Category: Poetry

A Slow Decay, Ashley Webster My substitute mom massaged her threading hands As substitute dad typed religiously on his Blackberry She claimed I was finally ready for my soccer game and even asked me how I liked it I dragged myself over the hotel counter to stare into the mirror  At the heart protruding out of…

Whispers, Emily Bryn Author’s note: In CMSCI  449: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, students were assigned to write a natural language processing program that would generate commencement speeches. The result was authentic English, and although some sentences did not portray logical thought, others were rather profound. After playing around with different seeds and generating different speeches, the…

2, Julia Broeker my ex-best friend told me her boyfriend ate her pussy, but it’s okay;, she’s still a virgin.  but oh i forgot, i guess that’s all sex is for you guys. you know that part in fried green tomatoes when they throw flour on each other? yeah, that’s lesbian sex.   lesbian sex…

Untamed, Natalie Meador My flesh, a fixture In your sanctuary  Positioned strategically  For optimal usage; Your pleasure at its expense. Dents and scratches repeatedly Concealed by pungent lacquers; The handyman covers his messes.  The inflated ego turned your “Good as new,” into the new “I’m sorry.” You liked them Used and worn in, yet  Moldable enough…

The Complexity of Detail, Olivia Offutt Oh America, you bad bitch  I picked the cotton that made you rich -Kendrick Lamar, “For Free? (Interlude)” i. new York was once new Amsterdam  and new Amsterdam once had 11 men—then lifetimes later spawned the empire city  and the Black men & Red men built Wall Street and…

Livelihood, Liza Ashley I didn’t see anything at first  but I felt every bump  and crack of the dirt road, the sudden jolt and sharp turn of the wheel  as we made our own road  around the boy. mumbles and stares from all aboard  with one voice above the rest, “No, we can’t stop” the…

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Lady on the Platform, Adam Foster I can’t watch  without a bile of blood and bones inch up a throat choking on the knee of circumstance. The black of my closed eyelids is already a theater; the pit orchestrates the offences  nightly. The light of May  was violent, branding  my retinas with the violence  that ensued.…

Midnight Blossoms, Sydney Walker The emptiness you left is there every day, The pillow sheets are often drenched, My eyes stay shut to keep from the truth, My ears still wait to hear you say those two words, My nose clings to the smell of your favorite plaid jacket, It’s been that way for eighteen years…

A Very Long Party in Green, Li Anne Liew I miss  having your head at the  foot of my bed  Sleeping off the pain of loss  my  living room fan  hasn’t spun in a span  Almost as long as your hair (on your head plus your crotch)  About the Author  Allison Lee Reichman-Bennett · Missouri Southern…

Phoenicopteridae Urbana, Jaxon Ke’anoi Bonsack lately, i’ve been meeting my supposed-to-be-stranger on city streets, looking for him on the edges of days and finding him in familiar hallways. but when i see him, i feel my heart stumble and struggle to stand again, so when he closes the evening door, i find myself trying to…

Heat Wave, Rachel Ikins can • cer not an elephant — sickness is the swarm of bees in the room / you want to talk about it but they’re stinging you over and over again so you just try to run / you met brent and you’d been told of the hidden rotting parts but he…

Dorothy, Ciera Land IThe numbness started after her silhouette faded awaywent from trading sly smilesand dancing as fairiesin secret gardensand on dimly lit sidewalksto the longest ache I’ve ever feltI keep the old her in creased handwritten lettersin tubes of rose lipstickin pale apricot yellow yarnand in namaste expelled breathsfrom a place that is bothconscious and…

My Happy Place, Makeda Wells We lived on a patch of infertile land,                           a place where they tried to convince us berries grew in the summer. Nothing ever bloomed except our cigarette trees, growing rich in winter. The smoke was stagnant and held its…

Poppies and WD-40, Chloe Moulin Mania tastes like a Monster Smells like cigarette butts Bleach gasoline And gripping the clutch Infidelity shows up too Grows in Tindr swipes right Purging sweating Lemme take a bite Avoidance: to hide in bright lights Tone-deaf till the beat drops Parking tickets Lipstick and skid marks Jitters sift through stretched…

Whispers, Emily Bryn Sylvia Plath would call me a spic. In the light  my eyebrows almost pass for a Spaniard’s. In the darkness,  Pablo Neruda would call me a gringa. What do you call  a Mexican poet that doesn’t write poems about their skin? Unpublished.  What do you call a white boy that still likes Charles…

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