Blue, Linnea Shurig surely not the ghost of your body inflated with the hudson like an old mylar balloon the kind a child begs for and then abandons to wander through…
The Japanese House, Effie Jia They pick marrow from their teeth With calloused fingers and fish bones Outside because the sweet night air and smoke from the street vendor’s…
Little Architect, Natasha Hirt as is tradition for the women / of my blood, / I shop too much. will sacrifice / a paycheck like a lamb for the chance…
Cellular Hierarchies, Effie Jia i’ve heard about the man who eats boys in the backseat of cars—we all have, learned to fear him, the weeping pustule. i didn’t think i’d…
Light and Dark, Grace Long now der’s clothes to wash and suppa to fix the missus want it all done quick she hate my black ass cus when i walk in…
Disrupted Cannon, Colleen Simmons i wanted to be a slow dancer. then i wanted not to move my body at all. not even a ghost in upbeat funeral dirge should…
Comfortable, Jihyea Jang rotten peaches, over ripe plums, …
Defense Mechanism 3, Elizabeth Ellenwood Watch her barefoot in cotton— not high heels and silk— enough skin to grip the surface, but not enough to make you think this is for…
Say a Prayer, Mikaela Rae Atiogue After Neil Hilborn I ate nothing but apple slices & eggs, hard-boiled, lightly salted. It was the summer of forgetting. The summer of scrubbing my…
We Sleep the Same, Kate Drakulic Your name is a splinter, an ice-breaker a loop of pearly fog. Your nineteen are kill notches scratched with an accurate slope on a…
Study of Myself, Bella Pozo Every time you kissed me you left bacteria in between the crevices of my teeth But it’s funny how whenever I got sick we both seemed…
Girl, Azure Arnot When the note is so high that it shatters thick glass And the smile so hard that it hurts And the tower so tall that it topples…
Nature Administers a Rorschach Test, Margaret May i watch lovers on the street kiss with more tongue than fang and call them pathetic for their forked bittersweet longings before peeling…
For Sale, Jess Mezzi is a womanizer / which is to say its victims are born / between itching crosshairs. this feminine inheritance: / to be prey from birth. /…
Flickering Strings of Love, Paul Knight Constellations mapped across her face Space matter and nebulas rest under two blue moons Stars mark a trail over a happy nose A spray…
Rise, Meg Jenson Because, even if we meet, I’ll have no idea how to bring this up in conversation. And you’ve started doing it with some regularity. Sometimes once, sometimes even…
Seven Sundays, Azure Arnot autumn The night I was born, my mother clawed up the tiles in the kitchen floor and buried her deciduous heart beneath the mortar. Concrete-stained fingertips…
The Grass is Never Greener, Vinnie Hagar To the children of Operation Pedro Pan They did not sail above sandy shores dripping salt. Their banners and flags grappled onto their…
The Battle of Antietam in Technicolor, Alexandra Moleski I shaved the back of my head on a whim at 2 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. There was a gap between classes.…
Untitled, Jessica Ram I walked through a church with an unholy mouth gazed upon this love ghost, this dead thing with sacrilegious eyes (they were looking for God, they were…
World’s Finest, Chloe Hiu See Tsang my girl sits in the garden like eve on her knees and i bite her shoulders in the milk white dusk leaving half cleaved…
Illuminated, Ava Fojtik Popped off my knees like bottle caps & became a boy Daddy crushed Diet Coke cans & I became a boy hands goldfished in the creek—colorful…