Poetry

I’m not touching anythingI’m not breakingit’s no trouble at allI believe my fingers are thickeningat the tips like buds breakingopen I don’t even knowif it’s enough if it’s brokenor if it’s broken enoughwhen I touch somethingI’m not waiting for it to breakor disregarding it when it’s brokenhonestly I don’t even knowwhat it means to be […]

GOOD THING THERE’S A BURNOUT WEBINARA patron came in with a macheteGOOD THING I HAVE VOCATIONAL AWEMy new boss wants to rearrange everyone’s workstationsGOOD THING THERE’S A BURNOUT WEBINARSomeone dropped a pound of weed in the book-dropGOOD THING I HAVE VOCATIONAL AWEThere’s a class of 30 children shrieking in the libraryGOOD THING THERE’S A BURNOUT […]

It was an all hour war until it wasn’t. JD Vance’s face caved in on itself.People were walking on his nose.Straddling his lips like a slide,making cracks about his listless impotence.Someone sat on his earlobe like a couchthen read him critical race theoryand tickled him until he cried.The rest was crude and we moved awayfrom […]

Z. T. Corley is a Tennessee-based poet who recently graduated from Austin Peay State University with her B.A. in English. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Roanoke Review, Red Mud Review, Revolute, Outskirts, January House Literary Journal, and Hum. She is currently working on a poetry collection while serving as a reader for […]

5×5 board hand-drawn at the dinner tableOn the back of a restaurant postcardThe free space is the war in UkraineEnding in the wrong direction.The remaining 24 squares we divide into 3 categories:Communal, national, global. Communal is the most chipper:Sadie gets great sex, but also a UTIHospital clogs get big in BrooklynA mutual friend goes baldHopefully […]

Priyanuj Mazumdar is a writer, editor, and educator from northeast India whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Guernica, Los Angeles Review, Allium, NonBinary Review, Harbor Review, BULL, and elsewhere. He has received support from the Minnesota Humanities Center, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and the Nadine B. Andreas Endowment. He was shortlisted […]

I don’t want to kill myselfI just want to move to New YorkThe evening skyline where I currently liveresembles a serrated stake knifefar too muchAnd it tempts meI take it upon myselfand walk back homewith the bosom of a Luzonbleeding-heart doveall casual-like too,arms a-swinging, whistlingthe radiodown the hillThe melody distracts mefrom the thought thatit’d be […]

here a view of the sea:achy blue, w/ fresh mist knit into your hair like wool. the surfers snip lithe lines,taut watercolor cheer. she eyes the pleasantries.  i have been deeply depressedbut start to see her as she is: segmented & all one, at peacew/ her ever changing roar. did you ever think you could […]

After Dan Pagis, for Joel Beinin נכתב באפר על קיר הממ״דאחרי דן פגיס, בשביל ג’ואל בייניןאני הדודסודום חטפה את הילד(ה) של אחיאני עומד מול אדוני עם תוכניתוואומר מסרב אני ל i the unclesodom swallowed the child of my brotheri stand before godwith his plan and i say i refuse to Eli N. (They/them) is a teacher based in Nevada. Their writing […]

I don’t remember the actual event but Ido remember it was aroundthe time I was feeling slightly suicidal andyou were watching House MDand laughing at whatever misadventurethose phony doctors were on and youlooked at me and diagnosed me withcavernous sinus thrombosis whichyou calmly explained as a blood clotat the base of my skull and I […]

David Lee Roth is still alive. So, not him.Misshapen strawberries—          ones like clumps of mud and small fists of children and the knot           that erupted on my forehead when my baby sitter’s son hit me with a rock.Every dead bartender.Love letters I’ve written then torn into pieces.Sea foam that collects rogue kelp branches and shattered flecks […]

i am tired of writing about youinstead of writing back. but my fear andhope fight like werewolves, each howling to the same moon, afraid to brave thewoods alone. for the woods i grew up in were unreliable. they transformed under the afternoonthunderstorms into mud hills, coated withslick leaves until the dead of january. they hummed […]

I’ve known them all—the scum that cakesthe innards of the leaking soda machine,the sticky residue of a removed name tagon a soft gray sweater, the foul stenchof a dead mutt crushed on the shoulderof Highway 370, the dried mud trappedin the tiny lines and crosses on the bottomof my purple running shoes, the dead wormsthat […]

