Shelly Blankman

OPEN BLINDS: WHEN THE SON COMES OUT

I never knew you were gay. Children can’t find the words,
and when they do, they’re afraid to say them aloud.
And I, as a mom, feared hearing them. Why no interest
 
in Boy Scouts or sports? Your bedroom was your field;
your computer, your companion. What did I do? I let you
be you. But it wasn’t you, was it? You, hiding in the dark cell
 
of your real self. Day after day, year after year. Living
between the pages of the books you read, within each
poem you created, on every canvas you painted,
 
in all the songs you composed. The cacophony of
comments spilled like red wine on a white tablecloth
at every family function with no one seeing the stains
 
left behind. He's so handsome. He’s so intelligent. He’s
so talented. Why isn’t he dating? I owed no one answers.
I had no answers. Dodging their questions never erased 
 
the doubts. We’d soon lose you to a world of hatred.
If we didn’t know your truth now, how could we help
you face what lay ahead of you? You squirmed the day
 
Dad finally asked you if you were dating any girls.
No, you murmured. Any guys? I asked. Are you gay?
Yes. The landmine had fizzled. You never saw my tears
 
that night. All those years, I’d never seen yours. How many
days of pain had I missed? How many tears had you shed
in the safety of darkness? How many days had you stumbled
 
through life and I wasn’t there for you? How could I be free
from the doubt and despair of letting you down? Through my fog
of sorrow, Dad assured me you were the same son we’ve always
 
known and loved, I wasn’t to blame, you were the same wonderful
son we’d always known. But how do I know what to say to you now?
No book teaches a parent the right thing to say or do. But you did.
 
You taught me to listen, to learn, to let you lead the way.
Because sunrays can always seep through open blinds.

Shelly Blankman and her husband, Jon live in Columbia, Maryland, where they have filled their empty nest with three rescue cats and a dog. Their sons,  Richard and Joshua, who live in New York and Texas, respectively, surprised her by publishing her first book of poetry, Pumpkinhead. Shelly’s poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, and Muddy River Poetry Review, among other publications.

Ava Morgan

We Brought Nothing Into This World, and It Is Certain We Can Carry Nothing Out: A Ghazal

These are the kinds of days where we could watch the branches break.
Speak our nos below the light, tonguing edict, crack-neck, break.
 
Say one night I wake up teething. Say one night I wake up,
sweat-dry, with the trees clawing at the windows. What breaks?
 
My back? These plates? Another bioarchaeology
of gun-blown skulls. When you make eggs, I imagine each break
 
you drive to the shell as a shot winding back towards center.
Always entrance and exit: ninety-five theses to break
 
open the door. What is left but exit wounds? A mouth that
can’t speak, can’t close. Like craters, we swallow light, lick bone, break.

Ava Morgan is a sophomore majoring in English and the Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her work features in the University of Colorado Honors Journal, Green Ink Poetry, Rogue Agent, and Berkeley Poetry Review. When not found hunched over a book, they enjoy knitting, hiking, and listening to music as loud as possible.

Ulyses Razo

Firecloud

          I don’t care
about the flowers, which I merely invented
to give myself another reason to address you.                                      

            —Aleksandar Ristović


When Brenda Hillman wrote
spring opened like autobiography
 
I saw bodies being assumed by the sky.
 
The creeks running down my arms in the shower
were also my veins.
 
And instead of leaves,
instead of branches,
clouds growing on trees.
 
Everyone was watering their mountains
and I could feel my plastic heart
 
bleeding out in the amber bushes.
 
Glaciers floated by in the sky like ships;
the moon was a monastery.
 
A cloud was on fire where I lived.
 
How I wish you were here
so you could see it & say,
 
I knew you could do it;
I always had faith.

Ulyses Razo’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Spectra Poets, dream boy book club, Wonder, Die Quieter Please, dirt child, and elsewhere. He was a 2023 fellow at Paul Smith’s College and lives in London. He’s on Instagram @ulysesrazo.

Kinsey Cantrell

work

lacerate, dismantle me
lately my ideas of curdle and clot
have become obsession   i sit in bed locked
in other missives   whittle the days
old spoke, new frame
 
*
 
forgo me   whatever
ache for return
i still have is
neutralizing, baby
you’ll see
 
*
 
the ragged textures of things
consume me, i run my fingers
over ridges
warts and cysts
encumbering read
 
*
 
small fits and starts
i heard you when you said it
the first time   is it really
so wrong to maintain, how
tired i knuckle to
the crosspatterns of the same
 
*
 
misuse me
shallow breath
heightened commodity
 
*
 
softer now
can i come
home soon
just one more way
to say

Kinsey Cantrell lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her poetry is featured in Protean Magazine, SICK Magazine, Apogee Journal, Booth, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. She studies epidemiology and biostatistics at the City University of New York, and she writes for an indie video game. Find her online at www.kinseycantrell.com or on Twitter @kinseymads.

