Gas Pump, Casey Eisenreich   Granny squints yonder on her sun flower field ’cause it’s the closest thing she’s got to roses. She named the Sycamore tree—the one that grips the river together— Gibraltar, because she read about the way the sun sets like a grease flash  off the coast of Andalusia. She says to…

Birthday, Lani DePonte [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Mental Illness; Eating Disorder] Anya, the temperature is dropping, and we’re not doing very well. At night we eat dinner in the cafeteria, and our friends watch every bite you put into your mouth. We smoke cigarettes on the patio beforehand, the uncomfortable outdoor furniture embedding diamond patterns…

Cast Iron Gut, Grace Weaver     A fiction-critique of prose-poetry   She will skip stones across this still water where I once tried to drown the jealous burning in my belly and throw away my underwear that still smelled like God even after the red had dried almost black. She will skip stones across…

The Lion Hunt, Lex Brown     I’m in the commode with all the other swinging dicks, and the drunkards queuing behind me, and the Global-Industrial-Dyson-Metallic-Silver-Airblade-Rapid-Hygienic-Digital-Motorized-Drying machines that sound like cloud-piercing X-1As trying to snap the sound barrier, and the one-and-a-half-story sound system vibrating the architecture, when all of a sudden I notice, in front…

Untitled, Jenny Nguyen [Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault of a Minor Mention; Depictions of Child Abandonment] The rainy days ended one night of December when Jemial arrived to dry the sky, leaving no trace of the torrential rain that, for three months, had fed the parched earth. I would have to wait for the next rains, for Iwa, to…

Sag, Marlies Staples [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Death] Jane is still mad that I killed the dog last year. My sister can be impossible in this way, and in many others. She won’t believe you when you say that Hitler had a love of animals, or that Nancy Reagan sold dime bags in college. She…

Geraldine, Tara Piscatelli [Trigger Warning: Racially Insensitive Language] People used to call my Pops a geep when he got old, which was, in a way, accurate. He used to wear the black socks all around the house. I don’t know where the term comes from: something with guinea, maybe the G-P of grandpa. I used…

Big Dave’s Meat Market, Lee Kraft [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Animal Cruelty/Animal Death] Based on Ben Folds’ and Nick Hornby’s “Your Dogs” from Lonely Avenue With a house that looks like this, at that price, we knew there had to be a catch. It’s 2:31 a.m. and this is it. Those dogs. Barking in Next Door’s backyard.…

Garden Walls, Sujin Lim     I think I’d like to keep bees— however much bees can be ‘kept.’ Like a kept woman maybe they could bring a sweet sharp pleasure with a constant stretching, sensuous ache of uncertainty. So I’d need an orchard where I could line their white boxes under the branches knotted like…

The Game, Jonathan Agee     All dirt trail and fish boot, straw in the lips, denim and oxcart, wrangler fish strung on a hook line, takes me by the waist, says sometimes everyone needs to be touched. Says it’s only a joke, I’m not really saying the things I mean about light and its…

Fish, Emma Conlon     Tasmanian bluegums molt, peeling back from their trunk-bones, calcifying up from the soil.   To the west, the creek spits and slaps. Sand on a beach at low tide: that’s how this bark looks. And decaying neck-ropes. And the strokes of Manet’s goldfish, all auburn and russet, all glaucomic blue.…

Istanbul Arches, Andrew Loth     There is a story in which snow is pushed cliff to cliff   with a brownbrush broom, a tree like an ache in glass, a space   to put oneself out like an ashtray, how sand and snow both blow. Say hello,   pluck your head off and replace…

Solitude, Melissa Ergo     I scribble a poem on torn sailcloth— The calm, cool face of the sea asked me for a kiss— then leap from the windward bulwarks early on dawn watch.   A splash rarely goes unnoticed on a night like tonight— wind blowing five knots, sailing under fore and afters and…

Untitled #6, Rebecca Jones     Mother, my sun-dried tomato, it’s Sunday, let us wake up and plant crocus bulbs in the frosted soil.   You have stopped growing altogether. Every word is a chip on the rim of your glass.   Why do we celebrate our suffering each year, orbit it, re-inhabit it? Why do…

Ocean View Drive, Rebekah Chamberlain     Open ocean falls closing into white past dark blue   where bound, in sand, in sun, blood, we lie unopened: five years   of love: still our cells run caught: blue divers falling   the volume under papyrus stretched, its inner face   bathed as in tea— you…

Used Tea Bags, Frances Lee [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Mental Illness] The stove is on. I was taught in high school that brain cells are kind of like trees working in reverse. The information starts in the cell body, the bulk of the treetop. The stove is on. A message is sent down the tree trunk…

Untitled, Ryan Baker     after Brian Mornar’s Three American Letters   En Route to Farm California Aug. 9, 2010 Antonia, It’s been a seven-hour bus ride but still sense you here. Pleasure to have met you at Anna’s. So unlikely, this L.A. Six days in a car, with you and Devin, Lukas, Vincent but caught in…

Ghost Print, Amna Ahmed [Trigger Warning: Miscarriage Mention] On the subway platform, 53rd and Lex, an old man in a leather cap pumps tears from the scarlet ribs of a dusty accordion. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t look at anyone. I hide behind the peeling, rust-colored paint of a steel pillar and pretend we are the only…

Untitled, Noah Aust     I turn from the display of pipeline detergent for the milking system when Bill Mayhew barks my name. He’s luggin cans of primer in both hands. His face loses its harsh look when he smiles at me, and I walk towards him. It saves him from havin to carry those things,…

Afternoon Tea, Ericka Veliz   He’s an Architect and That’s Plenty Noble Samih loses the words to say he’s scared of heights somewhere in the backstreets and alleys of the tiny towns in his chest, so instead he starts taking too many pictures. I’m drawing self-portraits on my palm, thinking about Alyson and how there’s…

Untitled, Alice Zheng     A little girl found herself awake at the hour of siesta. She stumbled out of her family’s shack in an abandoned corner of their Quiapo slum, and found her mother among the women on the street. They were sitting on little stools around a water-pump that rusted in the sun, half-drunk…

Ghana on the Rocks, Jenny Brum [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Domestic Violence] My son Henry is sitting across from me at a restaurant. It smells like a restaurant should. The waiters are always moving and there is the constant chime of glasses coming together, the steady bubbling of coffee percolating that fools me into believing…