When I was a girl I ate whole oranges The taste of sweet pulp and bitter peel like eating sunlight Before me there was Abuelo Picking grapes Before me there was Pa Picking oranges He must have laughed as he saw me The fruit of his labors in my mouth Alexandra Martinez is a […]
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It tastes like tin the chocolate cut with metallic tinge no tin ge I’m sorry I never told you I’m sorry I told you I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything When you kissed me all the colors drained from the room I watched them pool onto the floor and there was only you left […]
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i would like to sink into a hot bath the same way i melt into the early darkness that pairs with winter. sometimes i escape raw weather by going to house parties with strangers and peering through their bathroom cabinets smoking and drinking and seeping into the wallpaper like a stain from a photo that […]
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the promise land is the circle k when I need coffee the promise land is my shadow in the Arizona sun when it makes me look like the person I want to be the promise land is your face when I finally figure out what to call you its couples kissing on my Instagram feed […]
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Taylor Steele is a rare triple-Taurus. She’s a triple threat too—poet, screenwriter, and essayist—and it seems there’s very little that isn’t in her wheelhouse. You’ll find this is true almost instantly upon cracking Dirty. Mouth. Kiss. open. This is a collection of poems that roots for protection of the self, that’s wrought with newfound […]
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I hope I’m around when an earthquake flips a tidal wave up toward Tsunami Lanes. Or when all the TV couples we’ve shipped get divorced, and whatever remains is dissected for our viewing pleasure. If you’re not here for this tragedy we call an after-party, why come at doors? All I’m saying is how perfect, […]
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uprooted at the bar mother takes a napkin that held silverware / now holds tooth blood mixes with tomato sauce tongue the gummy space that used to hold bone smile is unbalanced mother says I can have dessert if I let her take the other out it is not time / but I let her […]
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I am exquisite in the darkness— Never Blanche DuBois. Never so derelict, but maybe the same sickness; the same hunger for those tarantula arms. I am drowsing in phosphorescence lulled from these sinuous shores by those questions of divinity: The wound in the right side and the mirroring of fevered light. Flash cut: Streetcar reconsidered […]
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to swallow you whole. others it takes the voice of a former life. a forgotten voicemail, or an old youtube video. and maybe one day feeling my absence will leave your teeth aching, or maybe it will make you feel more christmas lights than brush fire and guilt. i think one day your name will […]
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it was always Seattle it was always in the dark our bodies in search of something a drink a dance an open doorway the four of us, one me two duos you with your pale eyes, your name I saw a love inside distantly, we four walked Seattle’s Greek row, four who would never arrive, […]
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me, my softness starts somewhere in my belly, unfolding like freshly pressed grass; it arises from somewhere you cannot reach by just the touch of my skin she, keeps tepid water cupped in her hands like kindness, adjusting to the temperature of her skin the longer she holds it close she tells me: this valerian […]
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to give us this morning of shadow-cast bodies lumped under thick, stiff quilts, wooden blinds chopping winter-white sunlight up into more manageable blocks my beautiful wonder sprawled on her stomach we rinse out sticky wine glasses to later refill every flat surface covered with clay, candles and their coated holders, pencils and canvas edges, dead […]
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They come to me. Two flights up the stairs, above the kebab spot, opposite the stripped flesh the butchers. See how they run to me. A gorgeous cloud of need. I promise nothing. No refunds. Leave your guarantees at the door. Line ‘em up. I turn ‘em into water. Ever seen a man wearing hope […]
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When it is dark out, The sky closes itself like a window. I watch them Drink from the same empty stream. There will always be Smoke in the trees. We left fields and orchards untended. They withered as we slept. The birds will be dead by Spring. I will crawl Unhurt over their bodies, Only […]
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Megan Falley is in a word: sharp. Her poems have a sting to them that stays and her voice could silence a room. She is water running too hot in the best way. In addition to touring and teaching an online writing course called “Poems That Don’t Suck,” she is the author of three collections of […]
Read moreI like to fall sometimes. I like to see the blood. When it flows from my pores into rivers, dams, and streams- like velvet currents of rage and sorrow. I am open like a wound, raw and tender.
Read moremy white willow name is doctor, creatorof cold sheets, levee raiser as i kisscheek & child, i am softer in my ownhands, but hard as light parsed through a man’s lens to empty cement giants and husk men i have left retrograding, i am sorryunder my heel: rainwater, my toe: typhooni am all weight, all heat — […]
Read morein red season, my teeth hang off hingesand i’m tonguing door stops with myknees staked into the linoleum untilyou are home again.you loved me once before i knew whata past tense was and netted myself ina set of skeleton keys, that is my body,i say; i say it — my body is hereyou loved me […]
Read moresometimes, i still feel the heat of every hand that’s wandered across my body. shaking always shaking, earthquake veins, an uncertainty in the world, stepping on the ledge and looking straight down, neck tingling at a ninety degree
Read moreRaindrops gathered on my nose like a piercing. It was that just awake, yawning Delhi rain Leaving me not quite wet not quite dry I am quite honestly lost in these gullies Rain has that faraway look in my eye quality— It scoops out my soul and scatters it in the dirt. Swanky house Block […]
Read moreI had a dream where ashes rained down from the sky the night made so black it felt primal in the dream my father is saying ‘sacrifice.’
