Heavyweight / Katerina Canyon
Humans are water and oil—
simply blobs of carbon
In their proclivity.
My life now has
an artificial ankle,
torn meniscus, and arthritic
joints moving out of
rhythm with the music I play
in my head—It’s the end of the world
ss we know it, and I feel fine.
One day I will fall into dust.
The night my father fell,
he was too high to stand.
It was late at night
in the Perris, California
cold desert. I wanted to leave him.
“Let him freeze to death,” I said.
My mother begged me to help him.
The day my father fell,
I was 135 pounds soaking wet.
He was 325,
but I picked him up
and carried him into our trailer.
He lived to abuse another day.
Both are dead now.
Mother in a family plot
in Wisner, Louisiana.
Father in a mass grave
in Los Angeles.
The moment my mother died
I wasn’t there, but I felt it—
a rock sitting in my belly—
crushing pain in my pelvis.
The day my father died,
I felt it, as if I had lost something.
It was like that moment
when you walk into a room
for something, but you cannot
remember what you were
looking for.
I felt lighter in that moment,
but I didn’t know why.
Humans are dust and stone—
simply bricks of carbon in
their proclivity.
Moving Into the Cosmos / Sam Calhoun
The first cool morning,
frost speckled like stars
across the glass, birds
busy learning highways
they’ll never see again.
Later, bees searching
for the cosmos blooms
taken by the cold, frantic,
finding only the snow aster
wedged like star clusters
by the gate.
Soon the ice ribbons will erupt
like receipts across parking lots,
when the world gets too cold.
Soon I’ll retreat to the far corner,
my corner of the galaxy,
and slowly burn Heaven.
Cider / at/om
I look up a kitchen witch recipe
for apple cider, I clarify I don’t
want a love potion I just want
my home to smell like I love it.
I couldn’t go out to the orchard
this year. I couldn’t force my tired
legs over the small hills and roots.
I could not pay the heightened
prices for the farmer allowing me
to pick even the smallest bag of apples.
I don’t know how much if effects
the magic of it all when I buy the
apples at the grocery store between
errands. When I plug in the crockpot
I wonder when I started to prefer my
spell work be countertop rather than stove.
I lay down little gods around me,
I close my eyes and I chop and I
measure and I declare my intents
aloud and I cast them into my
crockpot cauldron and I can see it all
become something new.
I can smell the spell simmering
throughout the entire house, the
bones of my home rest, the walls sing out
praise of the goddess Hestia.
The hearth lights itself.
My blankets smell like
brown sugar and honey.
no words / Ellen Ferguson
Though Isabelle joked she was
(Her mom) married to
(Even if) she were kidding
The gift brides give
Early bestowed upon her
She really was
Though it would have been great
from here / Brett Gastineau
the room smells of stale tobacco and
yesterday’s bad luck
the radio is busted or playing a song
about goodbye
and I’m sitting on the edge of the cot
looking at my hands
calloused and stupid
trying to figure out what it was all for
people talk about finding meaning
like it’s a dollar bill dropped on the sidewalk
you bend down, you pick it up, you buy a
cup of coffee
but it’s never like that
you reach out in the dark
hoping for skin, hoping for a pulse, hoping
for anything
that doesn’t taste like ash
the more I touched the more I learned and
the more I broke
and now there are pieces of me scattered
in motels from here to nowhere
leaving fingerprints on things that don’t
care
you try to love a woman or a city
or the way a stray cat looks at you
through a chain-link fence
and everything turns to dust or bills or
silence
pour another glass
let the world burn down in its own grease
we’ll sit here and watch it
until the light goes out
and nobody remembers our names
Sweaty surprise / Joy Johnson
Amidst the ungodly unrest of forests
On fire, hotter than Hades summers,
Flash flood warnings and hail looming so large,
I find my way to tragic Greek chorus
And moan in my existential gutters:
I know sorrow profound with my whole heart.
But yesterday I woke to a red cat
Lounging smartly against my sweaty arm.
Jackson regarded me and I, wonders!,
Had forgot for a moment all my angst,
Knew peace.
II: living room / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
grandfather who never got to be
a grandfather made these tables,
chairs, sideboard and cabinet by hand
cabinet-maker, a job, an art
& when they met, my Nonna
had already made a handcrafted round doily that fit on top of his round table
after he died, attempts to save what seemed precious
Nonna lined up knicknacks on the bay window’s curve
one couch, one chair encased in clear vinyl
against sticky grandkids’ hands
could we have saved him, tucked away & treasured
rather than the upholstered seating
THAT RED DOOR / H.T. Reynolds
her red nails
that baptism
her jaded lips…
if the light were to stay green
would that mean she will smile
tonight—heavy with its echoes,
a day gone septic
but it’s a blessing
without consent—a hail Mary
etched along her breast
bone, that curvature of her rib
plucked and planted like a fig
satiating his appetite
that red door
her stripped nails
that alibi
her faded eyes…
Cluster of Rain Drops / Gabriel Phillips
When I think of leaving, I think of the portable drum. How I put the portable drum into the closet. How the portable drum is in a closet. When I think that gathering sounds measure the same as words, I recognize the lack of violence within me. At least where the surface breaks there is tension.
It would be a wait longer than waiting, waiting to know that waiting has a value. Or that some unspeakable treasure lies in the dead hands of a coffer. I am not neglect, and at the very least this is thankful. There are tribes of impatient winds circling blank pages. Pages with directions that are unfollowable but promise, again, a treasure underneath a since-removed ‘X’.
A good place to rest is like a blanket of snow on a bed of ocean. The promise of demise. Peaceful. Glorious and romantic enough that stars would sacrifice the heavens to live among the crabs as seashells. But then the stars would see unremarkable me sleeping and understand a mortal regret which would send their madness into an unholy defiance. I’d shatter into a pillar of salt to know that there was peace within this bed of sleep.
all that’s not nonce / Colin Sturdevant
Is when we realize
we are the waking labyrinths
In each others body
when snow falls and fails
To be corrected by the law
every plum a distinct tune
Kiss the gun goodnight
lock it up so the ringing stops
& a crying classmate wakes
to the complexity he is inside
