Allison Reich

Phrenology

The boy kneels down,
falling, as your fingers brace
at the backs of his two front teeth.
            For weeks, he will bow over the toilet,
coughing up fragments of your nails,
            dislodging them like splinters
from the sponge of his flesh.
Tile and porcelain blossom pink,
stained by his touch.
You are reading the roof of his mouth
because it is, to you, just more of the skull.
Though it is hidden under teeth and tongue and bite
Open wide
he is still, no match for you,
and his jaw is blessed in the grip of your palm.     
Tell us of the malignancies you find.
After everything that he’s said,
there’ll surely be a mouth full of sin.
Find the bread tucked away in his cheeks
and the names fastened on his lips.
When he thrashes and he bleeds,
Hold still
find the wine he did not swallow.
            When it dries like tea leaves on your cuticles,
Tell us if it bodes his salvation.
When he runs - he will try to run -
Please
reach between his ribs, 
grip his spine like a hilt, like a knighting sword,
            and pull.
When he is guillotined from the inside out,
            baptized and bent in prayer,
remember that you are a saint, you are holy,
            this is panacea in the house of god,
Medicine in the garden of Eden,
            My doctor,
My Lord,
Amen.

---

Allison Reich is an Ohio based poet, author, and student. Her poetry and fiction have all the tact and craft of modern contemporary literature and all the emotional intensity of a teenage rom-com. She prides herself on her vivid and compelling style, citing Ocean Vuong and Carmen Maria Machado as her main influences.

Jay Griffith

madonna, sung in rhinestone

after marc swanson

silently gyrating
at the dead deer disco,
the only color
in a ice white room is
a small purple splotch
of remembrance
 
less item than
empty space
with all the heaviness
of a marble block
like the draped
empty condom
in the public bathroom
 
where
in remembrance
and fidelity
some young boy
would not touch another
without it

---

Jay Griffith (he/they) is currently studying English and Education at the University of Vermont. They’re interested in embodied joy, gender overexpression, and all things miniature.

Susana H. Case

Telenovela 1

I don't spit on the plate where I eat,
the son without steady work says
to his worried father in a long-running 
soap opera, an Italian proverb
that sends me to the internet.
They drink wine on their patio
off the Bay of Naples.
 
I was on another patio yesterday—a restaurant
off Arthur Avenue. A woman with a Bronx
accent was so loud we decided to move
inside, where Andrea Bocelli was singing
"Con te partirò" on the mixtape.
In Puglia, I heard this song during a church service,
loved it so much, I emailed the priest to ask
what song it was, carefully checking
that my Italian was correct. He never responded.
Silly American, to email a priest
about a pop song of loss and goodbyes.
Leaving our patio seats started a movement.
The tables emptied out. Everyone then enjoyed
their wine in the air conditioning,
listened to Andrea Bocelli,
except for the loudmouth still on the patio.
 
When Andrea Bocelli sang in front of the Duomo
in Milano, during the lockdown—that video
with all the silenced cities of the world,
Music for Hope, made everyone cry
as if soap were burning their eyes.
We watched the death count going up.
 
I watch the Italian family,
at the center of the telenovela,
who live in Posillipo, overlooking Vesuvius.
The purses are big and beautiful.
But everyone is so serious. The only one
smiling is the girlfriend
of the married doctor who wants to rid himself
of a stalker wife. The girlfriend likes his new
apartment. Her walk is springy.
Uh oh; she's in love. She hasn't a clue.

---

Susana H. Case has authored eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done (Broadstone Books, 2022), which won her a third Pinnacle Book Achievement Award. Her books have previously also won an IPPY, a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite award, and she was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award and the International Book Awards. She co-edited, with Margo Taft Stever, the anthology I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk and Cake Press, 2022). A retired university professor in NYC, Case is currently is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. http://www.susanahcase.com/

Alicia Hoffman

Double Consciousness

The world works in waves.

Gravitational push
 
to some distant shore. Perhaps
 
it is death (the heat & pulse of
unknowing) that sends our havoc
 
through the fabric—
 
Our gill nets torn & fraying—
 
Both fisherman & fish—
 
How to catch
            ourselves
in the cradle—
 
how to soothe
            this sting—
 
this sharpening
 
lure—
 
O curved hook
 
of longing—
 
How to keep this meat
            untainted—pure—
 
thin sinews & the stink
of guts—
 
the scales stripped—
dumped in a bucket—
 
Everything is awful
 
and here I am
full of awe
at my own
iridescence.

