August - Poem 12

Ngoc, like what you do to a door / Zoe Berger

  In memory of Ngoc Ngo

Please pick up the phone it’s me 
I’m almost ready to be myself
you don’t have to die to haunt me
I’m only in the next room 
pick up can’t you 
hear me through the walls don’t you 
understand the phone ringing
    and ringing 
is a door
?

Deer   / Ashley Howell

I’m thinking of a poem 
About the deer I hit
Driving down the highway

How it most likely 
Died alone in the 
Brush shortly after
Our parting

While I continued
Driving to my own
Dying in the smoky
Summer sunset 

Parting is a Such Sweet Sorrow / Dahhee Chung

You’re dying
I smell it,
  your vodka bottle marked
  with a dry erase marker
  each night,
Sweet over-ripe bananas
And I don’t like sugar.
The spoonfuls in your coffee,
Crystallized insides,
Stalagmites and Stalactites 
Threatening to puncture
Your tender pink life.
Four horizontal tally marks
And a slash when it’s done,
Counting down the days,
Or tracking what remains.

Family Portrait / Alison Henderson

There are five chairs,
but we learn early
who may sit.
Father at the head;
nobody ever remembers
selecting one.
Mother moving dishes
back and forth
gathering the storm
before it bursts.
One of us proves evidence.
One of us becomes good.
One of us learns the skill
of not being there,
while still being seated.
Years down the road,
we shall disagree about everything.
The color of the kitchen.
How it started.
Whether the door was slammed
or shut.
Whether anybody was frightened.
Memory becomes
our last family asset
to partition.
Christmas is yours.
The cottage is yours.
The picture of us smiling
since happiness lasts
a hundred twenty-fifth
of a second.
I shall take the silence
following my mention.
I shall know what is said
since nobody shall tell me.
Years pass.
The chairs stay
where they were placed.
The good one remains good.
The missing one missing.
The difficult one continues to try
to explain why
the house was burning,
to people holding pictures
of a house
which had never caught fire.
At times I believe
that is what a family is:
five people standing
in five separate ruins,
each claiming
they are home.

monostitch, untitled / Ash Kemp

The atoms in me recognize the atoms in you, even if we can’t see any stars. 

Bravery / Hannah Page

Moving in the face
of fright, drawing
near and past the shadows
against the cave wall
which Fearlessness flees –
They’re cast off of me:
shapely Forms of the Poet,
the Priestess, and the
Beast. I have
thrown out all pretense
from my cavity.
It is streaming behind
me      vital red.
Until now I never knew
a sunrise so close
on the stiletto
heels of midnight; so
eager to cast autumnal
tones over fresh-tilled
rolling earth.

Daily Reminder / PF Potvin

blue  rain
gold  rain
pink  rain
rust   rain
drip paint down the white
wall in the Banksy
print above the bed where the black
suit man with briefcase
hurryscowls under an umbrella
while a kid
on the other side stands
rust boots and jacket
eyes tight
face upturned
tongue and arms extended
each moment a choice
man
kid
or
rain

Midnight sermon /  Janette Schafer

It’s 11:56 PM, 
and as I grow older, 

I don’t see 
too many midnights.

I think of my dad now, 
how he preached at 
the Lansing Rescue Mission, 
the same place
he once slept after 
the Vietnam War. 

He volunteered there
twice a month, never forgot
how he was one of them.
Two Friday midnights,
he was their chaplain—

and though his voice was soft,
they leaned forward, listened.
Some remembered when he slept 
on those same cots, ate that same
thin soup and bologna sandwiches.

When I was tall enough to reach
past his elbow, sometimes I came too,
sang church hymns, The Old Rugged Cross,
my innocent treble reaching out,
a gift I couldn’t comprehend. 

ABIOGENESIS   / Kate Thuma

In August, the microbiome of a pond 
presses into windows closed against
the feeling of being too alive 
to be contained in our skins. 
Like peaches 
barely holding their seams together 
around all that undripped nectar, 
cold and sweating through their fuzz
and leaving peach-prints on the paper bag. 

When I crack the kitchen window 
the sea pours through the rupture
and I breathe it in, remarkably, without gills. 
This close to the coast, 
humidity returns us through time 
to the precambrian sea 
we unwillingly crawled from, 
ushered out with a sigh and a stern “go.” 

In August I long to be a mermaid – 
For a high-gone simple past 
of drifting in a foam and seaweed nest 
like Venus, unrising from the sea, 
with a sticky peach pit in her pearly teeth.

August - Poem 11

Control / Zoe Berger

I have been holding very still so as not to change
Meanwhile the leaves in the park admit defeat

I once loved a baby for what it could be
then cursed it for throwing a fit

If winter must come then at least let it stay
Forgive me for thanking Death for his consistency

New Mexico  / Ashley Howell

Always smells like 
smoke and rain
And I saw writing
On the sidewalk
“Free Palestine”
So I took a picture
Walking downtown
With music dancing
Through the Plaza
And centuries of 
Occupation
Revolution
Occupation

Free Palestine the 
Streets of Sante Fe
Scream
We must all
Scream
Free Palestine 

Alien / Dahhee Chung

Those who raised me stuck in the past from their home,
Black and white.
While I’m stuck in technicolor,
Marching the yellow brick road. 

I write for myself,
My country of one,
The language you call metaphors,
The only one. 

And so,
No translation, 
Dap! Fist pounds my chest
No destination,
Dap! Fist pounds my chest
No explanation,
Hae! Fist pounds my chest
Just
Exhaustion 
Frustration 
Pounding my chest
Dap! Dap! Hae!

I. / Ash Kemp

After Rudy Francisco

Pilryk: noun-
The incandescent, tingly and warm feeling left behind after a kiss that makes you believe in love

I used to chase that feeling,
That experience of being wanted.
Now I exist in limbo—
Part want, part dissatisfaction,
Always a body close with pain.
The feeling retreats so quickly
After a kiss,
Can I get another?

Desire / Hannah Page

I am damned
to embody my
artistry on and off
the stage: draped
in velvet, dripping
pearls and
poetry
all
the
way
down
to the
floor

I want more
than tepid water late
at night in a cool
glass on a
rooftop — more
than what’s good
for me, probably
Certainly more
than what’s
allowed because
I am more
than what’s allowed
in most states and
in all minor territories
More than the
words I assign
to my person; collect
like puffy stickers across
my arms like all my
tattoos from assorted
shops on St. Mark’s
I couldn’t name
any of them no

2,000 Year Prayer / PF Potvin

let me be today
like Giacomo De Mola free

diving near Sicily’s coast
with snappers and eels 

in prep for a spear
fish competition with calm

control and wind full
in the chest for as long 

as it takes to discern my Roman
ship gone drowned

and parse a large rock
from a fortune of amphorae

On the occasion of staying in my car during a thunderstorm /  Janette Schafer

First, there’s the practical matters—
I forgot my umbrella, didn’t want to wreck
my hair or dress—
not when the pleats are neat as a pin, 
fresh from the dry cleaner. 

There is also the calm I feel today.
from a lovely meditation on my porch—
The squirrels were holding conversation,
and the robins, a lovers’ quarrel, 
all of which they let me overhear—

I know this will disappear once
the car door opens and I walk across
the parking lot into the office.
Besides, Poulenc’s oboe concerto still plays
through the car stereo, his delightfully strange

dancing harmonies kissing the raindrops.
The torrents come and lightning
crackles against the sky, water falling 
in layers. Orisha is stopping by Pittsburgh, 
and I’ll spill from my Subaru soon. 

DYING IN FAIRY CIRCLES   / Kate Thuma

When they’re close to death, 
Redwoods release thousands of seeds, 
and the lucky ones root into the ground 
in a circle around the dying tree – 
when you come upon a stand of Redwoods 
in a fairy circle around nothing, 
it’s not a cursed place, 
it’s children holding vigil over their mother. 

The seeds drip down in ponding ripples 
until eventually one drops into the exact place 
a long-dead tree (her many-times-great-grandmother)
once vined her roots just beneath the surface, 
shallow so she could link arms under the dirt 
and send blood to a distant cousin
through the fog. 

Caring is so much a part of her biology
That it’s impossible to tell if she does it against her will, 
or if she can push a choice through her bark 
and open herself to sacrifice. 

She holds brain and heart and agency 
in a form unrecognizable to humans. 
There’s so much we don’t know yet – 
there’s more love in the carotid arboreal transfer of water
than some are capable of passing through hands. 

They’re burning all around us and screaming smoke for miles, 
and we don’t know how they honor their dead, 
but we know it’s something about a circle. 

August - Poem 10

Good girls go to heaven bad girls go to Roku City / Zoe Berger

bad girls light candles and leave bad girls are kissing in front of their boyfriends bad girls are building an inn for the coven bad girls are at the afters maximizing their surface area to the exposure of luck bad girls are laying in blood but not bleeding

Santa Fe   / Ashley Howell

As we drove through the ghost mountains
Green fields
My ankle bone aching
From carrying too much

A deer, sign of peace, intuition
Ran into the barren highway
Right as we passed, slowed, 
He swerved, head strong into 
Our car, a crush of hair and metal

What does that tell me in the land of magic?
What peace is trying to find me?
Why am I running? 

My Left Brain Talking to My Right Brain / Dahhee Chung

“What’s your favorite song?”
“I can listen to Frank Ocean all day!”
“Well, I want to hear everything, and never know a thing.”
“I know it in my sleep, I wake up singing it.”
“I’ve heard you. You need practice.”
“That’s what I’m doing.”
             text message incoming
“What were we saying?”
“I forgot.”

Hiragana Sequence / Alison Henderson

A Japanese daycare
in the back room of a pottery studio
on Venice Boulevard.

Hand-building across the hall,
wooden door ajar—
a green room,
map of Japan on the wall.

Two women teach a seated group
the fundamentals of Japanese:
あ　い　う　え　お
a      i      u      e     o

Five vowels, a map of sound.
Breath shaped by the mouth.

In the other room
I glaze a palo santo burner,

clay shaped by the hand.

A shallow bowl,
small chimney hole
for smoke to escape.

I paint it white.
Through the open door
the children repeat:

あ　い　う　え　お

Later, a piece of holy wood
will burn inside the shiny vessel.
Wood becoming smoke,
smoke becoming scent,

entering the body.

Aubade in Perimenopause / Ash Kemp

My sleep paused, arrested, interrupted, unfinished. 

My skin tacky in the dark morning sheets. 

Make of this what you will—
A dream delivered to the one who delivered you and continues to deliver your meals and your emotional support. 

What can I say to the day when I cannot rest before it breaks?

A struggle, a loss, overwhelming exhaust-ion
No. I do not think I love this new season. 

Online Shopping / Hannah Page

This morning arrived the scale
my husband ordered online
like he does so many things
to cater to my fleeting
obsessions. Softened by snake oil 
ads on Facebook and the news 
(this time the real deal, 
this time from the 
skinniest 
snakes), 
I say I’ve caught 
wind of the shortcut anorexia 
false-promised in my youth.
Everything and the scale indicate buying [in].

Joke on Us / PF Potvin

Squished on the love seat

munching

chips the kids

sprinkled with olive

oil, salt, garlic, pepper,

cayenne, a little snack

before books and bed, but first

a science show where my son

flings up his hands,

observes, “Bill Nye is so crazy

because he falls down all the time,”

and my daughter replies

without turning an eye. “Yeah,

even when he’s not

tired.”

I wish I could name the storms inside of me  /  Janette Schafer

after Byron Hoot

We name hurricanes,
refuse what’s inside us

delight in thunder
terrified of our own

watch trees bend
resist bending

see lightning as illumination
hide love in shadow

darkness as necessary 
deny turning inward

heart as barometer
ignore storm warnings

cover our heads
smell clean after rain

Untitled  / Kate Thuma

In a one-card tarot reading 
I drew The World, 
which you had already given me, 
unstringing it as a pearl 
from its invisible thread in orbit
and into my too-small hands, 
leaving noon and the witching hour mixing 
in a brackish aerial estuary. 
A nursery of the universe.

