it is summer in the poem and we are living
three of us, in some family apartment
on the fourth floor perhaps sixth

every day, the hiss of onions
in the pan, and the pasta
always has beans in it

stacked on top of one another
	/another
	/another
we can’t reach the ceiling
and the doorknobs
keep falling off

at night on the balcony:
your moonmouth on my neck
you tell me another new thing
the plants half crispy around us

I know nothing really
belongs to me, but somehow
I have arrived in this moment like a tourist
in my own life 

where having an opinion is terrifying
and exhilarating/	means having
to surrender to my own publicness

I want to beetle on my back
with my legs up in the air
I want to grow wings and buzz
in circles around the ceiling

I want to melt across your lap
and her lap
and hers, with
my top off in some dewy bedroom,
the windows open, and I am saying
yes yes yes until I have nothing
left to say

I love every minute of this stupid life

of loving and not knowing
or caring where
to draw the line

of getting really good at something
and letting everybody watch

————————————–

Hannah Karpinski called us from Montreal, Quebec.

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"June Bug" by Hannah Karpinski

we’ve picked a color to make her happy / honey blonde or burgundy / a hollering red / blissful obsidian / a dreamy lavender / after the wash & waking / of each strand / with something to keep moisture / I touch the scalp with ease / bring only good gifts / & listen to the singing in my lower back / neck / arms & wrist / when I conjure the souls of these digits / to practice / my pinky gives me the most pain / when I am braiding / shouts at its bend / ties yarn or kanekalon / at the square root of someone’s head / someone who I love / & my shoulders hunch in defiance / & my forehead oils itself anew / & my knees bring their grievances / to the top of the bloodstream / & here / is my body / wilting in reverence. / if I could / I would destroy every memory / of standing in a mirror / with brush & head half done / the feeling of needing help / & no one to ask for it / I don’t know what the world expects / of little Black girls but / it isn’t / freedom / to know oneself intimately / to take pleasure in our many transformations / grow 18 inches of weave in the span of a few hours / & be recognizable only to those who love us whole / & consistently / I make braids or conversation / & the head I am working leans & aches / we cue a movie / coo a humble song / & ours is a texture architectural / mimicking the forest & its triumphant green / I take the shape of trees / I am as old as the unshed leaf / every spruce cedar & pine is showing off for me / & all my sisters deserve the sun’s reach / the wind’s kiss & howl / atop the scalp / proof we are the earth’s earliest kin / shapeshifting for protection / & when we are done / I slip each end through a candle’s light / or cloth and burning water / a small flame prayer / sent up in smoke / or sealed & soaking / in the center of my hands / this I learned / this I taught myself / a secret I pass to all I love who mirror me / I don’t know what the world expects / of little Black girls but / we never did this to be beautiful / though we did become so / in the process

————————————–

Ariana Brown called us from Houston, TX.

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"We Never Did This To Be Beautiful" by Ariana Brown

I got that dog in me, orchestra of barking,
I got work in the morning and a flock of dogs
beneath my sternum, I got bottled rage and a whole lotta corks,
I’m quirked up and collapsing courts, I’m crushing quartz idols
and scattering the powder, the dogs are powerful,
on God, they’re guards, they watch for onlookers
looking for danger, I’m done with mercy sex
and ungrateful strangers, I’m over my ex-boyfriend
but not what he did to me, I forgot to forgive,
the dogs were kids once too, puppies,
I got progeny, sons like I’m Saturn,
quiet fires, it’s quietus, these riotous dogs
demand change but cringe at righteousness,
beware of evil bosses, beware
of good dogs, beware of crosses.

————————————–

William Ward Butler called us from Santa Cruz, CA.

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"I Got That Dog In Me" by William Ward Butler

"You Once Told Me"

that if you were a fruit, you'd be a pineapple. I remember this, as I remember everything you say. whether you say it, boldly, in the morning. or softly at night. the sun is up, and you are still breathing. steadily asleep. I decide I want more of you and pull chunks of cool pineapple from the fridge. I pierce them gently with a toothpick. pop them slowly in my mouth you’re so fucking sweet. one piece turns to two. which turns to four which turns to eight. I love you exponentially.  without bound or moderation. and here comes the acidity. bubbling up from the night before, when you asked, how is this sustainable? you and I. with me eating so much of you. and you, eating me back. a hole burns through my stomach and with it this thought— that to love me is an illogical act. baseless and unjustified. you’re so fucking sweet, love. 
just five more minutes. one more piece  please.

————————————–

Lauren Saxon called us from Portland, ME.

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"You Once Told Me" by Lauren Saxon

They make the most of the raw 
poverty of our breath, taking 
leave from the blighted canyons 
of our lungs and, in haunting 
timbre, give eloquent voice to 
anguish. Barely able to hide 
their sadness, they make visible 
the holes in our hearts, our bent 
towards darkness and the beautiful 
blemish of afflictions that often 
come upon us like a sudden 
abundance of dusk rising through 
a narrow embouchure or the 
moist lip of a wooden reed.

————————————–

John Muro called us from Guilford, CT.

