Maria Juchniewicz

The body

This is my body
outspread before the world like canvas
people paint it as they want as they like
as the famous journals say 
This is my body 
where the wars take place, long debates grow
and grow like a fat, businesslike grin
this is how the decision is formulated – on the belly of indecision to the breasts of doubt to the
neck of silence and then on to the my head my head
where you hear the answer they long for shouted at your face and you could not
disagree
This is my body on the pedestal, hated and loved, for wrong reasons
This is my body that loves and hates, this is me inside the body
but the brush has been whipped from my fingers and my mouth is glued with somebody else’s paint
the canvas is somewhat smaller, shrunk and I am cold
This is my body but should I use the word my
anymore?
This is a body but can I even say the word body, just because?
(always but)
I should keep my voice inside my throat, like a bud,
I should keep it as a growing bun in the oven
Oh, in this oven I breathe in the smell of amazement
and the burnt cake and the burnt throat
from vomiting, vomiting 
in this pregnant silence, full of sharp edges and frozen sighs
in this happy house I keep my head down
This is a body that by a miracle can be divided 
each nine months and shared amongst exasperated society 
just like bread was shared by Jesus and his anointed voice
smelling of seriousness and wisdom and sex
each nine months this body is multiplied and shared 
amongst voracious society
just like each cell must live in a cell, your body’s a nun in a red habit
you’re spitting blood but the teeth form a smile between chattering
between looking into your hands at your hunched-up
past, hiding cupboard shadows
distant eyes staring from the dirty sink
choked cries, calls, laughs underneath the bathroom lamp
past these walls you keep your head down
you’re our happy house, freshly painted 

Maria Juchniewicz is an English philology student currently living in Warsaw, Poland. She is in love with literature, translations, rock'n'roll, and cats.

Bill Neumire

Taking pictures in the Evergreens, I get the call that your cousin’s been found hanging in the woods

“Heavy the woods with Self”
— James Merrill

I have a malady the color of mirror
light.
Disguised,
an
elegy
 
can live in one for a life
time,
conjured
at certain
calendar
moments.
 
23 & hanging from a tree, who was he
to me?
I last
saw him
sailing
like a
morning
loon—
 
he bought a rope from Home
Depot—
all
the directions
are on
Youtube
now.
 
The forest’s a palimpsest of
failed
children.
Observe
within
 
their bluest beginning:
night throbs
with
underground
tree-speak.
But of what?
Anchor points?
suspension?
 
My shirts are orderly. The funeral is
Wednesday.
His mother
moves
like rustled
brush.
 
I’m still
here
in late
October
light,
warmest week of autumn yet—
 
—pinecones
moth
the ground’s
nutrient
hum:
there are doors that take
 
longer
to open
than others.
I don’t
know
the names
of most
plants,
the names
for shifting
shades
of green
& brown,
these leaves,
veins & blades curled like sleep—this is not an elegy,
 
or at least
not elegiac:
the sun’s
telling me
a story;
it crowns
the stones
& polished
names
become
momentary
marquees.
I’m under
standing here in a field of golden syllables
 
& white-haired
expired
flowers:
(I do know
the names
but don’t
want to say)
the world
below
& the world
above
want me
without
direction.
Squirrels, deer, rabbits, crows abide here:
 
no
hunting
just
a long
breath
of end.
I’m giving
myself
permission
to forget
what
death is.
I’m feeling
whole
& warm
& lit
like
a moment.

Bill Neumire's second book of poems, #TheNewCrusades was a finalist for the Barrow Street Prize, and his first book, Estrus was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award. His poems have appeared in Harvard Review Online, Los Angeles Review, West Branch and Beloit Poetry Journal, and his reviews of contemporary poetry regularly appear in Vallum and in Verdad. 

Suzy Eynon

LANDLOCKED CHILDHOOD

Most of my nightmares involve the ocean.
I’m on a cruise ship as it hits rough seas. It flips over, then bobs upright, a duck
seeking a sinking bread crumb. A bathtub toy. Window squares
fill with water. I’m told this can just happen. My girls,
my adopted cats, are in cargo below, and I want
to check they are safe after the surprise flip. They could be drowning
and I ask if I can check on them, but no, I must wait
until we dock. It’s just not safe. There is a flood
in my childhood home, where I still live in the dream. In the desert.
I wade across the house to save the cats. I find Mina curled in a chair,
dripping. She’s the one who looks most closely
like my already departed cat. Water stretches across unfinished floors, leaving
in its wake thick gray fingers, evidence of reach.
I cling to the side of a sailboat, the sea and a creamsicle sunset at my back, my body
in the water but my head above. I’m in the middle of the ocean
as a horse swims past. I wonder why he is there
but not why I am. I’m from the desert so is it any wonder
I dream of drowning? On reflection I realize I’m
surrounded but not sinking.