---

Originally from Pennsylvania, Alicia Hoffman now lives, writes, and teaches in Rochester, New York. Her poems have appeared in a variety of publications, including The West Review, Radar Poetry, The Penn Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, The Night Heron Barks, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her new book, ANIMAL, is out now from Futurecycle Press. Find her at: www.aliciamariehoffman.com.

Larisa Harriger

Nights

I carry a lifetime’s worth of nights in my throat.
But only one at a time will fit into the coin pocket of my jeans.
The crows keep stealing my dreams.
They pawn the grubby rags
             for a couple of cents a pound.
When the burrowing owls
             pull down the moon and fling it at my heart,
             they intend to maim but miss
             and spill marmalade moon shine
             on the floor.
I cannot stop to wait for you to breathe.
I cannot stop pointing out
             the disappearing stars.

---

Larisa Harriger is a writer, former web geek, and Master of Librarianship who lives with her husband, a black dog, and some scenic sheep in the Snoqualmie Valley. She has been published in the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses, A Door is a Jar, and the American Journal of Poetry. You can read her occasional ramblings at shinymagpie.net.

Sharon Sloane Mariem

I Can Only Bite My Tongue So Long Until My Mouth is Full of Blood

                            I must
integrate the small gods        lovers        bodies in my body   
I once worshipped              then I eat        to encompass  
that which I’ve seen          and been
 
his ring broke open my temple  
bleeding from the head  
            ridiculously 
before 9 a.m.   
 
what can you do               but clean it up  
go to work  
take the J train to Wall Street                               earn
some keep         the trailing memory        I took
the anger                       took the slip of spit in my face
took the brute words and                                    ingested
integrated                      for a little atonement
but you never               
learn
 
so are you                      the dumb small god I eat forever
digesting all this once again
and are you                    sorry
this time
are you sorry                  I cut my anger teeth
on the freeze in your blood
 
couldn’t suck the poison out
still could spit you out  
            for a time                      but
            you keep crawling back
into my mouth

Note: The title here comes from a line in “Making Room” on the 2014 album by Punch entitled They Don’t Have to Believe.

---

Sharon Sloane Mariem is an American poet currently living in England. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in several online and print magazines, including Peach Mag, Witch Craft, MIDLVLMAG, the Nottingham Horror Collective, and Dream Pop Journal. Sharon was a finalist in the 2022 BOMB Magazine poetry contest and her poetry was also commended in the 2019 Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition. She is particularly interested in documentary poetry and verse that explores and critiques technology, capitalism, and mechanisms of control. She holds an MA in creative writing and, oddly enough, an MBA.

Issra Tobah

I buried my name under layers of other peoples’                            lingua,
                                                                                                 I mean langue,
I mean                                            language,
distanced it from my mother’s                 لغة.
 
You still say that my name’s unique
though what you mean is                        not yours 
                                    though it rarely feels like mine     either.
 
je peux écrire
en cuatro idiomas
wa It3alimt ista3mil el-keyboard kidda
so that writing right to left felt backwards
pero
 
I still get asked how I got so good at English and
you’ll raise your brows when you hear I learned it first. 
 
Why the surprise?
Didn’t you spend generations molding my tongue?
 
Is it not still bleue from your touch?

---

Issra Tobah is a writer from London, Ontario. She works as a communications specialist for a local academic consulting company and writes poetry in her free time.

Erin Rachel Norton

boston as a vaccine

convinced the city would save my life / i microdosed cement and cigarette ash / self-surgeries ripped vermont from my skin / i dressed my wounds with wet garbage and spring rain / so easily forgetting / how i used to cry over sunsets that gently kissed / looming green mountains / home looks the way it does without my glasses on now / nostalgic for the taste of bonfires and bitter tobacco / losing my appetite for fog and gasoline / we are not meant to regenerate like taste buds / but i am hope reincarnated one too many times / a mangled game of telephone

---

Erin Rachel Norton (she/they) is an avid strawberry eater, La La Land enthusiast, and a student at Emerson College. You can find their writing in pomegranate lit.

Caroline R. Freeman

You Said You Wanted a Verbal Seduction

My sister told me that the hanging moss
frosting the primal oaks of our scour-green neighborhood
was old women’s hair that slipped from their heads
on their way to heaven.  They didn’t need it, she said,
they’re perfect.  I would tear the grey clumps
from the wrangled limbs I could tip-toed reach
and rake it with one hand, then stuff and braid it
through the arms of my bulk-round, tortoiseshell glasses
and hairbanded tufts.  I’d bike the boughs
of the neighborhood steeping in the heat
but feeling a new kind of pretty
with the long swish of moss casting the sweat
over my tan tank-topped back as I pumped up the hills
and rode back down holding onto nothing
but the picture of the old women now young,
 
cool and softened, my view the lens of a frosted glass.
They wore smooth skulls, health-red mouths,
and light and nightgowns, sprawled placidly
around Jesus, their fingers brisk and thin
braiding his supple, deep hair.
I told you this story lying in our marital bed, staring
at the stain on the wall I swore was shaped like Spain,
and you said that wasn’t at all what you wanted.
So, I turned on my side, facing you and slid
slow to stand letting my hair, now a long, long drown
wash over your body with the fumes of vodka, hairspray,
and expensive yet salaciously named perfume
I donned for that months-belated dinner date 
and imagined it spread and settle onto you
like a steady, black silt.

