My instinct is not to bite.
Instead I’ll show you all
my little square teeth,
point them out to you
one by one name them
then leave my mouth open
and breathe.

Enamel speaks a thing you can’t
understand—the grain of sand
churning in the oyster
who layers thick saliva
over and over until pearl
to numb the gnawing and is still
left with a tender lump inside—
one she is torn apart for.

Why isn’t the female larger
and more colorful? Give me
the terrified red veins
of the albino raven,
the deep flush and large forearms
of the orchid mantis, also afraid.
Let me have fiery long hair that stings
with the smell of burning oak.

When I skin myself, I skin myself
in front of a mirror to see
all that pretty muscle.

I rehearse what crying looks like,
in my wardrobe keep buttons
that close soft bobbled sweaters
and feel an increasing desire
to become mud, to lie

beneath leaf litter and hide
from grabbing hands
that would put themselves inside me,
playing dead to save myself
from the salt of their fingertips
that craves a wound.

 

L Favicchia is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Kansas and is the editor in chief of LandLocked. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, Post Road, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry, among others.

Dusk dense with pending rain
& a cold front shoving its way across the water,

I want to believe
anything is possible

or I just want to be handsome.
I know how shallow

desire is & still
I want & want

& open the window
to let in the cooling sky

& this breeze hums your name
& the clouds slide over

& pat a space next to them on the bed
& the temperature falls

& out beyond the pines
a great lake churns & churns.

 

Amorak Huey’s fourth book of poems is Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

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.