August - Poem 9

Heavy Night / Zoe Berger

Burning without burning 
a deliberate wind takes me 
to a party in search of 
an empty place

Everyone’s faces 
are lively with decision
Their self-heartedness 
Guilts me

I know I should begin 
to realize my heart
I’ve heard it before:
the answer
is blind and new

Find Your Own Lineage / Dahhee Chung

Expectations genetic,
Birthdays feel generic,
Say, “happy birthday to you”
I’ll only sing it,
      if I love you.

I hated presents adorned with bows and fancy paper,
The thing inside often,
More you than me.

A forced smile and a thank you,
It’s the thought that counts,
Umma says.
But I’d rather you cry and shout,
“Why can’t you know me?
 What was the thought?”

So I got you a promise,
In an empty Trader Joe’s bag,
I watched you sleep
One more time,
And asked,
“Can you tell me how to fill it?”
The anxiety of expectation,
The quiet consternation,
Tell me how to fill it,
So we can both love celebrating.

Cell D45 / Alison Henderson

1.

The library had holes in it—
a steel rolling rack
carrying mostly fiction, donated.
Atwood, Hoover. Gone.

Covers torn off like lost limbs,
pages missing.
Inmates write letters in block print
over the stories.

But the bottom shelf—
hardcover and oversized:
Spanish-to-English dictionaries,
cookbooks, Aesop’s fables.
Murder mysteries wedged at the end.

I slid a softcover from under
outdated textbooks,
federal statutes swollen with dust.

Fore-edge scratched blue and black:
P. Willis D45.

Patricia? Pauline?

I turned it over:
Claiming the Spirit Within.

I carried it out
in a manila folder
with my court documents.

2.

I read from it
like scripture—
corners curling,
pink-and-white striped duvet
traded for incense.

My favorites circled:
“I Go Back to May 1937,”
“The Necessity,” “The Swan.”

Mornings I read
to women gathered
for meditation.

Laura sits upright
like it’s her first time at church.
Kelsey turns her phone face-down,
black coffee balanced on her lap.

All of us careful not to move
while the words move.

Not watching the watcher—
watching language
arrive one paper cup at a time.

3.

We ride the swan boats
in Echo Park Lake.
I steer, turning the handle
counterintuitively.

We paddle the perimeter,
in and out of shade
beneath imported palms,
past lotus beds.

As we pull in to dock,
someone says
people have died here—
drowned, drunk.

A man in a blue vest
waves us over.
We step out,
bookless, sober,
still turning the wrong way
to come in.

Hourglass / Ash Kemp

I pick up the glass and wood, 
turn it over 
once, 
twice, 
the mound of grains disintegrates then reforms. A new question each time, weighted with the promise of the future.  
Have we been here before, 
staring into the unknown, 
wishing it could tell us 
everything is okay and nothing hurts?  What hope do any of us have of holding on to the shifting grains 
in a world aflame with self-righteous anger and condemnation?

Stationary Objects / Hannah Page

I wish on so many 
stars for us.
Sometimes, they are 
stationary objects; 
sometimes, airplanes
just taking off 
into the abyss
pitching headfirst into
starless skies above
cities so luminous it is
as if the whole 
population is working
together to register
on alien radar and
the pilots cannot see
out the windows in
front of them for all
the pointlessness of
indefatigable blackness
or maybe for all
the potential.

Interpreting Artists / PF Potvin

“check the magic” his friend nudged

across the stage
on a platform

adjacent the folk band a woman signed
her black dress swinging
weaving dipping as her face
sounded

gamboled lyrics

hands twirling
drums words bass guitar
setting space

into action like storms of barn
swallows ponding behind the stage blue crowns
cinnamon faces tails forking

original theater

Route 60 between Barboursville and Huntington  /  Janette Schafer

after a photograph by Greg Clary

We began believing we were a road.
There are roads built for leaving, rails built for the same.
We mistook the crossing for a route.

All I know is the lay of the land,
key in my hand, turned on the ignition.
We began believing we were a road.

He leaves and returns; leaves and returns.
I no longer know when to turn on the light.
We mistook the crossing for a route.

What did I know of love then
but the leaving behind?
We began believing we were a road.

What did I know of cartography
except for drawing lines?
We mistook the crossing for a route.

Objects are closer than they appear,
a blurring sign in a rearview mirror. 
We began believing we were a road.
We mistook the crossing for a route.

Untitled  / Kate Thuma

There’s a science to weather formations 
that can only ever be a percentage accurate. 
I think I like only ever being seen 
in parts of almost right. 

There are mysteries hunched 
in my kneecaps held bent 
to spring in unexpected moments. 
When my knees and ankles ache 
before a storm it isn’t rheumatism 
or keep-your-heels-down echoes, 
it’s the pressure of so much rain 
held against cartilage unflexing,

of an Achilles tendon 
wrapped around a bolt of unstruck lightning. 

August - Poem 8

Iris / Zoe Berger

You look naked in your clothes you with your 
bicycle tee shirt and a key around your neck 

We take a walk in the woods and chirp a song 
off a cliff I do not tell you I love you because 
I don’t but something feels unsaid just the same 

A robin landed on our windowsill this morning but
I may be imagining tender things again
again I do not tell you I love you
again I don’t

hummingbird   / Ashley Howell

to colors
like chakras
root to white
wings to whisper

nibbles at sugar
hunger to bread
beak to needle

sewing the air 
into quilts of  hums
threading colors 
to patterns of 
spine and snake 

Lion’s Gate / Dahhee Chung

(Dedicated to Elijah,
My son born 08/08/08)

Eighteen years eve,
A portal opened in me,
A dying star between my legs,
Imploded from the other side.
The prophet,
They said would be a girl
For nine months.
The doctor said, “Who lied.”
Yet all along
I knew he’d be the prophet,
Never died,
but flied,
Both of them with two names,
Their second name the same name,
Fighting demons and spewing curses,
For a God,
Who tells them,
“I am the night.”
Lion’s Gate open,
Each year relived
 I step out-
 That same
 gray
 cold
 room,
Sanitized  dull,
Except for the blood
And almond eyes,
That stared bright,
As I sighed,
“An alien… “
Before the portal died.

Forest Service Road 151 / Alison Henderson

Jagged gravel, thirteen miles one way. New Mexico mountains, high desert sun, worn cattle grates interrupting winter wilderness. Chama River Canyon cutting through open pasture, charcoal blue, a choir breaking over boulders, bursting into impossible high notes. Towering sandstone, walls of red clay like raw cathedral. Roughed-up corners, edges crumbling vertical into gentle rapids.

Ten, maybe fifteen times I drove it fast, barely braking, black leather and blonde. On purpose. If I had no fear down to the ground of my subconscious, I could do anything. I could move mountains: Christ in the Desert.

At the end of the road: PEACE. The road dead-ends at the abbey, where a BMW man sits beside the Father on a bench beneath the portico, the front doors black and looming. Heavy.

On my way out, he is shuffling back to his car. I slow, lower my window.

What are you looking for?

He looks at his feet, takes a step back. Finally, our eyes meet.

Purpose, he says, like it’s a question.

You already know, I say.

I say it like I know, like I already know his purpose. I accelerate, whipping rocks into a grayish bloom, blasting the Stones. I retrace the canyon.

And again.

I transfer my earthly belongings to the one in the yellow hat, / Ash Kemp

after Desireé Dallagiacomo from prompt by Ollie Schminkey

I transfer my earthly belongings to the one in the yellow hat,

who made me laugh carrying on with a monkey like that.

Home Again / Hannah Page

Today, we soldiered on
picking up again our burdens
tearing again at our hair
when the pattering of our own
hearts became an unbearable
reminder pitched just so
to startle back into motion

your eyes the shade of
my eyes the shade of
the sky between the trees
outside the City Clerk’s –
lapis against my white
dress with the faux
pearls that kept
falling off even before
I put it on that morning

your favorite jam band
on stage and in
the kaleidoscope of tinsel
and acid with you
at my back, I
never felt more    home

&
the marks on my
thighs grow
less angry as the days
go by

& this is the most
satisfying rabbit hole:
the kind
where everything is right
sized at the end
of the tunnel.

Last Coast / PF Potvin

santa and mrs. twin golden labs six of us grinning at a funeral all

blowing in the fan’s shimmer but one pic sits tauter pinned by antelope

magnet a mother in blue wool beanie plaid coat his semiquincentennial

cap and solid red jacket crinkle with collars popped to shield breezes

off napes no teeth but lips pulled up like bananas someone’s snapping outside

frames of tomorrow they look left and can’t break from staring

Hymn to a buck  /  Janette Schafer

A friend of mine who hunts once told me
he dreams of deer come August. I think
of a lame buck who once took refuge in my yard.

I think of a buck who once took refuge in my yard.
It is early August and the worst of the heat
is behind me. Autumn is its own kind of sanctuary.

For me, September is its own kind of sanctuary.
I count my life in autumns, in turning of leaves,
when crispness in the air greets me.

The crispness in the air greets my skin, a lover
remembered, who comes behind me, whispers,
Hey, old friend. I still think of us. 

Hey, old friend, I still think of us. I recall the lame buck
who slept near the oak, gone now for three summers.
I wonder if my friend who hunts has begun to dream. 

GHOSTED  / Kate Thuma

Where there was something 
and suddenly isn’t, 
the air still holds your shape
with the surface tension 
of a real ghost. 

I can run my hand 
through the fog of it-you 
and unfeel the nothingness 
of your unpresence, 
but my hand still comes away wet 
with the proof of your living.

August - Poem 7

Waterfall / Zoe Berger

12:02 AM (7 hours ago)
to me
Trust you 
to surprise me 
with a place I’ve been 
before. In the underground 
Moroccan restaurant 
the hostess asks if we’d like 
the waterfall table, why yes, 
of course, so we eat our lamb 
and drink our tea in the bedrock 
holding up the building 
as water creeps down the walls 
and into the moss that
I assure you is real—
no drugs and alcohol today. 
On the walk home we pause 
on the curb 
to examine a dollhouse 
veiled in plastic, love scrawled 
on the walls in bleeding 
purple marker, a wooden moon 
framing the second story window. 
Who would throw away 
their daughter’s dollhouse, 
you say. Who cares 
how old they get. 
Maybe they got a bigger one, 
I offer. Rivulets of rainwater 
slip down the plastic valleys. 
Your face wets with disbelief. 
You run your fingers over the moon. 

Bad Day / Dahhee Chung

Ironically blessed,
A burn blistered
And scabbed 
Cured meat dried
      by Friday
Picked flat 
The  died parts
Not the alive parts,
Pink and smooth spots
R.I.P.
the fun parts
The hard parts
Except that one part
The ripe part,
That might give my fidgets,
One more for the night.

Ode to Peaches / Ash Kemp

for Renee

Oh Peaches,
The cutest little alligator,
The hottest hot dog,
Soft and fuzzy and juicy, too!

Your bright color
Like the sunshine
Brought to life—
We value your contributions
To the pile of fluff
And your steady presence,
Which was more than enough.

We see effigies to you
At every craft store,
We want to play fetch with you
Just a little bit more.

We miss the little noises
And the tummy rubs,
We think of you often,
And will never really give you up.

Annotated Syntax / Hannah Page

I write against
the grain because it  isn’t
like me to leave
stones unturned or
uncollected. It isn’t
like me to leave
lines of poetry
unparsed. I have never
not been enough. I
have never
not been found bursting
with potential/enthusiasm/ideas
like a boil or a blood
blister ripely reaching to outsize the container – beyond
the capacities of the
human membrane.
Speech & breath hold
natural rhythm; to
manipulate the
lungs like an accordion
played and stopped at
will to notes that are cutting against –
That is art. That is power.
That is
love.

