Dead Boys I Have Known: To My Second Dead Lover / Joanna Grant
It was a hole in the heart
that finally took you—
a pinprick in a valve
torn loose without warning
nothing stopping the flood
of hot arterial blood and all
the way over here on this
exile’s shore I felt it—first
silence then wave-crash and then
at last that long-drawn guttering roar
Early onset / Judit Hollos
First they say it is just due to anxiety
struggling with the faltering blues of my memory
you have endured so much stress lately
exams, work and raising a kid all at once,
no wonder it finally took its toll on you…
second childhood
the rising sun’s reflection
in a glacier kettle
Slowly, I begin to mix up meanings
if they bear the slightest similarity
or start with the same letter
idioms dressed up in wrong order
names hanging on the tip of my tongue.
little deaths
a chestnut twig’s shadow
bursts into spring
A couple of forgotten blossoms later
emails abound with missing sentences
words wrapped up in wrong sequences
a camel that breaks the straw’s back
a deuteragonist in one’s own story.
reversed waterfall
I fill empty hourglasses
with the life I lost
Figures of Speech / Zach Hauptman
Witness me–
like a brick to the face
I am no Mad Max, I exacerbate
the domination, great,
vast, gaping abominations that lurk in
the dark of my eyes;
Watch me–
dropping off the continental shelf into waiting
carnage, the harm that
I’ll do to your ego, popped
like a balloon, so beleaguered,
I see your grimace;
Come closer–
This gangly child is doing all that.
Fat fingers, like Hansel and Gretel,
I am shifting, using
my finger bones for grifting,
lying in wait to create something more or less to taste.
Shuffle on–
This mortal coil is greased, oily with tallow
Let me watch you slip like Sisyphus
allow me to spit superlatives
spurring on your descent,
id and ego no longer a nascent dream–
This old theme? I am the monster who kills you.
black canyon of the gunnison / Brice Maiurro
there is no edge
to this round earth
but there are edges
margins where
a pair of fragile legs
might cautiously approach
& gaze down upon
the evidence of universes
before us
the jagged rock reveals
carved faces elders
familiar from
my most intimate
of inner visions
you cannot weigh something
like a canyon–
& it will not weigh you
there is a wondrous calling
in its temperament
to let be your being
in the spiraling story of now
the canyon begs me to ask
how does the world change
it seems to crack open
only in tender moments
where the hard earth manifests
its own slow erosion
it lifts up rising towards the stars
then in time falling like the stars fall
transmuted through the pressure
of unfathomable fire
& down below
far beyond my human inquiries
at the very bottom
of this lithic narrative
freshwater runs
along the chasm
from here to
its own end
lays down green life
along its soft path
there is nothing
without everything
conspiring
there is a concern for time
least of all
where it has proven
so abundant
My Therapist Asks What Are My Intentions for the Summer / Kimberly O’Connor
In the summer of 2025 I shall drink wine.
I shall in the afternoon pour the wine
(white, Sauvignon Blanc
from a pale green bottle with a turquoise label, like the sea)
into a dishwasher-sparkling glass
and I shall place the glass in the icebox.
This summer of 2025 I shall call
the refrigerator the icebox.
The pale wine in the glass shall chill
in the icebox and the glass too shall become cold.
This summer I shall walk while the wine rests in the icebox
to the library and bring home an armful of dust.
I shall open the umbrella and sit in the shade
listening to the dust sing.
And when the time comes I shall
for an instant think of prisons. The sharpness of blades of various knives. My lost mother. Airforce One. Hanging chads. Ozone. Venlafaxine. Sirens. Cyborgs. Grated ginger. Ticks. What I would gather as the wildfire arrives and
raise the glass to my lips.
Grandma’s Sandwich / Michael Schad
She would roll each bologna piece
into a ‘cigar’ and then place it gently
on the bread, it floated on the bread,
and then she would butter one side
of the roll, place lettuce on top of the butter
and then a thin slice of cheddar cheese.
She would then complete the sandwich
by combining the top and bottom halves
and then cutting it in half;
she moved with grace,
yet each stroke was a dignified
way to show her grandson love.
Ode to Her Endless Returning / Kashiana Singh
all her dreams, unravel into cradle-songs
his arrival splits her sky—storm-laced, she opens
laughter, deep and laboring, bellows through her bones
she swells, river-borne, rushing into herself anew
each child a tide, pulling the edges of her
backward, forward—grief and wonder braided
he falls from her body, a deluge of syllables
naming her again, not mother, not girl,
but something older than either
beneath the skin, light stirs in freckled silence
desire coiled like dusk on the horizon—
not of flesh, but of memory: who she was
before the splitting, before the gathering
he reaches for her gnarled hand, shaped
by lullabies and laments—vowels tumble,
half-formed, sacred—each word
a grain of her sifted into time
she dies gently, again and again,
beneath the everchanging poem
of blood and milk and breath
reborn in the rhythm—
not of endings,
but of openings
Because / Elizabeth Wolf
Because I survived
I must speak out;
Because I survived
I must blend to pass.
Because I have endured
months in your wards and
hours crawling the floors of welfare offices,
stared through plate glass windows of restaurants
hungering in the streets,
I have seen the naked bones
of society’s fortress.
Because I have emerged, risen from ashes
earned degrees by day, working
flat on my back through long groping nights,
have learned to walk and talk and
dress like you, to carry credit cards
and expense receipts,
I must blind myself to my past.
Because I have been scarred
I must be a revolutionary.
Because I have defied your narrow expectations
I burn bright with the power of joy.
Because a beacon shows others the way
to be light: to dare, not only to beam dreams
but to fight to make them come true.