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"Woodwinds" by John Muro

you saw god
in a sunset upstate
said “god is good”
i cringed because
to me, that sounds
like the first notes
of a pipe organ
in my chest
the sitting
and standing
the sliding 
and squeaking
of hymns and
eucharists and
my dad bad-
mouthing the reverend 
in his sandpaper whisper
 
to me, god was 
just another grown up
to keep calm

before she
put my last
baby tooth
beneath the pillow
my mom put us
at a pew in the back
of that church
in Virginia
 
she worried
the tooth fairy
would come
for my molars,
my innocence,
my mortal soul
 
one of those
sundays i stood
at the altar
next to my
crush
we were eight
a too-late
two-for-one
baptism special
i hummed
here comes the bride
 
our moms smiled
friends from carpool
they’d married godless
husbands wanted to split
the difference
with their babies
my mom says:
keep your options open
when it comes to men
 
the sunlight caught
the tops of my crush’s ears
lit them up from the back
stained glass
polished cherries

i felt nothing for god
but everything
for a boy
glowing golden
 
holy water crossed 
smooth foreheads
WASPS don’t do
submersion
the indecent
silhouette of wet bodies
 
that summer 
that boy and i
swam in the pool
splashed at dragonflies
kept our hands
to ourselves
floating 
gentle as 
jellyfish 
defanged
 
i drifted deeper
than i meant to
went to put my foot
	down and i went
  down
like a spool of thread
unwound
i gulped a chlorine
sacrament to the sound
of my mother’s scream

the pool’s bottom
was cul-de-sac black 
black like bedtime 
no night light 
black like the gap
my front tooth
left behind

then arms around me
and those arms
were her arms
and my body
was her body
 
i don’t know how 
she got to me so fast
by which i mean
omnipresence 
I coughed up
the bread of heaven
by which i mean
a hot dog bun
on the hot concrete
poolside and mortified
by almost drowning
with an audience
 
and my mom
rocked my wet
body always 
unashamed 
for the both of us
 
you’re right—
god is good
she wears soaked
khaki shorts
her skin smells
like summer
belly buoyant
with Fresca
 
i saw god
in my mother

stopped going to church
in september

and still… 
afloat

————————————–

Kate Cavanaugh called us from Brooklyn, NY.

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"Sunday Swim" by Kate Cavanaugh

This saggy mottled wattled wrinkled hairy lipped pear-shaped noisy 
noisome bunioned pain-stiff aged body is made
for pleasure 

I vomited on the 30th Street platform as the gluttonous crowd rushed 
past toward their Thanksgiving feasts. That sophomore year trip home
I didn't seed the festive once-a-year pomegranate from the centerpiece cornucopia.
Didn't stomach my mother’s American pie.

I vamped before the mirror delighting in my diminishment towards 
fashionable zero. 

Demeter starved a nation to raise Persephone from the dead.

My mother, with hands and dignity
clenched, drove me 
back to the station.

The tech testing my nerve conduction chuckled when he opened 
the back of my gown.
Oh you’re easy. I can see all the anatomy
but don't worry if you cry.
Impaired innervation 
to the muscle under the shoulder blade
reveals itself as winging.

In the wilderness
the only reliable
fat is stored 
on the body.

————————————–

Amy Beth Sisson called us from Swarthmore, PA.

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"Harvest" by Amy Beth Sisson

& I still want the impossible.                
                where              the roadway is slickened in snow 
              & bittered with runoff,                    the salt a constellation   of light.
 &    you       have turned into a  saint,     
                             a weapon    of ascension      & bone,     the miracle     turning glass     into water.  
               I   have to stifle    the collapse  of   the  star in my chest  
at   the sound of your voice.                              in the trees,  
              all the birds  are    in their cages.         I’m putting my hands 
                                      through the wires,      pleading for flight,   
 those feathers iridescent        before the fire  &                    I don’t know   
                         where you are  anymore.                                                 
oh,   god.                      I’ve started   taking  pain              like benediction.     
             the birds            sound asleep.         in your wake,          I give apologies without end,        
     spend nights sleepless & repenting.                & I promise
             I am taking           the long way around,    like you asked me to.  
I promise       to pick up the phone          by the second ring       &                 
                                        live like          I   deserve it.       & in this aftermath,     
 where you have turned   angel   & searchlight, 
       gaze cast          beyond my reach,
                 I am still trying           to forget   your heartbeat.         I am at    your altar,      
shrouded in cages, the birds broken out.    I’m    making      my final plea: 
       let my desire           be my only weakness. 
                         let me speak      to you        once more
until my mouth       is void
      of  words.

————————————–

Ivi Hua called us from Washington, USA.

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"CONVERSATION WHERE YOU ARE HOLY" by Ivi Hua

I spy
Good looks
	in New York


I think
That’s
the sex
I want

(But how to get there?)


	Mysterious
		transit
	between

	States:
(Cars
 == sex?)

Sex
is
logistics?

…Convenience?
 People
 in

my building
 can see
 and hear

 me fuck

because
(I’m on the first floor and)
I don’t
	maintain
	the
		blinds.

