the smallest ocean lives between / my lungs
and kidneys / the tiniest door holds back
the grief living inside my heart / give me
a word for / the uneasy unfamiliarity of finally
being okay / but only if it stings / on its way out /
show me the moment the trauma finally killed me /
spat me out purple-skinned and suffocating / but
newborn / my body is crawling with insects / my
reality is crashing / into blood-red suns / lollipops
from banks flying out of car windows / and smashed
pineapple on scorching sidewalk / with my name
written all over it / we’re sitting on thunderbird’s
wing / drunk on dew drops / i ask you why
this healing / only makes me feel sicker / you say
the moon’s made of paper / and we’re all just
lit matches / getting closer and closer.

 

Wanda Deglane is a Capricorn from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Yes Poetry, among other lovely places. Wanda is the author of Rainlily (2018), Lady Saturn (Rhythm & Bones, 2019), Venus in Bloom (Porkbelly Press, 2019), and Bittersweet (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019).

He gave you a small bakery box
but didn’t reveal its contents,

didn’t warn you to handle
the grenade inside with paralyzing care.
Now I take it from your aching fingers
and shake the cardboard square—

never did have the patience
for a pendulum descending—

but the grenade rolls around in the dark,
pin securely in place. It holds its breath,
waiting for me to blink.

 

M. Stone is a bookworm, birdwatcher, and stargazer living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poems have appeared in San Pedro River Review, UCity Review, and numerous other journals. She is the author of the micro-chapbook Evolving God (Ghost City Press) and the chapbook Lore. Find her on Twitter @writermstone and at http://www.writermstone.wordpress.com.

a shock collar that jolts me out of my idiocy every time I wonder if you still think I’m your soulmate

a shock collar that jolts me a second time, but more painfully, whenever i start to think how hot it would be if you used a shock collar on me in bed

a shock collar that causes a giant neon sign that says WORRY WON’T KEEP YOU SAFE to slowly lower itself from the ceiling and blind me

a shock collar that keeps me from calling you whenever I’m afraid

a shock collar that can determine whether it makes sense for me to be afraid and then only shocks me in the moments where it doesn’t

a shock collar containing a giant mechanical hand that stamps YOU CANNOT WORRY YOURSELF INTO BEING LOVED backwards on my forehead in red ink and holds a mirror up to my face and makes me read it and then the red ink gives me a full-body rash

a shock collar that comes with rash ointment

a shock collar that tells me the truth

a shock collar that was designed to tell me the truth and only validates my feelings and when I call tech support they assure me my device isn’t defective

a shock collar that replays conversations between us in which you tell me you love me

a shock collar that loves me

a shock collar that tells me I deserve to hurt but the only batteries to the remote are at your house

 

Kat Giordano is a poet (1%) and massive millennial crybaby (99%) who lives in New Jersey. She co-edits Philosophical Idiot and works for a law firm somehow. She is also the author of many highly embarrassing social media meltdowns. Her poems have appeared in Occulum, Ghost City Review, Awkward Mermaid, The Cincinnati Review, CLASH Magazine, and others. Her debut full-length poetry collection, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, is available now.

Scrub brush sprawled and dead vines
along the edge of the trees, and bones

lying in fresh dirt. What would a deer
need to bring it here? Nothing green

to eat, no smell of new grass or
water to draw it into this clearing.

It chews a rib bone as quietly
as it can, skittish but not ready

to leave. I’m sure it would rather
crack pecan shells in its teeth

for soft meat, but it has this grave
all to itself, and more bones around its feet.

 

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. His latest collections are Elliptic (Yellow Flag Press, 2016), Revenant (Blue Horse Press, 2016), and No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, fall 2018). He has been appointed by Governor John Bel Edwards to serve as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

Dear Dr:

it’s embarrassing
to request
accommodations
for a life
on hold – unable to
make phone calls;
go outside;
hold one’s own.

I lick the envelope
it’s sweet / it’s permanent
the blue box
will swallow it
no turning back now

Dear Dr:

it’s embarrassing
my mental health
deteriorating
please sign
this form which declares me

unable unable
to function –
make phone calls;
go outside
smile at the neighbor

I turn the key
set off an explosion
makes moot
my letter

the blue box
still chewing
on the fodder
I fed it

Good Dr:

shrugs; sighs,
it is permanent
I suppose – her mental
impairment; it
seems she
missed her
appointment

not the least bit
wondering if
I am already
dead

the blue box mangled;
metal feet hold tight
to the pavement

unable unable
to function
without her hinged
mouth &

iconic half-dome
USPS
head

 

Elisabeth Horan is an imperfect creature advocating for animals, children, and those suffering alone and in pain – especially those ostracized by disability and mental illness. Elisabeth is honored to serve as Poetry Editor at Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine, and is Co-Owner of Animal Heart Press. She recently earned her MFA from Lindenwood University and received a 2018 Best of the Net Nomination from Midnight Lane Boutique and a 2018 Pushcart Nomination from Cease Cows.

