The greens are brighter somehow. The grass
not grass but a speaker for soundscapes,

yard songs like forcefields, pulsing
with peace and purpose, sermon-like,

the way cool air fills the lungs
with both rest and waking. Every day

is today if one considers physics. Or
think instead in terms of reflectance curves.

Yes, today is glowing green, hedge-like,
untrimmed because it’s a wild hedge

without ties to property or pension, waving
in the wind like ceremony, like couplets

printed on glassine paper
then gently placed atop pool water,

which is to say, we are outside again:
the mating song of crickets

bowing wings with wings, an orchestral movement
under the guise of question, wondering

if today is actually today, as in
the moment one thinks of as now. Nevertheless,

time goes on with its many shades of green—
lime and pickle and pear—and so many sounds:

crickets and cicadas, the buzzing of bees,
but man-made things too: motors, machines

of all types. One could call it a symphony
if they were kind, but the world is never kind.

A cricket dies of old age after ten weeks.
The earth swallows everything.

A hideous, hungry caterpillar the earth is, until again
it is leafy and green, blissful in its budding.

Time passes and then it’s the sun’s turn to swallow.
More time and then there is something else.

A cosmic flower, dark with pull. A black hole
that never covers its mouth when it yawns.

 

Adam Gianforcaro is a writer living in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems and stories can be found in Poet Lore, Third Coast, RHINO, Bending Genres, HAD, Maudlin House, and elsewhere.

When there was nothing but darkness we ate darkness
When darkness was nothing but darkness we ate
When we ate nothing there was darkness but
darkness was nothing & we were nothing
In the darkness we ate our hunger
We grew & harvested darkness
We darknessed in nothing
We ate & were happy
The darkness our
nothing & then
there was salt
& the wars

 

Jeremy Radin is a writer, actor, teacher, and extremely amateur gardener. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, and elsewhere. He’s the author of two collections of poetry: Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (Not A Cult, 2017/2021). He lives in Los Angeles. Follow him @germyradin.

The itch begins on my first right toe
And scrambles up my leg
And I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done

Thick scales replace skin
And I scratch furiously at what was my foot
Now green-gold and clawed

I hope again for salvation
But the change, it does not cease
Chain-link petals run up my thighs

Where once a girl I was
I turn
In the unlikeliest of places

Scanning People from the grocery magazine stand
Eyeing my still pink hands

My loose carrots and their leafy tops
Roll down the black mechanical belt
Cans and jars ride behind them

By the time the cashier asks for my ID
I’ll be unable to prove
Who I was

I react to a surge at the base of my spine
Like a cart was crashed into me
I turn around to give side eye
But there’s no one there

Instead, a tail grows fast and protrudes
Into the aisle

In my last moment of human thought
I remove my glasses
and brace for the screams

God this is embarrassing.

 

Molly Thornton is a queer, LA-based multi-genre writer. Her hybrid, prose poetry manuscript Proof of You was long listed by the 2020 [PANK] and Dzanc Books’ contests. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been published in The Los Angeles Times, They Said anthology, Hippocampus Mag, Lavender Review, and more, and also has poetry forthcoming in Peach Magazine. She is a Lambda Literary Fellow and WeHo Pride Poet.

Gabriela cancels the lesson,
says she’s in agonia—

sharp dolori in the lombi—
Google says loins.

You don’t question her pain,
only her use of agonia,

which meant death throes
in your San Lorenzo youth.

People also ask: How do our
bodies store bile? Do we need

a gallbladder? Why does Google
Translate suck so much?

What do you know about
her dolori? A gastrointestinal

surgeon spooled my cistifellea
through my navel, sent a video.

 

Hilary Sideris has published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Mom Egg Review, Poetry Daily, Room, Salamander, Sixth Finch, Sylvia, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others. Her most recent book, Animals in English, Poems after Temple Grandin, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2020. She is a co-founder of the CUNY Start program at The City University of New York, where she works as a professional developer.

The manual should say, simulate control
by sneaking in a second and defuse the tolling
before it wakes everyone within a mile radius.

The manual should say, heat up a packet
of popcorn once and the stench will inhabit
your machine until its time for a new one.

The manual should say, you’ve been
saying it wrong. You will never be as sophisticated
as Nigella Lawson.

