earthbound, i look upwards & see birds on flight, fleeing the scene of the crime. in another life i had wings, too. big & beautiful & blood-soaked, i could be God’s best messenger. i am working on a theory on love. in order to be lovable, you must first be unforgettable. this is why God […]
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i tell him that this mouth bites, he thinks i’m being kinky. i’m not. these marc jacobs purple lips are not for him, or for the man telling me i look damn good, they are not for the bartender i want to fuck and they are not for the ex lover i mistook for a […]
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swallowing mini beads from my fingerprint barefoot in sand and piss the true beach life her chest collapsed bus drivers held her feet to heaven downtown the Presbyterian lord caught fire in architecture angels’ wings lifted by the smoke […]
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I was watching the day you became a poppy field on fire. I’m love-marked, impenetrable past the rueful mouth of shallow waters. Monkish silence doesn’t fit you, (Not my blue-eyed mirror who makes me ache from missing him) its depths will you leave you heavy and wrapped in plastic. I carry my razor wire hope […]
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Drive me drunk in your heart-shaped glasses and we can forget about who we were or when about the hurt we chewed on the lives we left before we decided to be mindless because thinking Never got us anywhere kind Cross my heart to believe you’re who you never were and you try your best […]
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1. I’ve been ghosting since the first grave 2. I found this unopened instructional videotape on how to do some pretty killer karate moves If this is how we fall in love, so be it I’m ready to be kicked in the face with a beam of light 3. The gnostics had a word for […]
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For best results, choose a prediction damaging fungus existing in plain sun hair tangled no cosmic layer of irony. For best results, close off or else walk through the pain walk there in a day your blue skirt, hips busting your awkwardness not enough to keep you away. Why did you say […]
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Once my best friend tripped on acid at 2AM at UC Berkeley with her boyfriend and she saw two black blobs attack each other when in reality some guy beat another guy over the head with a baseball bat and what is that supposed to mean except fuck reality and fuck everything that has to do with […]
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sometimes i want you to feel the way i felt as a teenager smoking weed in my closet afraid of being caught but knowing that wasn’t very likely (because my parents never noticed the smell of marijuana smoke) i also want you to keep me in your back pocket where i can sleep for several […]
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there’s a flood but it’s inside me. there’s a flood but it’s made mostly of sand. there’s a flood but you wouldn’t have named it that if you’d had the choice. whatever you call it now it’s still a flood. I’m calling you honey baby my sweetest darling and I’m getting flecks of glass all […]
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keeping in mind the winter i collect down comforters for frost, asphalt for rush hour, keeping the kettle on to bring flush back to flesh where bone meets bus stop. once pedestrian, i find posture between cumulus and chimney smoke, making an even ascent, like leavened bread. when breath gives way to brinkmanship i will […]
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We planted a beating heart beneath the floorboards to remind us of what it sounds like to be human. For the days when I take aim at your soul for making a mistake. For the days when you do the same. We are hypocrisies. I’ll ask forgiveness for the same sin I chastise you for. […]
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there is a bruise on my ass shaped like a gun. I cover it with my palm and find that it is hand-sized. I take a picture of it and send it to my two best friends. I text my mom and say, “it’s a metaphor.” I stare and stare. I put my hand against […]
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a lone heron watches as the wind allows the trees to touch their long lost lovers. it’s a spring-sunny day made for Harbord Street. cream clouds wispy with winter’s dying breath against a morning-coloured sky. the cool autumn air under the first-quarter moon breathed into my lungs like untouchable water, reminding my skin of the […]
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it’s just a split lip December a bull’s eye of a birth month all wide eyed and waning turning twenty-one felt nothing like shedding skin and everything like the crack of a honey comb I fell in love with a boy and choked on the full moon and tumbled all the way through the rush […]
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the chicken fries i’m eating don’t taste like 2005. they’re seasoned differently, and i don’t know how to breathe when the pupils of your iris-eyes meet the rubber of my boots and tell me “bye” and i realize that i think i love you. i keep the streets in the back pockets of my jeans […]
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maybe it’s a springtime feeling w/ the melting flowers perfume in the air, but i’ve got myself thinking I might be becoming something. I tweet and delete i’ve been thinking about marilyn monroe a lot lately and how much of a superstar she was and how it’s wild that a mortal could be a goddess. […]
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I think, deep down, everyone wants someone who looks at them the way Beyoncé sings Love on Top. I mean, there’s just something beautiful about how the key to a melody could change so many times over the course of so many minutes, so many years, so many lifetimes, and it’s still the same song, […]
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you’re in the trunk of a car until the breath of blood throes you into a desert storm what tastes worse? the burnt out butt of a gun? or saltwater. the dust leaves you somewhere in the middle of southern california you sleepwalk through the […]
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the floors of memory are glass, which means the medicine isn’t working, which means I am back on the floor, which means it is July, which means the cherries are in bloom, which means they are painting the shrubs red, which means they look like fire, which means I’m going to try to pick them, […]
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move to miami move to new york become a buddhist really learn how to do my eye makeup start doing angel dust stop doing angel dust dangle from a rooftop like emma stone in birdman start running stop eating listen when people tell me they don’t want me to love them torture instead of being […]
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slip off my skin and look inside do you think my bones are pretty? chalk white, moon-like, they piece my body together now that my heart has stopped pumping blood i’ve gone cold beneath the freckled constellations on my chest tie my arms up behind my head until my wrists are raw and weeping next […]
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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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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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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 […]
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