When You Hear Sifting / PF Potvin

feet like sand creak
open the screen
step & stoop

down as two ravens
wheeze past your mother
takes another nap
wonder about peering
behind blinds

pinch & pluck red
weeds from bricks black
fluff tossing along

snagging in discard pile
you glance about

lower your head
both now pretending

nobody’s home

On the occasion of remembering the last time we made love  /  Janette Schafer

There are times you want your lover to go slow,
to pluck you like a piano tuner with the meticulous
task of resetting strings and voice hammers, 
making each note correct, perfectly balanced

That day, I wanted you veloce, our bodies
a cacophony on the black and white keys
of our desire, a pounding rhapsody
I said: presto agitato faster my love my body
is agitated incalzando chase pursue urge me
stringendo press together together together 
with fire con fuoco hurry affrettando hurry

Let Me Burn Bones: a Burning Haibun  / Kate Thuma

My father helped me perch on my swingset trapeze bar. I felt like a bird whistling in a cartoon cage. I was

three, and soft, and smiling. He ran inside to tell my mother to look out the window at me, soaring. In that

second, I remember pride, then weightlessness, then nothing at all. My brain won’t let me keep the burn

of snapping still-small bones. It wakes up again on the x-ray table, where a technician tells a toddler to be

still so he can find the exact place my body ripped apart on the inside. I remember a door with a window,

and being held down by bigger things. I cannot see my mother’s face, but I want to be certain she is there

in my memory, that she came with me. It’s dark again in the pieces of the story I still hold, then sparkles

around a bathtub, a green sandbox, an inflatable pool, all places to keep my swaddled leg away from

while living half-in-half-out of my last baby summer. Still, when the buzzing saw finally eats down to my

now-thin leg, it’s buried in sand. That leg is still smaller. It still remembers falling.

My father helped me perch on my swingset trapeze bar. I felt like a bird whistling in a cartoon cage. I was

three, and soft, and smiling. He ran inside to tell my mother to look out the window at me, soaring. In that

second, I remember pride, then weightlessness, then nothing at all. My brain won’t let me keep the burn

of snapping still-small bones. It wakes up again on the x-ray table, where a technician tells a toddler to be

still so he can find the exact place my body ripped apart on the inside. I remember a door with a window,

and being held down by bigger things. I cannot see my mother’s face, but I want to be certain she is there

in my memory, that she came with me. It’s dark again in the pieces of the story I still hold, then sparkles

around a bathtub, a green sandbox, an inflatable pool, all places to keep my swaddled leg away from

while living half-in-half-out of my last baby summer. Still, when the buzzing saw finally eats down to my

now-thin leg, it’s buried in sand. That leg is still smaller. It still remembers falling.

My father helped me perch on my swingset trapeze bar. I felt like a bird whistling in a cartoon cage. I was

three, and soft, and smiling. He ran inside to tell my mother to look out the window at me, soaring. In that

second, I remember pride, then weightlessness, then nothing at all. My brain won’t let me keep the burn

of snapping still-small bones. It wakes up again on the x-ray table, where a technician tells a toddler to be

still so he can find the exact place my body ripped apart on the inside. I remember a door with a window,

and being held down by bigger things. I cannot see my mother’s face, but I want to be certain she is there

in my memory, that she came with me. It’s dark again in the pieces of the story I still hold, then sparkleles

around a bathtub, a green sandbox, an inflatable pool, all places to keep my swaddled leg away from

while living half-in-half-out of my last baby summer. Still, when the buzzing saw finally eats down to my

now-thin leg, it’s buried in sand. That leg is still smaller. It still remembers falling.

August - Poem 6

Don’t get me wrong / Zoe Berger

I don’t really want to be writing. 
I’d rather lie next to you in silence 
and not say what I mean. 
I mean what I say. I just don’t say 
all of it. You wouldn’t want 
me to. We made it this far 
because I shut the fuck up. 
I know. First time for everything. 
Let’s not ruin it with words—

a burning   / Ashley Howell

I used to bite my nails until they bled bandaids on every other digit I couldn’t let my skin I started getting manicures to help with the biting because the picture I took of holding my fathers hand as he died has fingers covered in bandages and when I picked up his ashes my nail polish matched the grey in the sky and in the urn there was no blood to be found 

I used to bite my nails until they bled bandaids on every other digit I couldn’t let my skin I started getting manicures to help with the biting because the picture I took of holding my father’s hand as he died has fingers covered in bandages and when I picked up his ashes my nail polish matched the grey in the sky and in the urn there was no blood to be found

the picture of skin
my father’s hand grey ashes
used nails in the sky

Strawberry Fields Forever / Dahhee Chung

My weed garden is beautiful,
Tall green stalks wild with tips of white fluff seeds and yellow quotation marks stamped aggressively by a five year old playing god,
In a galaxy far, far away,
An open crawl of 
“Strawberry fields 
                  forever” thick and low,
Pitch slowed,
Surviving beneath the day,
Once meticulously cared for by a hyper-focused Gardener
Who had time
To nourish the soil 
And the clowder of cats,
Like orange swirls and creamsicles 
melting down the brick wall,
“…temperatures  in the high 90s”
      butterflies and bees swarm   the prolific weed blooms,
Then scatter as the hummingbird zips down and side eyes 
The gardener 
                 who thought 
The world couldn’t thrive without her. 

The Cowgirl and the Physicist / Alison Henderson

I see us crossing bridges in Saskatoon.

You shift gears,
low to the ground,
in your mother’s old Mazda.
The dashboard rattles.
Red paint flashes
off the hood.

I open a window.
You tell me it’s called flutter
and crack yours.

Grain and gasoline.

Mohawk razed,
collared shirt, leather belt,
ghosts of neon clothing.

You are quieter now,
listening 
to my music.

Your profile
in the flat sunlight.

We stop 
because I ask you to.

The Joni Mitchell plaque
on Broadway Avenue,
bronzed and unremarkable.

We are singing
Wheat Kings
instead of Blue.

I trace the arrow of time
on your calf
as you drive us 
out of the city
where at night,
stars covered the ground.

The fields ran on. 

At night,
stars covered the ground.

You said you were
a side character
in the story of a woman
who loved life so much
it killed her.

You fell in love
with my corpse.

I drove to California
in a stolen rental.

Mission Control Told Her / Ash Kemp

Once, mission control told her communication lines were jammed.
They could no longer hear her detailed report of her body
rejecting synthetic foods and missing human touch.
Leery of a slow death,
lone soul on a desolate ship
in the outer reaches of space,
waiting to be devoured,
She returns to her reports,
as if the world isn’t behind her,
forever out of reach.

Mission Control Told Her

Once, mission control told her communication lines were jammed.
They could no longer hear her detailed report of her body
rejecting synthetic foods and missing human touch.
Leery of a slow death,
lone soul on a desolate ship
in the outer reaches of space,
waiting to be devoured,
She returns to her reports,
as if the world isn’t behind her,
forever out of reach.

Mission Control Told Her

communication lines were jammed.
They could no longer hear her body
rejecting synthetic foods and missing human touch.
Confined to a desolate ship
in the outer reaches of space,
waiting to be devoured,
connection just out of her reach.

Lip Reading / Hannah Page

Some days, my bedroom
is enough of a world.

(The womb is a very tiny
universe btw.) 

Slivers of nightstands
decorated with daily
treasures carried home
in denim pockets with
widening holes. Wan
daylight slicing the air
like a mirror, slanting
over safe landscape.
My red and black pilled
comforter becomes my
swaddling-clothes, my
amniotic sac, and all my
sustenance – food; coffee;
marijuana – materializes
atop the covers.

I am not so alone here.
My husband in the other
room and over my shoulder
the disintegrating, spectral
forms of every past
entanglement. This morning
a friend requested
space but I was looking
backwards and I heard it
as the promise of betrayal.
Sometimes I can’t understand
the words as they're meant
unless I watch the mouth
expel them.

Taking a Break / PF Potvin

On my hands and knees painting the porch the dullest of grays, the kind you lose yourself in and almost stop thinking about painting or where the mind goes when you’re not looking, which, let’s be honest, happens much of the time, especially if you’re like me and getting older, which probably begs a different question but one I won’t get into here because I’m actually taking a break and typing this instead of painting, but all work and no play and all that, but seriously, where’s the mind right now? slipping out the side door of the shop and sneaking a smoke while I’m busy here working on a poem, or maybe it’s just slunk out on an errand and will return before I know it, which can’t really happen because I’m thinking about it now, but who really knows how many levels this person in the mirror’s got or how many tiny sprinkled cakes and coffees might be offered on this table and devoured before the projects can be deemed all done?

On the occasion of waking to a dream  /  Janette Schafer

I stirred to a phantom hand on my hip.
A ghost pressed close, his coarse hairs
tingling the back of my thigh. He gentled
my hair from behind my ears, swept it
to the side. What he whispered, I do not
remember except I could feel the icy dew
from his breath. He found that space
between my neck and shoulder, that inch
of nerve and life that shuts out all thought
and outside space, save for that bundle
of electric that makes the whole of me
cry yes…yes this. Awake, I kept my eyes
shut, holding on to the specter until it was
time, until I made my legs shake.

PHOTOSYNTHESIS  / Kate Thuma

I’m so of the earth 
that moss grows happily 
in my lungs, 
and every breath 
I exhale transfers oxygen 
back into the atmosphere. 

When I kiss you, 
I am keeping you alive. 

You and I could form 
a closed system 
together at Point Nemo, 
our own biosphere
at the point of inaccessibility. 

When you breathe 
back into me, 
it’s all I need. 

August - Poem 5

fallow / Zoe Berger

Cycle fallow. I plant seeds elsewhere. 
Throw myself against the world. 

Body a straight fuse. 
Thinking of you. I mean me.  
I mean everything 
that’s not me. I mean
strangers kissing 

on the internet. Anything 
but this. This blind deaf faith.

There are ways   / Ashley Howell

Autumn air at the beginning of August
blue music in the red hills
I love the way sunflowers grow like weeds
in the Colorado sun

There are ways to find gratitude
if I can only remember
how to sit in the morning light
and write my list, take a breath

Screen Time / Dahhee Chung

The boy with the iPad,
Holding its silicone handle,
Walking in circles,
Talking in loops,
Not fruit loops,
“Becaz I don’t like it!”
“Let’s go for a walk
     In Big circles,
          Around the Neighborhood.”
“Do you know why I don’t like acid?”
“Around all the slabs of trees with faces,”
“Mommy, do you know why I don’t like acid?”
And the pretty gardens
          wild ones, dull ones.”
“Mommy, do you know why I don’t like acid?”
“And the sounds of cars whizzing,
The birds tswit tswit tswit sing.”
“Mommy, do you know why don’t like acid?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s baaaaad.”

Monday at Full Circle Pottery / Alison Henderson

Shark wears thrifted jeans.
She stacks and unstacks kiln shelves,
arms like freight elevators.

No one knows how long she's worked here.
Maybe since the Greeks.

The studio, wedged between
a vape shop
and a half-price spa in West LA.

Inside: a menagerie of glazed creatures,
Picasso-faced teacups,
miniature yogis in metallic turbans.

Shark's compost jars and vases
stand apart, quiet as ruins.

A windowless room.
Canvas tables, two slop sinks
holding silty mirrors of fluorescent light.

Shelves sag under sharp tools,
wet buckets, and armies of unfired creations.
Dried clay caked in the sponges.

She glides from room to room
with the calm of something prehistoric.

Children flicker.
Adults in earth-tone shawls drift to their cubbies.
From the mental health clinic across the street,
Monday patients arrive after lunch.

Shark leans over a bearded man 
at the wheel.
He holds the clay too tightly.

The sponge is the hardest part, he says.
She bends over him,
her hands rounding his,
showing him how to let the clay pull,
thumbs meeting.

Shark’s long black hair licks the wet rim.

The vessel wobbles.
She lifts his hands from the clay,
repositions the sponge in his palm,
sets the angle.
Now, she says,
try again, the way you let it go.

What does language mean when you can’t speak? / Ash Kemp

It’s not just that I don’t have the words to answer you,
it’s a ball of twisted, burning steel in my throat,
cauterizing any semblance of thought
making its way out of my mouth.
 

