M. Benjamin Thorne
Tannenbaum | Exhibit (Oświęcim, Poland)
Tannenbaum
To mark the miraculous birth
we bring a live thing into our home
and water it with admiration,
provide a mantle of tinsel and light,
hang ornaments like sacred medals
from its boughs and adoringly sing
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
how lovely are your branches;
all so that it can slowly die,
dried out into a browning husk
shedding needles like desiccated tears;
then dumped, with all the pomp
of broke-down cardboard,
onto the street, a lifeless bum.
Exhibit (Oświęcim, Poland)
The room crowded with puffer jackets
boots, young, angled faces illuminated
by secretive flashes of small screens
all flowing past the exhibits like clouds
the glass cases containing dull dioramas
of hate’s detritus, so mindlessly repetitive:
Shoes, glasses, suitcases
Hair
Towers of suitcases
Mountains of shoes
Cities of hair
A civilization
ripped from context
anodyne with academic text
A heap of spectacles
no-one wants to see
A Pushcart Prize nominee, M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in San Antonio Review, Thimble Lit Mag, Last Syllable Lit, Salvation South, Pictura Jornal, and Heimat Review. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.
Tracy Royce
The Summer Before My Mother Descended into Psychosis | What the Books Don’t Tell You | By the Side of the Road
The Summer Before My Mother Descended into Psychosis
I worried about my hair.
It had always been thick, lustrous,
and best of all, attached.
Then I found clumps clogging the drain
and my comb came away kinky.
My part grew ever wider,
a strip of pallid scalp exposed.
“Bald is sexy,” my husband joked,
pointing at his vacant pate.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to be a bald woman,”
I said, stooping to gather the strands
strewn across the bathroom floor.
What, I thought, could be worse than that?
What the Books Don’t Tell You
After Mom receives the diagnosis, you read the books, attend the lectures, learn everything you can about dementia. You discover that memory isn’t the only casualty of the disease ravaging your mother’s brain. Cognition, balance, even the ability to swallow will eventually decline. But no one warns you about the animals. That someday soon, you’ll be unable to soothe Mom when she tearfully insists someone has snuck in and drowned several kittens in her sink. That she’ll mourn her babies, also imaginary, whom she thinks have been abducted and torn apart by wolves. That when your frantic mother believes a tiger has killed your brother, your sister-in-law will refuse to put him on the phone to provide reassurance. That after years of this, you will gaze at the reflection of your sunken eyes and sallow skin and wonder just what kind of creature you yourself have become.
Note: An earlier version of this poem was featured on the Brevity Podcast Episode #10: “One-Minute Memoir” (2018).
By the Side of the Road
If we’re to believe the billboard, the beaming blonde used to weigh more, before her procedure, her transformation. Now her arms are raised in victory, a slender celebration of her triumph over the scale. As we approach the intersection, you see her, then turn to me with hungry eyes—perhaps I too can be tamed, whittled away, made to take up less space in the world. I hit the accelerator, blowing past the billboard, imagining you too are behind me.
Tracy Royce is a fat-positive poet and writer whose work has appeared in / is forthcoming in The Dribble Drabble Review, The Fat Studies Reader (NYU Press), MacQueen's Quinterly, ONE ART, Scrawl Place, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies.
Victoria Melekian
On an Ordinary Afternoon in Late August, I Was Clobbered by Happiness | Open Your Eyes, Rhonda | The Hesitation is This
On an Ordinary Afternoon in Late August, I Was Clobbered by Happiness
Happiness trumpeted her way
into the house, leading a parade
of gymnasts, drummers, and a juggler
on a unicycle through the kitchen,
around the island to the dining room,
up and down the stairs. She twirled
her baton, the gymnasts backflipped,
and the juggler tossed flaming torches.
At the back door, she tooted her whistle
and I asked her to stay, but Happiness
said, “Oh, honey, don’t worry. I’ll be back.
This is just a burst,” and she flung her baton,
missing the ceiling fan but not my head.
Another whistle blow and she was out the door.
The parade followed her up the street.
I watched till there was nothing left to see,
then grabbed a broom and swept confetti
into a sparkling orange and red pile.
Open Your Eyes, Rhonda
after Help Me, Rhonda, song by Brian Wilson
Forever
on repeat
you help helping him,
this dude is needy trouble—
sixty-two times
“help, help me,”
no dinner date,
no pink peonies,
no sweet note,
nothing but
you’re so fine, Rhonda.
Sixty-two crybaby whines,
sixty-two crimson red flags
flapping on sixty-two poles
planted in your grass.
The Hesitation is This
after Kelli Russell Agodon
There’s always a good boy
waiting to nuzzle your palm
and stare into your soul. A puppy
who sits for bacon treats, fetches
his leash when you say walk.
Next thing you know, he’s asleep
on your bed sixteen years
until he can’t jump up anymore
and you’re guiding that sweet dog
to his dinner bowl at night, counting
checkmarks on the quality of life
questionnaire. I swear, Kirby
was the last: his crate, his bed, the leash,
the treats, his raggedy racoon lovey.