---

Caroline R. Freeman is a poet born and raised in Mississippi. She's the recipient of a Literary Artist Fellowship grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission and was a Lannan Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. She's a winner of the Fish Poetry Prize and will be published in the forthcoming anthology. After receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland, she has enjoyed teaching writing classes at colleges and universities in Maryland, Tennessee, Texas and Mississippi. She and her husband, Will, are raising a beautiful baby girl and a spirited four-year-old in Hattiesburg where she aggressively gardens and fancies herself the family historian.

Frances Brogan

i don’t like men very much these days

i’m sorry, i said. i didn’t
mean to make trouble. that’s why i hadn’t
said a word for days while that boy
barraged me with messages about
my curly hair and creamy legs.
not an inch of my body is
impervious to the male libido.
when it wants to move mountains,
the world gives it a bulldozer.
 
i used to fight harder
until a penis was rammed down my throat
try it, he said. you’ll like it. as if it
was asparagus and i an obstinate child.
i was repulsed by the largeness of it,
the pinkness, the straining veins ready to burst.
i did not like it, but he said if i stopped
he would leave. i could not bear
the susurrus: what does she do
to drive them away? (okay, okay).
 
god, how i long to live on an island
and turn men into pigs. instead i wear
low-cut tops. i have shrunk to
105 pounds, i can feel myself
dissipating into reed-thin air. i think
anyone could
 
squelch me. i was made to expand.
as a child i would let go of my helium
balloons from the grocery store just
to watch them rise. i didn’t realize
how quickly they fall, resignedly oozing
air. they lie dejected on pavement
to be flattened like pancakes by
pick-up truck tires. their ebullience is
short lived. they are not supposed to
dance. the air has been siphoned
from my lungs; my vocal chords
are cauterized. i no longer know how
to fill the space i’ve been told
not to take up.
babysitting
 
emilia threw a tantrum today. i want
a banana! and there were
none in the fruit bowl. i hauled her
to the next-door neighbor’s house to
ask for a banana.
 
i was wearing my defund the police
shirt; i forgot the neighbor is a cop.
sorry, no bananas, he said brusquely,
shutting the door in our faces as if
we were trying to sell him car
insurance. i apologized. i’m not sure
if it was for emilia or the shirt.
 
i want a banana! i buckled her in her
car seat and drove to wegmans. inside
the store, i held her even though she’s
too big for that now. her ears were red,
her snot and tears dribbled down my
neck in rivulets. in the checkout
line, she clutched her barely
ripe chartreuse banana tighter than
the lap bar on a rollercoaster.
 
why must grief have an expiration
date? one hour for a toddler’s
temper tantrum before she’s
quarantined in her room. one year
for my father’s death before i had to
turn my homework in on time again.
i gave the kid the goddamn banana.
 
the words shimmer, like wind chimes
that won’t stay still. it’s easier to scream,
to shred your throat into pulled pork bits.
i wasn’t asking her for peace - just quiet.
language could never hope to contain
our requiems.

---

Frances Brogan is a student and writer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her work has been featured in Blue Marble Review and The New York Times, among others. Frances enjoys rainy days and wandering through modern art museums. Her favorite poets are Mary Oliver and Sylvia Plath.

K.R. Morrison

Red

After a bottle of merlot in my living room
i meet a woman who talked a man out of raping her.
 
            She says she said to him
 
                        I dare you.
                        In days, I’ll have you dead.
 
i pictured her in that moment –
 
            her hair wild, blowing into snakes
            eyes two mercurial cressets
            her warning brutal like his urges  
 
                        It’ll be slow.      
 
She says she said.
 
                        Forensic.           Painful.
 
She’s annoyed the wine is gone.
She looks around for something red
tells me that upon marking her words
 
            his festering itch for conquest shed.
 
            No moral arousal on his end
            just fearful, full of her
            instead, fear full
 
            of grenades possessed
            by survivor riots, her warnings
stir within him
 
            dry bone dread.
            From his breath, he smells
            his sour spirit, his toxic head.
 
