Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

Sapphic Stanza 3 by Candace Walsh

Dinosaur egg rocks, clefts and declivities. Virga daubs sky over mesa achingly. Acid-green lichen. I long to be the sun’s last rake through your hair. Candace Walsh is a queer, multi-genre writer in her fourth year as a PhD student in creative writing (fiction) at Ohio University. She holds an MFA in fiction from Warren […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

I’m eating an orange by Aekta Khubchandani

and polar bears are dyingon my laptop screen.Black ducks floating backwards, a back-bending sun, the see-sawing skyits bed. My iPhone tells me sunflowers face each otherwhen they can’t spot the sun. I’m eating peaches and living by the riverin my head; sparrows are hopping onto branches with last leaves. How much has changed with weather,much has changed and withered. I’m wearing […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

ANDROGYNE by Anastasia Walker

in dreams a      wherea hole      should be      a bodypregnant      with ache, withwords      don’t meanyou, what is      whoand where to      find, fixthe shimmer      wind lickedprismatic, amphibious      lung-tied but fervent     for gills, waterbound      but wingedthe […]

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Everything, Issue 81, Poetry, vagabond city

Chicken Imitations by James Croal Jackson

We made Arrested Development-esque chicken imitationsat the restaurant– bakawk, cheep-cheep, wakka wakka– being young, I thought that was the language of love.We always laughed across the chasm of the room when we shut shop, squeezing soap rags into heart buckets,wiping fresh clear streaks on mahogany tables. I vacuumed pita crumbs and invisible dust, emptied bags […]

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Everything, Issue 80, Poetry

an elegy for opportunity by Louie Leyson

On February 13th, 2019, the rover named “Opportunity” went offline after fifteen years of exploring Mars. In goodbye, a final transmission was sent: Billie Holiday’s 1944 recording of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” In the aftermath of a dust stormyour grey body stilled with all the grace of a dogthat dozes inside only the red ghosts […]

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Everything, Issue 80, Poetry

I’m Afraid Of What She’ll See In Me by k.p.fen

after Sreshtha Sen in another life, my hand grips my belly, my other hand an extension of my cell phone, lights flashing in my pupils. nine months will be preserved in my phone’s gallery, waiting to be posted in a carousel. five years pass by and i smile at my daughter circling on a metal horse, bobbing to calliope songs, my camera too […]

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Issue 79, Poetry

Wild Horses by Claire Pinkston

for Symil heres’s a secret: where I come from,all the fairytales begin with instead, and my neck has earnedits permanent ache from looking backeven though there is no one left to save. in this life the window shares its own desolation and grief is stored in miniature paper cups.some days I miss my old transformations,the kind that turned braid […]

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Issue 79, Poetry

Transubstantiation by Charlie Divine

Transition, sacrament of selfTo die at twenty-two and start anewThis is my body given for you To return the same, but changed–the hero’s journey Do this in remembrance of me Charlie Divine is a current student at Portland Community College studying American Sign Language/English Interpreting. They live with their 32 houseplants in the shrub-steppe of rural Oregon.

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Issue 79, Poetry

pick up the phone by Kelly Mullins

no seriouslytake ithere’s my passcode there’s likeover 200 finished poems on there nowplus drafts of old textsyou already have plusevery drunk thoughteveryone’s numberevery tinder chatevery bored selfiea few nudesit will take youyears to get through everything there’s also a 250+ page google docof my spark notes for a new economybet your girlfriend’s read some of thoseanywaythere are passwordsperiod appsshopping […]

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Issue 79, Poetry

How to Win After Leaving by Lisa Baird

Delete the voicemail before the end. Win. Burn the letter. Smear the ash into the sidewalk. Win. No, save the letter for the restraining order. Lose.  Decide against filing the police report. Cops are transphobic already. Lose. File it after all. Feel worse. Lose. Order pizza. Panic at the doorbell. Lose. Forget to close the […]

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Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

chatoyancy and release by Vanessa Couto Johnson

We are all initial-ly named what our families can say.Glanced and category theorized, my morphismsurvives to asterism, even as dopped cabochon.To rock the dome is a beautiful breakage,if it happens. Cleave define or indefinite-ly or to infinite stroked to part-icle spark—when -ever it turnsout my grain can do all that and unbag. A Brazilian born […]

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Everything, Issue 78, Poetry

Poem I Never Submitted to Workshop by Daniel Felsenthal

Here I am wonderingIf my poetry will make meA goddamn Master of Fine ArtsAnd you with your talking blues. Sometimes entire days pass and one thinks aboutJust money. It’s toxic.Aren’t weekends forDrinking beer and lemonadeAnd getting fucked?Count your blessingsFor they comeEvery few weeks.In betweenDream-crawl orWrite an ars poetica:You know the form so well. Now that […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

