As if to interrupt the growing rift in mine and Don's own relationship, the swearing and physical brawls, broken lamps and TV remotes, Don's cousin made the leap to split with her boyfriend, and so she asked for a little help getting back onto her feet.
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A Normal Interview with Melissa Febos by M.D. McIntyre
It feels important to acknowledge that I come to theory—and I include theory in my work—out of a place of unknowing, and I don’t privilege that language and work over a sort of simple, straightforward description of experience.
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Anniversary by Simona Zaretsky
I want to have no synonym. No confusion with the other lost children, who cry quietly because they haven’t been young since grief froze fingers and toes, took hearts and squeezed them of decadent innocence, dripping away like rose-colored honey.
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Landscapes of a Pandemic by Teow Lim Goh
Here I skate 10 km, bringing my season total to 191 km. Dust on crust, and I come out early enough that I make first tracks. What I do not yet know is that this will be the last picture that I would take before we go into lockdown.
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Two Poems by Chloe Martinez
You were looking for water, as you // (or some other five hundred ants) / always do in the heat, in September.
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A Muscle the Size of Your Fist, and It Pounds by Ashlee Laielli
Under glow-in-the-dark planets and stars, with his blonde head upon my chest and my arms wrapped tight around him, I promised, “I will write it down, I will remember,” as I rocked us back and forth.
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Four Poems by Kristene Kaye Brown
I am slow to recall / how easy the heart / of a yard / can grow soft and green / again / come Spring.
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Until It Hits Something Solid by Daniel Mazzacane
Wilder met Corey four months after moving to Oakhurst when Wilder managed to get a spot on the logging crew mid-season.
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Scar by Cat Ennis Sears
You try on different narratives. holding each one in your hands, then wearing it like a cloak for a time before changing into another one.
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Rishtein (Relationships and/or Proposals) by Nimra Azmi
Of the one hundred kilograms of loneliness in her body, these interactions managed to keep perhaps half a kilo at bay.
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King and Lionheart by Sarah Gorham
The best way to cradle an infant is skin to skin. Rocking imitates the motion of amniotic fluid. It’s common knowledge that a lullaby coaxes a baby to sleep, slowing the child’s heartbeat and breath.
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Atmosphere in Our Bullshit Little Town by Bryce Berkowitz
Most days, we skateboarded / like the sky was spilling out of our pockets-- / our crusty teenage hearts stuck in a cyclone / of a going nowhere town
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Plastic Has Consequences by Kim Wyatt
I’ve come to realize the reason I am not making connection with anyone is a sign from the universe. I need to go within, to figure things out on my own.
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Trying to Translate Yesenin's Death Poem by Joseph Fasano
how dare you take this hushed young blood / I hold out like a thing you cannot sing of / and say that it is not already song.
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Two Poems by Eileen Pettycrew
we float like bubbles, but I can't help thinking / about our hearts--shaped in darkness, arriving / with a sadness that turns us to fragments, like notes / cut loose from their songs.
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A Normal Interview with Hanif Abdurraqib by Mialise Carney
I think I enjoy how many people can perceive the same performance in different ways, and how those ways might be directly linked to the way those people are perceived by the public when not performing anything beyond simply living.
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Butchering by Sangi Lama
I folded countless cranes into existence that year—so many that I can now bring them to life through muscle memory—without realizing that some folds, some creases you can never take back.
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InnerChild4U by Bowie Rowan
Imagine you are walking through tall grass, your hand brushing against green blade after blade. Walk through your memories like they are tall blades of grass. Let them brush up against you.
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To See Clearly by Amy Hassinger
A song can be a revelation, a reminder of the continual apocalypse that every living moment brings into being: the now that ends with each phrase, the new now that begins with the next. A song can cut through the smog of fear we breathe each day, helping us to—even if momentarily—see more clearly.
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The Unraveling by Natalie Teal McAllister
The beginnings of new threads emerge. This time she puts her palms against the threads, pushes them back into place on his skin, holds them as one might hold together something glued.
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