Suzy Eynon is a writer from Arizona. Her work has appeared in Autofocus, X-R-A-Y, South Dakota Review, Variant Lit, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle with her cats.

Jaimie Lee

Blue Mouth

I plunge my fingers into salt
until they forget tracing the beard
      that grew on your chin like an oriole’s nest
until they repent for trusting the bird
      who decided you were a safe place to build a home.
 
I watch waves abandon creatures
on the shore as a tentacle caresses my ankle
in search of a mooring and I exhale my animosity,
pledge to cradle only pity towards the bluebottle –
helpless that its every tender brush stings.

Jaimie Lee is a writer and psychology student from Sydney, Australia. If she could, she would spend all her time writing in sunlit kitchens surrounded by black cats.

Louise Wallace

crave

weak and irritable       the self flickers       time      
 
is like a heaviness on your chest       you crave
but each moment       disappears      
 
before you can hold it       you yearn      
for night       to head off      
 
into it       to occupy       a bed alone

Louise Wallace is the author of three collections of poetry published by Te Herenga Waka University Press, New Zealand, with her next book, THIS IS A STORY ABOUT YOUR MOTHER, forthcoming in May 2023. She is the founder and editor of Starling, an online journal for young New Zealand writers.

Corbett Buchly

what is left

Rio Rancho, New Mexico 2019

the people spoke of god
to speak around death
and the sound flowed
over us and through pews
emptying outside down
the long steps into gutters
they practiced the ritual
I’ve seen rehearsed
but never read the rules
 
graveside the pallbearers lowered the casket
gray and sleek onto polyester straps
he or the body who used to hold him
ten feet near
his rough voice
like sleet gathering
in the corners of glass
weaves between the mourners
a serpent not yet put to rest
 
only the voice the voice and this casket
this collection of tissues holding it all together
surly the panels will drift
outward at any moment
when the center lets go
when the pebbled snake
skin sheds and memory
slides forward, oily and difficult to hold

Corbett Buchly’s poetry has appeared in SLAB, Rio Grande Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Barrow Street. He is an alumnus of Texas Christian University and the professional writing program at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Northeast Texas. You can find him online at buchly.com.

Jasiah Hasan

Intrusive Thoughts Love Good Bones

every day I let you cut me
I let you make doors
out of my skin.
 
sometimes you enter quietly
surgical precision
scalpel teeth & nails
no lidocaine.
 
other days you bring a construction crew
chisel, brick hammer, hand saw
the earth shakes while you work
you wear earmuffs &
hum show tunes.
 
you crawl through new doorways
you look around and say:
this house is old and rotting
but it has good bones
I suppose it will do.
 
so I watch you make repair.
my ribs make furniture
ivory chairs & footstools.
my blood makes your pinot noir
red & earthy but never too sour.
my gray matter is your favorite
the way it makes your nightly bath
full of steam & epsom & lavender oil.
 
sometimes your doors fuse shut
locks fossilized by the passing of time.
but it's okay: you’ll find my ears
my mouth
my nose while I sleep.
you’ll still crawl inside me
still play house
still soak in your tub &
sip perfectly aged wine.
 
long live
the architecture of aching
the king of parasites
recycler of good bones.

Jasiah Hasan is a 22-year-old poet and writer from Portland, Oregon. She studied poetry at the University of Virginia. In her free time, she loves hiking, cooking, and oil painting.

William Aarnes

demolish

Level works and topple
and raze and maybe bulldoze
 
but it’s hard not to relish
demolish as the tongue
 
presses its curled tip
against the lower teeth,

then flattens it back
before slipping it
 
beneath the upper incisors,
demolish more full-bodied
 
than destroy, than annihilate,
than the open-mouth assonance
 
of lay waste, though ruin
has its lip-puckering appeal,
 
demolish more luscious,
despite what many
 
may want to think,
than peace or survive.

William Aarnes has moved from South Carolina to New York this past summer.  His most recent collection is The Hum in Human, from Main Street Rag.