	Im not a good “Bowery Bird.”

I’ve learned, 
You have
	to flirt
   with your
		legs
	  & eyes.

  It only
	happens
  a   few
		times

in your life, 
	until
	one year

You figure
  it out.

“I send
 them photos
and that’s all
  they usually
	need.”

My friend Tim  got
a trainer 
		
and lost
	a LOT
	of weight.

  
I drink too much caffeine,

And I shit like a bird.

And
	I CRAVE SNACKS
		Do y’all	crave snacks?
(if they agree– doubt them??)


			CUM -		UNITY.
			I 	WANT TO COME
		BY HABIT, THINK	I’M
		JEALOUS, 	DEVELOPED
	MY WHOLE METHOD-
		SELFISH.
Now I’m like a shellfish--
			PRIMO- GENERATING.
		SPLIT ME IN HALF,
		LICK UP THE VAGUS
	NERVE LIKE A FOOT,
		GROUND HANDS SWARM
		 FOR ATTENTION  
	( fast tap your soles)
	 A BOTTOM’S  GRASP
		CONDESCENDS:
“IF I’M TOO UGLY TO FUCK,
	JUST BEAT ME UP.”

————————————–

Peter Webb called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Bottom's Up" by Peter Webb

A boy, 
though I should say man, 
from that farm town of future doctors
is training to be one in this city.

He broke the heart of a friend,
another farm town doctor-to-be.
I broke mine on one 
who was his friend, and her friend, 

and once mine.
I was about to say I love you. 
It rattled against my ribs
and as if sensing it

this friend read me 
a Davis story that ended
with heartbreak and an old shirt.

In it, I love you was an awkward 
obligation, to hear it back,
or to awkwardly not.
In it, pleasure did not make 
pain worth it. Love was a mistake
one kept committing anyway.

I remembered visiting a patient
at church the other week;
the pastor had us all hug
and say I love you, 
and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I did it then, but here I balk. 
Speak now, or forever hold my piece.
I hold it in.
It shatters.

As I blink off my poem and look at the doctor,
I can’t help but see him, old boy, in the dark 
beard, the gold-rim glasses, the soft voice.

The year must be too new;
I must have asked the cab for the wrong day.
The driver pushed the gas 

and left me at the future.
My brain said, say any hospital but that, but that, 
so my throat simply repeated the that.

This must be him,
(not the one I loved, but still a mutual connection point, a tangential reminder, like almost anything is–any cloud, bossa nova song, blue sedan, yellow shirt, old pair of sneakers, spiral shell, jar candle, blackberry bush, fine-tipped marker, tomato seedling, rolled sleeve, plate of scrambled eggs, burned CD, old kayak, receding figure in the rearview mirror)
a medical degree, a gold ring, and fine-lined decades later.
Here, he’s known me longer than I’ve been alive.

The white coat, old, old friend, turns his pockets inside-out.
And what could it be? 
Acid Reflux. Heart Attack. Kidney Stone. Stomach Flu. Pregnancy.
Hard to know at this moment, he says, like a stranger.

He doesn’t know me after all.
He doesn’t know who we are, or when.
This is the stupidly correct hospital. Not his. It is today. It is this hour.

————————————–

Mary Zhou called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"A Patient Record (excerpt)" by Mary Zhou

There is a dog somewhere
In my building
That cries all day for love
In our shared shelter

Crying all day for love
I searched the staircases
And the old boxes people leave 
By the dumpster when it’s too full

By the too-full dumpster
And I brought myself 
To peer into the pool
And then I saw the dog

What a dog, what a dog
Weaving back and forth 
On the skin of the water
Crying for love like water
When it blathers under a bridge

Crying with my cry 
Shaking like I shake
Looking at my eyes with my eyes
On the skin of the crying water

And I felt that when I was looking
Through the heaps of trash
For what was crying all day for love
I felt that I was looking through myself

But what I did was jump
Into the water expecting to sink
Only to smash the dog’s face
Into ripples that have never stopped.

————————————–

Megan Wildhood called us from Albany, NY.

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"Way Down" by Megan Wildhood

Tiny oblivion sinking in throat
Explodes and itself
In liver.
With passing exhales of smoke.
Flashing secret smiles.
My life orbited three streets
And two corners.
Under nose lights
Abandoned churches
Now recording studios
Or tattoo parlors.
Warm fuzzy orb
Growing in gut
And all you have to do
Is sit there and look at me
Like that.
Drowned by
These harsh red lights.
All this
Fleshing melting into another
And I will stand there
Alive with pleasure or whatever
Looking back at you.

————————————–

James Milanesi called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Warm Fuzzy Orb" by James Milanesi

I’m 30!!
Scream that. Put that on everything. It’s the– 
dash of cinnamon on my coffee (30!) 
sweet almond oil in my hair just as I’m heading out (30!) 
chenille sweater coming off (30!) and on (30!) and off (30!) and on (30!) all over Philly because no one agrees on the thermostat when snow is still on the ground, but it’s a drizzly 60 degrees (30! x2)
parsley atop my shakshuka (30!) 
words of the language I don’t recognize, rolling around the table next to me (30!) 
group video call and my friends’ democratic selection for my next tattoo placement (30!)

