Tamiko Beyer

Jangle & Sweat, Twenty-O-Eight
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a credo

not sick but stink
not stink but silver
not silver but slate
not slate but grate
not grate but gate
not gate but wait
not wait but water
not water but will
not will but pill
not pill but power
not [...]

Rebecca R. Branden

Patience

As soon as my eyes open I know I am in David’s trailer. I have never been here, but I know. There is a smell, mildew and canned salmon, and the walls are covered with sun-bleached fake wood paneling.

“David,” I say, but my voice hurts me. [...]

Melanie Browne

I blame the sun for my bad posture
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I.

I want to walk
Like Jimmy Stewart
in “Mr. Hobbs takes a vacation”

while birdwatching,
he’s bending his knees
lower than Limbo

leaving arms free to point a
finger revolver At the sun

II.

It might slow an avalanche
of societal changes
which leave me catatonic,
lying in great piles of leaves,
pretending [...]

Kevin Catalano

Measure of a Man

Luke at the foothills facing the Smokies for perspective, to be dwarfed, when this evening his flatbed couldn’t, nothing else could. Quit this gazing, the other drivers might see, might call out his nicknames: Hey Jolly Green Giant! What’s doing Tank? Paul Bunyan where’s your ox? [...]

Annie Clarkson

You Spin Me Right Round Baby, Right Round

In the park, the way you grabbed me baby, and your lips, sweet as lemons. How I was spinning, swigging the night away, and baby you whispered songs, as if the trees were listening, the swings, the lampposts with their beer-glazed glow, and [...]

Jared D. Anthony

I’m Supposed to Fill This Thing How Much?

Landing a full-time, $8 an hour summer job isn’t easy. Correction: landing a fulltime,
$8 an hour summer job that doesn’t involve flipping burgers and peddling French
fries isn’t easy. I believe in nepotism. Simply have your father get you a position at the
company he [...]

Nick Demske

…From Otis Henry

Otis Henry bumfries the lillipad
Otis Henry mustard flys the munter hitch
Boo, Otis Henry. Your performance doesn’t meet my standards.
Otis Henry doth not want to pay the parking meter
So he shall pay the parking pentameter.
Wise choice, Otis Henry.
Wisdom.

* [...]

Jane Hoppen

Evening News

The last time Maggie made one of her semi-annual trips from the city back to her hometown in Wisconsin to visit her mother, they were watching the evening news when the newswoman reported that a 62-year-old named Henry Jankowski was caught sodomizing a calf on the Green Meadows farm. [...]

Hanna Miller

Venus Envy

stole a Jesus figurine from
my aunt’s house in second
grade. a Venus flytrap sat
outside, right by it. always
wondered how it was to
taste without buds,
how the plant sealed its lips,
kissed goodbye.

thought i was an insect,
supplying some grim
nutrition, thought
there might
really be a trap.
he had a sharp tongue;
even so, i miss the taste.
i [...]

George Moore

A Few Words
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He decides one day to write something new, something perhaps just slightly unintelligible. The contemporary equivalent of a personal sign, or a rune. He maps out his possibilities, chooses the upper right-hand corner where the space of the page makes its intrusion into [...]

Rich Murphy

Now Clones
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Suckers for the fantasy bribe
come into the world each moment
and never wean themselves
from their accomplishing
as accomplices their victimhood.
The mug and half-Nelson
flip sides of police records platinum.
Parking lots slurp air
from mall stores that wait
for emergency transfusions
from trailer trucks. The point
above a prime scene flashes
naked body parts, its [...]

Martin Ott

Vegas Everywhere I Go

How was I supposed to know? I hear footsteps in the room above me and the old man’s already at work. Right? His car is gone and when I leave my pad I see a shadow moving inside his place. So I walk down the street to [...]

Katelyn Romaine

THE TRUTH ABOUT MERMAIDS

I have always hated stories
where the woman gets the legs.
I know what they don’t tell you,
about the way she wakes early now,
tiptoes to her tiny hidden box
and peeks in.

It’s where she keeps her scales,
and when she touches them,
in the secret early morning,
I know even what she smells—
not [...]

Jonathan Sapers

No More White Boys
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Sempe has a small blue star on her right cheek that everyone thinks is a tattoo. It’s not, it’s what, when she looks in the mirror, makes her think most of her father whose skin is blue black and the difference between his skin [...]

Austin Tremblay

Taking a Mold
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There were never so many cigarettes smoked than the day they shut our building down for mold. We walked outside and lit up, said, Fuck mold anyway. We’ll smoke and die quicker than mold could kill us.

After we burned them, it felt like [...]

Lauren Wheeler

Sleep Corrupts Her

.
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During the night, the mascara
she was too tired to remove
migrated to her cheeks in an onyx smear,
crusted in the corners of her eyes.

Her skin gleams feverish and tight,
etched with lines the pillow made,
like sand after high tide.

Once ruby lips now resemble
bruised plums and, parted
slightly as [...]

Mike Wood

She Went of Her Own Accord

Shampoo Jerry’s Bar ‘N Barbeque is located smack dab in the festering epicenter of broken and smoky peppermint-colored streets constituting what there is of a tourist scene in Manchioneal, Jamaica.  The joint makes no bones about not being much in the way of a [...]

Catherine Zickgraf

Penelope Waits for Her Wandering Lover

Penelope is weaving
in her towering hall.
She’s refuged up there in her loyalty.

Waiting for Odysseus,
she unwinds her youth,
and fashions it into his shrouding lace.

Her dark eyes cloud under sunlit lashes,
she feels again his fingers’
last brush against her hers.

Her spool flows thread,
like years untwisting,
like days she pours [...]

Kevin Catalano

Measure of a Man

Luke at the foothills facing the Smokies for perspective, to be dwarfed, when this evening his flatbed couldn’t, nothing else could. Quit this gazing, the other drivers might see, might call out his nicknames: Hey Jolly Green Giant! What’s doing Tank? Paul Bunyan where’s your ox? [...]