Her story relaxes me.
i drift into wondering –
 
            Where does justice go
            When assaults surpass 12-hour clocks.
            When safety visits, where do wounds rest?
 
i retreat, into girl pure, protected.
Together, we tuck the blood to bed.

---

K.R. Morrison is a Bay Area rooted poet who since the pandemic, splits her time between San Francisco and a place she calls Mermaid Town, in Southern California. Aside from writing poetry, Morrison is a drummer in two female-fronted rock bands, and a high school educator who has been teaching English and Creative Writing for 18 years. Her first chapbook Cauldrons was published by Paper Press Books, wherein she received a Pushcart nomination for her poem, "Her Altar." Morrison has featured for various podcasts and curations; her poetry has been accepted into 14 new publications in 2023.

Alex Behr

Month Three

I met a stump. I nestled by its moss.
They told me to pour honey on it.
I nestled by the stump of Chris’s soul,
dandruff everywhere,
toothpaste stain on the
glass container by
the Henry Miller porn.
The box of his wilderness.
The sparkplugs and feathers.
His ashes, still white,
still enplasticked,
still zip-tied.
If you give attention to the voicemail
it’ll kill you five ways. Maybe six.
Hey, sexy. I love you.
You make me laugh.
You turn me on.
How to fit six-foot-three into two
bags for the Lover Monster
and the Son Monster,
who bicker over an oily Subaru?
Where did the penis end up?
Do you know a dirty joke?
I met a singer and I ate her
iron throat. I licked
her nodules. I tunneled
past her happiness. I
scraped out her voice box and
poured my attention into it. I
poured the ashes into it. I ladled
honey on the ashes and watched
how I ruin every party.

---

Alex Behr is a writer, editor and musician in Portland, OR. She teaches creative writing residencies in Portland high schools through Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program and occasional writing labs through Corporeal Writing. She is the author of Planet Grim: Stories (7.13 Books). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Kithe, Gravity of the Thing, Oregon Humanities, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Cleaver, and elsewhere. She received a RACC grant to support her adoption interview website called Altar / Altered: Adoption Stories and Sacred Objects. www.altar-altered.com. www.alexbehr.com

David Dodd Lee

THE SONGS WE MAKE UP

We were stranded in the dark like atrial fibrillation. 
Like the skull of a dogfish crawling along
 
the bedroom floor under the bed, a centipede
with a cape trailing tears and dust. Nothing’s
 
going in or out of O’Hare in fog this thick.
She handed me lines she’d scrawled on
 
the flyleaf of Navigable Rivers. I was still unfolding 
the map. It was the worst flood in 59 years. 
 
Even the dogfish was dreaming of growing 
legs, tossed back on the bank by a great blue heron. 
 
I’d lost 9 pounds in two weeks. We paddled 
our canoe past the train station. The sky was a pin 
 
cushion. I couldn’t breathe. There were pines
leaning over the water. She’d torn our plane tickets 
 
into confetti, a casket resting beside a boathouse. 
Cigarettes had stressed my alveoli. The fish used 
 
its pectorals to crawl away under the watchful gaze 
of the panting heron. I’ve seen them swallow 
 
ten-pound carp whole. After three months her
jeans hung on her body like a pair of pants 
 
on a hook, vitamin D streaming out through her 
eyes. I asked her to share her dreams. She rolled up
 
her sleeves with her long fingers. It’s my turn to
evolve, the dogfish repeated ayuadame ayuadame.
 
It was crawling uphill using its pectoral fins like stilts,
like elbows. The heron had no interest in doubling
 
its weight that evening, I’d spent much of the 
weekend in the gazebo eating the blueberries 
 
I’d crushed into a paste for the sugar high. 
The river sloshed all around me. When the red fox 
 
came by we both watched a butterfly. I mistook
it for an airplane on fire. It was a Question 
 
Mark. It landed on the path of slime the dogfish 
had left on the grass on its way back to the river 
 
after the heron had wandered off, bored. The fish sank 
into the muddy river, hopeful for better days. We 
 
paddled the canoe out toward the purple sunset. That 
night I watched the condensation on my windows 
 
evaporate like the muttering I heard from that dogfish 
as it labored uphill que sientes que sientas que sientes.

---

David Dodd Lee is the author of ten full-length books of poems & a chapbook, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), & And Other’s, Vaguer Presences (BlazeVox, 2018). He has published fiction and poetry in many literary magazines including The Nation, Copper Nickel, New World Writing, Willow Springs, and Pleiades, and is currently making final edits on Flood, a novel. Lee is Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.