pre-wired for the bliss that maximizes

pleasure
I motive toward the impulse
motive toward taboo—o,

little lonely mouth
opening and
closing

the self self
administering

M&M’s, double-chocolate chip
I oven nothing but
the comfort of

the silver fridge
that Jabbas like a hut
the Ben & Jerry’s—o,

little lonely mouth
transmitting

from febrile tongue
to hips
expanding

a theory of the
sex
without the sex

I feast
on the enormity of self

Kathleen Hellen’s honors include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review, and her prize-winning collection Umberto’s Night, published by Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Hellen’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, and West Branch, among others. Her credits also include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Hellen’s latest full-length poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin.

Laughing together
On the swing sets
At the empty school up the road
The city is finally theirs
I’d laugh too if it was me
Who was I?
My star chart says I was born
To be an employee
When I always felt I should be
A planet myself
Trudging through the universe
As a gigantic lonely eyeball
Leave it to heaven
To tell me how I should
Exist on the ladder
As though it wouldn’t be more
Cost effective for me to drop dead
Abandoning the pizzas I’d pick up
With all the boyfriends I’d have
The tattoos and birthdays
And paying for water
What is it like
To be an unstructured animal
As innocent as Jupiter
And twice as beautiful

Gion Davis is a queer poet from Española, New Mexico where they grew up on a sheep ranch. Their poetry has been featured in Wax Nine Journal, SELFFUCK, Tilted House, and others. They have received the Best New Poets of 2018 Prize selected by Ocean Vuong. They are the editor of Rhinestone Magazine and their chapbook Love & Fear & Glamour was published in 2019. They graduated with their MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2019 and currently live in Denver, Colorado. Gion can be found on Twitter @gheeontoast and on Instagram @starkstateofmind.

It’s a good thing to know who your enemies are
That’s what they say when they start worming
into all the holes of your life
tracking your diet your loves your mindset
analyzing meaning in your patterns of poop
what the wrong type of tea can do to your tooth enamel
scribing all your failures
in a chart on a spreadsheet in an app
dictating a memo to all your exes and past librarians
checking all the books you have left on your shelf
for more than six months without cracking
and taking away a donut and six Oreos
for each rhyme you left unfinished

You try to keep your nail biting a secret
but it’s typed in Helvetica on the bathroom wall
in red paint against the tiles blue.

Ruth Lehrer is a writer and sign language interpreter living in western Massachusetts. She is the author of the novel Being Fishkill, the poetry chapbook Tiger Laughs When You Push, and many other poems. You can find her website at ruthlehrer.com.

Stay off the back roads, Beynon says.
We do not listen. We eat the roads
and the roads eat us – swallow us
like a gullet so we forget.

We want to ride the velvet maw forever –
brushed by bronchioles of northern pine,
the muscled tongue of riverbeds. We are blind
to landmarks: Molly Supple Hill, Bear Swamp

ghosted, empty of reference. We press
our cheeks against granite molars, cool,
carved out of mountains. Lick the water
that falls like tears off lichen-patched rock.

The Folk will try to trick you, he says.
With fruit trees, or a bird with a broken wing
and you’ll be lost. The road is a marrow bone.
We suck in mile after reticular mile.

Stripped of street signs and last names,
we are innocent of home. The road swirls us
under its nose. How gladly we dance,
like wine legs on the curved bell of a cup.

Laura Ring is a poet, short story writer, anthropologist, and librarian. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dream Pop Journal, Ethel Zine, and RHINO, and she was a recent finalist in the DIAGRAM, Sundress, and Tiny Fork chapbook contests. A native Vermonter, she lives in Chicago.

Saw us wither beneath the brazen
haze. Listen: I tried
to keep him
from starving. He carried
pocketsfull
of water just for himself, never-
mind the thirst I acquired. When
the pool dried up he took dips
into my bed, beneath
the doting willow, which
too shriveled as summer
turned up her notch
on cruelty. I kept
the mirrors covered. Perhaps
he misplaced
his beauty in me—

I bristled beneath
the gazes of strangers but
turned languid
when gifted his glances.
Enchantment can
be shared. He held
my shoulders as though
they could wilt
beneath his hands. My window
let in enough moonspill
for him to find reflection in
the pale hollow of
my neck, the water
of my irises. I had only
a sliver of clouds to
drink from. Finally, they
grew swollen and broke
into rainfall. I followed
him back to water, he waded
waist deep
and I couldn’t harvest
the voice to beg him back.