Tag: poetry

Double Dutch by Jasmine Khaliq

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It sounds like gibberish, I said. It’s Double Dutch,
they said, and their grandma invented it.

A boy my age, a girl my sister’s. I wasn’t sure;
they lied about plenty—they were royalty

on a faraway island, their father was an astronaut,
their names were not their real names.

But the language I could hear was real as any.
Pattern I could attain. If I listened closely. If

I really tried. A lot of B’s, a lot of I’s. In his voice
my own name like an alien’s. I surprised them

after two weeks, sauntered into conversation
leaning blasé against their house, air

hot as any Western midday, mid-July.
A door unbolted. Talking in plain sight.

Selves and syllables doubling.
Secret language with the boy

across the street. We talked
about everything, nothing.

I wish I had a dog.
My dad is going to Mars.

They fought last night. I don’t want school to begin—
Anything. Just to speak.

We had never been so close
and we would never be so close again.

The differences between our lives closing
soon over our heads. Jordan’s rabbit died.

Summer is coming to an end.
What’s your favorite color, again?

Jasmine Khaliq is a Pakistani Mexican American poet born and raised in Northern California. Her work is found in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Bennington Review, Best New Poets 2023, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. Currently, Jasmine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. She can be found at jasminekhaliq.com.

Bikini Atoll by Rowan Pollard

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A wild driver, her feather coat flying in the wind,
Cadillac convertible southwards out of town but again
I found her half-sunken into the reservoir.
I’ve had enough, she said, I’ve done everything twice.
I’ve been a storm chaser, I shot Kennedy, twelve years
I spent in Vegas drinking gold and winning. My
velvet’s all worn out and I’m stuck here and I can’t
remember my own name.
I made one up for her, something American, Arizona
Castle, Georgia Crossroads, Mississippi Bravo.
I entertained her for a while until the shock wore off,
and once home a hurricane stuck the tower block and kept us
stuck. Some days, I was sick of tracing a trail of ash. I was sick
of extravagance. Where were my pearls to swallow? My
untruthful movie star carpets and gunshot near-misses?
I didn’t miss a word of lies but I got sick anyway.
Last night, under the low moon, I said I loved her. She told me
I like Mississippi best. Like the river always moving through the land.
The dam burst that morning, and I looked for her in the clear
dull water. I thought I’d find some goodbye note and
more, but beside our front door was her feather coat like a snakeskin.
The Cadillac drove toward the sun.
Mississippi, bravo.

Rowan Pollard is a writer and poet living in a nowhere town somewhere in the UK. He has been published in Apocalypse Confidential.

Emily Jarred by Toni Leonetti

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A poet’s X post argued
for art apart from artist.
His example?
We love Dickinson’s verse,
even though she killed kittens,
drowning them in pickle jars.
Look it up, he said.
What?
I checked.
Everyone but me knew.

Hope is the thing with feathers—
Unlike cats who can’t fly away

Because I could not stop for Death—
I tossed him softer fur to hug
Fresh eyes to blind in brine
Purrs to choke

My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—
Until blasted in helpless corners

My letter to the World
Met no reply—
After I tore it into tuna
Crammed down one hungry last meow—

Toni Juliette Leonetti lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and has written short stories, poetry, plays, and a mystery novel. Her work appears in publications including DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Literally Stories, Elegant Literature, and Soul Forte.

