August - Poem 20

I’m not balding / Zoe Berger

I’m just getting more head, reads the shirt I’m wearing, 
which makes you giggle, which reminds me 
we’re both on hair-loss medication, which brings up 
how my mother said she’d recognize us on the street 
by our matching whiskers, which makes us snort and start 
and roll onto our backs with our bellies up—
two stray dogs, following the smell of blood. 

Fracture  / Ashley Howell

Bones break and heal and then we forget they were ever broken, forever changed inside us and yes, you can say the same for hearts what a silly, lovely analogy for the thing that calls us out of ourselves love and heartbreak-heartache-heartsick I walk again on my broken ankle my arm healed after the kid pushed me off the jungle gym and I don’t think about it until my elbow hurts as I age or I need to balance on one foot but I think about how love broke me every day, yes, every day, my love

Fractal / Dahhee Chung

If I stare at my garden for days and weeks, every morning,
Will I understand this reality? 
Stare at the dried up blooms ready to move into the cycle of dying,
Bright baby leaves play merry-go-round beneath their elders,
A crown of paper white and dead brown flowers. 
The same bee circles its path between the third and fourth plant
Back and forth, while. 
Sprouts all look the same until they’re grown,
Like babies. 
If I stare at baby Pharaoh sleeping and count his lashes,
Will I unlock the mystieries of life? 
His breathing rhythmic,
Still down to his belly,
At night his pose matches his daddy’s.
Will reason one day click?
My eldest son  told me once,
I didn’t choose to be born,
You chose it for me,
So you’re responsible for why I feel bad. 
Can I also blame my parents for his melancholy? 
How long should I stare at the patterns before the grand pattern makes sense?

Kemp day 20- It’s Like an Owl Daydreaming He’s a Kingfisher / Ash Kemp

Which is to say, days go by without human contact. 

Days to go buy canned goods are few and far between. 

Which is to say, our stores are running low. 

The stores are below ground, hard to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for, or who. 

A king fishes in a rotten pond. 
Which is to say, I don’t have time for daydreams anymore. 

Time is running low, or down, or out, maybe. 
Maybe it was never there at all. 

I did everything all the way / Hannah Page

I smoked
each cigarette to
the acrid nub, brought
men crashing
to their knees with
the gravity of
the Colosseum
crumbling or my favorite
scheme unsewing.

Sometimes it means 

losing the
thread. Backtracking
blindly, selecting
different triggers. Pick
your battles, darling.

So much
anchored in the space
between my keystrokes
and you 

sleep safe and 

protected beside
me – my poetry
raining from my lips
and fingers, blossoming
like ink on our mattress.

Prometheus / PF Potvin

when you’re old
enough & finally see
the movie, study how
it opens at the same
waterfall in the photo
I left on your desk
with my papers
years ago when we
used it for changing
diapers & your river
washed the ink from
my black pants, green
wool sweater while
I sat crosslegged, eyes
closed in the rim
roar of Europe’s largest
prize before it all
crumbled & we found
ourselves swept
over the brink
onto rocks below
where next lives waited
in the dark scars
of eddies for a spark

Listening to Jeff Buckley in the car /  Janette Schafer

burning up my expensive gas
but I just finished a good parking lot
poetry session, wrote about 
remembered kisses, encountered bears,
how I’m still here after so many 
close calls. Start the car,

the engine turns, Jeff Buckley is next
in the music queue, “Lover, You Should
Come Over.” I dare you not to listen,
not to give that voice and song your
full attention while you are on earth

and he is not. Think of that person you
wish for. Let the gas burn. You can
refill your gas tank. You can’t 
refill time. 

An Eye in a Jar   / Kate Thuma

Inside the tree that held
a nest that rested on branches
becoming pages,
I’ve held the memory
of so many eggs hatching
in my hands
behind every poem
that’s taught me how
to be alive.
Another reason crows bring gifts
to people near them —
they can see with an eye in a jar
inside the book I pressed fingerprints
into in the Athenaeum Drum,
remembering its childhood home.

