Dreamscape II, Meagan Dwyer [Trigger Warning: Depiction of death] “if a man cannot drown in his struggles, at least he can float for a while” black folk be boat be shipwrecked be sinking be [w]hole in bottom be covered in water  be sinking black folk be  swallowing sorrow today and tomorrow be dreaming of days…

Blue, Linnea Shurig       I watch her cracked, leather hands dig deep in distilled earth soft from water long gone her voice softer still   ‘fiel es el Senor’ faithful is the lord she hums silently, bending her hunched back over Creation smiling through aches   grandmother, sending praises up as she digs deeper…

Conch Shell, Alessandra Leo   Folded into you, ardent asymmetry. What harmonious origami of bare skin and paper-white bed sheets. Our pages such jigsaw canvases, smoothed-over here, crumpled there, our ripped edges in union- such indulgent dichotomies.   All creases and delicate synchronization, warmth and earnest loving- a testament to miracles to be so crisply perforated…

Overloading, Qintong Li     When the old man brought his payment in dimes and hard candies, she hesitated. Peering into his mackerel-blue eyes,   she suggested an installment plan. The firm’s policy was to collect up front. It was the nature of her business: taking   what little was left of her clients—like this man,…

Suffocating Nature, Camelia Rojas     For a time I believed in the longevity of a dew-swept skyscape, how the sun-drop suspended itself over hazy blue hills like in my dream of catching fireflies on thistles, of cupping the laurel-webbed fragrance of orchards into a spoon, lilt and scatter, fingertips dripping with the memory of return,…

nuns still teach abstinence in school, written on the blackboard in thick block letters. “Kissing is bad, too,” they tell the sixth graders, who like neither themselves nor each other. On the first day of summer, the kids run nude through the sprinklers escaping heat and God, together. Somewhere, nuns fan themselves with pages from…

Beach, Jacob Roosa     I fear the swell and push of crowds; the incoherent chatter closing in from all sides. I fear looking up from my book and finding someone there or worse, someone won’t be there. I fear this fear will prevent our meeting.   I fear the day we meet. That it will…

Blue, Linnea Shurig       The car stops in front of the worn fence, headlights reaching for the little blue building that waits ahead. A sign flickers in the faint light of the window, the neon blue and red of ‘OPEN’ dancing on a wooden ice cream cone planted outside. I recognize the writing in…

2, Julia Broeker   His parents hold him over             his brother’s grave, explain how he is his brother born again. It is the miracle             of rebirth, renaming, reclamation. The day of his birth the mother is taken in distress, gazing at her newborn             child. The mother has named the son in the guise…

Still Air, Shareefah Pereira     From the high plains of heaven rises the mighty Heaven Shining. The stretch of her cheeks comes ten red suns, and yet the three-legged crow – a mutation, an erection, and yet Robin Hood before bed – a white warrior, and yet bibles on bedsides mute the generations. I stuff…