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Oceanic Oracle
Summer Hagan
Drum Heads, Kalen Keir after My Octopus Teacher sensesdilate opento a dense depthunknown. assuming a glimmerof indigo, I dance weightless, no bones.a light-patterned seafloor: my personalshow. the semelparous loss who lent me life, youwouldn’t know, as I straddle my assailant to a silver- lined shore. i’ve not enough tentacles to tally my predators. their proportions, overshadowing my den, pervade…
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American
Juan Ortega
Old Man Feeding Birds, Daniel Mrotek What makes an American?Is it the men and women who spend daysworking under the sun, with nothing but a water bottle,whose fingers are blistered and hard with a pain in their back? Their arms growing tired, from carryinga bucket of chiles that’s worth less than a dollar. They close their eyes…
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Orare por ti (I will pray for you)
Juan Ortega
Morning Prayer, Jenny Brum Que dios te perdone y cambie tu menteFor something I am, that I did not chooseAdan y Eva, hombre y mujer es lo que es simplementeI won’t move, please just change your views. Tu eres hombre y casaras con una mujerI am myself, my love life you will not dictateTu no sabes…
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Staring at My Bookshelf
Angela Vodola
Afternoon Tea, Ericka Veliz Sun and moon switch places.I’ve aged, and so have you.Years went by like minutes,as they always seem to do. The open window leaks poison.The foul wind won’t retreat.Air turns bitter with western ash.I breathe it insignificantly. Dried flowers lose full colors.Ancient words lose meaning.I’ve been staring at my bookshelf,never living, only…
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Radium Girls
Gwydion Miller
Geraldine, Tara Piscatelli I’m thinking about those girls again— the ones who painted watch faces to glow in the dark tapering radium-tipped paintbrushes with their lips. Some of them, the creative ones, thought a touch of workplace theft to be a small…
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Scarecrow
Chelsea Anderson
Untitled, Jenny Nguyen The freezing plastic shovel bends at the handle as it penetrates bright red snow. It screeches loudly as it scrapes pale pink matter off the road. He flings it into the woods he covers it in fresh snow he buries you, the pieces of you the ambulance couldn’t carry away. Starving animals …
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離開是為了回來—A CANTONESE LOVE SONG
Ethan Luk
Volatile, Anna Koeferl The house is on fire,And I’m not leaving yet. I’m not going to save the cat lying next to the split star fruit.Or the two origami cranes on the banister. I’m not going to save you, either. For you look most untouchable Asleep: body embalmed in the crocheted blanket. Outside, your flannel is…
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To the Zombie at the Intersection of Starbucks and Dollar Tree
Alexis Noe Ocegueda
Afterparty 2, Mandi Vivacqua No, not the one drowned in rainbows of paint and ink at every footstep No, not the one that has their jaw hanging on for dear life at their knees Yes, you, the one bashing their head against the light post mimicking the moths in your mouth Who leaves a trail…
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My Black Life Matters
Bright Nights City Lights, Jackie Phuong Ta I can’t find the words that won’t escape my lips to reach paper. Setting up equipment feels unreal, even creating content doesn’t feel natural enough with all the chaos in the world. A break is needed and that’s okay, mentally you don’t want to be here in this…
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Rain
Midnight Blossoms, Sydney Walker pandemic – (of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world. I.this year the cherry blossom trees bloom later than they ever have.what does that mean except that we are holding our breath? II.the woman in Food City coughs when she passes and I light a candle somewhere,that blue center, deep lungs. we don’t love…
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Fracture
Phoenicopteridae Urbana, Jaxon Ke’anoi Bonsack The Atlantic Surfers sprawled on their backs waiting for the sun to dry them out. Layers peeling in long strips. Just like sun-dried tomatoes. Stringy hair caught in the drain of the outdoor shower. Slinking into the pipes below them. Seagulls picking off their next victims in this summer of…
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Not for the Week
ano nakikita Mo?, harana On Monday the carrots mom packed me were soggy and grey where their shoes should’ve been. I threw them to seagulls and Ms. Villin kept me after class, telling me I was ungrateful. I looked for God in the classroom ceiling, but he didn’t show up. On Tuesday I gave my…
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Beets
Late Onset Adolescence, Breck Hickman you’re cutting beets grownin someone else’s garden andyou look at your hands, staineda deep magenta, and you knowthe shadow will remainafter your attempts to wash it off. is this what it meansto fall out of love? is this what it meansto be afraid of death,the real one, the oneof forgetting? you…
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it is one thing to keep a garden
Untitled, Julia Sub for Lola Tita and another to water the three potted plantson the shoe rack, stalk of baby bamboopricked by cactus and shaded by heartleaf,all of it garden enough. it is one thing to eat and another to feast,my Lola always our savior,erasing the thin of our wrists withpizza on paper plates and…
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Because we drove past
Eclipsed, Scott Gathright Because we drove pastThat crack in the highwayWhere a glimpse, a bone-clenchedFistful of pennies, of locked doors,Pressed hard, thumbed insistentlyInto who I thought I am.Was gone before I could winkAway flares it leftOn my sight, Implications.Violet, vindictive spotsThat will never leave:That is a promise.Because that crackIn the highwayHid waste Hid guiltHid sin-Hid uglyHid hungryHid rottenHid…
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Rain on a Tea Party
Little Architect, Natasha Hirt Solemn willow, sole witness to tea party stragglers left under a leaking sky. Cups of porcelain dribble coffee childishly mimed as sweet nectar and tea laden with nonexistent ripples of honey. Copper spoons morph to peeling brown and teal, corroding under the dripping ceiling of draped foliage. A soggy lion and…
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Lily
Pink Creek, Louise Rossiter The wind that daywas an irate infantan infant beset with colic tempestuous and tyrannical raging and wailing displeasure grasping and pulling and pushingup, then down, then sidewayshowling for attention a terror, to be sure especially for anyone who had yet to encountersuch voracious and single-minded determinationto be inconsolable …
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U.S. Route 95
Rust Rorschach, Timothy Embertson if i put my foot to the floor or take the turn just rightthe horizon will swallow this ought-to-be-ghost town. watch: i slip out through the teeth of that mawand chase the stars in the endless wide out-there,dodging leering eyes at desert rest stopsand waking stiff-necked in the backseat. watch:…
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Watch Dog
War is Over, Ernest Volynec Today’s spent echoing the beagleas I keep watch from the window,assessing each speck of land of thisplace called home or territory ormemory, each plot of maple, juniper,japanese plum, the latest implant thatnever took and the wisest, sickest trunkof them all. When she’s inside, shetries to dig. When she’s outside,she digs and…
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en plein air
Rome is the City of Echoes, Gabe Montesanti You hated the flowers. I tried to hate them too. Can you see decay entering the frameof our picturesque domestic landscape? I am a creature of images, brief appearances.I try to save myself from second sight. Living this way is a small matterof deferring and deferringrecognition, which means…
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The Art Journal I Kept Back When I Loved Jesus
A Very Long Party In Green, Li Anne Liew Lives in a clear plastic bin below my childhood bed, neighbors with decades-old stuffed teddies and virgin candles gifted to me for my Confirmation, because I could never bear to throw them away. I’d scribble over the pages of collaged bible verses if I could, pressure the…
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117 Million
Monochrome, Emma Lassiter Anyways, I’ve been thinking about going for a swim. I have been researching lakes and bodies of water. I am uncompromising and precise in my analysis of them from 3000 miles away. There is a way it ought to be: a crystal perpetually stuck in the moment it is turned to liquid. It…