Esteban Rodríguez __________ Throw Down With rumors in every room,you learn who wants to throw downwith who, that tomorrow,or the next day or the next,you will face an enemy you didn’t knowyou had. And so, you go home,raid your mother’s jewelry box,put on every ring she owns,and in your room,…
Read MoreSeth Simons __________ Winter Sonnet But wait. I’m not an ornithologist.You’ve never lost your hat in Lake Erieor come to hate your friend one restlessAugust in a corn maze in Kentucky. Last Christmas we poured whiskey into snowpacked wooden bowls and ate it with a spoon.Your lips were cold blue…
Read MoreStephanie Athena Valente __________ Lovers in Alchemy drip me in quartz,powder my lipspurple swollen, i ate the bees,there was nothing left alive tinged eyelashesher skin, drippingpretending to be translucent. we’re gamine, thinking aboutthe humanity, not thinking about humanitysipping, slipping polished stoneslike royal honey, like truth into diamond pots,we’re listening nymphs,…
Read MoreSara Moore Wagner __________ Invasive Spotted Lanternfly Close to Ohio Border It’s a mirror of a lantern,it hangs over the garden,sways back and forth on the fingerof the fern, outstretched. Semi-translucent, wrapped in red, crimsonas the bottom of a well in the morning,lit up. It echoes the ladybug, that littlered…
Read MoreAdam Tavel __________ Nightie edamame green and lace the lastAugust breeze blew through itlike a windsock the idle rich soarabove their beachfront cottage to saylook even the air we own that too at twelve I was old enough to want itagainst my cheek but didn’t nor did Iwant to see…
Read MoreKimberly Ann Southwick __________ This Line Will Keep You Safe after Julia Brandenberger’s “Funeral For Expectations” | January 2, 2020 | Philadelphia, PA The women in the corridor with merry, choking laughter,are be-lit behind a door closed to us, caved in darkness,our backs against the studio walls, socked feet on…
Read MoreWe Are Cut From Shorter Days Anthony Okpunor __________ you will speak through the mouth of a sea& know i’m not dead. one day the sun will rise on your tongue& give a language of salt and mercury. i will be there in the water, lockinga song of grief in…
Read MoreLast Winter My Father Abandoned Me in the Forest With My Brother, Who Was Eaten by a Witch; I Burned Her to Death In the Spring. Juleigh Howard-Hobson __________ I’m alive — although I am not happy;I am hungry most of the time, and whenIt’s hot I’m thirsty. When the…
Read MoreAsh Goedker __________ Grams Writes a Letter of Advice to a Single Father Raising Minnesota Child If she maintains the dinosauris how she’ll deliver Halloween, if she bawls a joke and missesthe punch line; if she dawdlesat all, she’s sure as heck yours. If this Christmas she begs a realstocking…
Read MoreEleanor Boudreau __________ Earnest Postcard Dear Earnest,The front of a motorcycle reminds me of my reproductive system—handle bars the fallopian tubes, mirrors ovaries, headlight uterus,and front wheel vagina. Working in the barn, I fit my sweaty fingers in a glove,and remember you at your cruelest,“Get thee to a nunnery. To…
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