August Helpling __________ Family Name Glinting with sweat and glitter from the club dance floor,a friend sits across from me at the diner and says,I’m nonbinary, but I don’t think I can call myself trans,it feels like I haven’t earned it. How I delightthen to tell the tale of the…

Gage Baldwin __________ Invisible Countries Words don’t live long outside the body,Not most of them, anyway. I can tell who is family By the tension behind their teeth The hesitance in their step Like a sinner sneaking back Amongst the gods. Do not believeTheir honeyed Words, let them hang In the air and die. We…

Joe Bishop __________ Vacancy This grand hotel has lost its headand the maids march on strike  for hazard paycircling parking-lot  sinkholes Anarchy overthrew  the maître d’Light & Power  cut lights and powerThe star rating  slips by the hourBaroque wallpaper  peels like stage makeup Chef pisses  in the soup du jourHis duck a…

Dustin Brookshire __________ Drifting Villanelle a collaborative, contoured villanelle using W.H. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You”,written with Joshua Barnes Tomorrow is Monday. Say it ain’t so!But there are, unfortunately, bills to payand so much in this world that I don’t know.  I could tell you; instead, let me showhow…

Onset Gender Dysphoria Meets Quarter Life Crisis Talon Drake __________                                 I am twenty-six / and sometimes forget / I no longer have to fear the girls on thebasketball team / who hurled out slurs from their seats / in fact they would fear me / my burlyphysique / but there’s…

We Gathered Them by Hand Awen Fenwick __________ We came up from the subway.Color hit the eyes. The Mall disappeared under thousands of panels.Names snapped in the wind. Some held photographs.Some were weighted downwith stuffed animals. Some werea name,two dates. I was nineteen,my first flagstill pinnedto my backpack.Those I had…

At the District Hotel Jay Paine __________                                    We upgraded to the theme,                                    the expectation: superheroes, sex swings, so when the door swung open we were less than thrilled, our room a less-than-private                                     locker room fantasy. Nine helmets lined the bench.                                    It’s dangerous to smash past all four bases  all at once but we…

Duplex for T-Boy Sex Cory Quinn __________                 -after Jericho Brown In bed, I am neither man nor woman;                 I am bodied, bottom growth in lacegroaning against a bottom, laced-up body                 and a bed frame, holding you tenderly.Like a bed frame, I hold you tenderly                 not tentative. You taste sweet like…

Audacity Shelly Rodrigue __________ I don’t want to talk about the woman in Walmart who asks me to pray with herafter she admits to stalkingmy wife and I through the aislessimply because two women in loveshopping for groceries somehowrequires divine intervention at the behest of a stranger  Instead, I want to talk about the…

The Collar Holds Topher Shields __________ In the kitchenabove the K’ Road dairy,I sew the small flagto your denim jacketwith thread I’ve pulledfrom my own cuff,three stitches throughthe frayed collar,the needle flashing onceunder the bulblike a matchstruck in a dark room. Your shoulder carrieslast night’s rainand the cheap pomadewe split…