S.K. Hisega

Kinds of cutting II

In her kitchen my mother kept 
coin-edged knives and a swayback 
board that skeltered on the counter. 
When it was my chore I really did
try, but my slices went ever wider.
My wrist got sore and I gave up.
She was always serene as she reclaimed
the work. I grew up and learned sharp
was safer, offered to buy new knives. 
My mother declined. Said certain things
should be kept dull. And in her house 
she’d decide what to hone.

S.K. Hisega (she/her) is a queer writer, soapmaker, and attorney living in Minneapolis.  She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte and serves on the editorial staff of Qu Magazine. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Foglifter, West Trestle Review, Spout, Booglit, and elsewhere. 

T.P.

Roadkill

                  moonless
country road
                 queer boy
running in hand-me-down
                 high-tops
joyful cricket chirrup
                 half moon grin
never heard the flatbed
                 coming
windows rolled
                 trigger cocked    

T.P. is a 23 year old, closeted gay guy who expresses himself through poetry. He hopes to reach and inspire other closeted people in some way. This is his first publication!

Morgan Caudill

the burning bush

i burned for a year,
but nobody felt the heat.
left ashes on everything i touched.
fingerprints to mark my silent burning.
but i am no phoenix;
this is no rebirth.
this is existence.
 
i burned for a year,
but was never consumed by the flame.
self-immolation of a selfish degree.
this is not a sacrifice;
this is an escape.
this is untouchable.
this is a warning.
 
i burned for a year,
or maybe it was ten.
it's been so long that i've lost count,
but it’s my fault for being pre-destined for burning.
for being a wildfire of a being.
for being so desert of feeling
that all i can do is burn
            and burn
            and burn.

Morgan Caudill is a writer from Kentucky who has only recently begun to share her work. She has a BA in English and an MAT in middle grades education. She currently works as a teacher by day and writes in her room by night.

Katie Cossette

Lobotomy at Claires

I am a woman,
but don’t call me a feminist.
In a flash I would trade
this measly existence
of HR complaints
and battling my
complicated gender identity
for a fluffy skirt
and a hole in the head.
Tell me what to do, honey—
it’ll be done with a
perma-smile.
Your steak was overcooked?
Go ahead, hit me.
Don’t worry,
my Cover Girl coverup
will hide the evidence.
Oh, I’m sorry sweetheart,
the hysteria’s acting up again.
Must pay a visit to the doctor
with the ever vibrating hands,
then I’ll be good as new.
No daughter of mine
will go around
demanding rights for her body—
your flesh is at the beck and call
of your father and
someday
husband.
Come on, honey,
let’s head over to Claires
and get you all fixed up—
I’ll even let you get
double pierced!

Katie Cossette (she/her) is a Montreal writer pursuing her BA in Honours English Literature. Her work has been featured in Toil and Trouble Lit, DarkWinter Lit, Dollar Store Magazine, and elsewhere. Katie is also the co-founder/co-editor of Crab Apple Literary and you can find her random thoughts about this and everything else on Instagram (nerd.i.am) and Twitter (cossette_katie).

Terence Degnan

The chair and the sliding glass door

are the opposite of paradise// The sagging light// unlike the soft white bats// that dive in gossamer rays// But there is some delusion in the box// A woman pushes the door to signify both, But// my eyes are closed// Her salvaged lips are full of medicine// see, here is where the dream redlines// I have trained my mind on fractal gaskets in relation to// The grains of wood inside a hometown pedestal// Have memorized its corners with// my bygone grip// but I suspect the rail// of her mouth// is bloated with elixir// and so I am not healed// the dog barks again at nothing

Terence Degnan is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent, I Can Wonder Anything was published in March. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.

Catherine Hess

IT WAS MY FIRST TIME

A silver Chevy—
                            the submarine
 
An abandoned parking lot—
                                             the ocean
 
Me—
         s u b m e r g e d

Catherine Hess (she/her) is a Queer American poet whose work has appeared in Tiger Moth Review, Dual Coast Magazine, and elsewhere. Her work is forthcoming in the Second BS Lit Anthology, and she lives in Arkansas.

