issue 16

I could hear the bomb tick in your jacket. Between layers of leather, so close to chest. I wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t been pushed together on the train. You caught my bags and fall and I had to say thank you, fist making a zero around the metal pole. Now I eat from […]

In June, we are inside out, mistaken for blooming. We steal apple blossoms, pluck them from low branches like burs from horsetails and braid them through our laces as we do between the trees. We snap stems into hairclips and paint our eyelids orange with pollen, our ankles gray from parched dust that floats on […]

I want to set my skin on fire but I’m supposed to be at his apartment in an hour when i come across the dress. a long sleeve, four inches above the knee length floral patterned dress. it was hidden away in the back of my small dorm room closet it is hidden with the […]

and we’re lying on the floor blanketed by a darkness that presses into every part of the room except the candles on the bookshelf an ellipsis of three small flaxen flames for a moment with the television muted it is just the two of us tenderness in chaos but with fresh tears the three little […]

凉粉: cold noodles best served on hot summer days. I watch 妈妈 dip her hands into silver bowl, scoop starch, chase a village long-gone; and I want to hug her but her hands are tied, her apron is tied, her feet are tired – of standing on lands not made for legs bent under weight of loss […]

[12:13AM] revolution is a self-taught language and i’ve always been multilingual. [1:38AM] some rot can be cut away with a fruit knife. [6:54AM] most mold cannot. [7:01AM] pick up. please. [7:10AM] there will be supermoons and moths with funny names to look forward to someday soon (atlas moth, comet moth, death’s-head hawkmoth, emperor gum moth, […]

on some days i am not birthed on others i am lake ripples dragging my ring finger over your thigh these nights i dream in anaphora, on some moons i am catharsis on others i am dry, swaying tree branch you remind me of cinnamon & on some thoughts i cannot help but cry because […]

i am tangled in the textured cracks of your cinnamon swirl palms so i crinkle up our poetry into an atom i am chipped nail polish painted over i am pushing the pebbles deeper into the earth with the heel of my knock-offs you are the dark splotches where the columns meet the ceiling, like […]