The Signs by Gabe Montesanti

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Backtracking is a rigged poker game, and yet, I still play. I bake backtracking on the top rack of the oven and scatter its crumbs through the forest. Like a bait dog, backtracking still growls at its own reflection. Backtracking and I steal every No U-Turn sign in the city of St. Louis, Missouri. Mounted on the wall like a moose head, backtracking stares at me through empty eyes. I bite into the poisonous pit of a backtracking plum because I’ve survived those juices before. Sometimes, backtracking pitches a tent in the wilderness. What’s the difference between me and nostalgia? backtracking wants to know. Mirrors reflect backtracking like a set of circular footprints in the sand, the hump of a question mark. Backtracking is the frozen tundra in the arctic onto which I can’t help but keep my cheek pressed. Like sandpaper, backtracking wants to use mindless repetition to make smooth what was once rough. Backtracking is disiecta membra, limbs of a scattered poet, Latin from Horace’s Satires. At the 7-Eleven soda machine, between the root beer and the cherry cola, backtracking induces nausea. Extraterrestrials don’t buy into backtracking because their aircrafts only move forward. Beam me up, I scream from a barren field of corn. Don’t let me track back into myself what I have collected by running away.

Gabe Montesanti is the author of BRACE FOR IMPACT: A MEMOIR, which chronicles her time skating for Arch Rival Roller Derby. She earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Her work has been published in Huff Post, LA Times, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a second memoir. 

Animal Relief by Rachel Becker

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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. 

Breaking News: Barbie Eats Trump During Baltimore Pride Fest by Chrissy Stegman

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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.

[When a man and a] by Jason Fraley

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When a man and a woman love each other, they can opt (i) for sexual
relations or (ii) to memorialize their feelings in a securities contract.

English makes it difficult to gender a piece of paper.

Even though I babble Latin, the doctor assuages my parents’ fears,
assures them I’m indeed living.

My parents, perhaps biased, repeat that I’m the most beautiful legal
document in the whole world.

After leaving the hospital, they take me to the exchange.

My crib is a plastic sheet tucked into a writing desk drawer.

A bespeckled man with a milky beard gazes from atop a wooden
crate. He predicts that, one day, I will be worth 30 pearls, an entire
bundle of flax, or six counterfeit rubies.

My parents are keen on those three outcomes.

What my parents learn is that securities contracts are not
circumcised. They are sliced into tranches.

Some price my finest details: a stylized T to start a paragraph, an
anachronistic diagram of a human skeleton.

Some speculate that a thumb-smudged page number or struck-
through drafting error will solicit a turquoise shaving or heron
feather at some later date.

Bidders disperse when they must pay more than quail eggshells for
my errata.

My parents are aghast as I’m confettied to the highest bidder.

Think of tranches like trenches.

A trench may be a rut, channel, furrow, or cut depending on when a
shovel breaks or Orion hides his bicep behind cloud cover.

A trench doesn’t become an excavation just because that’s where
the wind hides confetti squares appraised as worthless.

But that is one reason.

Jason Fraley is a native West Virginian who lives, works, and periodically writes in Columbus, OH. Current and prior publications include Salamander Magazine, Barrow Street, Jet Fuel Review, Quarter After Eight, West Trade Review, and Pine Hills Review.

App City by Rachel Myers

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welcome to [city]
please observe all traffic laws in [city]
park only in these designated lots
or garages       pay here
or on the app

the machines
will serve you
they are here to help you
we gave them mouths to say

pay for your parking here
pay for your parking here

observe them in rows     dominoes
echoing each other     activated
by motion   please enter
your license plate     that is not
from this state
you are a robot
try again     try again

it would be better
to download the app     where
you must also prove     you are not
a robot       the robot asking you
can differentiate

you may not
park elsewhere
you may not
park here         unless you pay
at the machine     that speaks
but again
it would be better
to download the app
which is different from the app
for [other city] and [other city]

you must pay       on the app
or at the machines       that say
you can pay   but cannot
recognize you   you
with your movements   your ability
to select     which pictures
have a bicycle in them

Rachel Lauren Myers is a poet from northern Nevada. Her work can be found in Red Ogre Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She is an assistant editor at MEMEZINE. She recently relocated to Massachusetts with her pug, Watson, and can’t get over all the lush greenery. Find her on Instagram and Bluesky at @hellostarbuck.

The Summer I Watched “Boyfriend takes care of you while sick” ASMR Videos on Repeat by Danielle Shorr

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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.

They Look Dead, but They are Just Dreaming by Amanda Chiado

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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