August - Poem 19

Cantor’s Theorem / Zoe Berger

when it began / no one thought to start counting / as in every set of numbers / contained another set of numbers / and so on / forever / didn’t matter if no one was looking / no / nobody kept scor

Monaco  / Ashley Howell

There’s a street in Denver
That reminds me of the East
Big trees and old houses

I dream of living in each house
Each life a new chapter of mind
And heart I listen to a song:

“It’s nice to hear your voice again”
“I like the way you say my name”
I wonder if the me in these houses

Also loved you

There Will Be Time to Murder and Create / Dahhee Chung

after T.S. Elliot

I take my vacations in spoonfuls each day,
Change the scope of eternity into one single day.
Eight to one, four days a week,
An episode can last up to an hour, each one.
Limit sleep to six hours tops,
Break fast at noon,
White rice measured two cups in the cooker,
Washed three times,
Five minutes to rest, thirty minutes cooked, 
Ten minutes rest while
Watering plants with the rice water.
Delicately scoop and fold the rice fluffy, not molded to the pot, but
Steaming hot topped with a silky six minute egg.
Sustenance in eight spoonfuls. 
The remaining minutes sitting, 
      scrolling, scrolling, scrolling
 Knowing time is up and flying out the door,
“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons”
Stirring the cup though it’s black through and through. 
Otherwise go stir crazy knowing
I’ll never have time
Past the hours of the afternoon,
Each day a repetition of alarm clocks and snooze,
Hit one, two, three times. 
Vacation done. 

New Release / Ash Kemp

The perfect book just came out for you today!
Thrilling, compelling, heart-pounding, page-turning,{insert line skip} word mix
                                                          wait

  is this ai?

Practical Magic / Hannah Page

For Shevy

They say love isn’t easy.
But it’s like falling
asleep – waking up to your
warm breath on my
cheek, your overgrown
tousle spread on your pillow
beside me at 3am and I
rustle up string
cheese with the hot sauce
you keep in ready supply for
me or a strawberry muffin
dunked in the milk
your post-surgery body is
just allowed to carry now
that you picked up on
sale from CVS when you
filled my medications with
yours today. And I never
sent for you (that’s the best
part, truly). The spells,
the anchors I cast over lovers
past – They dissolved
when your downturned
eyes pinned me beneath
that subway sign and all the
fated tragedies became
my favorite stories.

Humane Society / PF Potvin

eyes enter the room
white lab with blue
pouncing
chomping
balls to bits then.
snap

back into hallways another.
show begins with black.
& white shivers
each trial a match.

stick like a test.
struck hard.
on the box.
as you peer through

your mask your shakes your head
in my hands

That which feeds us /  Janette Schafer

We like to believe
we make our own food—
but what if independence
is a failure to notice 
what feeds us? 

We are heterophytes dining on
photographs, memories,
conversations. 

Basking in light from
forests, myths,
lovers, scripture.

Poems pretending
to rise unannounced. 

A HAIKU   / Kate Thuma

Ear to my eyelid,
I can see what you’re hearing —
synesthesia loop.

August - Poem 18

untitled  / Ashley Howell

we came, 

made. made.

 admitted

we[‘]re humbly made.

made. continued.

sought
having.

Poltergeist (haiku) / Dahhee Chung

Someone is whistling
A haunting tune heard throughout
Three blind mice, slowly.

Dead Languages Sing to One Another / Ash Kemp

after Christina Gosnay

I hardly have a formal education
in language, meter, or rhyme. 
I can only describe and observe and occasionally meditate on this beautiful world.
If dead languages sing to each other,
wouldn’t you like to make some harmony?
A rhythm between us—
across oceans and boulevards—
songs of want and wander, awe and despair. 
Every dead language eventually evaporates into thin air. 
Who can find the time 
to make a meager rhyme
Stand the test of time?

Anne / Hannah Page

Invisible ink
revealed in her blood after
lifelong research in

living. Grandmother
awoke pen in hand – bursting
with ink and people,

places, things to re-
animate in black and white.
In her head, movies

in sepia, in
black and white. And in her heart,
ineffable light.

Praising La Jument / PF Potvin

You may have seen it. The man with the orange winter beanie. Some might say sailor. Some keeper. Others crazed. But it’s clear he’s outside the lighthouse door. And the colors may have been different or maybe it wasn’t a hat at all, hard to tell sometimes from the angle, a straight-on shot, center frame, blue waterwalls curling around as he stands in the middle, staring straight through the lens, which may have been mounted or held, but must have been snapped via copter in that pre-drone era, a day after he’d radioed for help and surfaced after hearing the whirling but realized it wasn’t his ride, so spun and flashed back through the door, just as the walls gave way and came down clapping.

We called them fireflies /  Janette Schafer

“The lightning bugs were out last night,
just past the gloaming, before the night sky
whisked the light away.”