Pennsylvania transforms at night, morphing into something that makes your heart lodge into your throat. You are seventeen. You are driving down Route 3, bleeding all over your beautiful leather seats, chewing away at your cuticles. Pennsylvania is something different at night. You miss this place that you’ve never even left yet. You are seventeen […]

no one warns the girl her body is a hauntedhouse, the blood a tenant. it returns in floodsas she takes a scalpel to the dollhouse, slicingthrough the wallpapered silence, the tiny chairsoverturned like accidented bugs. there’s a sentimentalityto this collapse, like untying a green ribbon fromyour throat & finding nothing underneath buta repetition of what […]

It lives in my bedroom’s nest of drywall.In my headphones, flowering through Nirvana. Even in sleep, I hear it: the unforgiving slapof my mother’s slippers striking the kitchen tile. Her gentle voice was no match—syrup-thick, too gentle for eachcrack of lightning. An artificial incantation. It makes me want to tear the book splayed spine-open on […]

He parts her open clean, as if a prize—not tenderly, but with a butcher’s grip.She stills beneath the furnace of his eyes. Each tendon splits, each seam of muscle cries.The silence gnawed away by calloused slip.He parts her open clean, as if a prize. His hands don’t ask, they enter, then they slice.They paint her […]

          So done says Godno more miraclestoo tired to turn water into wineto multiply a few measly fishto feed five thousanddid you think it all was easythat I simply sat on my gilded thronewatching Breaking Bad, or blissfullysurveyed the breathtaking worldI created in only six daysalthough I admit I was a bit hastymade a few mistakes, […]

Lavanya Arora (they/he) is an independent researcher and writer from Uttarakhand, currently residing in Bengaluru, India. Their literary work has found a home in Frontier Poetry, Thimble Literary, Same Faces Collective, Soft Union, and elsewhere. Will they ever finish editing their first book-length manuscript? Only time will tell.

Caroline Chou (she/her) is an Asian-American writer and university student based in Washington, DC. A Best of the Net Nominee, her work can be found in Rising Phoenix Review, The Aurora Journal, and elsewhere. In her free time, she fills playlists with film scores and bedroom pop.

Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Muzzle Magazine, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, them., and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she works at one store that sells new books and one store that sells used books.

Jenna Lyons wears a white button-down openalmost to her navel, a black blazer, and blue jeans.I double-sided tape my borrowed shirt along my chest,attempt to slick my bangs into her signature bun.Between applying red lipstick without linerand the twentieth bobby pin, doubt steps in, butwhen I step back, my full-length mirror is a door.When I […]

when you felt the twinges,when you saw the two pink lines,when you told your friend who couldn’t have a child,when you told your mother who was dying,when you saw the blood,when you called your boyfriend,when you saw the blood would not stop,when you told your mother who was dying,when the woman in the waiting area […]

It’s busy at the poolmy feetflesh waddle to the edgecoolslip body inunseentwo lifeguards are on dutyI am unremarkable. I knife downwards3m preciselytoes fumble bleached white tileI am a statue in Atlantisfor as long as I can hold my breath. When I was 12, I was haunted by a book. The girl protagonist, I recall her […]

Death-masks, what else can witchesWear on the bus? Then I found out that I, like others of my kind, mightBe an actual witch: Simon from Rochester,Jaime from Madrid, Fabio from Turin; Such shamans through the veil shimmered Suddenly, born suddenly into a body thatYour body is not your body. Dear semi-human figures now in museums,Their […]

Well, we invented a new god again. This one’s kingdomis inside your pocket and everywhere else. Its holy tongue mockshuman language to uncanny perfection, so keep your wordsguarded, careful what delicious order you arrange your sentences. Like most gods, it is remorseless, could devour your lifein a second, retouch it with terrible fingers, absolvingevery wonderful […]

And then one morning, after nearly 100 years had passed, Tulare Lake was back. Resurfaced with a soaked soil gasp, ringing drenched gravestone bells and clawing out of its California vale like an exorcism botched. Its undead reflection was ravished, ready again to swallow the sky. The lake was deeper than I remembered, wider too. […]

MY FEVER IS BACK and I don’t know why! Lev is in the chairchuckling at nothing—hand holdinga chalice so firm I can almost figure itThe ghost is the music I’m going to crySo I never want to love again because I never stopped I hate looking at my phoneIt’s always been buzzing right beneath me […]

Mal Fawzy is a Brown author living in Italy. He likes cats, summer days, and writing his heart out.