Alyssa N. E. Jones

brachial

spores bloom in my lungs
dots of yellow life
 
porous/fragmentary/molecualr
 
breath
 
spores into fungus into ferns into flowers
 
breathe
 
blossoms
rooting in my tongue
 
            brachial stems/brachial roots
 
breathe out

Alyssa N. E. Jones is a 22-year old queer writer from Georgia. She recently graduated from Columbia University, with a double major of creative writing and evolutionary biology of the human species. Her paper "Do Non-Human Primates Have Culture?" was published in Columbia's student-run journal, Sapient. Her poetry often deals thematically with her race, sexuality, family, and upbringing. When not writing, she enjoys playing with her cat and going dancing with her friends.

Wen Yu Yang

A PORTRAIT OF A GIRL IN THE LOST AND FOUND

a girl as
a moon as
a shadow sun as
a forgotten prayer echoing
 
a girl as
a bottled typhoon rattling as
a yarrow wildfire outbreaking as
lava roiling under skin as
stars bursting on tongues
 
a girl as
sand into shards as
mirrors dented in as
tapes rewinding as
puzzle pieces missing and
found and lost and
again and again and
again

Wen Yu Yang was born and raised in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Currently, she coordinates the UNSWeetened Literary Journal 2022 and writes on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Bidjigal people in Sydney, Australia. You can find her at: https://wenyuwrites.wordpress.com.

Eli Shaw

Trans-sexual education

My home state names my body sexually explicit.
 
But when my father warned me against top surgery,
his voice ached in fear of my pending undesirability.
           
The gap between my scars feels thicker
than the distance between their two kinds of terror.
 
The night I forgot protection & let the tourist, anyway,
because of his shoulders & smile & the way he didn’t refer,
even once, to my lady's plumbing like the other men on grindr,
 
I stood under the showerhead & watched suds
run between the thick pink welts.
 
At work a customer asks where I’m from & I tell her & thank god
you got out, a little gay boy like you & I just laugh,
the mud & Mississippi of his tongue in my throat.
 
His lust felt impossible so I stored it in my ribcage,
a festering kind of marrow.
 
Query for the gym teacher who talked often about the pull-out method:
will these hands, which chop broccoli
for my friends & scoop up
all 19 pounds of my mother’s dog,
always taste a little of every man I touch?
 
Open letter for that video about my pubescing self:
can you inhabit a body without desire?
I do so many sexless things in a day,
but when the tourist touched me I think
he was giving my bones their proper names.
 
I wish I could visit my old classrooms, admit the mutilated & joyous truth of myself,
stuff our backpacks with condoms & chocolates,
promise the coming stains are nothing to be forgiven.

Eli Shaw is a queer, trans poet from North Florida currently based in Yosemite National Park. He spends his time writing, looking up at trees & rocks, and convincing tourists to fear bears the right amount..

Justin Groppuso-Cook

Hieroglyphics in Flesh

I.          Infection: Age 15
 
Birthed with the sting of a shader needle—
my wing bone burning, my blood
mixing with spirits.
In an acquaintance’s basement hazy
from marijuana & crushed Soma
 
blown off an antique vanity.
I had to jump from my second-story window,
sneak out before the birdsong.
This was before we knew consequence:
the playfulness of a baby’s first high.
 
We whiffed a few splinters, had to scrape
them from membrane. My childhood immortalized
in an effigy of imaginary friends: Ghost Head
Tree Head, Salt Head. Companions
who vanished in a sandbox.
 
 
 
 
II.         Pyrexia: Age 17
 
Dissociation germinated in the fall
                                    when her lashes swept through
 
raked mounds. Took notes on the shades
                                    & hues. Gathered the shifting leaves,
 
stuffed them in my mouth, stuffed
                                    them in the trash beneath my eyes,
 
colorblind; the taste of steel sticking
                                    to my tongue. I smashed my teeth
 
on the piano keys, strung out of sight.
                                    Relinquished footprints at my abuser’s door
 
as a relief. On edge—level with the night—
                                    a drop can become so much more.
 
She gifted me this tattoo: silhouettes in free fall,
                                    a red balloon. The chill of white
 
                        tile as I flushed away the leaves.
 