—Byron Hoot

On that trail before midnight
when I could not sleep,
near the swamp I once 
befriended,
a bit of cosmic magic—

The sky, spotless black—
the stars reached down 
and joined the fireflies,
the two light sources touching

beneath a bright gibbous moon.
I laid on my back in the wet field,
shut off my flashlight, watched
as the two strands of light—
the mating bugs, the too-low stars,

reached out to one another,
joined hands, swung them back
and forth in reckless embrace.

Sometimes when I remember,
it still pierces me, that dancing 
light, swirling en pointe above
my head, my clothes gloriously

ruined in the wet grass. 

UNTITLED   / Kate Thuma

I can compel my heart 
to beat differently for you –  
marshaling the muscle 
and triggering forming neurons
to link a wish to a maneuver. 

I want my blood 
to signal your arrival 
and rush through veins 
and arteries and ventricles 
fast enough it forces goosebumps 
out of my arms. 

My blush is every cell, 
at the same time, 
reaching to touch you.

August - Poem 17

Heat / Zoe Berger

What can I say. I was young 
It was hot
The goat outside yelling 
Sounded a bit like a girl I knew
Who cares if the boat driver wanted to fuck me 
I didn’t do it but I did do worse for less 
I had lemons for eyes 
I turned months into men
A dark sky was a blanket to tear through
Something to kick my feet out from under

memory   / Ashley Howell

passion only stays as long as desire
and ghosts of friends only linger
when the mind calls or nights alone

i suppose we are the ghosts of yearnings
and while mountains shift with each step,

and each step melts in snow,
and each body moves to clay,
clay reforms to mountains

and i suppose i’ve lost control
boots sliding in mud

Monophasic Sleeper / Dahhee Chung

I took a nap today
No dreams 
The heatwave,
Taught two classes, 
Took a heated sculpt class for the cherry on top,
Last night’s double feature
Slasher films and fog,
Two hundred fifteen unchecked messages,
Eleven thousand seven hundred eighteen unopened emails,
And wedged between the breeze from my window and
The oscillating fan at the foot of my bed,
My little boy running in and out between consciousness,
“Mommy are you ok?”
Downing the ice cold water from my emotional support water bottle,
Gurgling from the straw, “I’m done, fill me up.”
“Mommy are you ok?”
“I’m done, trying to fill up.”

But I’m Just a Frog / Ash Kemp

The pond is full of sound and fury,
but I’m just a frog. 
I see them across the clearing
leaning closer, closer—
She cups his tiny cheek and pecks him 
right on the lips!
A blinding light,
And then…
I don’t know what I was doing. 
I’ve forgotten who I am. 
Where is my mate 
Do I have any children?
Chirps and caws,
reeds swaying, a heavy sigh escapes me,
I see the two unfamiliar people walking hand in hand
out of the meadow. 

Arts & Crafts / Hannah Page

One of my ex
best friends taught
me how to apply
press-ons with super
glue rather than nail
glue because then
my coffin-shaped
fakes would hold           up
for a month rather
than two weeks max
like all the sets
promised on the box.
My sharpest
pinky nail unpeeled
from concealed flesh
and nub on the day
she cut me out
like vinyl letters on her Cricut:
messily. Without regard
for proper borders.
My body is still a craft
project but I buy
proper supplies.

Beyond the Field / PF Potvin

when coyotes sing
the dog searches the house for
babies in blankets

finding only kids
he lowers his back and pulls
hair from the Barbies

but stops when someone
in the kitchen barks his name
and whistles his song

Sensei /  Janette Schafer

The way I see blades of grass
has awakened. I hear the crackle
as they emerge through the dermis 
of the ground.  Can you hear that
music? Feel their green tips stretch
towards the light. How each sweet
tender green nib delights in, makes
love with liminal dawn-water. Oh,
I never knew. No, I never knew. 

BRAIN ROOMS   / Kate Thuma

The feeling 
of sending my heart
outside my body 
and letting it make 
a safe room 
to be free in.

This is how I built a new brain room. 

It didn’t have a door, it had veins. 

The door didn’t open, it bled. 

And I filled 
every corner and crack 
with softness. 

And sounds bounced off 
the padded walls 
and back into my body 
in echoes.