It’s not just that I can’t handle rejection,
it’s a deep cavern of shame opening up
and swallowing me every time
I perceive failure or anger.

It’s not just that I’m overstimulated,
it’s my skin too tight,
in a body feeling more than what is there,
with a heart beating faster each time I hear something too loud.

So I don’t have the words,
I don’t handle rejection,
and my heart beats louder as my mind goes
in every direction.

Ovum / Hannah Page

I struck matches
off my armor
in the middle
of Broadway
running errands at
the corner deli
where I consumed
my self through the
breast – a hedonist
eating my heart from
my chest, breastplate
a hollow aftermath.
You caught me every
time: red-mouthed
and red-blooded
hopping on the
pulse of the regular
man but kick it
up a dozen BPM.
That’s right:
Pattering like an adder
predatory and pining.
At birth, I crushed
the egg in which
I came to terms
with alchemy: set
myself free and reeling into
traffic, where I begged
all the cars to take me,
take me – anywhere
but the groin
of American hypocrisy,
anywhere but this highway
that leads to a superhighway
that leads to ruin. I am
your road sign, perilously
handwritten: Heed not
what may come, but what
is already up under
the ruthless treads
with which you attack
every faceted surface.

On the occasion of contemplating Spanish  /  Janette Schafer

They call Spanish one of
the Romance languages
and I think of my own 
romance with it—how I loved
and lost it.  The first language
I learned to think and speak in,
a language that I still hear
sometimes in my dreams,
a song that my loved ones
can still sing to each other
that I can only hear but never 
duplicate, even though I can
read and write the notes.

Somewhere in my brain
I hold this magic:
in a memory of Abuela’s 
perfectly curled hair,
humid equatorial heat
rising from the pavement,
the smell of arepas 
and platanos frying
in olive oil.

GREENLY  / Kate Thuma

Everyday 

I’ll distill 
a fresh me-tincture 
a higher concentration 
than is truly safe 
for inexperienced users 

(mayinducehallucinationmanialove-liking) 

I’ll soak it 
into a ripped corner 
of cerulean paper 

and fold it 
into a crane 
that animates 
with the tap 
of my toe

Everyday 

a paper bird
that smells 
and smiles 
like me 

(like orchards dripping peaches)

will fly greenly
into your pocket 

to belong to you

August - Poem 4

Sting / Zoe Berger

Meeting you was like birthing 
in both directions. Every time 
I walk through your door 
you happen to me all over again. 
Remind me, 
I have to tell you about this story 
when a bee flew on stage at a reading 
& stung the poet’s bottom lip 
while she was talking about sweetness. 
Anything can happen. 

When I open my mouth 
my whole life falls out. 
The brain part of my brain 
wants you untreasonably. 
I am no longer the biggest danger 
to myself. Are you?

Living Amends  / Ashley Howell

“Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, 
except when to do so would injure them or others.”
This footprint breathes with me 
I want to embrace those who I have harmed
some I embrace with arms and hands
some with spirit and meditation
some with sliced apples and morning coffee
some with broken lids of blue and white bowls
some with heartbeat and oxygen

some salt and water

I cleanse myself only of my need to speak
never the memory of those moments
my words are heavy as I carry them
in repurposed bowls and apples and coffee
my words
if they would cause harm, are only mine
sometimes I must place them in another space
to be held for a moment
so my knees don’t buckle         
                                        underneath me

Han / Dahhee Chung

It seems like Umma and Appa only complain in their native tongue,
Of guttural
gah’s
And
Aigo’s
The onomatopoeias
 an intrinsic projection of syntax
With the exact vibration from their gut tickling the receivers hair,
Contrary to their English
so polite,
The sentences phrased upwards like a question and permission to feel,
Rather than the raw Han
That is more an emotion than a word,
Pronounced imperatively without punctuation.
Han
The deep, quiet anger that can only be spoken with sharp consonants,
Or the high-frequency drilling of silence.

Flip-Flops / Alison Henderson

I walked nine miles in flip-flops
from Venice Beach 
to my house near LAX,
country music blaring
under an innocent August sky,
through a desert 
of dirt and piss.
Sticky sidewalks.

I didn’t get blisters,
feet free like Jesus. 

I imagined him walking 
neighborhood to neighborhood, 
preaching the good news
in the smog,
flip-flops slapping concrete
the way mine did.

Would he live on skid row
in a tent with the others,
washing their wounds
behind shopping carts?

Would he walk out of Ralphs 
with one bag of groceries
that could feed them all?

Would he say:

You are as worthy
as the billionaires.

And would that be enough
for the flock cameras
to find him in Chinatown,
for Palantir to know
his Reddit handle?

Would he stay nonviolent
and still go viral?

Would he still flip tables?

Not in the Temple. 
But in the boardroom. 

I can see him running
from DHS 
across the South Bay,
onto the Pacific
with no surfboard. 

I can see the helicopters circling.
Waves breaking on waves,
ocean remembering.

I can see Jesus in a cage. 

Checking In / Ash Kemp

after Linda Gregg

I get my wristband,
then the I.V.
I start to evaporate from myself, asking,
will I know a day free of this pain?
I wake in a different room.

Original Sin / Hannah Page

At your birth they braised  
you in your native tongue
and then they unwrapped
you and gave you over to the wide
web of possibility that is language
stretched taught far as the horizon
crisscrossing all over where Latin
bleeds into half a dozen living
varieties of spoken animal and now
in your middle years you still smack
of are lightly saturated with
ooze, really, that original sin.

Picking at the Homestead / PF Potvin

where the bees and trucks
hum in unison
when we pass the white flag
and keep walking
where the dunes don wigs
of tree and meadow
when the dogs squirm tall
blades like centipedes
where Reginas hang
plump before our buckets
when the jays whistle
each other to supper
where we weigh liquid
flesh and smoke
when we drive home
and kick in the front door
the second time that day
and finally remember
what was so important
in the first place

I USED TO EXPERIENCE MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE AS PANIC ATTACKS  / Kate Thuma

You’ve been tapping messages to me through time --
you were still far and long away, but I heard you. 
I think we were decided by an Old Testament angel.

My body couldn’t hold such bigness –  
it dulled the sound but kept the sensation, 
an insistent throbbing pinky knotted in thread 
stretched under my bedroom door.

When we speak with voices that aren’t ours, 
she is holding our mouths 
and enacting what has been ordained, 
extracting the always-was with silver fingertips 
spider-drawn over trembling keys of ivory spine. 

When you taptaptap goodbye, 
you’re sending love down the line 
and I’m feeling it through tears with my 
tongue pressed against a twisted backwards eye tooth 
and that pinky blue at the tip from the thread 
between us thrumming with the coiled tension of a 
string in the moment of attack. 

All of the rooms in my brain that aren’t a part of consciousness 
snap awake and look at you, 
suspended in the wisps of the feather moon. 
The angel in the corner tells me to stop screaming. 

I received your message, 
and I am here.

August - Poem 3

Tomatoes / Zoe Berger

I want a table 
of only tomatoes, 
I want sweet 
and I want wild, everyone 
just happy to be here. 
We could let our minds 
rattle our tongues, 
laughing in red rooms 
after dinner, all of us glowing 
in our skins, naked 
with clothes on, our joy 
expanding 
beyond the senses. 

Another List Poem   / Ashley Howell

(inspired by The Waters of March by Antônio Carlos Jobim )

it’s the rivers of March
the sun of deep July
it’s an inhale
a concrete morning
the way my baby
runs to the water
it’s the sun behind smoke
blue cinnamon notes
hanging late-summer air
it’s a heart pounding
it's both river and wolf
it's nail biting
and bleeding fingers
it’s craving a cigarette
as he took his last breath
it’s the moon on that morning
it’s the sound of a ghost

Modern God / Dahhee Chung

Ants scattered across the dusty wooden floor,
Milling about a grain of rice and a drop of sauce,
Morsels that missed my boy’s mouth,
Too big for small hands,
Too small for greedy guts, 
And my hands too weary to wipe clean
All of the above. 
I wonder if god created the world today,
Would he have created the world in two days,
Then rested three and four,
So he could spend five thinking 
Just make the damn humans
Doom scroll for inspiration on six, 
Buy a wand on Amazon,
pay the extra 2.99 to have it sent same day,
Yet leave the package unopened on his porch floor on seven,

Because it’s Sunday. 

Tensegrity / Alison Henderson

When being beautiful isn’t enough,
even to marry rich,
because the bones contain
no marrow,
only tears.

There is nothing I can say or do
to flush the bloodrot,
dharma and dark matter.

My body disobeys the moon.

No matter how wet
the nights get.

No matter
how white the walls.

The sordid smile
that animated you
bred a long darkness,
fractal man to fragile girl.

Your ant-hole eyes.
Patent leather business boot,
lamb-soled.

Hands around my ankles.
My head against the wall.
Black Gordian rot.

Daddy.

I cannot make them stay,
even with my best dress on.

Stuffing

in my shoes,
in my bra.

Strutting.
Longing.

My roadkill heart
keeps beating.

My heartstrings have no resonance.
Nothing but wire
holds me up.

Deep city groundwater
even the sun won’t touch.

My soft skull,
filled with sand
and torn-out stories.

A stone that crumbles
in your palm.

My white-hot, wiry stare.
Wavy golden hair,
even when I shaved it.

Years and years
of braided tears,
even where the river once held.

Someday,
I’m gonna pay the rent.

Ursa Major / Ash Kemp

For Erica

Drinking Liquid Death while Olivia Rodrigo sings
good for you,
hands clenching the can, contemplating the next week.
Sutured, sore, still kicking,
I’m not done yet.

Drinking water and remembering the metallic taste of the past,
good for you,
taking each defeat like a mother bear defending her cubs.
Crossing galaxies of pain,
I’ll get there yet.

Drinking little sips of joy from friends and music,
good for you,
letting the feeling in,
passing it to the other side
of forgiveness.

Forever drinking care and defeat,
good for you,
the refrain on repeat,
Scars and burdens part of the game, but
they aren’t going to take me out.

A path of drinks,
a path of stars,
a path beyond denial of care
and concern.
I’m not done yet.

In the Style of The Little Engine That Could / Hannah Page

I think I can I think I can I think I
can recall the freight
engine of my wildest
dreams spelling out this
litany, this scripted
melody – intending as intention
does to manifest the rest of the
tracks ahead. Heat-hazy years
unfurling one fragrant beat
before each miracle, each
trompe l’oeil detail among each
abstract pattern. Sunset blushing
the pond, glinting off the algae’d
turtle shells; the buttercups
sunnying my startled chin placed
at my white throat by the hand
of girl whose name has long
slipped backwards through
the currents of memory.

On the Boardwalk / PF Potvin

“Did you hear that?”
wondered the kid
about three, his green helmet

tilted like a turtle shell
beret as he stood
straddling his bike

on the boardwalk. I looked
down and raised my brows.
“I thought that was an eagle

screaming.” He studied my face
then grinned and turned,
his eyes tracing the black

rubber skid behind
his rear tire. I remembered mine
but mostly in gravel. Brown

snakes hissing roars
down the driveway until
someone called, snapping us

out of the BMX dream
and into the house
just at the edge of darkness

On the occasion of listening to a thunderstorm from my porch  /  Janette Schafer

8:12 AM and the morning is still dark,
wind strong enough to stir the heavy boughs
of the ancient pine that keeps watch 
in my front yard, the resin thick, luminous.
The smell bathes the yard in green, 
petrichor. Jane Kenyon, today’s

meditation. The sound of rain 
and thunder held me to my bed, 
kept my blanket sweet. The whiff
of coffee, its warmth
at my mouth, the pine and I
greet the rain together.

Phone Call from a Red-Throated Grosbeak  / Kate Thuma

Sometimes I wonder where birds sat before telephone wires
and if they listen in on the calls we make to each other
the same way we do to theirs.
– Trev Cimenski 

They feel our voices zinging up through their prehistoric feet
and echoing inside their bird brains in their own singing language.  
They’re better able to translate what they hear than we are. 