Lindsay Clark

How to keep breaking your own heart

First of all / it’s
easy. Make a lot / of choices. Flirt
with belonging / let yourself
forget the way you stretch and flatten, come apart
quietly / let it knock you
windless / again and again / the way you fizzle
into cosmological gut biome / undetected. Digest
good meals too quickly. Let your friends / go
when dinner ends. Move. /
Bear
children / watch
them spring like fish through your fist. Leave
your mother each winter. Compute
her mortal arithmetic. Show your work. Check
your work / again and again. /
Move. / Believe
this time / the drinking
will stop this / time / remember
last night’s fight
for the two of you. /
Start running / again / believe
this time / you’ll never
stop. / Choose
people. The same
choices / again and again / fall /
in lust with your effect on them / they won’t
want you back, but they will / admire
you, your specialness. Don’t
tell her / let her
grow old / keep your
lips / to yourself / find
no peace / in hers. Tell /
him / risk / it / wish
you hadn’t. / Pack
up your bags / zip
up your mouth and / move. You must move
before it kills you. Moving kills you. Killing you
keeps your chest / splitting
open with early summer mornings
on the road / the kind
that wipe your wisdom clean / the jostling
breeze that makes you
new before the day / comes
again to claim you.

Lindsay Clark lives in NYC with her family. Her work has recently appeared in Rust + Moth, Breakwater Review, The Shore, and elsewhere.

William G. Gillespie

Virgule

A seam that joins
the broken
 
lines. In ancient Greece
the host would snap in two
 
a tablet of clay and hand one
half to his guest.
 
Something to do with Zeus
dividing the first humans,
 
leaving them to wander, forever
in search of their missing
 
half. In the art of kintsugi a broken
bowl can still be
 
beautiful. The fragments are glued
using lacquer dusted with powder
 
gold. Once, at a dinner party,
my friend knocked down
 
a martini glass. We threw
away the crystal shards.
 
For most what is
broken is
 
useless.

William G. Gillespie lives in Brooklyn, NY. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Shore, Volume Poetry, Rust + Moth, and Eunoia Review, among others.

Esther Ra

self-portrait without a mirror

tears form small, glossy patches on the pool
of my skirt      remind me how small is my sorrow
 
after long stillness    my body hums    its tuneless
& squeaking refrain      kiln-dried spruce piano
in need of touch     to make music         your mouth
 
teaches me the shape of my own       measures
the size of my yearn            & the library         a forest
 
of ghost-written     glass       daily I run my fingers
through the blades      emerge cut      & resplendent
 
with words       I see that          I felt that
              you are not alone          & every human I love
 
shines depthful & limpid    as a lake       reflecting pieces
of me    in creased ripples     you     who taught me
 
how to love this hard city        you   who shaped me
into stalactites of strength       I laugh cry whisper
 
soothe prattle dance     through your body       your throat
         our shared lives         & I write this
 
words      that shimmer       with light
the only refulgence         I can grasp
 
one moment          at my back           my shadow
      on paper          I dissolve               into dawn

Esther Ra is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023) and book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018). Her work has been published in Boulevard, Rattle, The Rumpus, and PBQ, among others, and received numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize, 49th Parallel Award, Vineyard Literary Award, and Women Writing War Poetry Award. (estherra.com)

k.r. taylor

red paint and metallic tongues

she was always like this.
she was five and begged to paint her walls red
not pink or blue
but red.
they painted them purple.
 
spent years screaming until her throat bled
and people told her they loved her rasp,
made jokes about how much whiskey she must’ve drank
but she was afraid of the bottoms of bottles.
 
slammed doors to be heard
just like her mother.
filled her ear canals with cement to be deaf
just like her father.
 
she reeked of cigarettes but never smoked
bargained with the devil but never won.
 
ripped the heads off of the dolls who stared too long
and mourned them at their burials in the front lawn.
 
she was always like this.
she was born a bitch, bit her mom’s nipple and giggled.
bit the tongues of men until she tasted iron
in hopes they would finally stop trying to swallow her whole.
 
she cursed the wishing wells and her fingertips’ wasted eyelashes
god forbid she found the genie–
she’d shatter his bottle.
god forbid she met god–
she’d remind him what red smells like.

k.r. taylor (she/her) is a radiologic technology student with poetry seen in The Weight Journal, Teen Ink, Dead River Review, and The Somerville Times. Her poetry never steers clear of the uncomfortable, but rather tends to thrive off of it.

