Author: okaydonkey7

Telegrim by Madeline Blair

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Link to PDF: Telegrim by Madeline Blair

MADELINE BLAIR is a poet, editor, and award-winning filmmaker from Chicago, IL, with a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Blood+Honey, BULLSHIT LIT, Burial Magazine, Michigan City Review of Books, Luna Luna Magazine, Ekphrasis Magazine, and more. She was once quoted in The New York Times on her passion for clean air.


I Belong Hair by Shivani Mutneja

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Long arm hair is slowly longer arm hair is winding into prolonged arm hair is dreaming into sticky wet arm hair is only thinking of itself on the left arm soaped arm hair waiting to be rinsed so that it can go back to slightly tangled arm hair, having been forgotten beneath the woolens even by the judgmental eyes of mothers is the growing forestry of arm hair only imagining the future when a wax strip will uproot it into the dustbin or a razor will will it into the drain, till the longing of the arm hair makes it sentient into wanting to be seen by a stranger whose long stare may fabulate it into a savannah for cows to graze at.

Long pubic hair is longish pubic hair is longer pubic hair till the husband says, “I will trim those for you,” doesn’t say “I am tired of those on you,” because he knows better than long pubic hair is the longing to lick without indigestion, so he stands on the bedside while pubic hair wires gape, the scissor gently trims, long pubic hair trembling to the cold air is not a gripping story for the husband, razor takes away a bunch of narrative wires leaving deep inside the folds a long day of growing intimacy, tangled in the oblong gap between legs is the forest for one man to walk in till he can’t find himself.

Long armpit hair is crusted at the end with soap, what desirable lushness for the mousy parlour girl who wants to see it succumb to golden hot wax, to look at the black mat of it over the dirty cream of the strip is the hairy satisfaction she lives for, shows the strip to the bearer of the armpit expecting similar enthusiasm if not triumph, the stretched thin flesh of armpit, tenderness subdued to repeated pressure from palms, singed, betrayed that the once lush landscape is now naked folds, tongues might come for it, sweat will trickle down easy, beating close to the heart will be the resilient hair follicles till they sprout.

SHIVANI MUTNEJA is a writer from Delhi. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poems and prose have appeared in Nether Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, Two Serious Ladies, and decomp Journal among others. She is also the Associate Fiction Editor at The Bombay Literary Magazine.

NO OFFENSE TAKEN by Bennett Rine

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                                                     NO OFFENSE TAKEN
                                                                         or
  SHORT FILM OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PROJECTED ON GREEN BRICKS                                                                     (2007)
                                                                         or
    WHY DOES NOBODY TALK ABOUT HOW DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY                                                   CAN GIVE YOU MEMORY LOSS
                                                                         or
                          BLANK PAGES IN A CHILDHOOD SCRAPBOOK
                                                                         or
          DAILY MENTAL EXERCISE PRESCRIBED BY WELLNESS EXPERT
                                                                         or
                                                 THE FOG OF LOST SOULS
                                                                         or
             WHEN I LEARNED MY SIGNATURE COULD BE GRAFFITTI
                                                                         or
                                                      GENESIS 7:24-8:11
                                                                         or
   PLASTIC COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL FOR FIELD DAY PARTICIPATION
                                                                         or
                                 WHY I HAVEN’T LEFT MY BED YET TODAY
                                                                         or
                                     NOAH IF YOU READ THIS I’M SORRY
                                                                         or
                          YELLOW ONION ROTTING BEHIND MY EYES

___________________________
1.The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. (NIV)

BENNETT RINE is a writer from New Orleans currently residing in Los Angeles. Their work can be found in Palaver Arts Magazine and Fruitslice.

From there we came outside and saw the stars by Lane Devers

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― Dante, Inferno

Text of Lane's poem.

Link to PDF: From there we came outside and saw the stars by Lane Devers

LANE DEVERS regrets to inform you he is from Carbondale, Colorado. His work has appeared in places like The Offing, Peatsmoke Journal, and The New Ohio Review. His collection I wish you had married an astronaut, was selected by Hieu Minh Nguyen as the winner of the 2024 Quarter After Eight chapbook contest. He is an MFA student at Columbia University. 

The Farmer by Andrew Doll

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Behind the glowing screen the doctor nods. Terminal, yes,
she says. The farmer tugs a small notebook from his shirt
pocket. Will you sign this? he asks. The doctor snakes a
stethoscope around her neck. Applies a daub of lip balm.
You could write anything, he says. Like, thanks for being my
patient. Or, gosh, I love your knees. At home there’s a sack of
potatoes on the counter. The farmer invites the neighbors
to a party. They play Hot Potato in a field. Toss the little
guys late into the night. The wind rattles the windows.
Then there’s just two men left throwing a burning hand.

ANDREW DOLL is a queer poet and collage artist living in Portland, Oregon. His poems live (or are soon to live) in The Buckman Journal, HAD, Painted Bride Quarterly, Lurch, Sugar House Review, and Ink in Thirds. 