They can sense the vibrational difference between good news and bad. 
They know the meaning of our gasps of recognition 
and painful silences and connected yeses, 

and some of their calls are answers to ours –  
Red-throated grosbeak congratulations, 
Chickadee sorries, 
Bluebird I’m with yous. 
Crows bringing trinkets are saying “I heard you lost something.” 

Maybe they’ve heard enough to look at us the same way 
we do a cardinal with a broken wing. 
Beyond help. A poor thing.

August - Poem 2

MVP / Zoe Berger

The need to party is stupid and constant. Your brain on drugs. In some neurological sleight of hand I convince myself I’m the world’s Most Vulnerable Person and commit to becoming worse. Night slides dark into dark. Hell bends to me. I am crying in the Ferrari. Better than in the Honda. See? I am worse. Twisting my own arm. 

Fire Season  / Ashley Howell

Some days I can see the sky
and the mountains no longer 
haunt the city–ghost and gray.

Some days the smoke clears
enough to forget about
the end of the world.

I’ve been racing up the hill
toward sundown in the 
summer mornings.

I remember 19 and Rome
with hot concrete, cigarette
smoke, and good espresso.

Tonight we made love in the
hot air and then ate lemon pie
straight out of the tin.

Only forks and tongues 
licking the remainder like
a dog licks a wound.

Blood Fruit / Dahhee Chung

The old pomegranate tree cascading
Teardrops of  elliptical green,
Adorned with  red bulbous fruit,
It’s arms sign  in ASL
“When did the magic disappear?”

Emote from the breeze,
Until it settles into a memory of  red rubies glistening 16 miniature skies
Infinite reflections off  the faces of it’s sacred geometry,
Popped them between my tongue and the roof of my mouth,
Fed one by one,
absorbing potions,
Casting flying spells,
Spitting out the little tooth from each jewel,
Delicately plucking each spell into my mouth
So as not to  stain my nails.

Except now,
They faintly allude to the blood of my first kernel.

Was it when I first saw my dad bite into it like a fruit?
A mad man with blood trickling down his cheek to stain his white linen shirt,
Not any fucks given as to who will mumble rebukes while scrubbing it raw with dawn soap,
As he demonstrates,
“This is how you eat a pomegranate!”
Biting down on it’s rindless partitions
Like it is just a delicious red,
Spitting out the bitter remains of the hide that even the white crowned sparrows hesitate
Plucking  hollow,
Hallowed by its name,
The life from
It’s pericarp.

Conch / Alison Henderson

He'd never seen the man
with the conch before.

Every morning
he'd walk his dog along the shore,
stuffing bits of trash
into his jeans pockets.

He lived in a green bungalow on a cliff
above the bay.

Behind,
winding backroads
reaching toward the redwoods.

I was drinking Pacificos by a fire
with some guys up from the city
when he came up to me,
dog nosing the wrack line.

The town fire marshal
took me home to make grilled cheese.
There was wine and fire. 
Thick sourdough.

He did not know
I was homeless.

He did not see
my fingernails.

He told me about the man with the conch.
Said he'd lived there twenty years
and never seen him,
but that week he’d come twice.

We slept in a loft with no door
under white muslin.
His skin smelled of wood smoke.

His eyes stayed shut
while we whispered in the dark.

I would not let him 
open mine.

The sun, almost round again,
I watched the fishing boats
from his balcony,
the dog's head heavy on my lap. 

The sea spoke back.

And it did—
when the conch
broke through the fog.

Sonnenizio after a line from Terrance Hayes / Ash Kemp

It is not enough to love you,
to want you, destroyed, your existence so separate,
Yet tangled in mine. Again I tell you,
It is not enough, your pain brings me pleasure,
And I want all your selves to hurt me in kind.
Mutual destruction our inevitable end,
You claim you never want to hurt me,
Frequently, you handle me with
Worn satin gloves, while I, without your love,
Never would have been destroyed.
Your mask of a gentle nature slips,
Revealing bruising in the shape of your hands on my hips.
Hips that held my weight and yours,
Wishing to rewind time and take back our hours.

Out of Focus / Hannah Page

If it isn’t the little things, the camera
settles on the certainty of
beauty rather than the beauty
of potential: the fully blooming
jasmine (its ethereal
scent hovering
hot and hazy overhead), the rust-
laden swing set backlit against a rust-
orange sunset. The man behind
the lens cannot keep liminality
in focus: the perilous gaps     in
between cumulus clouds, the budding
weed-flowers in the cracks between
sidewalk concrete – audacious
in acid greenery. Instead of clear
focus his lens renders
smears of color, impressions
on glossy canvas.

Stacks on Stacks / PF Potvin

One morning she awoke on the couch to the dog prancing and sniffing circles in the air. At first she thought he was ghostchasing. Then she focused past the fur out the kitchen doorwall where her partner crouched on a concrete slab that once contained a kennel. The screen door on the ceramic hearth, the kind you might spy indoors in AZ or Cali, the sexy kind like a perfume flacon or hobbit potion decanter, stood ajar, its belly blazing crackle. She rose, ushered the dog out, and approached the ceremony with arms crossed. "What's all this then?” But he didn't turn, just kept feeding. "They're always demanding more money. I already gave, but they keep sending letters." She thought about the shredders she’d bought in his office and his stacks on stacks on stacks of papers. She shook her head and waved the dog back inside to find something for breakfast that hadn't yet expired.

On the occasion of contemplating Elk in Benezette  /  Janette Schafer

On an unmarked gravel road, 
follow the mist, drive slowly. 
Let your headlights be two
gleaming eyes. Remember when
two Seneca lovers found each other.
God carved for each a flute 
that sang like the piercing 
autumn call of the bull elk—
amorous medicine to woo across
the hills into the valley below.

Remember how the song carried through
Appalachian thickets, notes heavy enough
to be heard. God pulled his ivory teeth,
sewed them into the maiden lover’s dress.
It let her move with stealth through 
the forest, her large body, brown as wet bark.
In this form she could leap to her beloved, 
her legs cutting through the Pennsylvania Wilds 
like a sharp sickle through so much wheat. 

ORCHARD  / Kate Thuma

I didn’t know 
there was an orchard inside me. 

My hair braids into snakes 
that firmly hold every curious apple
like new rabbits they want to terrify 
before killing, 
to tenderize the meat. 

So the fruit goes unpicked, 
the harvest falling anyway, 
and deer get drunk 
on the softest, sharpest version 
of what would have been 
something sweet and ready

and knowing.

August - Poem 1

I am making up stories about you handsome stranger on the train / Zoe Berger

Necessary fictions
while I let the beer have its way 
with me            Are you thinking of me 
thinking of you? I want you to have a good forever
and you are wiggling your feet in your shoes 
so I bet you do too         Life is a ring of blessings 
all in the wrong order
An unbound book of prayer            Late          
Still open              Not a fool

I hope she knew  / Ashley Howell

I’m reading a book 
that’s not very good

a memoir
I will finish

because it’s not so much 
the reading 

that I need
but the offering 

to  listen and hold
her story

I liked her first 
book more

but in this one
she laid herself bare 

so I must accept the words 
into my body like warm milk

or a virus
I’m not sure

if I’m a good person
there are people 

who hate me
others I hate but 

I’m trying to stop
people who do not want 

my amends
even if I offered

which 
I’m not sure 

I would 
or need to

be human 
is all I can do

in this moment
not knowing 

what I did to
create such emotion 

in others
I can’t tell if

I’m upset they are hurt or  
that I’m seen as someone 

who can hurt
my friend died

on Christmas Eve and 
I don’t know if she was scared 

or knew what was 
about to happen

I hope she knew
I loved her

 Doshirak / Dahhee Chung

Julienned potatoes and onions seasoned with black pepper and sesame plated besides
A rolled omelet whisked with green onions, sliced into perfect bites,
A container of crispy, salted fried seaweed,
And a cold plate of acorn jello served with a tiny tasting dish of chili soy sauce and a tiny spoon,
Spread the table with small bowls of rice.
Pharaoh grabbed a handful of the onions and potatoes and smashed a fistful into his mouth, chomped three times and swallowed.
“This was my favorite school lunch.”
“They served it in school?” Clarence, genuinely curious.
“No, Halmi packed it for me.”
“No one made fun.”
“I made fun.”
“Of yourself?”
“Of everyone else who asked,
‘what’s that?’
‘Monkey brains?’
‘ew, gross!’
As they sporked congealed gravy with pale meat and boxed mashed potatoes,
Without masticating,
But swallowing the slurry
Into clumsy mouths.
The appall on my own face would surface
And I had to look away,
As I, savoring a perfect bite of gyeran mari and gamja bokum,
Replied, ‘I can’t eat that stuff.’
Chewed my own deliciousness,
Each bite layered with savory umami,
And a pleasant bounciness
Secreting sweet saltiness,
Averted my eyes from the tinned foil containers,
That emanated the scent of school cafeterias.
But I wish I would have shoveled my lunch with my hands
And ate like a barbarian,
To be on display for the uncouth,
As a show of irony beside the aesthetic brilliance my lunch was,
Assembled with the artistry that only my Umma could.”

Gold / Alison Henderson

It was bright white in the common areas
down there with no windows. 
A basement divided
below eye level. 
Cubicles like holding pens. 
Heavy plastic chairs. No edges. 
A small TV mounted to the ceiling 
in each section. 
Ridiculousness or the news,
too high to hear punchlines.
The floor shone, reflecting nothing—
stank of wax and bleach,
mopped every morning
by some guys from C-module.

Markus said he’d broken parole. 
Trespassing.
He gave me instant coffee 
in folded scraps of note paper.
Asked to see my breasts.
I almost did it. 
Coffee was like gold.

A woman belted lonely hymns, 
dragging her socks along the concrete. 
Above, wire mesh hummed. 
We’d speak through a vent 
at the base of the wall
between the two yards.
It was covered in pencil markings,
release dates and prayers…

Said she was doing life for a carjacking. 

Devina. 
Like divine.
She moved like a warrior 
back to her cell, across the floor. 
Hands behind her back.
Cuffed. A rope clipped to the chain.
Three COs walked her like a dog.

They did not know she was a dragon.

She smiled
in the fluorescent whiteness, head high.
We watched her through
our long windows. 

When I got some money,
I slipped her two folds of coffee
through the vent.

Selfie / Ash Kemp

after a prompt by Joseph Fasano

My name is Ash.
Today I feel like a miniscule ant,
carrying in the harvest.
Sometimes, I am a worker.
Sometimes, an egg.
But always,I am attentive.
I ask the world,
how did I get here?
And the answer is a miniscule ant carrying the harvest.

Against Cyclosporiasis / Hannah Page

I’ve craved salads for days
on end in the midst
of this national health
crisis: shredded
lettuce half-recalled and
half-pardoned; wilted
greens trucked down hills toward
sprawling landfills,
toward sentinel flies.
Less so than before, I
hunger for inconvenience:
for the ineffably certain
to gravitate away from
my molten core. I would
have taken every unsafe
door had my husband
not labeled the unmarked
pieces of the map
drawn in his
image because tracing
his profile with my
fingers is outlining
the contours of a life
well lived in. Of laying
each night two bodies,
one bed, my face
healthily greased and a dozen
pills inside the pair
of us. You are safe.
You are loved. You are
protected. Somebody who
loved me almost this
much used to pray
that litany for me.
Now my protections
include the more esoteric
of the Jewish texts; our sleek
black dog; and my oiled
wedding band.

