and I will saunter out of life a stag / an inverted stamen— the color / of an unwatched sky / on planet venus, caked in spit and pollen / with FAGGOT tattooed on my tongue. KORBIN JONES is a Pushcart-nominated writer who graduated from Northwest Missouri State University with degrees in Writing and in […]
Poetry
on biology
Zombie
by Korbin Jones
They say it’s a matter of attrition. Cut to / a caravan of sand carried by vehicles, couples racing toward the sun. They’ve driven for so long that the horizon is now their god, heterosexual the altar piece. Chemistry / their borrowed electrons, from and by, in the process of synthesis—children, compulsory futures, drugs to […]
What’s Foretold, What’s Witheld: An Interview with Donika Kelly on The Renunciations
by Robin Gow
Donika Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium (fivehundred places) and the full-length collections The Renunciations (Graywolf 2021) and Bestiary (Graywolf). Bestiary is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The collection was also long-listed for the National Book Award and […]
Holy Grail
by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia, translated from the Spanish by Douglas Cole
Holy Grail while I was sleeping the bird of fire delighted between its wings dream blazed—burning terrors and elegies I blossomed into flaming violet while my name, in silent flight within my soul, drank and sang until dawn Santo grial mientras yo dormía el pájaro de fuego se divertía entre sus […]
Welcome Hauntings: A Review of Mark Wunderlich’s God of Nothingness
by Robin Gow
Mark Wunderlich’s poems conjure reluctant ghosts and waltz with rusted memories. This collection makes mourning and melancholy tangible.
Journey to the End of the Night
by M.P. Powers
With a bottle of Belgian beer, I stand among pigeon feathers and a choir of darkening leaves, the murky Landwerkanal traveling under my feet, choppy ripples painted with amber horns and a blotch of floating swan. I watch it pass into the mists. I watch the clouds devour a Ferris wheel and a flying […]
Apocalypse Singing: A Review of Claire Wahmanholm’s Wilder for Pandemic Times
by Robin Gow
Claire Wahmanholm uses poems to take us through unraveling fairytales and the volatile terrain of our unraveling planet.
Grass God
by Amber McCrary
AMBER MCCRARY is Diné poet, zinester and feminist. She is Red House Clan born for Mexican people. Originally from Shonto, Arizona and raised in Flagstaff, Arizona. She earned her BA from Arizona State University in Political Science with a minor in American Indian Studies. She received her MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in […]
Perfume
by Charles Kell
Last summer your skin tasted of orange peel, of ephemeral lies buried deep in your lungs. Never more than two words: that hurts, or like that, right there. Every- thing inside me became unlocked, the Stanley knife you stole that looked as though it could barely break flesh, the love letters […]
Crave
by Mateo Lara
Before I carved the binary out of my bone Before I could look at myself and sweet-kiss it when it was easier to hide in the haze of my youth not yet accepting of the bright hot sun on my back in retreat, men evoking rituals on the soft body, reviving little ceremonies of distrust, […]