Read moreI travel westward to reach earlier time zones. Cross a line and I am an hour younger, though my body doesn’t know it. I will extend my life this way: by crossing borders. My ancestors did the same because they knew that the only hometown is the skin,
Read moreMom read x-rays for a living, but made a life kissing the bones of a 1932 row home always under construction Dad repairing with arthritic hands from the ground up
Read moreYou are a hitchhiker’s brainwash, a negative gasmask, a pair of waiting hands vacant everywhere You are a hoarder of ridges, a concave risk, heartsick and craving bludgeon exchange in a room of soundless piano keys, pushed in. Lonely carnivore, with a dirty forehead a mouth of murder. You beautiful handsaw, ripping my roots to […]
Read morebeing touched in a charged body by accident bounces bones enough to shed dead skinand leave flesh behind to finagle steady breath without a frame of mind barely attached to a torso danglingout of the car window even if hanging on means swallowing the one-winged mosquitos or pounding a steak until the vesselsrun dry and deformed or become […]
Read more—– cj west is a 20 yr old junior at Emerson College, where they created a major in Performance Poetry. They don’t care what your parents think of her tattoos. Their favorite things are: cats, bread, and women. Two they’re allergic to, one is out to get them. If they can’t change the world they […]
Read morehi you might like the way the moon looks will you go outside and see for yourself put the phone down first open the door then close it take however long you need to make up your mind if you don’t come back before time runs out i won’t blame you doesn’t it look like […]
Read moreyou kept my amethyst in your jacket / so I put a new piece of citrine in your palm / we sit at the bar & talk about cemeteries / tell me about your father again / talk about New York / that one time you were onstage dripping with blood & your best friend […]
Read more15 and she invited me to sleep over at her place minimal adult supervision hours one and two dedicated to mocking a children’s movie because we were not children she let me test drive her violin, first string instrument I ever touched, told me my instinct by way of heritage
Read moreWe used to be able to collect the dust, to make whole families out of the dust & though those families were never able to fit a ship inside of the bottle, they could could give themselves wholly to the land that made them. The hard times took
Read moreInspired by Lily Cigale’s poem published in the Winter 2014 issue of Vagabond City. “remember riding bikes at night in northern california remember kissing on various couches but never alone. remember our almost-summer almost-romance”
Read more“Away Status” by Shy Watson is a poetry collection that will lead you away from your comfort zone and straight into something so alarmingly honest, you will want to both close the book and keep turning pages. It is hard and easy to read the words of someone who tells the dark secrets that no […]
Read moreI touched raw fingers to the strings. Felt how gasping for air after being hooked, feels. I’m so long out of water. Somewhere in the background Momma is warning, Do not touch… pero, it’s so shiny, so shiny.
Read moremy dear [ ], a.c. said that fragments are good things to inhabit, so i love you?/ i don’t know what this feeling is, because the last time i had a crush, i wrote songs for someone else in a way of disguising who it was for. (my first published work is really for you.) […]
Read moreWhen you run your hands across my hips, I suddenly forget it is not a sin to have a body. Each point of contact turns my white skin dingy – something like a tea stain.
Read morethe wooden bridge stretching over black cacti. Remember calves breaking as fast as you can. What do you tell your body paraded? That you’re not satisfied until you’re sick in the dark
Read moreThese knees, will be the pick-me-up when you fall on them. Knees, that you fell upon, crabby and rude in your A,B,C baby swing. You marveled at your mother in her cocktail gown, the shape of her shoes out of your reach. You lay there like a splinter until she picked you up. On your knees, struggling to see. Hide-and-seek […]
Read morehow is it to carry a weight greater even than the ocean and still float
Read moreThe snow melt tastes of last November’s silent lightening, the blue air of Sierras. This part of California sees a constellation’s thrusted
Read moreTied up in bedsheets, drooling kerosene— This slump is a slow burning fire. Death by boredom or starvation, or By the constriction of your own hands Around the sprig of your throat. Will you stumble, sleepwalking From the burning room or paint a portrait In ash on the mattress? I get up to put a […]
Read morejudge, let it be known, it is so rare a girl cries wolf. the trial is so familiar, so familiar, so familiar (i am so tired) i could script it. ‘promising future’ and ‘boy of strong character’ and ‘first-time offence’. they report his swim times whilst she drowns
Read moreAlexandra Wuest’s chapbook “The Female Gaze is Cool” advocates for the elimination of tunnel vision, for a new perspective that shouldn’t be so new. The female gaze is so often an internalized male gaze, a reflection of how other men (and women) see women. But the female gaze should be its own gaze, and these […]
Read moreIt’s the talons stabbed and spread through the nervous system that keep the mouse twitching and give it the performance of life. A boy reads the forest floor: A bouquet. A pitying. He reads the horizon: an unkindness.
Read moreParts of me are burning in dad’s ashtray. Tuffs of coiled hair engulfed in flame. Clink of hot-comb against stove. Crackle of fire against pomade. The house is smoky with the burning of my hair the flattening into submission the taming of the wild black the Saturday ritual.
Read morehe was my religion where no god could exist laid slain in his spirit each time his hands pray upon me words baptized in tongues tithed offered in remembrance of we
Read moreMet my father in summer at some wedding. She won’t say if they kissed or felt clairvoyant twinges during Vows.
Read moreinsert a metaphor about paper cranes, their wings open wide as their creases can go before ripping and pulp beaks breach the earth.
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VAGABOND CITY 