 
 
 
III.       Elysium: Age 19
 
My rosary fell apart, & I carried the remains
            to Lake Superior. Let the waves take them.
                        The sky was coughing up smoke. A memento:
 
I buried a rock of salt. After a mouthful
            of amphetamines, I stayed awake a week
                        believing with absolute positivity I was
 
already dead—could hear the wolves
            gambling, feasting on a herd of sheep.
                        When I ran away, the corners of my eyes
 
filled with gnats. I hid in a hollowed out
            willow tree creaking—nobody called
                        my name. Tattered my sleeves, chewed
 
through nails & teeth, placed beneath
            my tongue, in Holy Communion, strips
                        of LSD, pages from a Bible; I recognized
 
everyone who passed me by. My Grandpa Joe
            swung through for a visit. I took a shot as he
                        loaded the needle gun: Let me show you
 
what you have forgotten. Left his thumbprint
            on my forehead, tattooed an evil eye into
                        my sternum: black with a red pupil, ink
 
            from his veins. I came down: Watercolor Cowboy,
his nom de plume, engraved across my clavicles.
 
 
 
 
IV.       Ascension: Age 21
 
In mourning prayer, I spread my wingspan
across the horizon & stitch
the pinons my ancestors
left behind into my chest. Blood reigns
as I suture my pigmented wounds
through a thunderstorm, the plumage
blooming from my rib cage.
No longer do I fear the windfall, clench
with tension—just allow the breeze to blow
through me. Brush the dust from my lungs,
spill my mind, until everything
I was dissolves into a hum.

Justin Groppuso-Cook is a Writer-in-Residence at InsideOut Literary Arts Project and Poetry Reader for West Trade Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets, Crab Creek Review, EcoTheo Review, and Luna Luna Magazine among others. He received the 2021 Haunted Waters Press Award for Poetry and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook, Our Illuminated Pupils, was a semi-finalist for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize (Factory Hollow Press). In 2022, he was a resident at Writing Workshops Paris. More information can be found on his website, www.sunnimani.com.

william erickson

Clock

A steel foot
kicks a sound,
 
a mouth.
 
Three red faces
draw their mats
across the voiceless
rocks,
 
chapped lips rushing
no prayer.
 
Your memory opens
like the diver’s surfacing lungs.
 
Each klick is a touch.

william erickson is a living poet. His work appears in Sixth Finch, Heavy Feather, Sprung Formal, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere. He is a 2023 Best New Poet nominee, has two chapbooks and another forthcoming, and his debut collection is out in 2024 with April Gloaming. william lives in Washington with his partner and their two dogs in an old house across the street from a large tree.

John Amen

Ode to Impermanence

                    — anatta, for Richard

I tossed in the dark, thumbing a silver button
until the nurse shoved me an Oxy in a paper cup.
Hot, cold, hungry, rolling from one
dream to another. But who dreamed? Who
unraveled that white thread, plunging
the catastrophes of mind & body?
I dreamt a morphine dream,
electrodes glued to my skin.
Dreamt of a rattlesnake coiled in my bed.
I dreamt of our father, who threw open
a second-story window, jabbing a shotgun
into the green breast of an oak tree.
Johnny he said bring me that dead bird.
I went looking for it, barking in the mulch,
sniffing that mound of butterfly wings.
I couldn’t find it, & when I turned our father was gone.
I woke & yelled his name, & the morning
shattered like a light fixture crashing to the floor.

John Amen is the author of five collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm (NYQ Books, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the Dana Award. He was the winner of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and his poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. His music, literary, and film reviews appear widely in such publications as Colorado Review, No Depression, Beats Per Minute, and PopMatters. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine.

Prosper Ifeanyi

SONNET: PORTRAIT OF A BOY LOSING AND FINDING HIMSELF AGAIN

There was a procession of people frozen in time, who sang
The song of a goat. And I, waiting for a kiss that won’t
Materialise, joined the dithyrambs. For every poem I wrote I
 Inadvertently left a piece of myself in there, even when that
Is not the intention for which I wrote. I heard one time from the
Mouth of my grandma that some people lost their lives in a war
Because they couldn’t be pidgeonholed into a lineage; and she
Moulded my tongue into beads to tie my name around my neck,
Like this: I- F-E-A-N-Y-I. And when I told her I found no delight in that, I
Expressed how I longed to be called a British name like “Prosper.”
 Then she called me a good arsonist who razed my world of clauses,
Phrases and mediocrity; painting a picture of what British names
 Looked like: Cook, Pot, Stone, Rice…In the end, I somehow found
Myself pronouncing I-F-E-A-N-Y-I again.

Prosper Ifeanyi is a Nigerian poet. His works are featured or forthcoming in Lumiere Review, Identity Theory, Kalahari Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Salamander Ink Magazine, Icefloe Press, Livina Press, New Note Poetry, Terror House Magazine and elsewhere. Reach him on Twitter @prosperifeanyii.

Christopher Gannon

GREEN DONKEY

I believe Jesus
drives a Ford Pinto
down a dark lonely road,
rank with industrial fog.
 
