not swim, but they fly,
or want to. Birds live through
 
little, or so you tell me when
I once suggest we get birds.
 
They die over nothing, you say.
All cozy in their cages
 
in a house, they drop dead
and you never find out why,
 
they go stiff overnight
when all you did was blink
 
or let a scented candle burn too long.
No, that's not the pet for us.
 
We're always looking for reasons:
why the bad thing happened,
 
why the good thing happened.
Three sturdy birds outlast countless
 
humans, like they don't realize
how fragile they are,
 
and then are released
to fend for themselves outside
 
their familiar dark prison.
Even if it's possible
 
they could have made it all this time,
will they make it now? Will they
 
sixth sense through this shock too,
those soft green birds lost to the trees?

Lauren Bender lives in Burlington, VT. Her work has appeared in IDK Magazine, The Collapsar, Gyroscope Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Yes Poetry, and others. You can find her on twitter @benderpoet.

Dynas Johnson

imaginary friend/black girl imagines a lover to cope with living in america


while listening to “my heart flutters when i see you/lofi hip hop mix” by 130mood 


my denim looks cool with your denim/your jean pants cuffed up my jean jacket with the bts dynamite inspired bunny design on the back/a little funk and soul to keep the kids from falling asleep without dreams/i’m in the mood for cream soda and french fries but our world’s trembling and shuddered/it’s been smoking for a while but they played it off as a fluke/now our world’s shut down and covered in hazard signs/so i can’t take you out anywhere but i can take you to rite aids for some junk food?/all i really need is your hand wrapped in mine/your hand wrapped around mine that means you must be real/right?/if i pretend hard enough i won’t be afraid of living:

i hold you tight when i’m putting cheese on top of my scrambled eggs when there’s nothing else in the fridge/while i’m job-searching on indeed and waiting weeks to hear back/sometimes even after i’ve spent/hours talking to friends on zoom or discord/when i feel cold in bed/staring through your eyes finding nothing but my own self moonlighting my pains in this make-believe scenario where we lay together and i’m not alone/but i hold you tightest when i’m going to stores at night/if i act like i’m talking to someone on the phone i’m less likely to be approached/i just want to get my s’mores ice cream and cheap nail polish and go/it’s even better when i bring you with me though i can’t talk to you in public because the illusion will find us being watched

outside rite aids teenagers sit against the walls/the scent of bitter plants surrounding their bodies like a force field/but even magic wands can’t wipe the sounds of police sirens in the distance/we all flinch/we’re not allowed to sit outside we’re not allowed to be outside after dark we’re not allowed to enjoy daylight/we’re not allowed to look further than this moment and even that’s not a promise/sometimes i can’t even imagine the future/sometimes i’m just trying to keep my body from disappearing/yeah the stars would be the only witnesses if something went wrong including us because we’re just as liable to disappear as anyone else with skin like ours/the only difference between us is that you’re actually not real and everyone’s pretending that i’m not real

i don’t think about how we’re all so used to death black/fathers sisters brothers mothers twitterized yet again for better and for worse/(then they’re real/right?)/center city’s been trembling for a minute now/tomorrow’s building a forest fire and we don’t know who will escape or if we should be escaping/back inside/i hold your hand while we watch the news/the nation’s enraged and faltering like a meme that’s too true to be funny/the uproar will be televised until it’s not entertaining/but my life will still be here and rage will still be here and after the shit i’ve seen on capitol hill i hope that something actually comes from the ashes this time/

until tomorrow there’s nothing to keep me company/so please/let me pretend that you exist for a little while longer so i can sleep 

Dynas Johnson was the vice president and an editor for SONKU, a university-founded organization for BIPOC creatives. She has poems in Vagabond City Lit, Sea Foam Mag, Memoir Mixtapes, Mixed Mag, The Aurora Journal, and others. Right now she’s very into indie, funk, and watching craft videos on Youtube. Find her at https://dynasjohnson.wixsite.com/dynasthepoet or on Twitter @Dynasthepoet.

Jameson Hampton

game day

to me,
sometimes,
     hope tastes like
     the bitter, half-cold coffee you forgot in the car
     while you were getting ready
and the one bite of chicken
wing dip as it comes out of
the oven, (y’know,
     to make sure it’s good)
sometimes
it smells like
     a breeze tinged with the chill
     that comes with recent snow,
     infused with cheap beer & charcoal
but sometimes it tastes like
a memory of something 
     more bitter than half-cold coffee,
a twin feeling of distrust,
a protective instinct
     you cannot extricate;
          (Josh Allen is a gemini,
               after all)

there’s a waltz we all know— 
step to the right,
     don’t get too excited
step to the left,
     “we’ll find a way to fuck it up”
twirl your partner and stop holding your breath
because my favorite step
     is when we forget this jaded dance for a day
     and fucking light some shit on fire

some days you feel alone,
but other days
there’s a game

Jameson Hampton is an adventurer from Buffalo, NY who wishes they were immortal so they'd have time to visit every coffee shop in the world. His work has previously been seen in such publications as Moonchild Mag, Rhythm & Bones Lit, Prismatica Magazine and Lazy Adventurer Publishing. Find him online at jamey.gay or on Twitter @jameybash. 