I’m 30!!
Fuck your– 
syntax
parallel structure
every lesson you ever learned (except all the ones that made you. so maybe unfuck them all)

I’m 30!!
Full stop. Unless I keep going- which I will. Because…. you guessed it.

I’m 30 in a leap year!!
Give me an extra day to be flirty & formidable. 
I’ve barely begun and can already tell you’re going to have to drag me out, but only if I don’t burst first.
Life at full volume! Decibels abrasive and gentle. 
Stay with me. There’s such a ride ahead.
But for today, it’s simple.

I’m 30!!

————————————–

Sebastian Ellios called us from Durham, NC.

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"Thriving!" by Sebastian Ellios

The ladies strut from the shower like it’s a locker room catwalk. 
Puddles of sagging breast and belly, a generous portion of
doughed and dimpled ass. All out on display. 
This is the lavatorial garden of Eden — who needs a towel?

Over showers and steam, they discuss dinner and dementia.
The rules of pickleball. A recent cancer diagnosis. The State 
of the Union. The conversation follows no clear path, just ebbs
and flows like water. Like wine. Like women being women. 

I watch this scene unfold from the safety of the toilet stall. 
I dress in the shadows of a well-lit room, tighten my corset 
of modesty. Like Eve, I ate the apple once. I couldn’t resist 
its shiny red taste, that seductive sweetness.
I’ve been clothed in shame ever since.

The ladies keep stripping, keep singing, keep sagging all over 
the place and I’ve been told that getting old 
is a death sentence — but damn 
if they don’t look
 alive.

————————————–

Jillian Stacia called us from Baltimore, MD.

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"The Women's Locker Room 10 AM on Thursdays, Immediately Following Water Aerobics" by Jillian Stacia

Today, I have decided I will go to CVS.
I will put on a belt and socks and shoes,
put my keys and my phone in my pocket,
and walk toward the door. I will almost forget
my mask, but I will remember, put it on, and
once again walk toward the door.

I love going to CVS. I hate people. My mask
helps me reconcile these feelings. CVS
also helps. My local store has minimized
the role of other people in my purchasing
experience through its use of automated
checkout machines, emailed receipts,

a rewards program based on a virtual card
that is stored on my phone, tracking my every
move and purchase so that I might not be bothered
with such things, and other innovations. I look forward to
the automatic doors sliding open for me, beckoning me
with the invisible light of their innumerable sensors,

their silent welcome nestling me into my nearest
branch’s warm, fluorescent arms. I relish this moment. I
consider the fact that my father briefly worked
at Walgreens — a major CVS competitor. CVS
brings with it the possibility of resolution
of childhood trauma. CVS is what the self-help

books I read on the basis of my therapist’s
recommendation tell me I have been looking for
in a partner. It was right there in front of me
all along, just past the corner of happy & healthy,
at the intersection of Convenience, Value, and Service.
I want to take off my shoes and socks and feel the store’s

abrasive carpet on my feet. I want to rub my
body on every available surface and belt out
as many words as I remember of “All For You,” “Kiss Me,”
"Always Be My Baby," and other 90s favorites. I want to splatter
my humanity all over this store's palette of eggshell and teal.
But I will restrain myself. I am an only child. I will consider

what this moment of life compels me to buy.

As I check myself out with a convenience only the absence
of workers can afford, money seeps out of me. I don't
exchange it so much as I allow it to flow in response
to the flow of goods into my Gem House USA Pavilion
tote bag. The money I give is mostly an idea. It's a
particular formation of language having something to do

with power. Most of the words involved are numbers.
The technical term for this is Near Field Communication.
The money feels like water or the idea of water or something
else of similar viscosity. This money flowed into me from my employer,
through a rivulet carved into the earth over many years
by the caste ascribed to my ancestors and subsequently to me

because of our similar appearance. While much of my employer's money
comes from taxpayers and the surplus value of my work --
which is to say, from me -- due to the nature of my work,
I can only assume the remainder of my employer's money
flowed there from medical students. Demographic information
tells us that this money flowed to them primarily from their

wealthy parents. I imagine one of these parents being
Larry J. Merlo, president and CEO of CVS who, in a 2015 SEC filing,
reported the highest CEO-to-average-employee pay ratio
of any American company. And so the money,
having flowed through many different streams and over many
different fields, now returns to the lake from which it came.

Welcome home, money. The lake has missed you.
Now imagine where that money came from. Imagine longer journeys.
Imagine the ocean and sky. From the depths of that ocean, millions of
people call out to their money.

Sgr A*

————————————–

William Hazard called us from Philadelphia, PA.

