Everything

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 […]