By: Anna Hillary The legs of the table, the cherry in wait. Bees wax sweet, houses high to rise. I’m not a branch, I ’m not a leaf, I’m not the root or the tree. Red eyes, red cheeks, dark red sight, and sound the day: I’m not always what I want to be. As easy porcelain stands straight and whisker reaches out, My juice drips down and heavy hand strips, wraps, sinks, deep into the ground. Daughter, shy— A torch spreading across my earth to burn. Thick heart thins, sudden teeth

By: Sarah Johnnes If she is dead, she’ll still be dead if I sleep a few more hours. Besides, I need a reprieve from what could be. I settle, till first light shows silhouettes of bare trees. Wind gusted though a few days earlier and stole the last of the red, orange, and gold foliage. If this were spring, finches, warblers or chickadees might sing the new day in. Winter stillness alleviates the ruthlessness of death. Feet stand on fragility at the entrance to her bedroom. I h

By: Dick Altman Cinco de Mayo, fifth of May in New Mexico, and I look up past Aspen’s fledgling leaves, into a Sistine sky of flaming blue, to see a jet’s contrail splitting your still spare crown, at no less than half a thousand knots an hour. I smile to think that nothing in view is more of the moment, than leaves whose emerald sheen, to my eye, grows more vibrant with each passing breeze. * Can I halt the wind, my Aspen children ask. They dance, with little joy, as over

By: Hope Fischbach after Andy Warhol’s “Love is a Pink Cake” Pittsburgh, PA It is the first day of autumn, September breathing into his skin and my prism fingers curled in denim and disquiet. Twilight snakes through steel frames, our hollow bones; I want to lean into him, stiffened spine to the cold grey lines, the rust, the factory noise. Gaze at the cross-armed sky as she holds forth a downpour sure to come; fluorescent office windows, eye

By: Pat Phillips West It’s not easy when there is so, so much to understand. I stand and look at the heart-shaped leaves of the pole beans that hang limp, baked to death on the vine, chives curling in on themselves, a futile attempt to shelter in place. I don’t have more pressing things to do under this once-in-a-millennium heat dome. I stand here, when to do so feels impossible, and wish that one slow spoonful of water could bring parched basil, red and green lettuce— bleach

By: Shou Jie Eng Lay like whale over a course of salt wear coats of oil, lay warm latitudes raise gardens of ice where posterior and up lie uneasy. Unwind over deck coats of oil, worn latitudes belaying triple strands, laid hemp ends unwinding over deck. Lie uneasily in quarters, pitching, fingers unstranding where laid hemp took their triple ends knowing that, far from home, the body lies in quarters, pitching, slowly unstranding the line between body, body, and water knowin

By: Carolina Esses Translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese The Mountain Fit in the Palm of my hand. She only needed a name. Through her, we should each follow our desires our nature, my father corrected. He, who has never seen snow, walks ahead. It’s summer. That luster between the stones could be snow. Writer and journalist Carolina Esses (Buenos Aires, Argentina) has has published several books of poems, including Versiones del paraíso/Variations on Paradise (De

By: Durell Carter You look down at the cockroach from your bar stool That isn't afraid to acknowledge you Because it knows there's a hole That will hide them/ hide us From the light of their trespassing gods' eyes And you wonder how they/how we are going to survive a world That will require them to learn how to fly further than their/ than our limitations While you inhale cigarette ash And listen to the music played in iconic 80s movies with zero dance montages Vibrating

By: Mary Paulson Some small black bird with a yellow beak like a toothpick knife jabs restlessly in the grass. He stops, glares at me and I’m struck with the thought that I should know his name. You would have known it and all about the green shimmer of his top feathers, about the song he sings, the females he likes, the carry of his wings on air. I remember you at our kitchen table with your bird books. Mary, you would say, pointing at the large bay window, see the Tit Mouse

By: Elizabeth Ambos I went back to the arena With flowers this time Fanged phlox, daggered asters lavender sheafed as a shield Still the blood rose In the battle sand And I was broken to thorns Crowned by my Masters Planted about the hospital bed I went back back I went to the arena With time in these flowers Clocked daisies bobbing all manner of lies Scant tarpit of petals As thumbs list downhill Lilies fall Monitors now still Elizabeth Ambos wr

By: Scott Stolnack The thieves come each night and empty another room. You sit at the front door, a loaded shotgun across your knees, thinking over my dead body yet somehow they come in while you’re looking the other way or through the back door or through cleverly hidden tunnels beneath the cellar. Why anybody in their right mind would want this junk is a puzzle but it’s your junk goddammit and you’ll cling to each tottering rotten stack of old magazines or the deflated ball

By: Lori Starling I shouldn’t be Someone You could take or leave—I know I’m Cracked, Chipped, Broken in All of the Places— Normally thrown out pottery— You know, I was ART once! So, take the Time to pick up My Pieces, and mend Me with gold like I’m fucking royal! Loving me is Wanting to put it all together, And embrace My broken, beautiful, and boundless flaws, And cheer for me when they shine. Lori Starling is an author, academic, and poet. They have their MFA in Creative Wr

By: Breanna Watkins She looked at her reflection. First in a long time. Staring at herself wondering, ‘is this really mine?’ She looked into her eyes, almost as if she could see right through. Then she spoke up and asked, “Am I really you?” Breanna Watkins is a teenager who has been writing poetry for a few years now.