Emilia Joan Hamra

Bones

What cloud did we wake?
The spindly one,
the acid rain,
the spider vein.

A child sucks it up
and blows out a bubble 
shaped like a dead frog,
legs mid-leap and rainbow.

You drive us to Tucson,
your pale hair wild in the open window.
Past a ranch with ostriches
and stingray tanks built on sand.
In tandem we marvel and bleed.

And somewhere a daughter watches 
her mother baking bread, picking weevils 
from the wheat, saying, 
These are flour fairies, my love.
We don’t want to bake them up.

Once you changed a theatre lightbulb 
and found a cockroach bleached white 
as a flower. You couldn’t wait to tell me.

This desert glows with uncountable thorns.

Not all children have to be bones,
nor all bones be discarded.

We can pluck them like daisies 
from the lakeshore, 
taste them,
give them names.

Emilia Joan Hamra lives in Philadelphia where she founded and edits The Shoutflower, a print journal of art and literature. She studied Creative Writing at Arizona State University, has worked as a copy-editor for Four Way Books, and was the recipient of the national Norman Mailer College Poetry Award. Her work is published in Occulum, giallo lit, Santa Ana River Review, the tiny, and others.

Janice Lobo Sapigao

Therapist’s Recommendation

after Matthew Olzmann
after Eve L. Ewing

We drive on I-880 towards Homegoods and TJMaxx in Cupertino from San José / Ma takes a deep breath while I fumble with choosing a radio station and the wheel / says again that she’s scared / asks again, emphatically, as if we had been inside a conversation / asks the windshield, “What if I die?” / says to her palm, “You and your brother are not even married yet.” / can mind-read so effortlessly from the passenger’s side, “Who will take care of you?” / When Ma says she’s scared / I don’t listen / her confessions the writing prompts I dodge / I don’t let her finish her sentences / I deflect her fears with my jumping avoidance / instead of my empty phrases / like “Don’t worry” / or “You’re fine, mom” / I stop silencing her / instead I imagine:

We drive back to the hospital for free cupcakes / all the doctors are in one room / celebrating / telling us her cancer is in remission / confirming the research that it no longer exists to kill / we’ll never have to come back here, in fact, everyone else in the hospital is healed / and released / and the hospital has a Circus and Playground Department / or  something vapid but entertaining like the Museum of Ice Cream / where illusion is playful and tangible / and the Warriors appear in support / and they all sign a jersey / she takes pictures with her favorites / calls Stephen Curry / Step, Carry like she’s giving the sweetest instructions for how to do a lay-up / and he hugs her in congratulation / and the nurses / hold balloons and give us canvas bags as big as hot air balloons for a shopping spree / and they hand us golden envelopes with gift cards to discount retail stores / and malls / they give us clocks with no minute or hour hands / nothing slips away from us / especially not / not our time with each other

 Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. She is the author of two books of poetry: microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016), and like a solid to a shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017 by way of Nightboat Books). She was named one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Women to Watch in 2017 by KQED Arts. She was a VONA/Voices Fellow and was awarded a Manuel G. Flores Prize, PAWA Scholarship to the Kundiman Poetry Retreat. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Skyline College, the 2020-2021 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, and a Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets.

E. L. Diamond

BECAUSE PILOT WHALE PODS HAVE THEIR OWN UNIQUE VOCAL DIALECTS 

And because whale song travels four thousand
miles or so, their world aphotic, a darkling sea of sound, 
imagine how pilot whales sing their world 
into being. But if a whale is abandoned 
by the sea like a solitary ink dot on a blank 
beach, it spells a catastrophe of love. 
Grief after grief, they strand themselves. A whale 
won’t escape with its life because losing the chorus 
is worse than losing its own voice. 

If I could save one whale, I could save the pod. 
If I could teach a whale to go numb, would it
break free and outswim its grief? Imagine
a pilot whale alone, alive, in a vast, illucid
deep. Would I have unmade the world? 
To keep what we can’t afford to lose, we cast
ourselves against the straining sky, the starving
shore, to cling until the last note to the world,
to the ones whose love is the world. 

E. L. Diamond is a writer and educator currently living in Omaha, Nebraska. Her short fiction and poems have appeared in journals such as The Pinch, Literary Orphans, The American Journal of Poetry, The 2River View, and Storyglossia. She blogs about queer life and love in the Midwest, along with pieces on writing and editing, at eldiamond.org. 

