instead of telling you my name / I will unravel my hands from my pockets / and show you what I have lost / those little eternities know me best / they dig their eager claws into my tender belly / and call me to be hungry / I am not ready / I am a removal / I often do not believe morning when it tells me it will arrive with newness in its small mouth / like the steady light of home turning the front porch into a lighthouse / I am uncertain / so do not consider it a blade / to your throat / when I tell you that I am unsure if our eternity will outlive the others / give pain a body / and it will press your arm between your shoulder blades / until you cannot hold who you love anymore / I’ve given pain a whole country / I have tilled its fields and fed the children / until they were plump and perspiring / I fashioned crude knives from steel  / and taught them to dance with the killing thing resting patient in their teeth / something I meant to learn myself / I’ve waited and waited and waited so long and now all I know is surrendering / I am frail and bleached / now I eat only what pain gives me / and slowly / in cool, fragmented light / I am forgetting your face

 

William Bortz is a writer and editor from Des Moines, Iowa. His work has been published in Luck Magazine, 8 Poems, Folded Word, Empty Mirror, The LOVEbook, and others.

I watch him slowly disappear from
this earth, a 240-pound body mass
whittled down to 125. His bones stand
out sharp under his wrinkled, brown
skin; spiteful for the years they were
engulfed by flesh and fat. I hug him.
His bone slice my flesh, smiles as it
spreads its disease through my body,
laughs as my roundness deflates.
Now, we hug with comfort; wrinkled
skin resting on wrinkled skin. Bones
embracing bones. I’ve become a
companion in his downward spiral.
When I was young I heard the proverb
Misery Loves Company. I now rewrite
it, as through experience I have learned,
Misery Pities His Company.

 

Arlene Antoinette writes poetry, flash fiction, and song lyrics. More of her work can be found in Better Than Starbucks, Cagibi Lit, Foxglove Lit, Juke Joint, Little Rose Magazine, Literary Heist, London Grip, and Tuck Magazine.

Link to PDF: Afieya Kipp_Seriously…

Afieya Kipp (she/her) is a queer poet, editor, and text-based artist born in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of the forthcoming titles, Investments in Weak Vessels (Whiskey Tit Books) and nude. She lives in northern New Jersey where she carries poems in her wallet and earned her MFA at Lindenwood University. Follow her on Twitter @AfieyaK.

of the northern white rhinoceros

i leave you this: a parting gift of ivory,
and task you make for me an urn
fit to hold the ash. carve it with unicorns
and aurochs, mastodons and my woolly-haired
compatriots. set it with ammonites and amber;
stand me upon the shoulders of great pearl
elephants and play me out of kenya on
antique piano keys.

this was meant to be easy, just close my eyes and drift,
but didn’t some of you make it so hard?

make me a myth: tell them a hundred warriors
could not slay sudan the great; say i slumbered
upon mountains of diamonds; claim one tear
could heal, or a drop of blood might raise the dead.
i go to palaeontology. i’ll tread softly through
the dreams of children, let their open palms
smooth over grey, wrinkled flesh
and grant for them a wish.

for them i’ll always be a story.
for them i’ll never need exist.

 

Jonathan Kinsman (he/him) is a poet from Manchester, England. As well as being founding editor of Riggwelter Press and associate editor of Three Drops From A Cauldron, he is also the host of a regular poetry open mic. His debut pamphlet & was joint winner of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2017.

Content warning: pregnancy loss.

 

little symbol, little opposite
of emptiness
the first name you’re given
and the last

little larvae, little tadpole
knocking against the walls
of my bowels

little bee sting, little parasite
suspended in your
bloated blood cave like a bat
—you never blink

foam at the mouth,
spit up rabid water
mourning sickness
I’m mourning you, you sense it

sense the morning
you’ll break like a fever,
nothing but roadkill guts
in my underwear

and I’ll mourn you then, too.

Rebecca Kokitus is a part time resident of Media, PA just outside Philadelphia, and a part time resident of a small town in rural Schuylkill County, PA. She is an aspiring poet and is currently an undergraduate in the writing program at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. She has recent work in Moonchild Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review, and Rose Quartz Journal, among other places. She tweets at @rxbxcca_anna.

Link to PDF: A. Prevett_In the Morning Their Shirt is Hanging Off the Bed

A. Prevett (she/they) is a human from Atlanta. Their most recent poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Hobart, Cherry Tree, Puerto del Sol, among others. They received their MFA from Georgia State University. You can find them online at www.aprevett.com or on Twitter @a_prevett.