Victoria Melekian writes poetry and short fiction. Her work has appeared in print and online and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California where the weather is almost always perfect. For more, visit her website https://victoriamelekian.com
Jane Medved
Transit | Ways of Being Right
Transit
My granddaughter is seven and an accomplished liar. She stole a Swiss Army knife, then pretended to “find” it. She fed her cousin’s goldfish until he died. When forced to confess, she admitted he looked too skinny.
Last night, before I left for the airport, she hid my cellphone in the bushes. As we tore the house apart, she shrugged and went back to sleep.
Seen from above, the clouds are their own kingdom. Nobody wants to join them.
They rule over cold air and shadows, a grid of order then reaction. Their subjects are well behaved.
In Rome, wheels travel the floor. They arrive in pairs. Anticipation. Exhaustion. A little girl cries on concrete.
I am waiting to share my ride with a stranger. I walk up to men. Ask them for their names.
Is wisdom a circle, or a path that wants to repeat?
From above, the clouds are also an old woman. Her softness is an illusion. Her whiteness is the absence of color. Her interest is temporary.
Tonight she’ll be a knife and escape from the box.
And because I love the tree, I’ll ask her to chop my house down first.
Ways of Being Right
after Kim Addonizio
Like thorns that announce the petal.
The erratic kindness, a smattering of good deeds.
A morning destination sunk back into sand.
An eruption of thirst, drown in it.
Sometimes you appear like a far harbor.
Gasping boats swim to you.
Sometimes you are the baggage unclaimed.
The reassuring whir, a repetition that can only be mechanical.
You fall asleep missing the company of crickets.
Their mating songs calm you.
The abandoned attraction.
You check your reflection. Are you window or mirror?
That time you were yourself.
That time it was suddenly past midnight.
That time you resembled the exotic.
The smoke and the aftertaste, the scratchy respite at the back of your throat.
And, once a month, a bright penny of moon.
Be gracious, nobody else cares.
Jane Medved is the author of Wayfarers (Winner of the Off the Grid Prize, Grid Books 2024), Deep Calls To Deep (winner of the Many Voices Project, New Rivers Press) and the chapbook Olam, Shana, Nefesh (Finishing Line Press). Her translation of Wherever We Float, That’s Home (by Maya Tevet Dayan, Saturnalia Books) won the Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize 2024. Recent work can be seen or is forthcoming in Plume, Swwim, River Heron Review, Ruminate, and Bending Genres. She is the poetry editor of The Ilanot Review. Visit her at janemedved.net
Linda Laderman
catastrophe | the brevity of warmth
catastrophe *
you scream after you see
your boy slip in front of a yellow
cab, an ordinary taxi.
The slackening of his body as
it folds into itself while you tremble,
bewildered at the looseness of your
grasp—your inability to know why
you’re standing and he isn’t.
and though the medics tell you
it was no one’s fault, you yell for them
to stop talking, and plead with yourself
for a description of this thing that makes
you keen—a color, a piece of torn cloth,
an origami bird. you hear your wife’s howls.
she wishes it had been you instead. you wish
that too. your words mean nothing. you think
if you go back, you can wake him, like you do
every morning. you’ll cajole him to get up, get out
of that black plastic bag and get home.
*After How Fortunate the Boy by Alicia Ostriker
The brevity of warmth
The summer I turn ten I learn about definitions.
That normal means two parents whose last name
is the same as yours, that ordinary stands
for a Schwinn bike, a sibling, dinner at six,
and coming in when the streetlights come on—
that June captures the brevity of warmth.
I discover laughter can be a weapon or a salve,
depending on who offers it to you. That you
can know who you are even when others don’t.
Mother teaches me about secrets. She says
our dirty laundry is no one else’s business,
even when it becomes everyone’s. Play as if
neighbors don’t see the police climb our steps
to stop the quarrels between her and my stepfather,
or behave like no one hears his tires screech.
But I hear. She caws after him, a broken bird
singing from a porch swing, then sits and waits.
The crack in her voice panics me. Still, I want
to hold onto her hand. He’s found in a rented room,
slumped in a chair, a newspaper opened in his lap,
an empty pack of Winston’s, pistol in his palm.
In July, mother teaches me to dance. Wearing her bra
and half-slip, she wraps strings of my pop-it beads
around our necks. We zig zag across the floor,
her midriff and breasts, spongy, like the yellow cake she
bakes for holidays. When she plugs in the record player
and sings Swanee, I lie on the on the porch swing and clap.
I feel, your love is real.
Mother decides it’s time to leave. We move to a flat.
In her bra and half-slip, she dances in the doorway.
By August, I understand the meaning of shame.
Linda Laderman is a Michigan poet and writer. Her poetry has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, numerous literary journals, including Action-Spectacle, Quartet, Gyroscope, SWWIM, ONE ART, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Scapegoat Review, Rust &Moth, and MER. She is a past recipient of Harbor Review’s Jewish Women’s Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her micro-chapbook, What I Didn’t Know I Didn’t Know, can be found online at https://www.harbor-review.com/what-i-didnt-know-i-didnt-know. In past lives, she was a journalist and taught English at Owens Community College and Lourdes University, in Ohio. More work at lindaladerman.com.