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"Resentment: Big Water" by William Hazard

Each morning I rose from the bed of my own heavy August 
dreams, wandered in an orange glow, watched the wind heave	
bellows and break through the blanket of earth’s own breath. 
We were children of the stadium, filling it with waves and chirps,	

dreamy trombone, clarinet, and the orange trumpet blare in wind. Heavier	
under each hour on the turf. A sauna of sneakers and spit. Instruments 
chirped and marched into form. Stadium babies made to make waves 		
for the press box to watch a rolling beach of brass and steel. We ached

after each hour on the turf and spit sunscreen from sticky lips. The sun
started to slip on her evening dress. Ourselves stretched out on fake grass
while the press box watched. We rolled around the brass and steel. Hugged
our knees, pointed toes, rubbed our ribs jeweled in sweat. When Vera

found me, we ran like we ourselves were the evening dress on the sun	
and clung to something sparkling. The ever-moving glitter of the river
welcomed our knees and toes and rubbed our ribs until jeweled. Vera
called us sirens warning the world, asked for bliss and plunged again.

————————————–

Gwenyth Wheat called us from Lake Charles, LA.

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"Pantoum for Marching Band Lore" by Gwenyth Wheat

Beyond the cornfield, 
up from the old dirt road, 
the tree perch in the field, 
deer in those trees for miles, 
I played in the sand of the lot 
by the road leading up through 
the pasture.  I spent days 
skipping down the steep steps 
to the river, out to the dock, 
to greet my grandfather, 
gutting a fish.  

He used a pair of rusty handled pliers 
to peel off its inky skin, sipping a beer from a 
key stroke hole in the can.
 
He saw a light in me for the black water 
and the bull frogs croaking at night,
and because I had just turned eight, 
he let me ride into town 
for the July dance.

Riding back, the air sucked in from 
the windows down of my cousin’s truck,
speeding back on the highway, 
shifting the gears for my cousin’s 
girlfriend driving us, my cousin in the 
passenger seat, my brother 
between him and my own body 
circling, I could see the peanut fields 
for miles.

 


We were forbidden to walk 
one hundred yards past the outhouse 
because of the bed of water moccasins 
in the creek living below the one-laned bridge, 
the bee hive in a tree on the edge of the clearing, 
the copperhead we had seen earlier on a log, 
and the rattlesnake dead 
in the back of my grandfather’s 
motorboat, floating belly up, 
next to the one he had killed 
the week before.


From all the way out there 
on the water, you could smell 
yesterday’s catch cooking,
the tails dipped in batter, 
fried in butter.  You could 
hear the tails crackling, 
my grandfather laughing.

We hurried back fast through the 
patch of lily pads and cattail blossoms
which reminded me of an outcropping 
I had seen once before of a patch of 
cypress knees jutting out from the 
water along the swamp road leading down 
to North Carolina.

We continued along, some of the trees 
still tied up, orange string on the low branches
my grandfather had set, bait for catfish.

 



I was half out of the boat before 
the others tied to the dock.  I was 
already most of the way up the stairs 
when everyone else started up. 
We all ran to the kitchen to wash our hands.  
We found our seats at the table, 
sat up tall in our chairs, as we were taught, 
the blue and red checkered tablecloth 
lining the grey wood planks.  

The rule was we ate the fish’s tail last, 
the last inch or two of it at least, 
an old tradition we had kept from 
the years before, attending to it,
believing in us, telling ourselves this, 
this part of the river, this part of the fish 
holding some knowledge.

————————————–

A. Logan Hill called us from Richmond, VA.

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"On the Nottoway" by A. Logan Hill

Everything about us fits 
like two keys for one chest

one chest opening to make 
a space large enough for all 

the fear we carry. I cherish 
most the way our hands knew

the first time they touched. 
Our lips, too, met like old lovers. 

The rest of us a dozen volcanoes 
determined not to go dormant 

until our bodies are red and hot 
and empty, my shoulders covered 

in your explosion, teeth like small 
craters. A history that aches 

for days after you leave. Your ribs 
and hips carry our night sharp 

bruised and wanting for one more 
chance at uninventing this impossible 

distance between my pulse and yours. 
I tell you I feel your pulse at the tip 

of my finger. You flex and unflex 
against my knuckles. I wonder 

if you know how good my imagination 
is. How with each flex my hips flinch. 

I hear you tell me to come. Your voice 
already a familiar song I sing to myself 

for weeks—at the grocery store, folding 
clothes, at the gym. Everywhere 

you are with me, telling me to come. 
I am already home.

————————————–

Ronnie K. Stephens called us from Texas.

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"Incantation" by Ronnie K. Stephens

I stole my father’s suit jacket
Before it became mine—
Tenderly, oversized and engulfed
In it, proud, powerful. I can inhale a blue
Whale in this tux, deep into my diaphragm, then
Blow you a balloon bouquet. I’ll wear these
Pressed silhouette lines 
That are also soft to the touch; curves of fine
Fabric that is worn with hugs and pats
On the back but also soaked in alcohol
Induced scream-singing and unabashed 
Goosebumps that tickle the satin lining;
I’ll wear it until it is worn
In every stitch and seam, with soda can
And champagne flute condensation 
On the sleeve edges, and the lapels lick
The sweat of your perfect palms 
When you kiss me like you can’t
Picture anyone else wearing it.

————————————–

Hillary Nguyen called us from San Francisco, CA.

