The two-headed California Kingsnake thanks its InstaCart Shopper by name. It never calls the cops, but has no training on the gun range. Good with operations, the snake divides its labours: One head for dreaming, one for mourning. The Dreamer visits redwoods and listens to the voice of god; subtle airplane in the canopy. It […]
Poetry
collapse/collabi/to slip together or: an anatomy of snakes
Testdemonial
by CD Eskilson
The children are taught they are demons. A scourge that’s inciting the wreckage of paradise. The holy men claim that, through torture, some salvation awaits them. By no longer being the children that they are: through the pulling of fangs, clipping wings. Through the turn of their bones in marble. The holy men spend years […]
Map, in Parts
by Christina Hennemann
after Olga Tokarczuk In a workshop I draft my poetic map of home & find Agatha of Sicily: virgin, whore, captive, saint. The Etna’s lava fell asleep in the girl’s veil. Her breasts sit in a bakery for sale. She would not love a man for the price of a lie. Rebel- girl admonished saint. […]
Hallucinations De L’ouie, Etorisme, and Appel
by Emelia Kamadulski
Hallucinations I recognize you know something I don’t. Best I can do, raise my finger to my cheek. Gesture my knowing for an ignorant lens. In this vision you are the canary in the coalmine. You bellow and teal but no one will listen. Drop dead demands the doctor, you’re just hormonal. Grant me your […]
Burying the book: Three Poems
by Adrian Alui Gheorghe
Translated from the Romanian by Cristina Savin
Let us bury those who wrote the books.
Let us bury those who read them.
In a Postwar Therapy Session with an Amnesiac, He Said
by Gospel Chinedu
A pilgrim seeks acceptance, the way a gun / seeks a voice. I welcome grief / into the village of my body.
Yield
by Tamara Barnett-Herrin
You’ve got a hard rule that the gruesome is a counterpoise to the sentimental. I used to say that’s how sadists are— getting teary over Italian operas, and then afterwards, strangling someone small. I look out your window to see fresh pavement markings painted over roadkill fox. The triangle means Yield. I want to say— […]
call and response
by Chiagoziem Jideofor
call and response every time you bring me to the point of questioning, i bend o immaculate queen of streetlamps and audit benches leafing through layers of what is presumed and claimed i do not like feeling this naked or looked over with strange eyes there is hesitation on my part. […]
Reprint
by Stacy Boe Miller
Reprint When I saw his wife’s milk-pond skin I scrubbed my face until it bled. Wrinkles hold my mouth in parenthesis. I’d like to be less rusted barbed wire and more fresh spring pond. You are the strongest person I know Sam said but when I […]
Judith and Her Maidservant
by Virginia Laurie
Judith and Her Maidservant I’m scared that my hair is falling out because I’m a gossip; scared hissing follicles loose with loose cruel lips; I believe in punishment as much as forgiveness; I believe bound fingers form blades; Artemisia paints Lucretia with the dagger pointed up and away; I see myself gripping liquored stringy hair; […]