Kimberly Zerkel

Earthquakes in Oklahoma

You played in our dirt until
There were earthquakes in Oklahoma.
The window of your airplane
That often tiger-striped our star-filled skies,
Framed your yawning face as you pointed a single finger down
Indicating to The World where he could pound his greedy fists.
Every bird felt the tremor and joined you
In flight, harkening to the ancient instinct
That saved them once before when a tyrannosaur
Gasped and fell in that very spot.
Don't let the lie of your well-meaning resourcefulness
Turn your head away from what happens
With every violent chip at the crust:
You're loosening the fossil caves beneath our highways,
Rattling the bones of Tulsa's mass graves,
And stirring up the buried
Arrowheads in children's backyards.
We, too, are waiting for the rapture,
Yours,
That is coming from below when
The Earth smiles like the snake she is
And swallows you whole.
Me and mine pray to be left behind,
Whispering as we calmly stroke her back to sleep.

Kimberly Zerkel is a freelance writer based in San Francisco, although I currently call Joplin, Missouri home.  Her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and Heated; her fictional work has appeared in Isthmus, Dual Coasts, The Meadow, and Z Publishing's California's Emerging Writers. 

Alexandra Pasian

Lest we get caught dancing around the kitchen at night.


It’s just a slip of the knife.
Barely a glide.
No pressure, little resistance.
We consider the weight of the blade
less than the edge of it. Tapering down
to air. So, we let the air in. 
Breath and breeze. The great blue
machine, working in its syncopation. 
Once we were impressed 
by the jazz of it. The unexpected 
rhythmic alterations. This is what
life’s all about. Minus the sedation.
The flat-out posture of it. Each doing
their part to forget 
the persistent drop in temperature. 
Or that weather exists outside.

Alexandra Pasian is the author of the chapbooks Where we live (Ghost City Press, 2020)!! and Work until you find resistance (Junction Books, 2019). Among other journals, her work has appeared in Arc, Cosmonauts Avenue, CV2, Electronic Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, and The Fiddlehead.

Stephanie Choi

Two-winged Sunset in Penang

I am the remnants of this:
shades of fuchsia adventure turned dim.
Only the gold essence
of another self, long left.

I lost my earrings once.
They were fuchsia and gold rimmed.
Fell onto a dance floor in Penang–
where a part of myself had been shed. 

Stephanie Choi's work is published or forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, New Ohio Review, Breakwater Review, and elsewhere.

Alisha Escobedo

a baby in a trash bag

when nicole calls, i am thinking
of a dream i had of emily
and a baby in a trash bag.
wearing only a diaper,
with its mouth opened wide,
it stretched the bag against its face.

in the dream,
emily looked at me and said,
see?

when nicole calls, i am thinking
of a halsey song i’d heard that morning,
the question repeating in my head:
tell me how’s it feel sittin’ up there?
name in the sky, does it ever
get lonely?

do i ever get lonely? i think
of a smooth stretch of plastic
soothing me in its swaddled embrace.

when nicole calls, she says i shouldn’t
call her back anymore. she says
the flowers i sent for her birthday
have died already. she says
they probably dreamt
of emily too. my face

pressed against that trash bag,
i look at emily and say,
see?

Alisha Escobedo (she/her/hers) received her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and her BA from Columbia College. Her work explores themes such as queer womanhood and addiction, among other things, and can be found in the Acentos Review, The Los Angeles Press, Desolate Country: We the Poets, United, Against Trump and Prompts!: A Spontaneous Anthology. She currently resides in San Antonio, TX, where she sporadically posts/deletes photos to/from her IG story @ayescobe. 

Stephanie Pierson

TO HEED THE WEATHERMAN

Tess and a friend with their latest salad plantings, says the undated article I found on 
Google when the sun was too hot and I was out of fresh vegetables. It
tells me about their lead-contaminated soil, all their 
sorting and 
measuring and 
“OK”ing et cetera. 
I hear about the chickens in the article: they enjoy eating excess farm vegetables / as if 
we don’t all secretly wish to be farmers. To protect nearby children from possible soil-
born lead dust, woodchips cover every surface in their lot front. I have taken on similar 
habits, spilling soil down my front steps to cover all concrete surfaces. On two melatonin 
and low blood circulation, I dream of a home intrusion by the woman I used to split a t-
shirt drawer with and must check the steps for footprints to 
be sure of her absence / looking for 
you tonight in the hills of me.
Taking advantage of urban closeness, these farmers encourage their neighbors to 
full / indirect / sun / water twice a week / organic fertilizer or use compost / let it / drain. 
We heed with new reverence during high stakes: garden as anti-grocery / all-organic
/ singular. 
The neighbors blare techno music and talk. This gathering is an absurd violation of law 
and I long to turn them in. I count seven in the yard and understand the gravity of 
healing: all parties must comply. 