August - Poem 16

Sailboats / Zoe Berger

Yawl
Sloop
Schooner
Cutter
Ketch
Smack
Junk
Dhow 
Carrack
Frigate
Cog
Pink
Snow 
Brig 

Can you believe these are all types of sailboats 
Can you imagine loving something so much 
you use up all the letters naming them 

august   / Ashley Howell

tell the truth to the ocean
drink each other like you want to drink tides

until you are all tree
swallow each other like bags of saccharine and dopamine

make a list like red waves
roll your words with her tongue like wet salt

or only foundations
shiver your cravings like orgasm through slender toes

tell the truth to the rain
that you still aren’t well

until you are granite
release your poetry in monosyllables

oh
god 
yes

let the earth cry
even though it won’t

Grey Moth / Dahhee Chung

In the days that tigers smoked,
A primordial beast with
Black-gray wings with folds highlighted by fuzz and a peak a boo
Little flare of orange flame and monarch markings,
Eat and burrow deep from when they were like green plump finger grapes,
Gripping her finger like a snake,
Until it’s coat shines like leather,
Polished by young boys from harder times,
Still breathing before it’s time
Palpitating in it’s suit,
Like her finger pulsing to the same micro beat from the proper palmer artery pumping from the palpable heart, 
Holding on to life. 

this is what I got / Ash Kemp

when I went to the store
this is what I got
a brush
reusable paper towels 
with little daisies printed on them
a brush with the lady around the corner who looked at me like I was a ghost
baking soda
lemon oil
an oily feeling that settled on my shoulders when I tried to find one more word to say thank you, but said I’m sorry, instead
vanilla 
one small bag of candy coated chocolate 
a coating of regret for all the times I never believed in myself
when I went to the store, I got lost 
Can you help me checkout, please?

Lepidopterology / Hannah Page

At my first and only big-girl job
at a crystal shop (but make it high-end)
behind the jewelry counter hung an accent
wall of taxidermied butterflies. The bluest
wings (Menelaus blue morpho) exhibited
more natural magnetism than
the punchiest reds or yellows
something cliché about swallowtails
and fresh about enigmas, about deep
deep blue suspended
between glass
panes in shadow             box frames

Filming Danaus plexippus on your
iPhone today’s long                    afternoon
tracing its orange trajectory along
the edges of the park
where verdancy flourishes   liminally
floral sprigs pushing past
filigreed fence      trembling, alive

Night Courier / PF Potvin

we abandoned the path
with our dog choosing
our own beneath an elm’s
arms muscling clouds
across the sky and stooped
here and here and there
to balltoss returning
at dusk to the locked
car key a ghost we retraced
our steps down
gullies through fields
up slopes   over bridges
while cicadas
passed their round
singing to katydids
until the light of a jangling
bike finally cut
a hole in our waiting

Wealtheow thinks of Grendel /  Janette Schafer

I think of the “monster”
outside my window
as I lie in bed.

There was something in the
soft amber of his eyes, not fire
but marsh-anguish, as if to say—

Who could love me?

Make me worthy of love—
of its heat without burning,
its touch without fear and blood.

Why does his strength spare 
when his claw could have 
destroyed me? His hand,
gentle when it comes
so near my face.

Hrothgar snores;

I turn toward
another sleepless night—

dream of mercy
ripples—tenderness 
that hides
underground,

out of reach. 

CORVIDS   / Kate Thuma

Corvids have a kind of demonic whimsy 
achievable only 
by a creature who gifts 
perfectly round white pebbles 
with blood still on its beak.  

Keep them safe – 
They’re talismans against 
ordinary living. 

Maybe this is why 
crows can be lured 
by metals and meat: 
Thought and Memory 
are still accepting sacrifices.

August - Poem 15

Tug of war / Zoe Berger

Life is teeming around us
And still everything is embarrassing

I’m convinced my dentist hates me
Anyhow I smiled all the way through

Too bad we can’t sort of die
In an attempt I went somewhere warm

I was looking for a single source of truth 
Living is a conversation with your body that never ends 

“Hey Stanley” (Letter to a stranger) / Dahhee Chung

In corpse,
 I glimpsed your water bottle,
a Clackamette Skate Park sticker
Slapped on dead center.

I was conceived there and rode down the Pacific in Umma’s belly,
I can’t remember what I saw.

I like the dings and dents,
What do you like to do?
Yeah, I like this class too.

Sometimes, I just stare at your tattoos,
And the shadow on the ceiling
Of the little girl’s frolicking profile holding a big balloon,
“Inhale, wiggle your fingers and your toes.”
Okay, until next time.