Being Ill by Aiyana Masla

Laying stillhas ripped opena thin, temporal levity on a morningit is snowingmy own worth revealed to me again & again, againan    incandescent    nothingness. Aiyana Masla is the author of the chapbook Stone Fruit (Bottlecap Press, 2020).  Her work has appeared in Cordella Press, Field Notes, West Trestle Review, in the collection So Many Ways to […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

Transsexual Daydreams by Apollo Chastain

i.An angel came to me the otherday, said “Wanna make out in mycar?” I’ve not been so keen onthat sort of thing sincedysphoria set in, the guilty teethof wolverines sliding scalpel-sharpin the space beneath my breasts. Butthis wasn’t a beautiful command, norwas it the word of God:The angel pleads like 50s loungesingers in with the […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry

(NORF NORF) by Julián David Bañuelos

I’ve always tried to proceed with caution. The few things we owned I made sure not to break. How selfish could a poor brown boy be? Let alone three? Grassless backyards and baseballs there we were. Unminding any manner we learned in a country that molded & scolded us. America’s past time to pass time, […]

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Everything, Issue 77, Poetry, vagabond city

apology scribbled on the back of a receipt for a jar of green olives by Madeline Langan

hey,super sorry forthrowing up on your couch last night  missed the antique hunter green velvet thanks to the deli bag you haphazardly tossed over  never knew i could havesuch good aim i keep doing thisThing – not the puking but thebleeding mascarabuying myself baby’s breatheating crumpledvalentines losing my left shoeneeding you to find itasking my therapistwhyit-is-so-hard-to-be-lovedthree months laterstill i can’t believea […]

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Everything, Issue 76, Poetry, vagabond city

Spin Out by Molly Williams

A girl on the plane says, I was stuckwith all these crazy people and I wasnormal. Incredibly, I say, Same same.It was not I who pulled madnessfrom the water. My arms are my own.But everything I’m saying is true:nothing real has changed. Thesewhiskers, these black eyes were there all along—what am I becoming, I say, […]

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Everything, Issue 76, Poetry, vagabond city

inter-sex by Lorelei Bacht

every morning, it sings – but it is not pretty: bird’s nestinstead of hair, purple accordions lacerating the thighs. if icould make a wish: winged, angelic, anything but the meat. one slight adrenal mis-calculation leadingto rogue, to roam, to in-visibly dis-abled: if my mother had known. had slept on it. but imperfectly to perceive, to […]

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Everything, issue 75, Poetry

Marigold by Kandace Siobhan Walker

Your eyes are the soil around a depressed white root. Nematodes will eat you out of the bathroom mirror when you feel quiet and laboured and you want less nights. Work a fingertip into the dirt and tell me, what is alive? And you know it is everything. Even you. Just as there is always […]

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Everything, issue 75, Poetry

Somebody Else’s Bones by Kit Evans

Eleven, that’s all you’ll ever be.Dark-haired kid holding your face downin a pool, howling Don’t touch me, faggot.Sounds like Touch me, faggotin a world of burning water.  Thirteen, eat a weak punch to the teeth, let himlick away the hurt, tell him you’re sorry you didn’t make it more believable.Mud gritting your mouth, pinned to the […]

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Everything, issue 75, Poetry

A Jinx, A Curse, A Broken Charm by Kiyanna Hill

I’ve always known too much, bornadherent I entered the world with a shavingof my mother’s hippocampus curvingagainst my palm. I urge / I warn / I caution:it’s dying, it’s gasping for water.This is a family of burdened women. These bodies won’t make it to 30. This is the beginning of genealogy, of lineage, of a door with a […]

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Everything, Issue 74, Poetry

pareidolia in the form of a lamprey by Liam Strong

hypothesis:            ur seeing moons in the face            of the moon. yeah every nite is            full w/ ur moon in the face            of another man. oh he the Dreamworks             logo. he hooked. he dipping            his toes into ur ribs. in the morning            ur blanket is a milky cloud. a rabbit             humping another rabbit. ur toes            scare […]

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Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

The Boy and I by Noelle McManus

The boy and I make nicebecause there’s too much sufferingand send messages through the flight patternsof migratory birdsand when his answers cawat my window I open it upand cut cloacas in my breaststo let thefat outand I tell him “I’ll get you your surgery somedayI promise”and he says “black feathers blue feathers south.” Noelle McManus […]

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Everything, Issue 73, Poetry