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"I'll Wear your Love the Same Way" by Hillary Nguyen

What the lynx caught can’t be told,
and everything I’m about to tell you,
you already know.

Look down. Fur mottles ice.
In the years I had no 
I signed letters with      [ ]:

a dash - of cayenne 
& the whiteness of blank	



You can preserve yourself 
with salt    
     I did;
those wet 
crystals glisten

For 25 moons, 
a blizzard flurried 
from my fist


all over once white 
red jewels 
into precious

but gems 
of name eluded

& viscera claims
your feet

I avoided signatures
and kept my voicemail 
greeting generic

you could cry out
but sound

would cling cold 
and slick to your face
To not atrophy, I wove 
syllables on a loom

then wore them around my neck

but now:

but now—


Paper absorbs ink and
is stamped by the court.

sunburst.



Officially changed,

bones broken
into splint

I do not confess 
to feeling lost

maps cannot 
chart 

in my new home 
of letters, 

cannot admit homesickness 
for the journey

hot flesh 
in belly

Who could?


nobody asks the lynx
if it regrets the chase.


An axe splinters 
my palms though
with memories of an old pelt


hold steady—

————————————–

Reece Rowan Gritzmacher called us from Flagstaff, AZ.

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"Fresh Blood in Snow" by Reece Rowan Gritzmacher

Um yes it’s possible to fall in love in three sentences
in line for the bathroom at Manny’s, full bladder

rearing to go you do selfless things like let the star of the show
cut you in line, it was Alex Edelman. He was crazed & jogging

on stage but in line he was a white deer, i know
because in 1949 Charles Howard bought 53 albino deer

ten bucks a pop & released them to kill for fun
near Point Reyes, but some survived & i pulled up

a few years ago to a lot in Olema – saw the moon thing
glowing elk reindeer just standing there in my headlights like Alex Edelman

blinking at me sweet in line & i said you should definitely cut me, so he said couldn’t possibly
so i said go on & he went since it was 5:30 & the thing was starting

at 5:30 but probably 5:29 i built a house in his dewy gaze & by 5:30
we’d lived our whole lives together in it – real true

love, always for me. I’d say it’s my problem but this French philosopher
Gabriel Marcel, says swap “mystery” for “problem,” see

what happens. It’s my mystery. It is. I’ve got this guy in LA
writes me vignettes on God & we talk 

sometimes his hair is worth living for. Or what about that director
in New York i met in silence, my boyfriend

in Berkeley, super weird but intriguing in this Neptune type
of way. Did you ever hear “Dirty Girl” that FELT song 

where Murs and Slug sing verse for verse about girl after girl?
There really aren’t enough stanzas like that in women’s poetry

& i’m making up for it – call it Dirty Boy
i’ll go on & on about all my mysteries.

————————————–

Genevieve Greinetz called us from Pacifica, CA.

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"Call It Dirty Boy" by Genevieve Greinetz

I tell you I am sick, suffering my ass off, burdened with pain that is a howling
iPad toddler, forever kicking my back-of-an-airplane-seat body,
they ask: 	But have you tried yoga? 

Each morning, I find myself in corpse pose, for perhaps half an hour, 
making eye contact with the ceiling, 
trying to lift a coffin lid of pain. 

But have you tried yoga?
 
While standing for long periods of time, my body 
often falls into an unsteady tree pose, my weight tilting from one 
leg to the other while a heavy pain-child demands 
to be held on my hip. 

But have you tried yoga? 

This week I perfected my cobra pose–
used my fangs to rip open the letter from my health insurance plan, 
used my exceptional eyesight to read “denial of coverage,”
and readied my venom to spit,
to appeal their decision.

But have you tried yoga? 

I feel like I am always in a half forward bend:
half 											as productive,
half 											as patient,
half 											as pleasant, 
as everyone else.

Sometimes pain turns me into a cobra,
rearing up and readying
to spit.

————————————–

Anna Boughtwood called us from Albany, NY.

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"BUT HAVE YOU TRIED YOGA?" by Anna Boughtwood

Give me more wine, bloody 
like the stain of Fosse on Pippin’s hands. Give me Ben Vereen, 
sex made incarnate
singing of Charlemagne’s addiction to dopamine and 
glory.

Bread/like security/a trigger in the
lizard brain/reward me/decadence trickling
from gaping mouths, the viscous juice of
supple fruit/dripping down chins/onto
breasts/hunger/licking/satiation

Give me Dionysus, God of madness, God of
ecstasy. Give me Dionysus, the frenzied 
cult of souls, the ecstasy of worship.

Hedonism/hedonism/pleasure/glinting off
golden headdresses/communal rapture as the last high
and delirium, delirium 
to avoid the sunrise.

Give me Zarathustra, the ubermensch, he who is 
a seizure of power, the overcoming
of mediocrity. Give me a deity to 
venerate, to kill.

Men and men and women and 
/fucking/
limbs twining among limbs/byzantine paths of 
thighs and tongues and
climbing/to climax/to clarity

Give me a Bacchanal, to
forget the Buddhist suffering in this world. Give me
a Bacchanal, 
because I just want to feel.