Terrible feels fresh—right off the printing presses—unrecognizable by September’s 
standard. On hold with Oxford English to get clarification that this is a collective
sensation. I hang up in the middle of the night. 2 AM as absurd customer service and a 
resounding no. I hum their hold tune as 
anthem 
for the next month. Humming / I need / help / my stomach does not recognize lonely or 
longing this month, 
plastered across 
the bathroom floor. I will not open the door but I will thank you through the window.
Do not expect any more than this gesture / an anti-healing / a protesting of this loss / a 
processing with hands tied
/ to let someone in is to cross the picket line. 
Do not call my father. Do not attach my name to this poem
/ I will dig ten holes in the ground. 

Stephanie Pierson is a prose reader for Denver Quarterly and is based in Denver. She studies creative writing at the University of Denver and makes home with a rambunctious Pointer. Some of her critical work can be found at the Tibet Post.

Cleo

Body Count 

CW: Rape

The boy on tinder asks me my “body count”
Melts my bedposts into a crown 
Like I have had the chance to choose every/everybody/body I’ve split open for 

My rapist became a catalyst,
For weeks, every fuck took me one farther from him
Some days, I just need a body that isn’t mine
A warmth against me that doesn’t singe
The first casual fuck after the rape 
The boy asks me to say his name and my rapist answers, his voice a low echo stuck to the roof of my mouth 

I scratch his back and refuse to dig my own grave in his spine, 
Trying to ignore the dust already scattered on my chest 
I wrap my legs around the boy, hang on for dear life, say “please” as if he can save me from what’s already happened 
Pretend I’m not using this new boy’s body as exposure therapy

I try to forget the words to the song my rapist sang in the shower as the drugs wore off in the morning
Make myself busy swallowing a symphony 
My tongue is a violin with broken strings
My throat, a twisted flute
The piano keys of his teeth pressed against my flesh as I pretend I’ve ever known how to read music 

I make a body bag of this boy’s tongue and roll myself into it 
I ask him to fuck me harder, turn me to dust
This wrecking-ball boy willing to demolish something already gone

Cleo (They/Them) is a Black femme genderfluid poet and educator. They have been blessed with opportunities to perform up the east coast, and have publications out with Kissing Dynamite, Barren Magazine, and Pocketfire. They have recently had a poem nominated for best of the net. They hope for their poems to heal, hold, and rage. 

Alyse Knorr

Constitutional

Weregirl newly walking—stumbles in her Velcro shoes toward the zombie tulips (awakened, Jesus-style, for one week only). “UH OH” she says as she dumps her plastic eggs again. “Uh oh,” she mutters, replacing them one at a time. The eight o’clock howls wake her nightly from her toddler dreams—Babybel cheese and a dog-eyed view from the stroller—or nightmares—a glass she is not permitted to touch, a gate between her and the kitty’s tail she wants so desperately to pull. O child of the quarantine, comforted only by sticking your arm down my beer glass—what delights will transfigure you today? What new words will you swallow whole?

Alyse Knorr is a queer poet and assistant professor of English at Regis University. She is the author of three poetry collections, a non-fiction book, and three poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, and ZYZZYVA, among many others. She is a co-editor of Switchback Books.

Marc Huerta Osborn

vaccination

in times of need I meet a bruja who brews venom out of nightshade, 
moth wings and nyquil — I say venom, not poison, because she delivers
the toxins with her teeth, like a snake. don’t ask me why. all I know is that the feeling 
is numbness, a chill wind in the heart’s chambers, the smell of hair 
burning — then sleep. 

while I toss and turn, the bruja cleans my bite wound and binds it. the mind
fills with unspilled secrets. sweat beads on the upper lip, grotesque
admissions and beggings for forgiveness squirm, sleepspoken, from my restless
tongue, flopping around the room like a grey-fleshed fish 
gasping for air. time passes, the toxins

do their purging work. just before I awake, I’m visited
by a vision: a hairless black xoloitzcuintli dog 
judging me from the corner of the cold,
empty room. her eyes’ milky whiteness implies
blindness, but I feel her gaze like sandpaper scraping
the skin. I gasp — the image scatters. 

sitting upright, I take inventory of 
the room: two water bottles, a fistful of 
earth, and the dust motes: golden 
confetti riding the stale, stunned air.

Marc Huerta Osborn is a poet and educational consultant based in the East Bay, California. His poetry appears in The Acentos Review, Rust + Moth, and various Stanford University publications. For inspiration, he devours anime, hip-hop, and fiction.