poetry

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.

How many times can I tell this story before it corrodes. I am tired, I don’t know who I am anymore. I wake in the middle of the night and stare at a water glass. What would my life be if I had stayed? If I hadn’t swapped visual art for creative writing. The questions […]

Plato I had gone to your chapelon a wintry November night.Your sage scattered everywhere—in the air, in the water,in the earth, where I stareddeeply into the well of your eyes,a kind of abyssal charm.I went barefoot to see you.I climbed up the hillunflinchingly, Plato.I hauled your books like a bovine yakup the hillbilly brae of […]

Strap on the seatbeatas you leap off the cliff. Rinse the recyclables so they siton a landfill. Never raise your middle fingerbecause you can’t take it back. Be careful.Did you bring an extra pack of tissues. You quitsmoking ten years ago and you hate vegetables secretly.You want to walk with Marco, who lived acrossNorth Boulevard on the […]

We will learn the namesof the land, of the plantsthat were & the plants that remain Hand-counting bladesof grass until our tonguesgo numb chanting the sequence Music will be conducted by birdsong;extra credit if you can identifytheir new migratory patterns Our Art teacher is the still-lifeof a prairie dawn across the fields,a fresh chiaroscuro each […]

when I die bury meat the root of othergreen minded individuals. ones who know that evenmost things in technologymimic the best parts of nature. bury me withgrass that welcomes dandelionsand some weeds with petals whom move like solar panelsneeding to prove the sun exists.bury me with proof of life. don’t talk about the maggots.let the […]

Like the time we snuck into the open houseoff Park Avenue, relishing in what we had never known:open doors and floor to ceiling windows.And when the blonde realtor questioned your accent,humming a prayer against the backs of her teeth,we smiled and scurried away,our laughter drowning out the slap of our sneakers against the sidewalk.High off […]

over early coffee, a friend reminds you how young you truly are, howyour head & heart are developing with a rapidness too invisible to praise. it feels so obvious, yet you forget all the time.look, every day you unveil a new shadeof yourself, strange unseen tones bleedingtogether on your palette. lookhow your face has shifted its shape over […]

is the worst possible method of acquiring information.i never like what i learn & i refuse to listen to reporters who dress in colors you won’t find in thewoods: horrible dark greys, blacks, & maroons.            seeking answers, i take matters           into my own hands: i walk around & ask           every animal i see on a scale of 1 […]

Stand in the morgue and listento the hush between last breaths and statistics,where silence weighs heavier than data points,certainty is measured in empty homes and call medicine poison.Let mistrust metastasize like mold in flood-ravaged cities,watch fever slip through cracks in your rhetoric whileruin joins it in drought-cracked soil because disease is the freest thing of […]

everything was fireproof and temperateand the sky was whole and holding waterspace was clean and time was sloweveryone loved and believed in love orbelieved love would come they wonderedthey cried but their tears were waterfor uncooked seedseveryone was truthful and their names werefamiliar and their faces were familiar andtheir bodies were familiar and beautiful andeverything […]

wading in a lake of swing dance music, jeans rolled up to the knee-you were there with a sweat-soaked bandana on your head-this was a dance under twinkling electric lights in your backyard.the Moon was out, the stars were out, your smile was out, it was all gleaminglike a streetlight shining down on a graveyard […]

Zigzag across the road only whenYou’re sure you’re safe, when the headlights aren’t burningXrays of your bones onto the concrete. Dark enoughWhere all i can see are the whites of your eyes. your Voice carries over distant traffic, jubilant and trembling.Unbelievable, how you carry onTough as teeth through the winter when the airScrapes at the insides […]