Jodi Balas

BEFORE FINDING HER

(on your phone and elsewhere)

What if we just left it at "you make better dippy eggs than I do" - if I didn't switch gears and call another house my home - what if you didn't look at me twice, my glasses giving off a glare in your direction; if I left at the edge of summer instead of trespassing into fall or if you ended your scheduled shifts on time - what if I never handed you a plum from the garden because it tasted too sour - what if you didn't smell just like my father and had the same dull fade out - what if I wasn't so inclined at reading birth charts and placed you at the center of mine - or if accidents always happen on purpose and it was an accident I was into astrology and dippy eggs - what if I shot you down after the third or fourth date - or what if I didn't believe it was an accident that you smelled just like him because we know how long grief can stick around before attaching itself to someone else - and so what if I fall face first onto someone else's heartaches - what if you only care about landing on your feet or where they can take you - what if you didn’t bend me over the crucifix of your past - if your tongue wasn't split in two - what if you punctured the egg - what if the sex was irrelevant - if you told me where you're headed instead of where you've been - and what if I followed - what if you're actually part merman, your sea entirely green - if you never brought me morning coffee and a case of your ex - if God was the only judge and there was never a case for us - if I'm starting to forget how tangible it almost was?

Based out of NEPA, Jodi Balas is an "always developing" neurodiverse poet who uses a variety of methods to expand her craft and is searching for innovative ways on how poetry could be evolved and cultivated. Currently she is working on her first Chapbook, titled The Art of Molting where she draws inspiration from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of grief to center the book's theme. Jodi has work published in The Willawaw Journal, Grand Little Things, The Times Leader and is a contributor of the PA Bards.

Alex Dodt

My Mother Forgets the Word for Mercy

the general shouts bury ‘em where they lie
& the fire subsides / enemies rolled into a pit /
the victorious dead in flag-draped boxes / lying
in state as the credits roll // mercy is unwalkable
 
distance between the soil we die on & the dirt
tossed over our grave / mercy is the hole
the soil that bears us // like a mother
mercy walks anyway / arms extended
 
coaxing the sky from its womb // every funeral
I’ve been to was fitted around work red-eye
flights one change of clothes / mercy is space
between death & burial / burial & goodbye / goodbye
 
& your hand forgiving the last cell to ever touch them /
mercy is unlimited time off / & paid / in the living
room / napping beside the body // mercy is no more
general / fire / flag // mercy is my mother
 
watching my brother love his long-gone father / mercy
is forgetting // mother mercy
left you plucking raisins from sills that open on waters
I have never touched // mercy / must be near
 
-ness / a body soothed by the soil that birthed it / lovers
& mothers visit on lunch break // in the book
on my nightstand / amnesia
is the hero / of the story / the hero in flesh
 
is a woman who knows ten words / who believes
zero might be mercy // the average
person knows 20,000 words / too few of which
are synonyms for mercy / grace / or a cage

Alex Dodt is a high school philosophy teacher in Phoenix. His previous work appears in Qu Magazine and Devastation Baby.

Ken Anderson

SERENITY SUITE

         The Sedative

A hypnotist,
I heal invisible wounds. Lavender grows
from my cracked shell.

Lay down your gun.
I won’t hurt you.
Follow my lead.

Swallow me and hear a lullaby,
“Hush, my darling. Sleep.”
 
Again, you curl
to a cherub, suck your thumb.
A homely nursemaid guards your crib’s white cloud.
 
The pendulum stops. All rolled
into one. The eye
of the storm. Patient Job. God.
 


         The Tranquil
 
I have drifted
into a dead calm
in the middle
of the Pacific Ocean. The sun has pressed the wrinkles
from the tide.
 


         The Statue
 
I have assumed a sculptural pose, a monument
to whom I used
to be.

Ken Anderson: New Poetry from the Festival (an anthology of the 2021/2022 Saints & Sinners winners and finalists) includes four of his poems. His poetry books are The Intense Lover and Permanent Gardens. Gay publications include Angel Rust, Beyond Queer Words, Flux (Fifth Wheel Press), Gay and Lesbian Review, The Heart of Pride (Quillkeepers Press), Mollyhouse, Prismatica, Queerlings, Rabid Oak, RFD, Screen Door, Vagabonds, Warning Lines, Wicked Gay Ways, and Wussy Mag.

