Five Poems by Lisa Fink

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Her Disco [5]

(she who) tightens the throat
equals

(she who) causes the throat to breathe
equals

our scorpion queen. Our meat
run rampant run equals

bhū-: to become, to grow
equals equal.

Equal equals becomes, be.
The angle of incidence

equals
the angle of reflection.

We gather at her,
the oracle of her, & are

reflected.

Genesis

on a brown plain straddling
     hands on [...]

Blown by Lisa Ahn

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Nothing beats the Everglades for swallowing a body. A life. It can ruminate for centuries on secrets taken whole. It can absorb the bitterness of treason, the gallstones of deceit. It devours castoffs, bolts down indiscretion. Its appetite is legendary, a burial ground for saints and sinners, [...]

Fuck You Superman by Ian Brown

Boolean Napoleons by Melissa Yancy

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Presumably, I work in an office. The space is full of office signifiers such as cubicles, coffee makers, and personal computers. In one sense, I suppose, all these signifiers mean that this is an office, in the way that a theater stage meant to resemble a living [...]

Los Reyes del Barrio by María Elvira Vera Tatá

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Am tired of doin’ the same shit. Of packing up drugs an’ burying guns. Of selling coke bags an’ cleaning the twister bikes. Of watching the ravaged kids scramble like rats on roof tops, tryin’ to find something to steal, to trade for paco. Poor shits can’t [...]

Salted Wounds by Ashley Bethard

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She crushed the grains of salt against her body, imagining the gritty hiss they might make as they broke apart. The granules left long, puffy red streaks on her breasts and belly, as if someone, many someones, had tried to pull her apart.

The skin rose in angry [...]

Some Day This War’s Gonna End by Tyler Sage

Night of the Living Dead (1968) begins with a shot of a car driving through a pastoral and eerie countryside. The car turns off the road and winds its way into a graveyard, where we discover that its passengers are a brother and sister who have come out from Pittsburgh [...]

Why I Don’t Say Hello In the Grocery by Hedy Zimra

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Micropsia, for one. Although, I question the syntax. It is a disorder of perception. Distance. An atmospheric swell where objects become remote, shrinking in size. Humans appear like mice, far away, scurrying. I am trapped in a glacial space, standing tall, holding the cart.

My child goes to [...]

Near Sonnet for S by Kimberly Ann Southwick

at where i work i know a girl who slurs
her words the way you would-but not the way
when you were drunk and loud, would sway
still tall, balconied, your sentences blurred.
no, not watered-slow-sinking, but laughter
sure, close-confident, talking nights away
in your Christmas-lit room. bedded, we lay
close side by side, wrist brushed against [...]

Two Poems by Danielle Sellers

DEMONSTRATIONS

Weeks before the new world began,
we met at an ice-breaker.

I wore coral. The towers still stood.
I did not have to scan the skyline for planes.

We practiced on our street corner.
A mild event-

mounted policemen stood watch
over the chanting of our muffled mass.

During the invasion’s first days,
under the sprinkling of blossoms,

I followed [...]

Inside by Glen Pourciau

He called and asked if he could come over.  He’d gotten a diagnosis, and I felt sorry for him and said he could.  It had been awhile, but I was still weary of his voice and listening to the way he thought about things.  He always had that jittery, wheels-turning [...]

Interiors by Wendy C. Ortiz

1.

In the dark, my toes curl and touch the floor-length vertical blinds. I hate vertical blinds, but they are not going to change for me. It’s not my apartment, after all. My twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend wants to go down on me. I’ve done that. He is the boyfriend who reads [...]

Jana lives in this house, by Hazel Foster

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the one with the missing and broken windows, the one with the collapsed front stoop, the one painted pink and tilted like so and surrounded by the gnarled oaks of Texas. She lives alone. And this may sound like a public service announcement, but Jana doesn’t need [...]

#11 by Carina Finn

YOUSAW/revolutionunderthe#cigarette[regime] + [verysoft]*photographer.

#itsasnaposhot#symmetry#omg @whatareweunderwater + [ ? ]

…in repose, sore. rip so peers in poise pose so.

#sixthousandINYOURSIZE#forfun#forfulcrum + @shehasaname + [hooker].

@cameragirl #passiveagressive

#ohmy#drugofchoice #fassbindersdead [  !  ]

#cymbalangst #artisdumb #sequinsaremylife #bellabellabella.

#getwhatIwant.

#wifebeatersonwomen.

#youhaveto#takeitinthebedroom#theoryslut.

Corporate Birthday by Blaze Dzikowski

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It was Mike’s birthday. We had a special budget for such matters and our department’s assistant bought a present. By the shape of the package one could easily deduct that the gift was of literary nature. My boss called me and together we took the package to [...]

When the Water Leaves Us by Dana Diehl

It’s always the water that goes. The visions started a year before we met.  Ashton dreams of an Earth with wide stretches of endless sand and uninterrupted sky.  He turns ponds into beds of dried seaweed.  Swimming holes into meteor craters. It’s a firing of a synapse, a neuron interrupted, [...]

Lost and Found by Thomas Busillo

People bring things here. People lose things here. They come back looking for them and they meet me. My job on paper is “receptionist”, but I also keep the lost and found.

When I get questions on the lost and found, I feign ignorance to some degree. I lie and tell [...]

Terminal Boredom by Zach Buscher

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You expected me to come in last
in and at all things. But alas,
I’m always a man

in an overlay oozing machismo to his seat.
Sweet, I’m like a beautiful wedding
minus leis, quail, and shantung.

I sniff the dust off new bicycle seats
outside old bookstores I have gone the distance
stuffing Lego [...]

Two Poems by Kelley Bright Leidenthal

I Pretend Sometimes I am in Love
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Come sit on my couch.
I sit in the middle so our thighs touch
and you will secretly like it. I like to close
the distance before there is distance
like a train that never leaves the destination station.
I don’t like change.
You shouldn’t give [...]

Three Poems by Richard Bentley

BEARS IN THE STREETS

Its share price sinking
At implausible speed,
Vladalisco Company refocuses on
Its balance sheet.

Cut the rate of growth?
Cut the common stock?
Sell convertible preferred
To private firms?

Vladalisco-has never missed
A quarterly earnings target.
“We don’t have an earnings problem,”
Says the CEO.
“We have a multiples problem.”

No one knows what he’s talking about
And they are suspicious
That [...]

Two Poems by Anne Barngrover

Your Color is Not Green is Not Gold

We trim late this year, girlhood tree
               of clay stars and dog-bit angels,

wool knotted to sheep and snowmen,
               the skirt an electric train. I’d run

its circuit as a child till sparks licked
               wheels till the toy became

a flame. In your religion, men fast so
               that [...]