Gettysburg 2019 by Allie Hoback

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I met him at the Heartbreak Motel. A thirty-five-dollars-a-night
no-nonsense no-thrills motel. Hours before he materialized,
I threw the key cards & myself to the edge of the bed,

thought of the split roadkill I saw up I-70. Gettysburg:
weird tourist trap, war junk store, cold cider
in a cold November getting colder. Dirty ice

from a dirty ice machine. He made fun of the TV
bolted to the dresser. We play-stabbed each other
with imaginary bayonets, walked through empty

battlefields & got soaked in rain. We smelled of damp
grass & I wondered how long we could possibly
keep doing this. The cheap sheets seemed clean

when I kissed him––the kind of kissing
that only comes at the end of distance. In the morning
when he left me, I watched him walk across the motel

parking lot. I drove home north into a snowstorm.
My love for him glacier, moving downhill under its own weight.

ALLIE HOBACK is a poet from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Syracuse University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and Salamander, among others. She lives in Washington, DC, where she professionally keeps houseplants alive.

Quack by Julliette Holliday

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Do you see that duck in the water?

You’re seeing things, they say. That duck is your losing mind.

No time for breathing into brown paper bags.
Here come the honeycombs. Flare ups of black
holes. My deadness in the hollows of circles and hexagons.
Do you want to eat me? I ask them.
Here comes the confirmation. Patterns of cavities emerge
in the midnight ripples. Mouths
of baby waves.

That water is an animal.

That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that duck.
That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that me.
That water petting, pushing, brushing, disappearing that—

That duck is losing my mind.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Good—

I see it! they say.

Gas diffuses for the honey like a love song. Oozing
out the hexagons, filling up the hollowness, covering
the combs, moistening my brain
folds, dripping down my face. Death
hides itself away.

I taste sugar.

Did you hear that?

Quack.

I was that animal.

JULLIETTE HOLLIDAY (she/her) is a Brooklyn based, Black, multi-hyphenate artist—writer, composer, director, producer and educator. She has collaborated with The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center,  NYU Tisch, La Mama Experimental Theatre Club, The Tank NYC, and Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, and more. Originally from Columbus, OH, and a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Julliette’s poetry and creative non-fiction has received support from Kenyon Review’s Adult Writers Workshop and VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation Workshop). She was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason Participant Scholarship in Nonfiction for Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference 2025.

Notes Toward the Month After May by Penny Wei

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I have started to count the number of times the microwave
hums before I eat. The evening it was seven I told myself
that odd numbers are lucky. Like the women who wear ankle-
length skirts and read weather reports for pleasure. Like
the crow that tipped over its feet on the edge of the Walgreens
parking lot and dipped its own beak in cement. I stepped around
it and said sorry, like you do when you bump into a mannequin
that looks like your father. The news says that the bees are
leaving but I’m still getting stung by things. Not insects, but
poorly-timed entrances of gods through oven sparks explaining
why all my dreams are just variations of that one bus
I never caught in 2017. They start with guilt, composting.
Somewhere, the glaciers are crying. Somewhere, my mother
is planting begonias in the shape of the Chinese character
for enough. I’m still wearing that eelgrass wig, blinking
Morse code at the sun. Except the sky has the vague look
of a person who has said too much at a dinner party. So I
tell my dog to stop sighing like a human. It questions
why I don’t stop answering to my government name.
I then remember the crow, who later exploded. Not like
boom, but like oops. Like it had a scheduling error and
forgot it was made of muscle. I try not to name the loam anymore.

PENNY WEI is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She can be seen on Dialogist, The Weight Journal and Inflectionist Review and has been recognized by The Word Works and Longfellow House. She also has a passion for journalism.

Decomposing at Bathhouse, FiDi by Grace Dilger

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Link to PDF: Decomposing at Bathhouse, FiDi by Grace Dilger

GRACE DILGER is a poet and educator. Her work has been featured in Peach Fuzz Magazine, The Brooklyn Quarterly, The Southampton Review, Grody Mag, The Elevation Review, Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors Vol. 9, Slug Mag, The Racket Journal, Yes Poetry, High Shelf Press, Defunct Magazine, The McNeese Review, Barzakh, Nonbinary Review, and The Bangalore Review. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University and teaches at Monroe University.

There was a meaning by Amelia Averis

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There is a boy who speaks in rain at arrivals.
He has time in this world
where the rockpooled minnow
flashes silver seconds.
We follow the funeral and I try to say
‘I am sorry I am not afraid of you’ but I cannot lie,
or forgive the recurrent ghost;
I cannot learn his lesson.
In this dream there is guilt but not enough of it.
I will not die on this hill
but I am freezing beautiful
to an accidental death.
With the moon hanging over the park as the sea, I kissed it
and cried twice
to make it real.

AMELIA AVERIS  is a writer and journalist from Jersey, Channel Islands. She was highly commended by judges of the Passionfruit Review “Here and Now” contest, and also appears in Heimat, Tiger Moth Review, Palette Poetry, and Prosetrics. The organs of her poems can be found in her decade of journals, where she explores themes of longing, loss, beauty, and memory. Her chapbook as the ink birds split the sunset with Alien Buddha Press is on Amazon. You can find more Amelia at https://ameliaaveris.journoportfolio.com.