Have You Ever Seen a Baby Vape? / Alison Henderson

It’s not like I don’t care about babies. One crawls across the living-room hardwood. Maybe I don’t want one. I know I don’t. Her mother asks, Have you ever seen a baby vape? Then they leave. Dana walks into my room and suddenly I’m not angry at all. Five women, one teenager, one baby: yelling, laughing, moving furniture while I try to nap. I didn’t sleep last night. I’m trying to sleep enough for yoga, then the fire show. Last time I tried poi, they gave me two sticks with fire on the ends. I swayed while everyone watched. It was humiliating and boring. Bella was there, so I wasn’t cynical. We had fun. I ran into Robert again. The next day or the day after, we ate Caribbean food in Santa Monica. It was authentic. I thought I liked him. At the time, I did. His house was a Sprinter van. His face five inches from mine, his bare chest against mine, he said he wanted to wait before sex. I said I hadn’t in six months. So we did. I came. He didn’t. Afterward he read me his poem. He roared and wept like a bad method actor who had cast himself. He wanted it as the closing voice-over of his film about twenty years in prison for trying to kill his wife. After that, I didn’t want to fuck again. There were still hours before curfew. He kept coming on to me. I asked for a cigarette. He said, I have a cigar for you. It was not a cigarette. Then he told me Rapunzel. The tower was what made her irresistible, he said. In the story, she lets down her hair. In mine, the hair doesn’t leave the van.

Future Acrobatics / Ash Kemp

(uplift speed poetry prompts)

limbs tangled/sheets askew/arms reaching/
pulling/taking/ accepting/ breath synced/
stuttered/sighed/moaned/a
fullness/ a space/a moment/more/
music seeps from every pore/
falling back/ out of breath/
grounded/connected/bodies/inside and out/
screen goes dark/ windows shuttered/
the VR headset back in its drawer/
until next time

Ode to a Stranger in Times Square / Hannah Page

Bedtime Wonder / PF Potvin

Under the wailing boom of sirens, she huddled in the single bed each night with her daughter as the buildings shivered, telling tales of the grandmothers and inventing what she didn’t know, and when she knew but couldn’t say, she’d squeeze her hands together until the veins danced like shadow fires and repeat, “that’s good my love, that’s the way to ask a question.”

To the woman lying down on the sidewalk /  Janette Schafer

The sidewalk feels cool against your hot cheek
you’ve spread your length out from head to toe
let people stare as they walk past, go about 
their day.  No one has stopped yet and truth be
told I almost didn’t either except that you are 
young and I am old and eventually the one who
will pick you up is never the one you want if you 
just wait for them.  Sometimes we can be angels.
Someone was an angel once for me.  Today I
thought I forgot my wings, but here they are again
right where I left them, these stunted nubs at 
my shoulders underneath my skin.  I touch the 
back of your head, say: I don’t know you—
I am here.

THE RED   / Kate Thuma

After Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present” 

Before she knew he arrived, 
the red sensed him. 
It surged forward, ungovernable, 
reaching out the tips of its fingers 
to kiss the edge of his collar 
into the exact shape and shade
as the hole hidden behind her knee. 

He loosens his legs to shake free 
the dust of love travelling in his cuffs. 
She’s silent, tethered, whole, controlled, 
even as the red leaps and screams and 
throws its severed edges wildly. 
It knows beyond knowing: 
there are too many threads between them. 
They weren’t ever meant to be 
anything but sewn together
into the most exquisite knot. 

She opens her eyes 
and a string of holy phenomena unfurl. 
The red sighs and softens, 
warm, bleeding, somehow carrying a heartbeat 
to a phantom limb. 

She still is. 
They both still are.

August - Poem 14

If I met you at the Bone Museum / Zoe Berger

I’d put my skeleton next to your skeleton
I say over dolma, moussaka, lamb, 

at the family-run Greek spot on Flushing. 
In a real matter of the heart you tell me of the grocery store with your mother, 

how your aunt bled her dry for thirty years, the flippant way 
your mother called you sister in the produce section, 

and stopped examining lemons to smile to herself, 
the same crowded grin as yours, a little passing fantasy. 