Long Distance Dating as Told by Dreams and Special Relativity by Casey Reiland

I dream of Einstein     and lightning   describe the splintered            tree to you over text how I saw the blitz coming                 before anyone else          You write to me about                                space   about time                   that gravity affects      how the days   slip away       like a whale                        pulling […]

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Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

35mm by Em Norton

35mm the next time i take you to my parents’ house     it’s better            we leave the catholics out of it and i am at least three quarters  of a person      mom cooks & cooks  hot chicken wings & honey garlic  my sister’s   favourite      a […]

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Everything, Issue 72, Poetry

Elegy @ Coney Island by Nancy Huang

Nancy Huang grew up in America and China. She is a Sewanee, VONA, Tin House, Watering Hole, and Pink Door fellow. Her debut poetry collection, Favorite Daughter, is out by Write Bloody Publishing. Her poetry, plays, and prose are published by The Offing, Cosmonauts Avenue, poets.org, The Margins, and film distribution company A24. She has […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

Restriction by Katey Linskey

Birds dive for fish, backdropped by pinkhaze. I watch them disregard breaking wavesand sink shamelessly for what they want. Watermelon, two eggs, five dates. I runmy daily list of what I ate. A net negative,I decide. I roll over onto my stomach, eye-level with the sand. Crabs dartbetween holes. So tentative, they scareat the tapping […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

i thought about you again by Eli Shaw

yesterday, while lugging a box up the stairsto my new apartment, lungs aching in thestink of a hundred cracked and rotting pears soupy with august under their mother, green and sweetness-heavy. it once would’ve conjuredan image of us, older, in a perfect little domesticcountryside life somewhere, called to mind the songs about dizzying and soft love i collected […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

second puberty by Eli Shaw

i smelled jasmine today – cut my lungs wide open. and yesterday, i swear, it was fresh pears on the tree outside my windowmonths too soon. i thought of the way they filled the basketon my bicycle as it leanedagainst the stairs. deflated tires and theache of uneaten fruit. i don’t know where i’ll be when they come again […]

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Everything, Issue 71, Poetry

MRI Arcade by Eunice Lee

●●●● preposterous ●●●● how intense grief ●●●● reminds you of ●●●● games it is not: ●● pac-man, ●●● galaga, ●●●● major havoc ●●●● embarrassing ●●●● there is a face ●●●● to which grief cleaves: ● mouth, ● blip, ● gulf, ● whir, ●●●● inaccurate ●●●● the glitching face ●●●● I fight to piece: ● zip, ● clasp, ● jolt, ● wrench, ● twine, ●●●●●●●●●● shouldn’t have opened my windows to you ●●●●●●●●●● should’ve known pain pooled is more […]

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Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Longing: A Gay Science by Mahalia Sobhani

Mahalia Sobhani (she/her) is a barista and social work student in southeastern Wisconsin. She is the oldest of ten and has a Pisces moon, which explains a lot. Her work can also be found in Catatonic Daughters and the Oakland Arts Review as well as the forthcoming Bonemilk anthology from Gutslut Press. You can find […]

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Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Tehillim 96 by Miriam Saperstein

Miriam Saperstein is an artist, ritual-crafter and logistics maven based in Detroit, and soonmoving to Philly. Their writing and art have appeared in ctrl + v, Jewish Currents, thelickety~split, Pollux Journal, New Voices Magazine, and PROTOCOLS. You can find theirzines at miriamsaperstein.gumroad.com.

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Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

concentration, 64 by Kristine Ma

             no repeats or hesitation.i go first, ‘cause you’re the worst.             category is: taste.              in my dreams, you taste like stale lemon drops.overripe blueberries splitting down chin,             tension wrought between us like a knifeslicing into the flesh of a peach. i cradle the pitin my cheek.              dalgona kind of lethargic,seaweed-around-rice kind of unraveling,             and so […]

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Everything, Issue 70, Poetry

Heat Seeking by Britt DiBartolo

Britt DiBartolo is a poet living in western North Carolina. She recently graduated with herMaster’s in English literature from the University of Tennessee and now teaches research andwriting to high schoolers. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in the Rising Phoenix Review,Pigeon Parade Quarterly, and elsewhere. She’s @frangipansy on Instagram.

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Everything, Issue 69, Poetry

sadcore & sleepless by Michael Russell

pause     obsess     rewind porn star Calvin Bankskneeling     leaning back     his hips bounce like a buoycaught in a tidal waveof cock     muscle     curls oh     Calvinwhen you study your reflection     do you worship the striationsin your chest? absthat cut & pushthrough the amniotic sac of your […]

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