Gold Mountain Awe / PF Potvin

In the field I throw
over &. over
under

& side

an orange
plastic disc
while a woman explains

her face like a tree
caught years in the light of snow

“that would be my house”

& nods at the valley below
Uncompahgre Peak where plumes
billow & schroom

cooking the sky into toxic soup
as our dogs take turns

twirling. & chasing

across the grass

knowing in their bones
that distance matters more
the closer you get

On the occasion of trying to take notes  /  Janette Schafer

Retaining walls
Plumber recommendations
A realtor pretending to take notes
Call a locksmith for a new listing
Someone really needs an aluminum siding guy

I need to go back to Ways of Attending:
How Our Divided Brain Conquers the World,
on how the hemispheres of our neurology
coexist, how creating paintings of wildflowers
and solving polar form alternatives 
make love, come together

Yes. A haul-out company. Useful.
If the crow I feed on my porch
recognizes me
An attorney for easements
and tax abatements

Septic and well assessments
for rural properties
if longing is a place
or a direction
A new title insurance partner

Radon levels above 4.0 require 
a radon mitigation system
Submit three poems
Encourage buyers to purchase
an umbrella policy

Write a stanza on how
the shadow in my lover’s eye
should be a color I can paint
on my bedroom wall
so I can always wake up to it

Don’t delay your closings over
an occupancy permit 
ordered too late

Untitled  / Kate Thuma

Shooting my fingers 
into the sky in tree pose,
there are finely-haired roots branching 
out of my fingers that hold me 
in place in the sky so I exist
an atmosphere above human life.
The world turns under my toes 
and I’m suspended at the edge 
of the same sunset 
for whatever the length 
of an undone day is.

This is how I live more slowly
than biology mandates.
The wormhole astrophysicists marvel 
at is the displacement of air 
from my racked spine 
and time moves through mud
in the expanded space 
between my vertebrae. 

I am a little behind in everything. 
I learn the already-known organically. 
I’m the last one to realize my realizations. 
The world turns as I’m leaping.

July - Poem 31

I Used the Internet to Write This Poem/And Still Call It a Sonnet   / MeraBaid Kuar

with lines by Clayre Benzadon, RJ Equality Ingram, MeraBaid Kaur, Dallas (Amber) Outlaw, Azmia Ricchuito, Tammy Smith, Kes Maro, Daphne Stanford

The city cracks its wrists 
before a moth could fly toward flambé

the pace was an ancient animal 
you’ve already stepped here

risky in stupor
the same clowns are pointing & grinning

because the laughter had witnesses 
Pepperidge Farm remembers

a pomegranate is an apple’s honest
somewhat untouched

carousel
jealous of each spoonful

resistance is your favorite game 
but my defiance is whimsical 

wear me like rain
until your body surrenders or sunrise comes. fall asleep

to who I was: less
a map of my wounds

just enough bite to be aftertaste
the world is an unblemished apple

where the doors are doors of paper
because pain is a poor/ Historian

I told the trees and crows
there is no chemical solution to a spiritual problem

consider how quietly the foxcat leaves
we swallow without knowledge, we only slightly pause

as we go the unknown ways
the lesson was already in the clay

July - Poem 30

The Nature of Things  / Clayre Benzadon

 After the 8 am log in,
three tabs open to three
different emails,

after the settling in—
you forget how to think.
Papers piled up on your desk,

which you can’t keep track
of, so instead you come to
the digital page. How to say

“gray day” a better way,
you type, wonder. You
conjure ballets and ash-

trays in your head, then
start to understand the nature
of things a bit more, how

one object shouldn’t relate
to the other so casually,
because life is random like

that: After ballet, the women
leans upon the ashtray atop
her nightstand, another kind

of Pirouette. A draft. Just
a draft entering the kitchen.
You shake a little

before reading this
more constructed
poem aloud.

More Less Than We Could Handle / RJ Ingram

Giovanni was the first to set his foxkitten free / Not to be one upped by their older brother Brock & Misty also set their foxkittens free: Brock let his go when the train stopped in the mountains then Misty sent her’s ashore as the train dove into the endless sea / The Lieutenant taught his foxkitten how to restart a car by rubbing up against it & when Erica’s learned to chirp like blades of grass whistling the other children yearned to learn what other tricks the foxkittens knew / But they always set them free / Sabrina’s foxkitten turned mauve in the morning twilight but Janine’s foxkitten’s divine immunity to every kind of poison was the most remarkable / Although not quite as useful as baby Blain’s kit’s ability to survive being set on fire / Mother watched her children grow up from her chapel in the caboose / They gave away their birthday presents like they were donations of stuffed animals for the needy / Mother was easily disappointed but this went beyond disappointment it was betrayal / To her it was eight ungrateful children unable to see power to be controlled / They had failed the test of the foxkitten / All of them / And they needed to be replaced / So Mother grabbed her deck from the Iron-Ivory box on the black altar & drew a card to find places to abandon them while she looked for their replacements. 

New Growth  / MeraBaid Kuar

To grow watermelon soak the wood-grain seeds for half a day– 
set a poem free to flap its wings and gums, 
if it returns commit it to the page 
and whisper its magic into pockets of air your plant inhales– 
choose an earthy non-soil to press your arthritic fingers into 
and place your seeds upright– 
allow a little tip to peek through 
long enough to wiggle in its blanket and take in the warmth, 
as it shifts and yawns and says grace tuck it in completely. 
The hard part is keeping it moist and warm in cool weather, 
but soon the sun will wear its summer crown 
and you’ll bring it out for open air playdates with your other plants. 
It will become a large slumber party that lasts all day, everyday. 
Try to keep it damp and fed, but the sun will do the rest. 
Sometimes you’ll forget to respond as it begs for another sip of water, 
there is so much noise, but usually it will sprout green shoots, 
then its pinnate loaved leaves will devour the feed you give it 
and compete for readiness to enter soil. 
When you pinch it from its temporary cell, cradle it in your veiny hands, 
mosquitos will sneak sips of your blood and you’ll anchor on the ground, 
knobby knees spitting riddles as you attempt their puzzle, 
wiggling and angled until they hum a lullaby, 
which will become the deposit you send your watermelon off with, 
as it enters the world of work, forgoing its cradled existence. 
Now your melon will take off, according to the soil beneath it, 
the neighbors around it, the weather it inherits. 
You’ll stay close enough to see it, pour bits of help into it most days, 
but you let it fruit, 
walk away when it encounters conflict, 
your intermittent neglect in infancy prepared it 
to strengthen, sweeten and form its own flavor. 
Wait to see what song it sings when it's ready to perform 
and say a prayer when you finally taste its flesh. 
Even if all you can eat is a next time. The next poem will water itself. 

broken pantoum portrait of T / Kes Maro

graying wolf will not let himself

sleep, though he cannot stand.

he cannot sleep though he can
not stand. he cannot sleep though

he will not stand. graying will let him
sleep. graying will not let him.     can

     sleep     not stand. sleep cannot
stand.      graying will     .     though

     wolf,     he will not let himself.
wolfing will not stand.     he cannot

     .     will not     .     gray     .

Stigma Sticks  / Tammy Smith

Everything changed after Dad died
from bladder cancer. No, that’s not true,
but bad news sends me spiraling.
Crisis speaks in absolutes:
Always. Never. Everything. Nothing.
What mental health professionals
call black-and-white thinking.

Wait—I’m the therapist now.
Why can’t my own training save me?
Never mind. My psychiatric history
is longer than a child’s list to Santa.

No one knows unless I tell them
I spent years behind locked doors,
where doctors, nurses,
and social workers hurled words
that stuck like Krazy Glue:

Borderline. Bipolar. Narcissistic. Histrionic.

Labels scrape like sharp nails
across a chalkboard. A wolf howl
rises from the dark cave within,
a shadow so frightening
Plato might rip out his eyes
rather than face its glare.

Even Thoreau’s quiet desperation
can’t compete with this dread.
Kierkegaard comes closest
with his dizziness of freedom:
standing at the cliff’s edge,
staring into the inconsolable abyss
of what if—
and what comes next.

In Your Rebel Dream / Daphne Stanford

“Rebel Rebel” blaring from speakers in the back seat of your Datsun wagon & you’re driving the foothills of your hometown, Pacific on the horizon thick with mist. Still time before first period for swim practice, pre-dawn—short drive down to the swimming pool, where steam rises from lanes splashed by warm-up flip turns at each end. Lanes churning, flippers kicking. Soon it will be time for Moon to set & Sun to rise, fully. Until then, you keep swimming.

July - Poem 29

Within the Margins  / Clayre Benzadon

I think about skiing at the end of July, how I could use a slap of winter on the face and even brace myself for the claustrophobia inside gondolas. I’m trying to write squarely this time, within the margins of a page, but I can’t ever successfully come up with what to write next; I’m having a difficult time breathing within the space-lack. In a more “normal” poem, words appear based on the measurement of a line. Back to skiing: I put on my goggles, stomp my

boots into skis, and glide my body against whatever form of snow is existent in my fantasy (powder, most likely).

I fancy fries and a Mountain Dew after, or at the top of the hill, for lunch. I visualize in double time.

When I reach the bottom, I’m back to reality. I read my email: I’ve received a rejection letter. I settle for Starbucks instead of a local coffee shop. I burn my tongue on the bitter water that is supposed to be a bold brew.    

    I think about it, this life, what we have and what we miss.

I did not use the internet to write this poem / RJ Ingram

I am honest about my background in necromancy I don’t feel like it’s a stain on my resume or my reputation / I’ve stitched years back together with the libraries of the deceased & the clothes they leave behind oh! The clothes they leave behind / Brands our parents could never afford & mountains of neglected toys / On bad days I remind myself we are doing the labor for Moonracer the guardian lion of the Island of Misfit Toys / We bring people back to life too / We give them a place to go & slip secrets in their pockets when shaking them out looking for loose change / Shoes walk again because of us & that’s the magic that’s the necromancy the church doesn’t talk about / The magic that could run them out of business / I met a necromancer once a strawberry blonde with a gold tooth who reminded me of annihilation / He braided his own hair I thought that was so cool / He could find a real coin in a barrel full of fakes in thirty seconds / He only stayed in town for the summer / But I swear I’ve seen him standing out in the field on the other side of the horizon / If you make it there check the scarecrow for a golden tooth.

Please Stop the Noise / MeraBaid Kuar

Let us all choose a side
as quickly as the road degrades

as carefully as our state spends
the tax dollars to fix them

as loudly as the teachers yell
at our kindergarteners

as openly as a combat veteran
shares the colors of his war scenes

as heavily as his eyes water
when the stories clack and collide

as easily as we separate the truth
from the albumen, collect it in its shell

pour it into the bowl of dry ingredients
whisk it into something new, cook 

and eat until we believe this is the only
way a side should ever taste. Pass on

any other version of this cooled dish. 
Don’t think too hard, don’t step on a crack.

Portrait of My Grandmother and I With Wallpaper / Kes Maro

The angels of the raspberry wallpaper lived
in the paste in Nana’s kitchen for thirty years    
          They were a mess of bramble & macerated

berries          Their songs took tongues from orioles
& the hum of cars down Montauk highway
          Once     I sat at the counter & begged to eat jam

with a spoon          I felt that everything we ate was plain
cereals     oatmeal          The angels shut their mouths
& turned their eyes from me          She said I would make myself

sick & later it was a gentle I told you so     but she smoothed
her palm over my back & the angels chattered again
On my tenth birthday I wore a navy blue unicorn

sweatshirt that shed glitter all over the couch          She gifted me
a necklace with the Virgin Mary’s portrait & told me
she had been gifted that same necklace on her same birthday

          The chain broke immediately          We got on our knees
& never found it          I feel where she rested between
my collar bones     a hot shame          I find

a photo of us on the beach     I am in a bright blue bathing suit
& her hair is tied up          She is so young
         The sand bleached     photo ink almost melting off the paper

          Nana renovates her kitchen          She redoes the floors
     the counters     tears down the wallpaper          She paints most
of it blues     covers the dark stained wood     & gets rid

of the green furniture          She hangs paintings
long lines of morning beach light          The angels
get loose & move out to the yard          They grow

roots from their spined wings & become
everything     blooming bleeding heart     a row
of pine trees     rabbits burrowed
under the aging porch

What Strength Questions  / Tammy Smith

Whether you think you need strength

or fear you don’t have enough

hardly matters when you’re stargazing,

searching the sky for a lost love.