How you imagined being hers, stepping away 
from the fruit to cry. Over a beer 

you let out the real nasty stuff: 
your friends’ fathers, after prom 

when one of the boys got into your bed, 
how you walked home barefoot in the middle of the night, 

decided leaving would keep you safe 
but not clean. I want to know more of your insides 

so we go to the bone museum. There are signs pointing to cranial fractures 
labeled “Unknown Trauma”, bones sliced sideways 

and longways, exploded heads suspended 
in golden contraptions, every hard white thing 

tagged dutifully, precisely, with care 
to the original owner. I look at the lucky skulls 

all lined up in smudge-proof glass 
and I wish neither of us had skins. 

(to carry a plant)   / Ashley Howell

knit and cloth winds touching
point of hook
moss mountains thinning 
sprawling toward sky
will it hold
as chair
sits softly with 
pillow stagnant as cloud
cup clasps what will burn
to vapor 
to purity
hold firm small warrior
you carry so much

Crustless Sandwich / Dahhee Chung

Peanut Butter and Apple Jelly
Smeared to each side,
Cut the crusts,
Cracked open rambutan shells,
Sally sold sea shells by the sea shore,
Rolled some salted seaweed and rice,
Wrapped rice rolling, rolling rolling,
Three, four, five…
Containers of cashews and chips,
Crackles for your chomp,
We can crack down gizzards after school, son.

First day without holding my hand,
But the nice stranger’s.
My first teacher was Mrs Lake.

Brave and bold, but
Question marks furrow your brows and the crinkles of your nose,
A cacophony of crows cawing, a child crying,
And the harsh cough of the boy barfing.

I wonder if you’ll like your lunch. 

Loveseats / Alison Henderson

The horsehair loveseats
smell like cat piss,
even here, in the new condo
in South Florida,
where the walls are white,
the carpet beige,
everything else pink and green.

My mother sits, legs up,
on the long white couch,
watching the news,
then repeats what she hears
later as opinion,
like I didn’t hear it too.

I want to know what she thinks
when she paints,
but the canvases hold
only flowers,
pink opening into green.

I sit on a loveseat
writing by the window,
the golf course kept green
beyond the sliding glass.

Between us,

the beige ocean is vast.

They face each other,
a pair from the old house
before the divorce.

Instead of Self-doubt / Ash Kemp

After Andrea Gibson

call it wonder.
You can take it with you,
You can mold it,
Harness it for creativity,
Nurture it on nature walks
And bookstore trips.
Talk to your friend attention,
Take some vitamin hope,
Drink it down with a glass of warm acceptance.
Stay awake all night
And write what you might have dreamed.
Submission is not an ending,
But a chance to face a different direction.

Breaking / Hannah Page

We’re exposed to
violence every morning over
breakfast: a new
carousel of crime &
stupidity repetitioning through
the late afternoon until
enough fresh
dirt has been
spat through
the pipelines into the frigid
studios where putty
people wear too much or too
little fabric depending on
where. And on, a new
montage – hideously   ordinary
in the way we can’t feel
the heat of the car on
fire, the warm
blood pooling in the
A/C of the studio where
they excavate harder than
the forensic specialists
at the scene. They’re fighting
to keep alive
the heart of the
story economy – however
twisted where
it nestles
in the collective chest.

Ode to the Peanut / PF Potvin

smush you

cut you

cream you

gut you

boil you

into paste

strain you

ink you

oil you

crush you

sprinkle you

on the face

pickle you

pinch you

curry you

grind you

layer you

round the waist

coat you

blend you

candy you

press you

meat you

in that space

perking ears

flaring eyes

sniffing for a trace

widening mouth

wagging tongue

begging for a taste

Missing crow /  Janette Schafer

It’s been three weeks
since I’ve seen Chuck—
the crow that visits 
my porch.

I hope he has another
“girlfriend” feeding him
bread crusts and blueberries 
to explain his absence 

and hasn’t been swept
away by a hawk—
although sometimes,
wild things just leave you.

The robins and
a lone cardinal 
appreciate
the bounty he has
left behind. 

[6:32]   / Kate Thuma

I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. And for the five days of breakneck stillness before the six hours of frenetic frozenness, which are both as long as any lifetime. There are ways I’ve never met this stranger, but it feels truer to say I didn’t know I’d always known you. It makes sense to me now that it snowed when you first knocked, flakes dampening the sonic boom. 

You open your eyes 
And I’m instantly cosmic. 
You cry and I’m born.

August - Poem 13

Body Shop / Zoe Berger

Don’t have anything to regurgitate. 
Blinkers pulsing at the light. 

