Category: Poetry

Opulent, Taharah Islam embodied stories pass me on the sidewalk & my head is a balloon / floating above / but I still cannot see through skulls to the thoughts & narratives inside / from my inflated position / I suffer from a buoyancy complex / KOM-pleks (n.) an assemblage of featureless stick figures engaged in…

Demonology, Jack Hoye There once was a man from Nantucket  Who ate a pufferfish straight from a bucket. He said with a grin As he wiped off his chin, “The tetrodotoxin from this fish will bind to my voltage-gated sodium channels, thus blocking the passage of sodium through the bilayer, killing me in four to six…

Haku, Anna Hiltner My sister and I grew up between golden hills that glared against the rough blue sky of Tahoe country. Mom and Dad sat us down in a too-small,  too-expensive California home to tell us  we were moving to Florida. My sister and I pierced our home  first with shrills for Disney,  and…

Fever Dream, Emily Lawson I met a woman early August,across her skin I felt tearful years.It was written on her stomach and thighs.  A burning wish fired from her own tongue:  “Loving arms and a pulse to be alive.”  Breathing in your raspberry vapor,take me through each of your faded scars,  I’ll carry those tearful years…

Dusk in the City of Angels, AJ Favorito i step into a massage chair designated for patients one man is distant enough we stare into each other   as plastic balls knead my shoulders into tenderloin i make that disgusting enjoyment face I sometimes make   trying not to laugh  our eyes roll inside our heads I…

Cotton Candy Woman, Kiara Florez funny, isn’t it that Eve bit into knowledge and all of my citations slither their way back to sons of Adam funny, isn’t it that we bore the brunt of it ate too much, too soon burped ourselves to exile funny, isn’t it the girl in the movie is sad…

Dorothy, Ciera Land novel is new, but The Novel is not. Poesis. Poesie? Poetry!  Glass shatters, I escape God. Forget the Book, I want to create, to produce something new– What is new? God isn’t new.  And neither is equating sunlight to heaven. And maybe a long time ago someone wanted to grasp at the…

Untitled, Robert McGrady परदादा in the veranda. White kurta, square glasses. Sitting in the giant of a rocking chair his father had graced before him. Every time we would return, we could see him from the driveway, right where we left him a year ago. A concrete image of my first seven summers. He would…

Poppies and WD-40, Chloe Moulin Imagine clouds salting wildfiresshaped like spicy tofu. The girl I love stirs incense into Taiwanese films.Spreads it over my eyes. So why did we sneak into a Buddhist temple—I was raised Christian, after all.In this dream, we’ve got bamboo flutes for legs, woks for hair. The Chinese goddess, Nüwa,wears an apron. Teaches us…

Haku, Anna Hiltner it to rain  all the time  I would move to Southeast Alaska  and live in Wrangell where I would wear True Tuf  rubber boots and call them tennis shoes while watching Orca cavort in Zimovia Strait  and catch fresh Coho Salmon at the mouth of the Stikine River  from the stern of…

Rose-Covered Glasses, Margaret Wright TW: Childhood Trauma When I was six, my mother made an elegy out of stitched pictures punctured straight through the cork board in our front hallway hanging beneath the sign that read “For I Know The Plans I Have for You  Declares the Lord.” I asked my mother if those “plans” had…

The Complexity of Detail, Olivia Offutt this counts as artistry to the roadkill generation – a few synonyms for sadness stapled together with  a metaphor that’s easy to digest     &  some               pretty              line                     spacing the writers try to keep their hands clean while they inspect the patch of bloodied bird feathers on…

Molten Medium, Chloe Moulin To be a poet trying to write a poem,  is trying to be as free  as a naked chicken— you are undressing feathers  with similes and undulating a pecking parade with  onomatopoeias— trying to explain that there are pants  but also under-pants and foot-pants that are really just socks— a poem…

Cotton Candy Woman, Kiara Florez Mother, in her slight accent, calls olives “Oliver.” She loves Oliver, brine salty in her mouth. Almost twenty-five years in America and she cannot differentiate between a man and a fruit, but what is the difference, really? Both are green, hollow on the inside. We eat until our cheeks are…

I-70 Diner, Emma Lassiter Invisibility while screaming. Telepathy with those who secretly hate you. Future sight for spoilers. Time travel while experiencing diarrhea. Summon comfort bees when distressed. The ability to shapeshift into sex offenders. Super speed within elevators. Teleportation while crying. Levitate objects within arm’s reach. Continuous X-ray vision. You see only a world of…

Monochrome, Emma Lassiter He pioneered the theory that if you hit a road sign with your car, it’s yours. Lifting 35 mph into the backseat, the sides were sharper than expected,  slitting my fingertips. We mounted the sign back at his place,  used small magnets to pin up reminders. The wrong way across the bed, my…

A Clarifying Moment, Alyssa Noel Original Calm and serene The sound of a cicada Penetrates the rock. Translation Don’t matter how calm. A cicada’s mere sound could Defeat Dwayne Johnson. Omar Dirie · George Mason University Omar Dirie is a Somali-American writer from Washington, DC. He graduated from George Mason University in 2020, earning degrees in…

Dusk in the City of Angels, AJ Favorito I spend a cold summer searching                                            for my own hill to die on and find a bowlful of sun, the lip            …

Pink Creek, Louise Rossiter Winter ends, and the lake thaws: frostscape turned fairyland,flies flit through lilies, the surface serene. The boatmanunhitches his crafts at the coming of spring; the heat is aharbinger, and he its only heeder.  Soon enough, three visitors come: muddied boots, liquor-lipped.“Ho!” says they. “Lend us one of your boats so we…

How Long Will You Love Me, Eric Tran Where else can politicians And cannon balls meet Besides steely, destructive, And inappropriate for a wedding? About the Author Tanner Whitney  · University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Tanner Whitney was born and raised in Seattle. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in…

Fever Dream, Emily Lawson Do not watch films only once or twice.  Study them like that third trimester sonogram. Try to find the family nose.    Watch film noir.  Embrace the who-dun-its, the stationary car chases, mustached villains and shadows. Bathe in the shadows until your fingers are pruney and old.    Do not watch a…

The Unexpected, Anasstassiya Selezneva It took a village.   One house next to another, four in a row.   Cousins and uncles on each end  with grandparents in the middle.   It took a village to show me how to pick raspberries in the summer time,  my grandmother’s crinkled fingers  yanking them from their  stems,  piece by blessed-onyx piece. …