Don’t be fooled by fullness—

even the moon goes through phases:

a sliver of light grows, then shrinks,

before the naked eye

blinks shut.

If only strength
could be lassoed
the way George Bailey promised Mary
the moon,
or pocketed like the flower petals
he saved for Zuzu.
If only strength
were all you needed
to outrun darkness or desire.

I prefer Mary Oliver’s question:
“What will you do
with your one wild and precious life?”

Strength is the soft animal
of your body’s answer.

After-Elegy / Daphne Stanford

About the first David
The one I was born to

After whose death I went

Numb, then couldn’t
Sleep, then drove to the
City of my undergraduate

Years to reclaim pieces of
Myself I believed I must 
Have left behind in some

Green canyon, forested 
Park, or basement library
Stacks. Always relegated

To basements, I was—& 
Am. Easier to dig toward
Middle Earth, further down

I’ll reach the sky eventually, 
Right? When I get there, 
I hope I’ll hear you singing.

July - Poem 28

Anatomy of an Antonym  / Clayre Benzadon

Inside the antonym,
schnapps, is an opposite lie.

Confessions are like fireworks
waiting inside its plastic bag,

heavy and combustible
at any moment.

I breathed grief and got
gummy. I wound synonyms


all over my shoulders: apple brandy.
Today, absence tasted like orange


juice, and I spilled it over
me in public, at the park,


tried inserting a straw
at its base; it splashed


in my face instead,
gesture of silent laughter.


Translate the myth
of loneliness. Say


the park is just
a stage: back,


private, an exposure,
confessional lie.

I don’t think you know this about me / RJ Ingram

My grandfather forgot my name after he asked you if you were a boy or a girl / I like cute things so there are always little bunnies & rodents & pigeons & foxkittens in my parties I’m a predictable son of a gun / Seriously / My dad was a gun / Sorry is a gun / He’s still alive today & locked in a safe with my adoption papers / I prefer blue what can I say? / Who doesn’t love a cute squirrel turtle / I don’t think you know this about me but I’m actually a nice guy / I used to get along with everyone / And you killed my rat on a boat just before it sank / And they blamed all of it on me / So no I will not let you follow me all the way to the top/ Game over.

The Context Between Waking Up & Falling Asleep / MeraBaid Kuar

Dinner in bed, lunch in bed, breakfast in passing
Baby in bed, kindergartener in bed, husband in passing
Drool in bed, sweat in bed, piss in bed, dream in passion
Isosceles triangle, perfect spiral, fingers angled, que paso?
Cramped hips, arthritic hands, eyes weighted, embattled
Wall shadows, sun strips, familiar dimension, uninvited
Kitten meows, baby babbling, household appliance
squirrel fashion, overgrown garden, gunshots?
the moans of sleep, water, cars, sirens?

surveillance / Kes Maro

i have only ever seen
a wolf in a zoo. she

was smaller than i thought
she would be, more like coyote

who yells at night
in the spongey yard. little

happens in this white lead
paint town, but there are cameras

everywhere. i keep painting
these wolves with big blank eyes

and calling them a container.
i trace shadow shapes

across every person’s face.
i start seeing the wolf’s shadow

in old vines and within an underpass
outside tydavnet, a town with one church,

one bar, a few cow fields. and in the edges
of the wetlands of a land more recently extracted,

with a few churches, a few cow fields,
a franchised coffee shop where i cannot go

outside as myself. i paint the wolf biting
off her own tongue, suspended

between leaping and getting away and lying
unnaturally, dying, with her eyes big and blank. 

It started with a phone / Azmia Ricchuito

Something that should be
a lifeline;

but what happens when
the people who are
supposed to protect you

are tired from carrying
their own grievances

and you are
just a burden?

A phone call
and suddenly
a strange man
snatches you
from your home

and you live in a box
with the other
misfit toys;

discarded like yesterday’s
news

but you will always remember it

just like it was yesterday

for all your todays and tomorrows

your brain remembers,
it plays your worst hits
on repeat in your head
and your body keeps
the score;

You: 0.
Emptiness: 1.

and you sit in the shower
crying and repeating
I’ll. 
never.
go.
back.

You will wonder
if the emptiness
won because

atoms make up
everything;

empty space —
absence is
your only
companion.

You will understand
the evolution of
Edward Nashton;

how easy it is to
mistake vengeance
for rescue;

how heroes
live long enough
to become villains

one betrayal
at a time.

someday you’ll be
the lifeline on the
other end of
the phone.

Competitive Natures  / Tammy Smith

Ignore the temptation to compete
with writers who win awards,
who have—or don’t have—
kids, kittens, corporate jobs,
fully stocked eat-in kitchens,
who dabble in iambic pentameter,
schooled in the poetics
of finer forms.

Ignore those folks, particularly writers
well-versed in politics, who can pontificate
about the perils of pollution,
fixate poetically
on domestic and foreign policy.

Someone more deeply rooted
in cleverness has already exposed
how the branches of government
entangle human nature.

Believe me,
it only gets worse.

The more you compete,
the fiercer your inner child
will fist-fight
other people’s flexes.

First-place medals adorn the chests
of those who held their breath
and puffed themselves up
long enough to stand proudest,
if not tallest,
in a long row of fledglings.

Second Monday / Daphne Stanford

Tiwesdæg is an origin word for 
The day of the week that inspired
A band fronted by Aimee Mann
In the eighties, when everyone
Sprayed Aqua Net in their hair &
Wore head to toe spandex & fish-
Nets & leg warmers & The Bangles
Were on MTV & wouldn’t it be 
Nice if it were still the eighties &
They still interviewed rock stars 
With those foam microphone
Windscreens? But it’s not the 
Eighties & Flashdance isn’t on
VHS, Beta, or cable TV tonight
So, absent a blank cassette tape,
I guess I’ll make myself a playlist 
With sides A & B because I can.

July - Poem 27

Heaven, Either Way  / Clayre Benzadon

1. I’m afraid of heaven turning backwards.

2. I’m scared of elevators without the emergency call button, ones that shake more than usual, all you can see is metal around you. Like being stuck inside solitary confinement, only more steely, with even less space. What if heaven were a small space?

3. I fear for my own life (does that make sense?)

4. The freeway looks either extremely empty or too crowded for miles. My brain can’t comprehend it, it starts to go on overdrive and panic, internal prefrontal cortex control panel has lost power and now I’m hyperventilating but I need to keep going because there’s nothing else I can do while in the middle of the road. In the middle of clouds. 

5. The anxiety before the medical professional comes in with that tray (you know the one): the slotted white plastic one, with the rubber band and the needle inside the tube, and then they tell you to relax as they suffocate, squeeze your arm to death with the light green band around your arm. 

6. I wake up with a green band around my arm, as if it were the day after a concert and I were too drunk to take it off, or I wanted to keep it on, on purpose, to show everyone I’d gone to up to the gates, they let me in, and all the angels were playing heavy metal. 

7. I existed in limbo. 

More Less Than We Could Handle / RJ Ingram

14 We teased at an extinction & flames cut our music lessons short.
13 We lied about making bright little macarons & making good on our rent & mixing earl grey into the shortbread.
12 We bought an oil rig & named her Grenadine we killed so many little frogs. Mostly by accident.
11 We were not very good to our parents. Locked them up.
10 Didn’t we?
9 We were devoid of humility bc at that point the human in us jumped from broken escalators.
8 We burned off all the grammar too not just the Oxford comma.
7 But we brought somethings back with magic.
6 We found it hard to satisfy extinction in a world after Jurassic Park.
5 We built a train & a series of stops. We put our menagerie in the boxcars. We thought we were playing a game.
4 We wasted no labor in our journey to get here.
3 We simply wanted to arrive at the end & came.
2 We didn’t expect so many more children at the end of the world.
1 We are so glad we came!

Tate & Liza rate the end of the world ︎︎︎︎

Koala / MeraBaid Kuar

Kaleidoscopal world of dreams, the scents of others don’t reach 
ornate design of this compact package wears its own perfume
perfectly comfortable, so much so that they sleep through 
every noise, change of atmosphere, they call it the itis 
the sleep that draws a heavy curtain over consciousness
just when the belly gets the time-released contents
is it the poison requiring all the body’s energy 
or the nutrients finding their travel route and final destination
we are all stuffed animals, after our favorite meal

shale / Kes Maro

i split a piece of shale
between my fingers, easy,
and it feathers in three.
the same as cooked fish.
the same delicate shape
fans out in tones
on the ocean’s surface, mirroring
light and uneven seabed.
the flesh, the rock, the sea,
meet the way each fiber
in the kittihawk’s feather layers
over the others and how each
feather layers over the others
and how the wings fit against
the body and how they split
the air when flying. the shape of
pressure is the shape of surviving
it. i split open my flesh flaking
like the fish’s, the seabed’s every
fiber layered over the others
and over the others again.

Foreign Body: Unidentified Foreign Object (UFO) / Azmia Ricchuito

My first home
was a strange
landscape
in which I lived
as a foreigner—
a parasite;

I was evicted
by a scalpel
and this was
supposed to be
freedom.

It was a trap,
and maybe that’s
why hearts grow
behind prisons
of bone

as old as the cosmos.

I wandered,
never lost…

my grandfather
showed me the
North Star

but he never
told me

that it wasn’t
the only way
home;

that sometimes
the thing that
beams you up

doesn’t
carry you away.

It wraps its arms
around you;

tenderly
to welcome you
home

behind a fortress
where every heartbeat
echoes your name.

You are no longer
a traveler;

a space cadet.

You have found
your place among
the stars;

the place where
you belong.

My Humble and Sincere Regrets to Taylor Farms Iceberg Lettuce  / Tammy Smith

I can’t recall a time when you were this
contaminated—part of an outbreak
now reaching four more states:
Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania—
nine in all. I can’t escape
your tainted image all over the news,
shredded and chopped, reduced
to dates and codes to check before I eat you.
Even Walmart pulled you from its shelves.
Even Taco Bell is forgoing you altogether.

Before now, I never imagined
you could carry a parasite.
I picture wasps paralyzing
grasshoppers, laying eggs inside them,
then burying them. Who knew
I was so susceptible, so dependent
on prewashed greens stuffed
inside zip-top bags? Too busy
to prepare broccoli or cauliflower,
cut up carrots, mushrooms, peppers
collard greens, a head of lettuce,
or rinse everything under running water?

I should be ashamed I don’t cook,
embarrassed I buy my produce
at the nearest convenience store.

But I digress. The warnings keep spreading.
Forgive me, but I don’t want to spoil

my summer weekend, my twilight
gin and tonic, my Sunday morning coffee and book
by ending up tethered to the toilet.

It’s Too Early to Cry / Daphne Stanford

Today & the sky is a thick haze 
Of wildfire in the foothills.. 
Sun a red orb in a smoke-grey
Sky. All the gulls are hiding in
Trees or staying low, closer 
to water for oxygen. Cluster 
behind my right eye leveling me
To my bedroom, grey curtains 
To grant me the illusion of peace, 
Safety, comfort—despite my not
Having seen you for more than a
Week, now. Epson salt baths help
As do kittens, as does shutting my
Eyes & allowing myself to escape
This waking life for two brief hours.

July - Poem 26

Roadside Litany  / Clayre Benzadon

Along the road-
side, wildflowers
   for miles. 

Butterfly weeds,
Jack-in-the-pulpit,
Pink Evening Prime-

rose. I take a yellow rain-
coat out of my glove 
compartment, pull over. 

If I walk too close
to edge, I’ll slip in these
shoes. I was hoping

to find bees and butter-
flies in the middle
of rain. Feist’s “I Feel

it All” plays in my head,
and now, I feel even 
younger than usual. 

Tomorrow, I’ll go out
in my wrinkly raincoat 
again, but this time bring

along a magnifying glass.
I’ll find surprise, perhaps
a caterpillar or beetle chewing

through the leaves. I’ll find
comfort in the after-rain
space, feel lighter as I stumble

along the road-
  side, wild.

