Under the pressure of my hands you’d kick.
I’d guess your features, drawing your likeness to mine.
Mostly we were silent, finding our way with each other.
I didn’t have the words, yet.
Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh by Kayleb Rae Candrilli
I could say I am simple—my heart
again a newborn with a shelf life.
But there is nothing simple about
my body and its fruity orbit around
the sun.
Two Poems by Romana Iorga
No one wants to touch the skin
of this poem, its unhatched
enigma. The words sit in rows
like alien pods, oozing deceit.
Argo Navis by Elizabeth Breese
Why call for a group of stars in the shape
of a boat sailing backwards to be broken
up into three parts of a boat sailing
backwards?
WE ARE SO SORRY FOR YOUR LOST by Michelle Peñaloza
We sort the cards at the kitchen table.
Instead of flowers, our people help
the family pay for the funeral.
Telway Lament by Andrew Collard
And then one morning, just before the sunlight turns to bees
at my bedroom window, I will see it, through fog—
Read More
Three Poems by Alessandra Narváez-Varela
When I sit on the toilet, my thighs,/ purple and mold-green, file against / each other, mercilessly. My neck hairs / rise, dandelion-like, aware of her thighs
Read More
Malus by Geoff Anderson
I find the last crabapple—rotted, not fallen
from the branch but buried up in the leaves.
What has stopped the cankered globe from falling?
immigrant treatise by Bernard Ferguson
the sun is retreating from yet another day that wishes to lay claim
over our bodies & my friends have taken to the streets in my name.
Read More
Two Poems by Robert Krut
And as the curtain above turns
to black with the absence of time,
we lie here, backs on grass,
dew climbing up and over our thighs.
Two Poems by Jessica Guzman Alderman
Like all beasts wandering on the edges of cities, I turn my head
toward the highway. The sun sets across six lanes of idling engines.
Read More
Tiny Worlds by Molly Gutman
When the Devil comes for Christmas he brings
a casserole. He wears an argyle crewneck,
too expensive, pilling, starting to smoke.
In the Grove of Self-Charging Trees by Jessica Jacobs
It is early enough that fog still skeins, / like moss, the highest branches. / And twining each tree: a cable / rough-creped as wild grape vine, / with both ends socketed / into the trunk.
Read More
Houston: The Satellite Bar, Wednesday, 1:13 a.m. By JP Allen
The city is a two-headed lizard scaled with private parking, the mist is full of drones, particulates
and used blue gloves—
but here, may we get super SUPER weird.
Read More
Fix By Sage Curtis
I stich pills with gin,
think in pink things,
pinch sticky skin if his Irish shirt clings right.
It’ll fix my mind.
Read More
Fellowship Application by Joseph Rios
His other hand enters my space with fingers out
like he’s flying or the birds are flying or we’re flying or the truck is
flying; we’re birds now and I still can’t get this shit lit.
How Briefly the Body by Chelsea Dingman
Two Poems by Sasha Pimentel
A man outside a café is putting his gloves on slowly, tugging
the leather over his wrist, and he is, perhaps, waiting for me
to put my knife and fork down, to come out from behind
Wishing that There was Another World that Isn’t by John Gosslee
Mae Young Has Always Been the Heel by W. Todd Kaneko
Screw that—I’ve never seen a woman
I couldn’t lick, never a man I couldn’t
hammerlock and stomp into the canvas.
Read More