I barely follow the soft red glow,
bloody holes in a hopeless landscape.
 
Yes, Jesus drives a Pinto.
Yes, Jesus drives a Pinto.
Yes, Jesus drives a Pinto.
The bumper sticker tells me so.

Christopher Gannon is a storyteller from Buffalo, NY. Their short fiction and poetry have been published in 50-Word Stories and Apocrypha & Abstractions.

Richard Newman

How to Take an Afternoon Nap in Southeast Asia

If you don’t have a spouse or animal in the house, borrow one.
 
Don’t think about the plots you’re plotting
or people you want to sleep with.
 
Your work, your troubles will still be there when you wake.
Let them have a rest too.
 
If you can’t find the cool spot of the pillow,
appreciate its damp warmth.
 
Don’t let any parts of your body touch the mosquito net,
as the mosquitos will find you.
 
Most likely the mosquitos aren’t carrying
dengue fever or malaria.
 
Somewhere, something in the house—the refrigerator, electric fan,
the plumbing—is singing you a lullaby. Listen.
 
Your phone is not singing you a lullaby.
Put it in another room.
 
The birds, the bugs, the car horns, even the sidewalk karaoke
are all cheering you on to sleep. Let them.
 
Seal any anger in a glass jar and put it on a specimen shelf
with the others. You can examine it later.
 
Set the air conditioner or fan to make the temperature slightly cooler 
than normal, then cover yourself with a sheet.
 
Do not lie in a fetal position. Casket style is better.
 
If a song is playing in your head (and there should always be
a song playing in your head), let it.
 
The car alarm drilling into your mind wants
to tunnel through your dreams. Follow it.
 
When trying to fall asleep, don’t compose
lists or poems. If you must, wait until you wake.

Richard Newman is the author of three books of poetry, most recently All the Wasted Beauty of the World (Able Muse Press, 2014), and the novel Graveyard of the Gods. His work has appeared in American Journal of Poetry, Best American Poetry, Boulevard, Tar River Poetry, and other magazines and anthologies. He currently teaches Creative Writing and World Literature at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco. Before moving to the Maghreb, he and his family lived in Vietnam, Japan, and the Marshall Islands.

Zachary Rockwell Ludington

Convesso

When photographing broken fruit
for album covers or magazines, you want
a man with a slow hand,
lighting, lenses, flashes, flush
with a nice per diem and a choice
of exit seat. A sense of sudden surface, and
everything is surface; palpable, pulpable,
relatively cheap. It’s not fair to yaw on about
La trahison des images; they have no
promises to keep! Everything
is surface, so try not to look too deep.
Get real. Don’t give and don’t ask
too much. You want a man with a slow hand,
you want a lover with an easy touch.

Zachary Rockwell Ludington is Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Maine. His creative work has appeared in PEN America, Bateau, Drunken Boat, LEVELER, Guesthouse, Numéro Cinq, and elsewhere. Cardboard House Press published his translation of Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Pixel Flesh in 2020.

Erik Carlsen

Solstice

The runt kitten eating sloppily gets applause
While the bite on my neck is nursed. I saw a baby
Nursing once from a cut tit and it had a bloody mouth.
 
The plow got so dull it felt like a finger in the mouth.
Sharpening by moonlight took so long that all six sons
Had to rest their heads.
 
Every morning a man goes to the river and picks a switch for his son
Before stuffing his mouth with cattails to muffle the crying. I see how still
I can be. I am so still he pulls the switch right from my mouth.
 
An ox limps through town with a conibear on each horn.
I am greasing the posts that lead to my balcony
Before I set the street on fire.

Erik Carlsen lives in Washington with the ghost of a dog named Duke.

Fred White

WHEN I WAS SANE

When I was sane I danced naked in rain,
climbed rooftops; drew horses and raptors
on my bedroom walls,
carved flying people on my belly.
I wore boy costumes to school;
but later, in trees, I peeled them off like dead skin.
On Halloween I crouched in pumpkin glow
and grinned with blackened teeth at the children.
Ma thought I was delightful,
but Pa took away my crayons
and returned me to the state hospital.
That was when I gave up on sanity.
I glued my mouth shut
and dove into fry-cooking and auto parts.
Eventually, I was fitted with man clothes,
my hands were recalibrated,
I was placed on an assembly line,
and there I remained until my face shriveled up.

Fred White's poems have appeared in Allegro Poetry Magazine, Rattle, Spry, and elsewhere. He lives in Folsom, CA.