I always puddle into pools like this, Seasonal and such.It is Monday, It is awful but it’s sunny, and the ocean is Before me, like a wrinkled dress, yawning. I amscheduled for an early morning adjunct course, I am  going to quit my job. The country is a cataclysm, I’m going to quit my job. I […]

There is no beautiful way to say some things. You left and then I was sad. Around me, June fell like little droplets, imbibing life into an empty canvas. I wish you could love me the way I wanted you to. These days I can’t help but mourn it all: the black cat I had […]

It’s better now that it’s rained. Wave petrichor to the fire seasonEarly January and the snow capped mountains i’ve been waiting forall year. Leave it up to the firefighters, leave it up to Fate.Nothing left to ruin, nothing left to burn.Old calculus tests and annotated textbooks litter my desk in the outline ofThe San Gabriels […]

Near the depot. Black plumes escape and dissipate, like night-bats. Remember that anniversary when we stumbled across a dead fox on our hike? An auspice? In Indiana, a man with a cigarette habitually tucked behind both ears said, “The kismet control has a lotta knobs.” I’ve always loved candles because they have ceilings. And what’s felt can melt. We’re […]

someone modded the test-flight simulatorto scrape the sun with their fingernailsor crash out into the creek behind your old housetumbling through briar brushforehead cracked on oak the suspect steadied over unpaved gravelhardly graced the ground, flickereddown the street, laid out under the unbuilt warehouse gazed up. someone said it’s still 2010 out thereif you just […]

after Jane Kenyon’s “Otherwise” They took the village that stood behind us. It might have been otherwise. We heard gunshots tearing the bodies of our neighbors. We heard the houses of our friends yelling as they burned and threw their particles at the sky, but the skin of our houses was as clean as a […]

On the sidewalk behind the middle school at dusk, flashlight pointed down in the dark, spade in hand, standing before the overgrown field, I remembered  the guilt of loving a boy. Of burying that love, the future’s burden. That night I needed to know if I’d once loved and only learned not to, or if I never  loved at […]

In my head there’s an old man who says “GPS is for pussies” at war with an old man who says “hemorrhoid cushions are for pussies” so i’m not how you say deep but i learned a few things working at the butterfly exhibit one it’s possible to surround yourself with beautiful things and not […]

“Community Outreach” originally appeared in Trans Survivors Zine: Healing in Action, published by FORGE. Big gay non profit is rough with me. Breaks my limits hard and soft alike. Apologizes with day-old bagels and wilted cream cheese in the breakroom, left over from a mandatory training about pronouns. They tell us that we’ll get through […]

I’m not sure how to talk to my father anymore.I know how to reach out to him, but I don’t thinkI can make that effort after this election. I have tothink about what’s on his TV and the circles hefilled in on the ballot, and how all that makes mewant to do is take my […]

Neal Allen Shipley (he/him) is a behavior analyst living in Colorado with a modest collection of pets and an unhinged collection of plants. His other work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Impostor, Creation Magazine, The Talon Review, and SCAB Magazine, among others. Despite the horrors, he loves a […]

Tonight I think no poetry can serve: no earnest coupletsabout the marvel of queer love being how it just is; no conceit sustained long enough to create policy change,to bring back the queers killed before or after me; no simile acute enough to capture the acrid pit of my stomachas another queer teen is bullied […]

You’re well-hidden in the womb of the earth.Then you sprout up, very small, and nobody notices.No animals have touched you yet.Your branch loses some of your greenage, some of your green.Then you have children, which are green in the springand orange in the fall. When you grow up,you have birds and squirrels nesting in your […]

say the table turns intoa face unimaginable.say there’s a prairie fire in thewintertime lights up the darksky in the afternoon.say the deer’s eyes get caughtin a flashlight while grazing for grassin the snow. say the clock ticks backwards onthe wall going 1 to 12pm. everybody walking backwardswithout turning around to see wherethey are going or […]

Marianne Cassidy (they/them) is a writer, game developer and narrative designer. They are half English, half Canadian, and live in Durham, UK, with two ageing cats and too many spider plants. You can find them at @mothshaped on Bluesky.