Jordan Alejandro Rivera

FIVE-COURSE PRE FIXE FOR THE INFLATION MARKET

sweet juice-filled aphids from an anthill in the cracks of a sidewalk, pulled lick-by-grainy-lick from their burrow with my cracked tongue (i loved the pop)  ★★★★☆

 

maruchan ramen, classic, i know, but they got rid of the noodlebrick, so just the styrofoam with savory sprinklings from the beef flavor packet. zero-waste which is nice  ★★☆☆☆

 

a fleshy bite from the invisible hand of the market. this one was just hot air. ★☆☆☆☆

 

thin slices of new hampshire birch bark coated with the good lichens, not the orange slime mold type, but the stringy mint noodle kind, toasted ★★★☆☆

 

the star of the show, sizzling ashes of an ascot over rice ★★★★★

Jordan Alejandro Rivera (he/him) is a 23-year-old queer Xicano writer living in Boston. Jordan is passionate about mutual aid and wants to see a Free Palestine in his lifetime. His work is featured in fifth wheel press, Writers Resist, HAD; read more at jordanarivera.wordpress.com or on Twitter @jordinowrites.

Spencer Eckart

Leaving

The folk at the coffee shop
talk of coffee,
among other things.
 
I'm sat at a table, centered,
facing the counter.
 
My stomach twists,
part from the coffee,
part foreboding.
 
Outside it's wet and rainy.
Inside the lights are dim;
it's cramped, buzzing.
 
My flat white's gone cold.
I go to leave but can't
seem to time it right.
 
There's a lull, and I
methodically slip out,
hardly noticed.
 
It takes my old Nissan
three tries to start.
I turn left onto Chicon,
left again on 7th,
 
and before long,
I'm dawdling in a
stripped apartment,
less home
than question.

Spencer Eckart is an Austin-based poet and writer. His work has appeared in Ghost City Review and is forthcoming in Apocalypse Confidential.

Wolf Indigo Baker

target sells a candle that smells like you sleeping

I lower my odd face to it and come
back up glamorously to be
zamboni’d with tears
 
it’s just like how the sun touched your smile
the way water moves invisibly
through a tree into
dying leaves
 
the pepper in your lips
when I learned what the
girls must’ve been curling
their bodies in the
club bathrooms for
 
and last night realizing how
rare it is to squint into
all of my hurt
 
how it’s safer to love
when the loss is as slick and
frightening as fire in a dream
 
how it’s safer to snuff it out
with my eyes trailing past my
own nose, with my body on
the bonfire, how courage is
wrapping your arms around
an O of high noon
 
and knowing that your trembling
is the gunfire of the heart,
your gasps the unborn rhythm
of a new national anthem

Wolf Indigo Baker is a trans 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford University with roots in New York City. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Offing, The Pinch, Banshee, prose.onl and others. They are a core promotional and essayistic writer for Red Hot Org's TRANSA.

Isabel Cruz

A pre-k art teacher ruminates on her situationship while laying out today’s activity

anyone can make you feel cute after you fuck
shoulder kisses and ‘you’re so beautiful’s
don’t mean much when i’m not sure where we stand
you can ‘i really like you’ me to an empty death
reeking of plasticine and manufactured affection
 
let me papier-mache together these fantasies
and hopes and dreams
they’re nothing but ribbons of paper
nothing to hold on to—
love is just a watercolor mirage
a mod-podge of dopamine and lust
 
i am supported by nothing but pipe-cleaners
teeter tottering on earthquake pins
caught in a knot of yarn and careless words
what’s a downy touch when there’s nothing behind it
 
i wish i could separate all of this shimmer and glue—
parse out truth from the felt stickers
remove this gold glitter gilding
expose the cardboard soul behind it—
the popsicle stick skeleton of us laid bare
 
because anyone can make you feel cute after you fuck
but will they still be there
when the cotton ball cloud of passion
is thrown out with yesterday’s scissor scraps and muddy paint water

Isabel Cruz is a Puerto Rican poet from Paterson, New Jersey. She has earned a B.A. in American Studies and English: Creative Writing with a Concentration in Poetry from Smith College. She was awarded the 2024 Elizabeth Babcock Prize for Best Poem. Her poems have been published in The Poetry Society of New York’s Milk Press Books 2023 Summer Edition. Cruz has been a featured poet in venues such as The Dodge Poetry Festival, The New York Poetry Festival, and in 2023 she was named the Inaugural Youth Poetry Ambassador for the Paterson Poetry Festival. 

Joel David Lesses

Garden (Hebrew גן)

(in a kindergarten in the middle east)

tree rooted in
- pastpresentfuture -
in a field of children, 
seated.
 
they pop-up, 
like 
tulips - 
and, shake their
sun-lit, 
petal heads,
toward me;
to toss 
their arms 
around 
my neck, 
so gently,
they leave 
no trace.
 
one after another, 
these are the little 
treasures, 
expressing 
the 
Great Secret. 

Joel David Lesses is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey is the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan 'What is the matter with me?' which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. He founded Ground and Sky Poetry Series in 2015, is the Editor of Journeys of Sacred Community: A Collection Anthology of Ground and Sky Poetry (2024, Holograph Series: Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications and Manjushri Press) and has published in anthologies, newspapers, magazines, collections, and journals.

Mallie Holcomb

On the Peculiar Intimacy of Girlhood Friendship 

I couldn’t tell most of the time 
if I wanted her or her litheness.
 
late one weekend we crept to the kitchen 
and she mixed pilfered vodka 
with diet coke, aglow 
in the light from above
the stove, and we drank til it tilted.
unfrictioned and nightshrouded, 
I realized only as I whispered: 
 
it was an experiment 
for awhile but 
now I don’t think I could
stop if I wanted
starvation was a game 
until it wasn’t;
hunger is a challenge
that I won until
I lost and now it’s
a compulsion wearing 
me as a jacket. 
 
I’m too convinced for intervention.
so she brushes my hair cross-legged 
on the bedroom floor and bears witness. 
so she leads me up the ladder into her twin bed 
and we settle in amongst the moonbeams,
surrounded by precipice and just enough light 
to be seen by. we face each other on one pillow 
and tangle ourselves close enough 
not to roll off either side. 

Mallie Holcomb received a bachelor’s in English from University of North Carolina Asheville in 2020, where she was awarded the Topp-Grillot Scholarship for strongest student of poetry and the Virginia Bryan Award for best senior thesis. Since then she has been working in libraries, practicing yoga, and testing the veracity of the statement “we publish both established and emerging poets.”

Kimberly Wolf

Gator Tails

was what my dad would yell out anytime we passed the shredded mess of a tire
abandoned on the side of the road
my brother and I would press our faces against the window
trying to catch a glimpse of the swamp creature that left it behind
on long road trips that took us through the Gulf Coast
we kept our eyes peeled for something lurking in the tree line
We knew that one day
we would see it
a colossal beast come to make our father’s words something more than mere myth
I don’t know when I stopped believing my dad
I just know that one day
I didn’t acknowledge his excited gestures
didn’t lift my eyes from the book I was reading
and pretty soon after that
he stopped saying it at all.
Now when I make the drive by myself
debris littering the highway
I whisper the words to the empty car
I imagine my father
scanning the road ahead
looking for a reason to make us believe in something bigger than ourselves

Kimberly Wolf is a poet and parent living in Texas. You can read more of her work at www.kimberlywolfpoet.com. You can find her on Twitter @KimmieWolf.