We’re sitting on our first adult couch
to which the cat has already done his worst,
fabric pilling. It’s from Jordan’s.
We spent real money.

From here, the crooked chandelier jangles
on its chain. Mismatched bulbs flicker
like filmstrips, our dinner table,
paint-stained, pocked—again, the cat.

Sometimes I clear plates too soon.
Evil waitress, my husband jokes, fork raised.

So different from how my father ate,
hunched over and full of complaint,
the meat, too dry, and beans, over-boiled.

He left the table, still chewing,
like a child, who had soiled himself.

Rachel Becker’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry South, and RHINO. She is also an assistant poetry editor for Porcupine Literary: A journal by and for teachers. She lives in Boston. 

What else was left for her to do? Giant in pink,
her laughter clanging down Charles Street
like bells rung wild to the dystopian melody.

She was a blaze in glorious sequins. Swirls
through the crowd, her skirt sliced the air
like ribbons of rampage, her manicured hands filled
with noise and want. She saw him, glitterless,
small in the gold chair he made for himself.
A throne as yellow as piss. The crowd parted
like the sound of rain. She moved toward him,
her shadow a blossom of organza fire in the setting sun.
She plucked him like feral lint from a coat lapel.
She flicked him, a spinning trinket tossed
to gravity’s obsequious gamble & caught him
mid-fall. Her mouth opened into a cave of cherry
and fuchsia, a holler of lipstick

When he fell, she swallowed him whole.

Love did this: the riot of it. Love
for the smashing, the making,
the breaking. Love
for our country and the streets
lit like a sky of teeth.

Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Recent work has appeared in: UCity Review, Rejection Letters, Gone Lawn, Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stone Circle Review, Fictive Dream, Inkfish, 5 Minutes, Libre, and BULL. She is a 2x BOTN and Pushcart Prize nominee. www.chrissystegman.com.

My loneliness had teeth, no eyes, and legs
that walked me back to bed at all hours of the day.
The room spun only when I was conscious.
Exhaustion replaced all other natural desires
and it was the best I had ever looked.
The first medication was wrong, the second and third, too.
The days were a shrinking room,
and I had eaten all of the doors.
So I watched Youtube videos where a man
I didn’t know pretended to nurse me back to health
through my phone. I can’t remember the circumstances
of the discovery, only that the videos found me
when I needed them to. A fraud, a two-timer,
I went on dates where I couldn’t make eye contact,
then went home to the arms of my laptop’s screen.
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.
You’ll be better before you know it.
A hand reached out holding a spoonful of chicken soup
and I opened my mouth. His fingers scratched
the top of the camera and I felt it on my head.
He rubbed my shoulders and cleared the tears
forming in the pockets of my eyelids.
How did he know I was crying?
I watched the videos like porn but without shame.
What we did here in the bedroom was
nobody’s business but ours. No one would think to ask,
so I had nothing to tell.
He would fix me before anyone knew I was dead.
He would keep me until it was safe to send me off,
until I could reenter the world and want to stay there

Danielle Shorr is a professor of creative writing at Chapman University. Winner of the Touchstone Literary Magazine Debut Prize in Nonfiction, a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction, and nominee for The Pushcart Prize 2022 & 2023, and the Best of the Net 2022 & 2023, her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review, and others. Find her at: @danielleshorr.

There is an ant infestation at the laundromat. The little legged beauty marks are marching toward a large hole in the wall. I start a load of whites then get in line with the ants. Upon arriving at the hole, I gaze inside where I see a newborn baby covered in stickiness. The ants work hard at cleaning the infant, dropping crumbs and water droplets into its mouth. The child looks well-cared for, but I have no children of my own, so I don’t know the full extent of rearing a tiny person. A pregnant terminator arrives, “The baby has done its job. Everyone must evacuate.” I go next door and buy a pink frosted donut and a bottle of chocolate milk. I watch as they freeze the ants into immobility with ice guns and throw them into large ant farms hoisted onto 18 wheelers. I read a tabloid about the protein packed insect food of the future until the washer chirps from across the parking lot. The crime scene tape is still whipping in the wind like sweet strands of honey. The ants look dead behind the glass. I am sure they are just dreaming.

Amanda Chiado is the author of Vitiligod (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has most recently appeared in Rhino, The Pinch Journal, and The Offing. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press. www.amandachiado.com