Category: Poetry

Popcorn, Karlen Lambert On some nights the pasture and the prairie fire, red blooming, are still, standing straight,  unbowed beneath the biggest  moon, that downglows to the  grasshusks, each of them unmolested by black cow,  nor tomato bug, and the way  all of it is: together. The world is getting loose,  and thundering, runaway toward…

Comfortable,  Jihyea Jang By the time we’d uncovered the whalebone our legs were already thorned dusted, turning indigo with evening.  The afternoon spent running through the eucalyptus  that hung in the windless air.  Your hands were still balmed with sagebrush, still stained  by the sea-figs we’d opened too early when you asked me what it…

On the Edge of the Falls, Sarah Moore An Imagined Theater Scene 1. A woman glides into a bathtub of snow. As her body fills to brim she realizes it is not snow But finely powdered shards of glass. Scene 2. She lies down on a sofa. A man is drawn to her. He peels off…

facetime, Saber Paustian In ninth grade I made a list of oxymorons. Plastic glasses. Open secret. I reveled in the duality, like holding dark chocolate on my tongue to let the bitterness linger. When I came out, this is where I found  myself––not seeing a choice  in the not-choosing. Bi as in two, as in…

Little Architect, Natasha Hirt I.            Mouse   You run from owls and coyotes, the rigorous bum-bum, bum-bum  of the tiny bass drum  rings through your marimba ribcage.  Little rivers of blood and memories  traveling, meandering  through cracks in the bones,  treading through snow  as your toes and tail   are dragged along.   II.            Spider  Huddling in the corner  of a frost…

Portrait of a Friend, Noah Bavonese believing my mother’s language sane, I raise my hand. perch bluebird-shy on the edge of a desk too nice to ever feel like mine. ain’t no word mr. whatshisname can flash that I can’t spell. sixth grade know alchemy this way. each new language a precious metal mined from…

Moving Forward, Brittany Lenze Cempasúchil La boca de una niña llamada Flore se mantiene abierta por el  Viento, o un tope de puerta.  En el umbral ella observa Sonidos otoñales. Ella espera  Por el niño llamado  Picaflor (¡Picaflor!) Inspector de las Flores. En ti el nombre tararea (¡cucú!) En ti las Flores cantan y mi…

Disrupted Cannon, Colleen Simmons One day we’ll have all  of our memories Inscribed  on rusty USBs.  Our grandchildren can  wear them on chains  of silver and gold  and remember  we weren’t always  so old. We didn’t wear  tech around our neck, but instead: our favorite  selfies in the center  of lockets or on a phone  background…

Light and Dark, Grace Long I will be shot  by this white man  because I come into  his store every day  and disturb his displays.  I am always fingering  the etched shot glasses  and the Elvis-emblazoned  postcards near the Kama Sutra  picture books. And it’s a manufactured  fact that black people do not buy  knickknacks…

Geodess, Eric Fram On Tuesdays I am Mary, the Magdalene  with wrinkled skirts and bruised vagina. I hide in The Tomb and hold onto things until they cut into my hands and I only cry when I smell sweat. On the other days I am Paul, holding corpses to sunlight until they hear sky. I keep…

A Better World is Possible, Ernest Volynec I think what I wonder is what is your mother tongue? What words have you forgotten? Who taught you to answer a question from a friend like it’s an interview? Who taught you to guard your whispers  even when you’re naked and warm and fingers entwined? Or, where is…

Disrupted Cannon, Colleen Simmons The old church. Pastor X hits the podium until he beats forgiveness into our mouths. The word coats the tongue like a caramel in the heat. Sickly & immovable. A corner store for sinners. This is when I am a girl, taught to swallow pain like a lady should,              pinky raised…

Planet, by Karolina Klonowska     When burial. When banquet. When meadow & its scroll of frailty. When viewing anatomical cross-sections of my lymphatic system, I imagine a finch blooding  toward an elsewhere  & I imagine it one thousand times. When, later, I nick my finger in the kitchen, it seems wrong I’m so ready to…

Pins and Needles, Kamron Williams     the Earth didn’t have a cunt, so the men dug one out for her. they were delighted by the black gold ejaculate, and proud to make her squirt. About the Author Hazelle Lerum · Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Hazelle Lerum is a Portland-born poet pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Science,…

On the Edge of the Falls, Sarah Moore     This is a new language in which home makes no sound.   Violence whimpers his tune, hollow,    and inside, story-caked hands push muddied    earth into mounds tall enough to be   temples which will burn before there is time      to fall to our knees as…

About the Author Kayla Ziefle · University of Central Missouri Kayla Ziefle is a UCM graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English. She worked with Arcade Magazine, where this piece first appeared, as a managing editor and poetry editor. Kayla was also the Assistant to the Poetry Editor for the online literary magazine Pleiades Press…

Light in Hand, Liza Hollenbeck my mother dreams me unafraid  and wedded. don’t sleep with boys until you need to  marry a citizen. in my sleep, i dream of girls    in skirts fluttering like pages  from a fallen passport.  marriage in mandarin is derived    from the root words to be the cause  and to…

Memory, Veronica Torres a (un)Holy war: white or Arab, American or Lebanese, fought between broken noses almost blue eyes a spangled hijab church bells a bald eagle perched on the branches of my homeland’s cedar tree a grandmother who always forgets that our tongues can’t perform the same dances that her language strangles my lips and…

Sweet Dreams, Hannah Elizabeth High The helicopter noise your car makes when you open the windows on the highway, The static on the radio, The ringing in your ears. Your lies that drip from your mouth like tar.   The tag on the inside of your underwear, The hangnail ripped off your thumb, The spot…

Flickering Strings of Love, Paul Knight i see the guiding vision warping, changing “we stand in solidarity with sex workers’ rights movements”  becomes  “we stand in solidarity with all those exploited for sex and labor” a lone trans pride flag, trying to wave at me from where it’s drowning in a sea of pink,  and…