I scrawl my admiration in my all-weather birder book.
I don’t really have an all-weather birder book at all,
just the one in my mind, where I’m free to scratch.
The grackles cluck
to have their say, and I like that. Sometimes they swell
& hop & spread dark wings & perch on my shoulder &
have a look
in my birder book.

Which is to say they examine my self-assured scratch
with their ESP black eyes that chill the spine
with their golden-zero fat-chance good-luck pupils—&
then they double-cluck & flap & bolt pell-mell.
In my birder book

I make up little poems (not really) that point in all uncertain
terms to how crooked they’re not, & how they,
the grackles,
invented the spoon, the hallmark of genius tails that steer
them as they buck & bolt away from Homo sapiens insults
like: “Trash birds!” & “Not worthy of poetry!” & “Filthy!”
These misapprehensions
I also scribble
in my birder book.

 

Patric Pepper has published a couple of chapbooks and a full-length collection along the way. His work has appeared most recently in or is forthcoming from Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Broadkill Review, District Lines, Gargoyle, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, and The Northern Virginia Review. He prefers disorganized “religion” and misapprehensions of quantum mechanics to ersatz enlightenments. He lives in D.C.

Remember kissing those knees soiled in May?

Statues were pointing at bodies, windswept,
as we sat idle at the door of a bone church.

We cupped tomorrow in girlish hands
our intrepid hearts resin-soaked, jeweled;
reincarnated fetish priests dragging
our generation by their strange throats.

Cherry springs rotted,
                became flesh-eating children

        and I promised you an edifice
        that would split blue,
        touch Centaurus—
        a prayer closet smolder.

We ate lake seeds, tongued dirt
until those bodies         were no longer heavy.

 

Ahja Fox is a poet obsessed with bodies/body parts (specifically the throat). Her tagline is “#suicidebywriting” and her muses are dead things found among the living. Ahja can be found around Denver reading at various events and open mics or co-hosting at Art of Storytelling. She has published in online and print journals like Five:2:One, Driftwood Press, Rigorous, Moonchild Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, SWWIM, and more. She has also recently been included in the 2018 Punch Drunk Anthology. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter @aefoxx.

I never thought you existed. You were a fight
in another room, a moon landing, someone
else’s problem.
But now you’re here. Recumbent flotsam
gone sour on our sofa.

And now, it’s like you’ve been here
the whole time, crouching behind
lonely larder tins, nesting in the
plaster cracks. You make us into you
and your
not quite flesh.

I’d offer you a drink,
coffee I suppose,
but the cups are full with
blister packs.

You were in our bed this morning,
muddying the womb of the place,
warm and
heavy as a sleeping child.

You’re in the strangest places.
I know you’ve watched me in the shower, squeaked
love hearts on the frosted glass, grabbed ringside seats
at our love making, left
popcorn kernels for naked feet to tramp,
each its own
little death.

I’ve caught you in mirrors, whispering
imagined infidelities in her ear,
retuning guitars an octave low, breaking all the
major keys.

Uninvited, you leaf through
books, records, trip trap fingers delicately
dripping scorn
for still-faced ornaments, pronounce our poverty,
pick your teeth with cutlery as she cries
on vinyl floors.

Sometimes, I want to
kill you. Pitch you on your back,
push
a thumb each side of

your pitted windpipe, squeeze
the life and pulse until you
pop
gift air
incontinent
like a skin balloon.
But what’s the point?

Besides the dust, you’ve dislodged
other things,
embryos
we hoped buried.

We keep the kids out now. And other guests as you are
a shy intruder. You hide in petticoats
so they’d never know.

You’re a secret bruise, a
cuff pulled down on
red raw wrists, weak
eternal canker, the moment just before
a door
slams
shut.

We know you will never leave.

What discord then,
that we endure your tremendous
vacuum,
file your teeth
and castrate you
with acceptance.

I wonder,
if we were to
take the shards of us and
carve and mould
some other selves,
would you remember us
and come again?

 

With a foot firmly each side of the Irish Sea, Alex Smith was raised in troubled Northern Ireland during the Eighties. Educated in English and Spanish, his work has taken him to some of the most socially deprived schools in England. His stark poetry has been published in Twyckenham Notes, Tammy, Clear Water Poetry, Bonnie’s Crew, Abstract: Contemporary Expressions, Ink & Voices, and Coffin Bell. He edits at ABC Tales and has a collection entitled Home coming soon through Cerasus Poetry.