Dad’s cold in his puffy blue coat, tells me 
Living is hard but dying is harder. 

At the body shop— 
my mechanic wrings his hands, 

hopes it’s okay 
if he asks me something,

How’s your dad, give him a message, even 
the atheists are praying, okay?

After your dad died,
the neighbor took your mom’s trash out 

every week in secret. 
Kindness is just love with its work boots on. 

At the bus stop I still think about jumping. 
You know this,

understand how the metal 
would weigh on me like a blanket. 

You continue existing though I look away
which feels good

like grabbing the right key on the first try. 
You happen to me every time. 

there is no name yet;   / Ashley Howell

noun: for what you can’t hold and always carry
verb: holding what you no longer carry
adjective: as if weighted with something one used to hold
adverb: to move through weight knowing you hold what you cannot carry

No Bread / Dahhee Chung

Bought three trout for 
Ten dollars,
If Jesus could feed his people with two,
I can feed mine too,
Bellies full.

Patted dried,
Lightly salted,
Fried whole 
Till the eyes pop and the fins crisp,

Crack  between our teeth,
Fish Chips
Without the chips 

A slurry of starch
To thicken the sauce,
peppers, garlic, ginger and oil, 
Poured and served,
Ten minutes fried
Five minutes gone 
Heads, tails and all.

Catfish / Alison Henderson

Anywhere else
you’d call it a pond.

In West LA
they built a lake.

It smells of carcass,
oil and eucalyptus,
the cries of disturbed geese
and a waterfall.

Catfish.
Bullhead, sunfish,
trout.

Men in T-shirts come with rods.
I take pictures of them—
they hate that,

turn quickly back
to the water.

The sign in the reeds
says a woman should
eat only one catfish a week

because of the chemicals,

higher in the skin,
fat and guts.

One.

I wonder if their wives
obey the sign.

I breathe what rises
off the surface.

Fish jump,
oblivious to
the life of an inner-city culvert,

not knowing
what the water has put in them.

The men watch me.

Dinner Among Friends, a Mad Lib Poem / Ash Kemp

Shirt stained with oil,
Verdant cabbage to shred into the pan,
Spindly onions glazed copper,
Open the next ingredient.
Forget to turn off the burner.
Weave a cloth around the finger
You foolishly burnt.
A scab an offering on your pillow.
A syncopation of kitchen and bedroom,
Sizzle and snore.
What are we but proverbial soup?

Under Construction / Hannah Page

In my haziest
recalling, I feel your height
curved over my spine
your pieces slotting 
into my pieces smoothly
like the highest end
Ikea tableau:
a modular set of
particle board shapes
varied in color
like something sturdier than
a room for a while.

Spring Rooting / PF Potvin

I’m sorting and folding
shirts into piles – tees, dress,

polos – packing them into paper
sacks topped with too skinny

jeans bound for the resale shop
heaping and huffing

books (after permanent
markering our names) to the free

little library two doors down
under the eyes of the squirrelly

oak that leaves me wondering
what to do with this ziplock

full of teeth

Sushi /  Janette Schafer

Lunch
and we do not 
talk about Nate
or how it’s been

a year and we
do not talk 
about it’s just
that the salmon

is so fresh and 
we do not talk
the roe bouncy
pops salty in

your do not
talk about 
Naturally my
sister has 

only just tried
sushi and we
do not talk 
about nature

walks we used
to take when
we were young
or how people

knock on your
do not talk about
now they bring
out the pickled

ginger you see
they forgot and
we do not talk
about Nate

Being Alive in Maine   / Kate Thuma

In the skinny triangle of time between sunset and dusk, 
cranes, spent from soaring, tuck themselves into sharp nests, 
leaning their long necks into downy corners. 
Edgecomb grey edges peel back to open doors for fireflies 
(and mosquitoes we hope the bats will find). 

Three small heart-level heads bob along the coastline, 
soft toes scrabbling against rockweed bubbles and shards of mica.
I’m just dying for a breath of their unselfconsciousness in space. 
Kids just live, you know? 
Music has never meant more than its sounds, 
and the creeping-inward ocean doesn’t trigger thalassophobic sweats yet. 

The randomness and profound intention here sleep entwined
in the soft s-curves of a twisted pine: 
that somehow, we all found each other in time, 
under the newly-brighting moon, 
where we unsay vows of solitude and separateness. 
Where I belong to myself and to everyone, at once.

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.