And I can only feel/
when I feel to excess/
like the long-ago followers
of Bacchus, ascending to rapture
and praying for conception
on the dawn of equinox 
at the birth of spring.

————————————–

Shannon Frost Greenstein called us from Flourtown, PA.

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"Bacchanal" by Shannon Frost Greenstein

On this leaden day 
my husband cuts
and brings inside
a fistful of daffodils
frilled and yellow
as the organza dress
my grandmother
gifted me when I 
was three or four,
the one that itched—
I never was a very
girly girl. They bear
a floral perfume, 
a high whine, with
a lower coffee note,
like a scented lady
at the theater in 
the seat next to you
and nowhere to go;
it’s strong enough 
to dissuade the deer
and they eat 
almost anything. 
They almost glow 
in my white kitchen, 
turn million dollar 
smiles at my
seasonal malaise.
I can’t stay mad.
Yes, it’s just
stupid April,
but what else 
have we got?

————————————–

Marjorie Tesser called us from Boca Raton, FL.

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"Another April" by Marjorie Tesser

i fall into the opening between subject and object 
and call it a condition of possibility. 
when i speak only the ceiling listens. 
sometimes it moans. 
if i am a body let it be the sound his lips make. 
there is no word in my language for this. 
sometimes my kookum begins to cry 
and a world falls out. 
grieve is the name i give to myself. 
i carve it into the bed frame. 
i am make-believe. 
this is an archive. 
it hurts to be a story. 
i am the boundary between reality and fiction. 
it is a ghost town. 
you dreamt me out of existence. 
you are at once a map to nowhere and everywhere. 
yesterday was an optical illusion. 
i kiss a stranger and give him a middle name. 
i call this love. 
it lasts for exactly twenty minutes. 
i chase after that feeling. 
which is to say: 
i want to almost not exist. 
almost is the closest i can get to the sky. 
heaven is a wormhole. 
i first found it in another man's armpit.
last night i gave birth to a woman and named her becoming. 
she is four cree girls between the ages of 10 and 14 from northern saskatchewan. 
we are a home movie i threw out by accident. 
all that is left is the signified.
people die that way.

---------------------------------------

Billy-Ray Belcourt called us from Oxford, England.
More about the poet: http://nakinisowin.wordpress.com

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"GAY INCANTATIONS" by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Sometimes I wish I could stop you from talking 
when I hear the silly things you say
Alison, I know this world is killing you
Oh Alison, my aim is true
            - Elvis Costello, “Alison” 

  I was named for a catcall    strung out into three verses and a chorus     Ballad
     drowning in mystery     fansites say she’s a pretty stranger       his eye caught
at the grocery store    maybe an ex-fling             scraping out a fetus
     with half his DNA               Elvis Costello says my aim is true
  he might mean it literally       No one wastes time      on what Alison might say
      but I am Alison        so       to Elvis Costello                to anyone
 who has ever claimed to love me

Take my name out of your mouth. 
                                                 Your eyes lied when they looked at me
  and told you muse     Damsel            I’m the troll under the bridge
      Asked for peace         Got this trap, trap         trap              Every echo
  hissing my name in a hated cadence	      saying: we sing          because we love
      Who wouldn’t want a passion sharp        enough to carve the melody of you
into the air?       I was a child the first time              I was dragged from my body
      and into verse           the first time someone thought their love meant
they could take my name         bend it into a circle to crown them prince       or 
      failing that      martyr        against the heresy of my refusal 

I ran    into the arms of a boy          who never sang        did what Elvis couldn’t: 
      gift me a contagious silence           whistling a hole through my head
  to land in my own mouth    I survived him   only to stumble through more poets
      stitching me    into metaphor         muting me     to make way
for the romance they knew they deserved          If I were love, I’d say: 
      take my name out of your mouth      Set it ablaze         I would rather be ash
than what you’ve made of me

Alison means “of noble birth”    A princess     of course needs     not just a hero
      but a narrator         Her voice only good for      singing to the forest creatures
The moral only ever             Sit       Wait       Someone will love you
      enough to speak for you                       to dirty your name
What a happy ending.  


————————————–

Alison Kronstadt called us from Boston, MA.

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“I Sang It in a Love Song, So It Must Be True” by Alison Kronstadt

Sons blushed and became soft peaches in the hot backseats of cars, never even wanted the front seat. Or, I was the son, but it’s nice

to be plural and grand and count the dandelions in right field as friends, which I picked in the ancient way of boys who’s fathers tried to metaphorically

light fires under their asses, there I go again, I was the boy, who was mediocre at boy at best, first boy, if it makes a difference being a minute closer

to your father’s father, and I don’t remember if I plucked maybe a little out of spite because my dad told me metaphorically to quit picking dandelions, or if when

he mentioned them they sounded like pixy stix in the outfield during a tee ball game, which due to the smallness of five-year-olds mostly happens very close to home plate,

and dandelions pluck so satisfyingly like plonking open a can of coke (let us use plonk’s secondary definition of playing on a musical instrument – the coke tab –

laboriously or unskillfully) and their frilly heads spin when you shush them in your hands like you’re warming them. If you build it then some of the angels will come

to plop down in the outfield, finger the dirt and rest their heads on tender blades while the pop flies pock the earth around them.