Lindsey Marie Siferd

an auntie anne’s in the wild is a strange and beautiful thing

this time it’s you eating hummus in palestine. i’m riveted, lost thinking about
licking your teeth. scraps of tahini behind your molars, all slick with my spit.
remember when we could spit on each other, tony? last january i would walk

by the hookah bar on my block where lovers sat blowing strawberry smoke
into each other’s lungs. delicious, like the ice cubes made of blood they give tigers
at the zoo. i watched them melt, so red. delicious, like the egg salad you ate

in okinawa. you’re conflicted about the strip clubs darling, and i’d like to take off
my shoes for you. as kids, we used to tell stories about the cereal killer, his victims
smothered with chex, drowned in lucky charms. i tried to tell my therapist about how

alone i felt in the hotel room with the blinds open, but he only wanted to talk
about disney world, frozen yogurt, and chocolate bars. this is new york, man.
a wednesday is a friday is a saturday is a sunday. the ocean is so blue in marseilles.

on the screen it’s rosé wine with eric rippert and i hold my breath because is this it?
the one where the hotel—the scene changes and my stomach floats back down
to my abdomen. not yet, tony. another five seasons to go. meanwhile, it’s sea snail

cooked with wild fennel and orange peel, slow simmered in garlic and saffron.
it takes forty hours to pick 150,000 saffron flowers, leaving one kilogram
of raw spice. i’d dump it all on your head if it’d make you stay. don’t you get it

my love. there’s so many children who want your scraps. fuck them following
you into an afterlife, fuck an afterlife at all. i don’t know about your siblings.
who did you leave behind? whose kittens begging for droplets of cream?

i see an auntie anne’s in the wild and text my brother. it goes nowhere,
an s.o.s. sent to a ghost. dawn says the opposite of devastation is fruit, so
i’ll take a plum, please. i want you to pull out my heart and put it in your box.

i already know there are one hundred girls left in this broken city more beautiful
than me. but i can promise you, tony, i have the sharpest nails and the tightest pussy
and i taste like america. i taste like freedom. i am your freedom, i am freedom.

anyway, in cuba, you are a flag girl and the vintage cars rev their engines for you,
thirsty for your kneecaps. when the checkered flag goes down i almost vomit
with the pleasure of it. your fingers send missives from another planet,

and i keep forgetting to take my medicine. detroit, and you’re a steel beam.
las vegas, a stubbed out cigarette. i can see the tattoos you got in tibet on your arm.
i can see the tattoo of the anime girl on my brother’s wrist. take your medicine,

lindsey. take your goddamn medicine. broken links on your wikipedia page leave
me eroticizing your trip to tanzania, and i’m afraid i’m complicit. i’m not ready
for this all to end. let’s keep going. in my dream about the field everything is yellow. 

Lindsey Marie Siferd is a college admissions counselor who moonlights as a poet. She has been previously published in Cimarron Review, Atlanta Review, Vagabond City, and Sortes, among others. She lives in New York City and is currently a candidate for the MFA in Poetry at Columbia University.

Mickie Kennedy

Playing Around

As a teen, you wore
your mother’s bra
stuffed with socks—breasts
meant to be seen,
never touched.
Do you wish you’d been born
a woman? you asked.
 
When I fucked you,
I saw you as you
wanted to be seen—
smooth and warm
skin, a mouth I loved
kissing.
 
In college, you showed me
how to smoke crack—
a rock in a bowl
of aluminum foil,
white vapor.
 
I wanted to dial back
time, back when you confided
only small things—
like the lipstick you stole
from the corner store.
 
Back before your body,
with its many little betrayals,
simply stopped
being yours.

Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland with his family and a shy cat that lives under his son's bed. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in The Bangalore Review, The Pinch, Plainsongs, Portland Review, Wisconsin Review, and elsewhere. He earned an MFA from George Mason University.

Sophia Marina

QUELL… QUELL

tectonic shift
traceable non
my slackest heart
escapades; fills
the empty balcony—
 
(weight of each eyelid
its brief dream
 
 
                        who volunteers to guard
 
            my artifice? my sheen, extract…
           
promise to read the omens (forever, harness
the future before it is fracked
 
movement mine
in tireless orbit
modicum of wholeness
/supply the energy that becomes
 /coveted 
 
 
 
    to achieve such balance in the torso
                                                  contort me featherweight no
                                                                                                                                                           
 
 
 
 
                                                                                      / i twist it all to wreaths
 
 
 
 
 
 
                                    &)anchor me in symmetry
                         wrest me from it too

Sophia Marina is a poet from the Texas borderlands. Her work has been published in 4x4, Annotations, and Variant Literature. She is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Brown University.