By: Emma McNamara I wonder if flamingos ever become so enamored they forget how to stand atop a single leg— likewise, if lilacs become so lovestruck they fleetingly fumble their flower functions, or if lust-led lovebirds become so flustered they falter their flight— darling, I daydream that nature is as foolish in desire as I oh, how I wish I could have spewed out sonnets and soliloquies and sapphic stanzas on the spot, but alas, the panic conquered the poet oh, how forlorn t

By: A. Pikovsky \/ it’s a disruption of peace, wilting in the whirl now, i’m ironing in the settle, no. i’m settling in the web of (f)ears i did not \/ could not weave. it’s a collection of repentance collapsing into the purpose you painted for me, to serve for the living where thoughts summon the monster i can’t shake off me— looming in the stale air of hurt spaces calling it whatever it is not no. it’s a separation of scent i am dusted & \/

By: Tierney Chapman Raving across listless sands grinding to the grimy beat o f the bass canyons, I am a fire dancer burning through the red haze I am a lizard king, pulsating idle grains pushing up beige to the red, yellow blue skies, that swim flat above the mountain head I—the dust devil of electric beats recharge the clay mountains raising them up, to the world with-out-end, —I am the desert night, headbanging to the cadance of the half-moon, dancing with violet bobcats i

By: Siobhan Casey You are not sentimental and rarely afraid to show your toothless gums. I call you Kai-Kai and Tiger-tiger, when I reach the room where I hold your silk head in my hands, your skin olive and smooth against a map of oxygen tubes. You are like your father the world is already busy saying, as if dominant genes determine everything. I disagree because you are newness, infancy itself. And it seems I have been writing the poem of this moment for most of my life: of

By: George Burns Driving into the low morning sun, I cannot see, so drive slow and on hope. Like the sun, the traffic on Sunset, Temescal, PCH and the 10 is just beginning and it’s easy to go with the flow and, in the garage, I have my choice of parking places and even have time to finish listening to the podcast, there is a great ambiguity at the end of the world, which I’m mis-r emembering, but not in a huge way. It’s close to 8 o’clock and the approaching hour is drawing m

By: Donald Guadagni The mirror that is life and that which is myself, I quietly reflect as to the truth and meaning of my heart. This is not passion nor aberration that passes silently as I touch the mirrored surface of my soul. Even the mirage of existence that shimmers upon us all cannot touch the true meaning of that which is the soul. The vision of the true heart seeks only that that provides balance and serenity. Quintessential and sublime being becomes elusive as rip

By: Heather Hutcheson I. In the chill December darkness, we wait for our shiny black mare to deliver a lanky filly or a spindly colt, some limber specimen bred to run, built tall, engineered agile. We anticipate an athletic, living locomotive to nearly spring from her round body. II. The four of us, shivering under starlight, pretend amnesia about last year’s nights of false labors, more than a week sleeping outside the corral before we could name the immense noiselessness in

By: Terry Jude Miller darkness approaches the eye retreats to back seats of the theater the world obscures leaves wind song and the ghost of blooming night flowers in its wake people who know better or nothing—sleep—while the broken wait out the night in half-dream and opaque images try to memorize the words sung by the wind Terry Jude Miller is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet from Houston. He received the 2018 Catherine Case Lubbe Manuscript Prize for his book, The Drawn C

By: Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas I wanted to write you a letter filling you in on all that’s gone on over the years, but according to your sister, who emailed me last week, you’re dead. I’ve been searching for you so long with no word back, I wasn’t surprised, yet I have to say I began to imagine in a hopeful way that you might be alive somewhere, lying on a sandy beach sipping margaritas, too high on alcohol to answer back. I’ve been wanting to tell you how much I miss our o

By: Will Neuenfeldt God hums white when sinners sleep as not one shadow repents inside his parking pews. Pothole holy water remains blessed and full until he lets strays have a sip. Between tinier cracks grow crabgrass and dandelions before his followers spray what they call weeds away, but tonight God rains and Jesus takes his break to shower out back while his post glows brighter without a set of headlights in sight. Will Neuenfeldt studied English at Gustavus Adolphus Coll

By: Raymond Hoffman Everything tight like islands Abhorrent is the shore where the others swim Tangle up to the warmer ones The most abrasive tag along If happiness is a toe in water, mania is a plunge Born a swimmer, but never knew what to go after Natural nomad launched out of orbit Life is searching for herds across hot cement Hopping along frantic and scared Terrified of those sharks They nestle to you when most vulnerable Admire and come to you Blowing up your phone, fee