————————————–

Andy Powell called us from New York, NY.

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“An Embarrassment of Dandelions” by Andy Powell

yeah i’ve got a lighter. can fix your filter. give you honey stick secrets and light tight roll laughter when you call me blue dream like your favorite strain like your favorite character ramona you know the blue of your dreams? yeah they’re both pierced. few things hurt so good like a needle. addict in a cute way. smoker with a toothbrush. dreamer with insomnia. liar and a poet. dream girl without problems. will ignore your worst for a sprinkle of the same. won’t shut the cartoon off till you ask for the remote or a shaved head. will lay alone with you and all of the dirty dishes. or i can wake up pretty if you want me to. i can be your party now and your home in the morning. feed you jewels of deep red pomegranates and suck the stains from the bed sheets. let you call me by any name you want when you fuck me. lick your wounds so you don’t have to. pretend you don’t have them until you don’t. and i will say goodbye before the jump so you don’t have to see me splatter. or if you want, i could rewrite the closing scene. i could change this to a happy ending. i can make you everything you want. i will make me anything if you ask me to.

————————————–

Taylor Jaczin called us from St. Petersburg, FL.


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"Manic Pixie POV" by Taylor Jaczin

remember bodies at night 

how they glow 

how they bend into us 

like refracted light


the memory of where a body was 

after it has left its phosphorescence


you cocoon into 

the spaces around things


find yourself 

in auburn eyes and hazel skin 

the red that flows from you


you learn that aloneness is a softness 

a sky that pulls you through


you see bodies as they are 

things that love you and then stop


when you wake up it’s heavy water 

write down the deep green blue feelings 

like paua shells


there is a pale existing in your head 

a light moving in your hair 

behind a colour


in the lunar month you return home 

the whenua moves its arms up to greet you 

climb up the hill to see the faraway beach 

feel lonely like mislaid keys


it’s good to be there in the quiet 

saying to yourself i’m real i’m real 

as the feelings inside shrink red into shape


————————————–

Stacey Teague called us from Clonakilty, Ireland.

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"Whero" by Stacey Teague

as silent and holy as an empty church. 
a polished row of pews. you, moon
in the sky, how do you do it? 
your one-handed gravity
holding still the earth. astral magic trick, 
you newly christened old god. 
every family’s forgotten dance is a scar 
on your surface. memory like a bear trap. 
worldfodder magnet. wise old sledgehammer
once smashed through our orbit longways. we were just a pie cooling on the galactic
windowsill. now we say Light &
mean your face, stretched our whole lives
and once reached your shadow. pockmarked
queen of all ships. all flags. can’t sing
a note of worship if it doesn’t include
a word of pain. the night sky’s
opening bell and serene last call, 
nursing your craters like old wounds 
nursing your craters like children. 
your face held high and regal
through eons of the same steady bruise
and somehow you arrive to us with a bouquet
of escape of routes. i have so much
to learn from you, and not just about physics. 
how long did it take you to learn
such luminescent confidence? your brilliant
backlit halo, the way you just float and move
everything, shine your own ligaments to dust. 
when people say they love each other 
to the You and back, is it about distance
or about damage? about some man’s
lonely footprint? and what do we know 
about damage next to you, anyway? 
all our blood clots thick with time
but you have no winds to whisper
your name. sometimes the healing
does not rush through you. prehistoric ocean
or otherwise. there are no channels
you didn’t cut yourself. no way to say Over
in the dead space. no one there to hear it
but a silent star. 
                                                  and a billion other stars.


————————————–

Zachary Goldberg called us from Oakland, CA.

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"Moon" by Zach Goldberg

On April 11th, 2019, Israel sends a space probe to the moon. It explodes on impact.

BORN of Holy Space, she is sister

to stone. knows each smooth defense 

littering occupied Ground. Holy

Ground. she whispers stories of how we built

our homes / laying stone gentle atop one another

 dabke  hard on soil 

sending stories of how children see if stones,

too, float in the dead sea. 

israel sends a space probe to the moon & it explodes on impact. 

LISTEN. the moon is pro-Palestine.

moon remembers when she was part of the earth / remembers when land was one / craters filled with water waiting to be named holy / a people knowing what it always was, tending to orchards with twisted roots older than sea level / sung prayers tucked into breakfasts of bread and cheese / throats uneroded / calling on our daughters / ya ‘amar ya ‘amar ya banat al ‘amar / asking of us beauty / strength  

holy earth sends stories of children / gripping rocks so hard their life lines become granite rings.

Children scratching at empire / criminalized. what is a blemish to an empire? man-made death machines plummet into the surface of the moon / scratch for conquest.

o holy Ground. those who separated us will not be forgiven. 

there is no blemish to her light.  in eulogy of the Children who have joined the stars 

she fights back

————————————–

Summer Farah called us from Oakland, CA.

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"the moon is pro-palestine" by Summer Farah

Poetry via voicemail. Missed calls you need to hear.

Open submissions accepted.
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