The manual should say, this may empower
your late-night confidence to binge on loneliness,
and oh, leftovers meant for tomorrow.

The manual should say, it shuts off
and assumes a slumber you will envy—
unlike your worst thoughts, plaguing.

 

Audrey L. Reyes (she/her) is a Filipino poet, writer, and former early childhood educator whose favorite workplace activity is raising hell. Her work has been featured in QUINCE Magazine, NECTAR, Marias at Sampaguitas, Hecate Magazine, superfroot, and Porridge Magazine (forthcoming). She resides in Manila, Philippines.

Mama said I was born in July, lucky
                enough for a child who was
missing a bellybutton. July – one month

                before ghost month, and one
month after she could no longer harvest
                butong and java plums. She told

me that the day her legs had gone stale,
                she salted her mouth with their
seeds so she could expect a smart child.

                I came out plump instead, arms
tapered into my fingernails that looked
                like dactyls and toes that burst

whenever cradled. My scalp burned
                black — the only lucky
feature mama found where all the fish

                eyes she hollowed and stuck a bone
through was worth it. The aunties said I
                would be prickly, a child with

a mouth where claws grew out from, that
                could not be fed nor rinsed. They
couldn’t nip me into a wife, or pluck a husband

                that could. Mama said I would die
near water, in a glazed shell where my body
                would orange in the heat until dry.

Mama said it was because I was born
                in a month named after a sickness,
where even the hermits bury themselves.

 

Tara Tulshyan is a sophomore currently living in the Philippines. Her works have appeared on or are forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Ilanot Review, and The Temz Review, among several others.

the people here enjoy the act
of unfolding themselves.
watch them wish their bodies
into something clear and papery thin
something riddled with tears
and creases.

you’ve never seen them like that.
never seen them fold their bodies so many times over
that their wrinkles go smooth.
that’s something holy,
but not to me.

when all that you are is paper
the sky cracks itself open
and then you take all the silly things
and break them,
until your palm is full of salt and sadness
and you eat grey like a feast.

you feel your joints fissure.
it’s hard to notice until your gears are rusted over and
every mechanism within your great, terrible body
has become a singular monster.

in all of the small eternities between us,
you are the same.
you would look at this place
of paper houses and paper faces
and strike a match.

 

Sally Nagle lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her family and has been writing for 8 years. In 2017, she won first place in the 21 and under category of the By Me Poetry Competition. In the spring of 2021, she won a Silver Key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

If you are lonely, read poetry.
If the poem is a love poem, break a bottle into two asymmetrical halves.
If the bottle has mead inside, lick the ferment from the ground up from your toes to your shins.
Become once more a stranger to your body.
If the bottle is empty, proceed to the next poem.
If the poem is not a love poem, identify the ways in which it is a love poem.
Name it love for a sentimental sadness, love for summer grapes, love for the child who clutches your hand,
love for a good steak and a crisp, translucent onion, love for the sweet purple comforter which covers your face when you sleep—
Or identify it as a cut poem.
If it is a cut poem, identify the ways in which the speaker is cut.
Identify if the cut was healed from a blood wound or honey.
If it is a blood wound it will howl on all fours and shriek under the moon.
If you are angry, get on your knees and shriek too.
But if you find a honey poem, think of all the bees.
The bees work industriously somewhere out there, all yellow pollen and sticky haze.
If you are a bee-lover, read poetry.
If you are a lonely insect, like all of us who crawl and never fly far enough
off this wretched Earth—
Read a love poem. Suck honey. Cut a poem open, and the pain will last one second, then a lifetime.
Let the sharp blade of the feeling slice you. One moment. Sweet open.

 

Cleo Qian is a writer based in New York.

A Silicon Valley millionaire
pays me nine dollars an hour
to be his coffee table.

He doesn’t use a coaster.

At night
the vape pen softens an image: trees
burning from the inside.

I can’t dream, but God
has enough content for
a new video.

It’ll be an apology, and he’ll
cry like a crocodile
on camera.

 

Coleman Bomar (he/him) is a writer who currently resides in Middle Tennessee. His written works have been featured by and/or are forthcoming in Blink Ink, Drunk Monkeys, Eunoia Review, Maudlin House, X-R-A-Y, and many more. He enjoys 90’s grunge music, and dogs who are too friendly.