The Empty Stables Of Fuchsia City: 
Historical Landmark / RJ Ingram

Janine freed the caged animals of Fuchsia City / She put an end to leash laws & psychological cruelty / When it was Janine’s turn to pay the check she’d slam a dagger into a deck of cards & bet against the hearts / Janine turned the hunting & poaching facilities into a nature preserve / Welcomed every drippy case from inky salamanders to baby nurses who have lost the stones they care for in their kangaroo pockets / Janine covered her whole city in a swamp to drive the locals out & her gambit worked / She was all alone in her ninja jammies between cases of Pinkenberry & Pokerus with the rhinoceroses when a knock awoke her to Sabrina on the threshold / Carrying her lavender foxcat through the endless trials of Victory Road / Swamp weary but ready to talk Sabrina cut the chit chat as was her custom / The facts were Erica was killed & something was controlling her either from the other side / Or within her / A Schrodinger’s Sister / Either already cursed or about to be.

Founded 1996 years after the train last stopped here / See More?

Lineage / MeraBaid Kuar

You don’t need a reason to come over
the porch is damp, the ants are busy
I clip sweet potato greens and red clover
I give you the biggest cucumber easy
to do, but not simple, anxiety rivers 
around, I must measure up to whoever
gave you the best cucumber you've ever
you give me 3 tvs in one day, the water
pressure has improved but I’m still 
afraid to drink from the tap, there’s fever
going around, pain on the roof of my mouth
a new baby has joined the family, 
I don’t ask her name, they don’t need 
names yet, not until they come over
all the way, to the living and bring us
a little over to the river of the womb again.

invest in plastic futures now ! / Kes Maro

when there are no more
maple trees & wild

strawberries. no more
moose, black bear, deer. no

more wild flowers or
honey bees, and clean

water. it will be
us & mosquitoes

blood hungry. we will
sit in our limbless

plastic glory, sex-
-less & my lips will

not move but i will
say to you, darling,

its not the end of
the world, not yet.

RIP Kurt Cobain. You Would Hate 2026 / Azmia Ricchuito

Is anyone else
tired of dreading
tomorrow?

The guilt of American
gluttony
is all-consuming.

I have food,
clean water,
a roof over my head—

who am I to struggle
with so much sadness
when people would kill
for my life?

I understood Kurt Cobain
when he wrote,

“the sad little, sensitive,
unappreciative Pisces,
Jesus man. Why don’t
you just enjoy it?

I don’t know!”

Am I also just
an “erratic, moody baby”?

Or am I, too,
incapacitated
by a burning,
nauseous stomach?

There is so much
to be sickened by—

American dollars
committing genocide,

the obscene luxury
of looking away.

Misery loves company,
so why am I
so alone?

Tonight, I’ll do
what everyone
who hates tomorrow does:

I’ll try to sleep well,
but probably won’t.

I’ll ask God
for forgiveness

and try again
in the morning,

as if somehow
things will be different.

Mageirocophobia  / Tammy Smith

I never learned to cook.

My mother never taught me,
never prepared me
for ordinary living.

Growing up, my family’s meals arrived
in folded white cartons
with wire handles
or Styrofoam boxes.

Delis passed for diners.

Pizza Hut was our family’s village.

It took me years
to discover what foodies
already knew:

Mickie D’s and IHOP
hardly count
as eating out.

I still don’t know
how to peel vegetables
or cut fruit
so it looks pretty,
respectable—

dainty and delicious,
arranged on a platter
when company comes.

I rarely turn on the stove,
even less the oven.

I’m afraid I’ll start a fire,
burn everything
I’ve worked so hard to build—

another rock bottom.

Now I take Wegovy,
the highest dose,
to curb my appetite
for everything sinful
and forbidden.

Still, I crave
what my mother never gave me,
what she never taught me
to make for myself.

Who knew something
as simple as kitchen smells
could sharpen
into stomach pain?

It would be easier to lie,
to claim I have allergies,
than to admit
I am terrified to cook—

and even more terrified
I will gain back
everything I lost.

Letter from La Piscine / Daphne Stanford

In which Jane Birken seduces an older man without meaning to, or perhaps she did, who can say who is prey, predator, conquest, angel—what is an angel, anyway? A construct? Figment of the cosmos? Oh, aren’t we all cosmologists, now? Jellyfish, tentacle, poisonous even after death. Mortality only contains so much before smarting, after the venom grips quadriceps, hamstrings. Close your eyes, plug your nose. Hold your breath. Keep holding. Underwater, all is silence.

July - Poem 25

Good Ol’ Days / Clayre Benzadon

Today I dye my hair blue again—
haven’t worn that color, era, since 2020.
I’ve learned it’s ok to not be so well in the brain.
Whenever I visit Franklin, I come back to my child, plenty
good, full of god and fear. I miss the old band days
but don’t miss our fights. Taylor York, I love you to death
but we need to take a break. “Good Ol’ Days” says it all, in breaths.

Sabrina / RJ Ingram

I wrote this by candlelight if you can believe that.
Mother warned me not to do this too many times if you can believe that.

My memory’s running tepid was I the tall one or was I the fawn?
I can hardly remember my name anymore but I bet you can believe that.


The one who attacked me she was a mother too.
A groundhog wearing her own mother’s skull & believe that proven rumor I do.


Sabrina I know you to scoff at the word mother yourself.
But also I believe your loyalties are maternal by nature & I swear it to be true.


We buried her son & wrapped his crushed skull with terrycloth
She had every right to throw his bones at me you’ve gotta believe that to make it true.


But that poor lost Lieutenant converted the entire lighthouse
Into a morgue & I truly believe that


Something parasitic must have found its way into my hair as he carried me out around his shoulders.
I can’t believe that thing he buried within me exhumed itself say it isn’t true.


Sabrina please tell me my body’s not being controlled by a mushroom
Even though the fungi in the Undergloom tease in whispers that my nightmares ring true. Your Sister, Erica Goodbye

Unwritten Letter Between Handmaids / MeraBaid Kuar

What is a last name really
just a way to acknowledge a connection
I took for granted, the modern convention
to follow a name through history
because history sometimes hops through
time and hoops and loops around 
upending shapeless tradition like naming
patterns, and sometimes people in pockets
of humanity, defy the norms for their own 
reasons and I keep the names I’ve learned
from the old world, front of mind– doodled
paisleys all over my perception of each 
personality, so when you're called ofglen
I only conjure that retelling when necessary
when I see you, I remember all the Emilys
I knew before and that is how I know
the classy badass you are underneath 
the blood red cloak of oppressive times.

The Snake At The End of The World Says, “New York or Nowhere” / Kes Maro

I have walked the length of two
continents twice. I have slept

on a sandbar between two rivers.
There are always two rivers,

at the beginning and so there will be
at the end. Two rivers, two eyes, a two-sided

scale, when one dies, the other soon follows.
When I ingest the nuclear waste emptied

into these, the final pair of rivers, the end
of civilization, the path of my walking

will unfurl as a massive serpent and it will open
it’s jagged maw and chew.

You Changed Me for the Worst / Azmia Ricchuito

The nights that I spend
overthinking everything
I did and everything I said

knowing I couldn’t save you
but you’ll still accuse me of
leaving you for dead

even though God knows
that I lost pieces of me
I’ll never get back

I lay awake and
cry at night because
I know you’ll never change

And I miss the
version of me
who wasn’t used to
all this pain

I’ve never stayed
anywhere where
I’ve had to beg

and even though
we share blood

no, we’re not the same

I’m a writer but you
rewrite history

and your books
are all fake
and if I could,
I’d burn them all

Gave myself papercuts
and bled all over
your pages
trying to write
a happy ending

but I’m not like them
and I can’t pretend

that my heart’s not broken
and there’s no Band-Aids
you emptied
the medicine cabinet

like you always do.

The Etymology of Suffering  / Tammy Smith

It originates inside a wound,
shipwrecked before language—
or perhaps it goes back to the womb
wet and slippery, tangled in the dungeon-dark,
clinging to waste.

Every family in pain
resembles a Greek tragedy.
In Latin, to suffer means
to bear from beneath,
to carry what has been placed upon us.

Then comes parental Pig Latin,
rooted in bedroom-and-kitchen speak—
the vernacular of family diction,
where pain and suffering
become one sacrifice.

But who can disremember
the smoky smell of sacrifice
permeating a parent’s master bedroom,
where there is nowhere left
to hide from devils?

When Your Mother Is a Curandera / Daphne Stanford

And she doesn’t know it, her saying you need to eat more thyme feels like nervous system mapping. The way thyme leaves spring from the root, Bonsai-like, attempting to graft woody stems onto hair follicles as you brush wrist &  forearm against the green of its tiny. Before lowering your face into the thick of its sprouting to taste one sprig more, you open your mouth.

July - Poem 24

Telemachus’ Letter / Clayre Benzadon

-inspired by Louis Glück


Dear father,
your twenty-year

absence has taught me
how to discern blood

from beggar. Even then,
one should always give

to the needy. So I gave you
my bow and we killed all

the aggressors. Here’s
where the story turns:

I end up marrying Circe, whom
you have several children with.

Mother ends up marrying Circe’s
son, Telegonus, and Telegonus

kills you with a stingray-spined
spear. It’s all very incestuous,

as these types of stories go.
My name means “far off battle”

while Telegonus means “far off off-
spring”. It all makes sense, really.

I fought so he could live.
I lived so I could beat fate.

Lost & Found / RJ Ingram

, . / , . , . / . / . / , . / [ ] / & &  / . ,  /  / .  / , : , , . / , , & . / , & . / .

No reward
for completion

self portrait as childhood construction site / Kes Maro

i had a name like a pine branch bound
to the root of a berry bush. like a nail
through a tree. i grew around something
with a meaning between gift of god
and belief in the lord, neither of which
was under our roof. small houses
built from broken glass, lifted
grafts of moss and sticks in mud
in the shadow of a big house
broken into little dwellings.
i was convinced i was a changeling.
i collected acorn cap tables, stone
walk ways. in the unfinished basement,
on a pink plastic vanity, dirty
and color turning, offerings carefully
arranged. coins found in dirt
and my father’s dresser, yellow
cakes made from children’s book
recipes calling for at least twelve
eggs and honey, green glass with dull
edges. somewhere between playing
fairies and worshipping them. we picked
new names and i crawled out the window
and fell barefoot, level with the exposed
foundation. the sun rarely made it that far
so the dirt was always cold. or i just
remember it in April, still a little frozen
underneath that initial layer of mud.

Dark Matter / Azmia Ricchuito

When I was a 
little girl
you told me 
when I missed you
to look at the moon
because we'd both
be seeing 
the same one.
The only stars
you see now
are at the bottom
of a bottle
empty, a void ---
you drank its
dark matter
the orange bottle
full of little round
moons
is this what they 
meant when they
asked
if you've ever
danced with
the devil in 
the pale moonlight?
I needed you to
show me that 
it was possible
to escape
damnation
because you 
were Superman
to me
but if even you 
were swallowed
by the night
how am I supposed
to escape the darkness? 

Galley Kitchen Prayer  / Tammy Smith

What kind of God gives a girl
a mother who won't cook,
refuses to speak, won’t look
at her? God bless this family’s galley kitchen:
windowless, its narrow walls painted pearly
white like a bottom row of crooked
teeth no amount of brushing can straighten.

Ode to Circe / Daphne Stanford

Who can’t be blamed for the sins of Odysseus
Or, rather, his base, mortal impulses—same as 
Any man. Who could blame him, really? It turns
Out, most of polite society. Typical: blame the
Sirens for wrecking ships, for merely singing 
Aloud their ocean cantos, vibrato so powerful
They hypnotized men’s loins & brains & bodies
Armed with nothing but silver shields & armor—
Helmets covering skulls, breastplates shielding
Throats, chests, and lungs from spears, not
Knowing what lies beneath sand, this island.