Mathieu Cailler
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Didn’t Spark Joy | The Cheetah | Out of This World
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Didn’t Spark Joy
for Delilah the way it did when she was young. Maturation, she justified on her dark drive home from the theater. But she thought of her friends, who were also in their thirties, laughing hard at the rerelease. When Delilah arrived at her condo, she plucked a flashlight from her glovebox and searched for her joy. She scoured a park not far from her home, where she used to play hide-and-seek with her friends, swing from monkey bars with her brother, even shoot down a long slide whose metal burned on hot days.
The light’s beam illuminated the park and vacant playground equipment. But as Delilah turned one last time, the flashlight’s cone lit up three small children at the far end. Immediately, she knew them to be her innocence, her imagination, and her inner child. She looked on and watched them as they sat on the ground, serving make-belief tea, in a make-belief pot, on a make-belief table. They didn’t even notice Delilah; they didn’t even notice the light.
The Cheetah
ran so fast its spots fell off. From a distance, I yelled, “You forgot your spots,” but it didn’t hear me. I collected the spots, and made some signs, and I left my phone number. In the meantime, I used the spots to teach my daughter about estimation. I filled a glass jug with the spots and asked her how many she believed rested inside the jug. “Fifty,” she said. I guessed seven hundred. We counted them together and were both wrong. The total was 2,149. No one ever returned my call, so we still have the jug on display in our home. Over the years, we’ve used the spots as furniture pads, for my daughter’s art projects, for lapel pins and brooches, even for the dark-colored stones in checkers. There’ve been times, too, when I have placed them atop my eyes at dawn to block the daylight and allow me to sleep until noon. When I do this, I dream of lush veldts, of mountainous terrain, of sprinting at up to seventy miles per hour through Africa’s Sahel.
Out of This World
The boy walked home after a long school day. This time, though, at the end of Juniper Lane, instead of the usual yellow Dead End sign, there was a narrow, metal staircase overgrown with ivy. The boy started up the stairs. When he reached the top, there was an elevator. He pressed the button. It illuminated, and seconds later, the elevator doors parted. Wiping sweat from his face, the boy entered. There were only two buttons on the control panel: an L and a 2. He pressed the 2. The doors came together, the inside light flickered, and the elevator rattled hard enough to knock the boy over. Then ding! The boy rose and dusted himself off. When he exited, he realized he was on the moon. The ground was rough under his Converse sneakers, the lunar rocks poking through the rubber. Earth was so perfect from here. Quiet. Cute. Swirls of blue and white, patches of green here and there, and little lights in certain spots that winked at him. He wished his phone’s battery wasn’t dead from playing Candy Crush at recess, so that he could snap a photo and show his grandma later. Above him, a comet burned and fizzled. Scared, he crouched, then stood tall again, once the tail was far away. After a couple of hours, he made his way back to the elevator. He learned he couldn’t dream while looking at Earth. He knew too many of its answers.
Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: a novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over one hundred publications, including Wigleaf, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He has received many prestigious awards, including a Pushcart Prize; a Readers’ Favorite Award; and accolades from the Paris, Los Angeles, and New England Book Festivals. You can connect with him on social media @writesfromla or visit his website at mathieucailler.com.
Mary Ann Honaker
OUR COUNTRY IS DYING
OUR COUNTRY IS DYING
The ceaseless ants do not sense a threat, and
continue to build their mounds of sand. Whom
should they fear? Birds appropriate seeds, do
their tiered mating calls from tree to shrub. I
watch the leaves nod. Time is only time. Call
to the steep cliff; it will answer. In my
house I have blankets, tea, no enemy.
Sky portions out its portions of rain. An
unseasonal drought, the sky an enemy.
Who stuffs her reason under her fear? Must
we? The light drops a gear, soon we'll be
closed up in night's cloak. We are all worthy,
clocked in on the planet's time clock of
years. Is there to be an engagement?
I will engage my skin to light. I
won't pluck the rose, because it's your turn
to bend to it. Our years are clipped, so in
them bask. In them scream. In them nap, and the
rivers will flow from any direction.
My mind has an ocean in it, it's of
night, stars on water. There I drown. The
night and day change places, hover. Sun
leaves us: but it still shines elsewhere, and
night, that huge bear, paces the globe. We keep
still as night passes over, keeps walking.
We have loneliness in common; it’s
a curious bell jar. In common we hold the
change of autumn light, winter's scrim on heart.
In common the earth breaking in spring, that
cracking that breaks us open too, asks
how much hurt is worth it to live. In the
summer, we buzz like trapped bees and question
less. The moon is there and then it's not.
I look for shine and find a scratch in my
sky instead. Full moons make us furious.
Do we listen to the heart or mind?--
a question we share. Salt air, how the
scent of it humbles. Immensity, heart,
pulses in the night, and the sea at night is
overwhelm. Galaxies above, and the
deeps below. They say it makes us smaller,
but I say we expand, we are cousin
or closer to the furthest blue star of
the heavens we can't with the naked eye, the
largest telescope, see. We are the sun.
We are the earth, when it turns, we with it
turn. We are the hawk's fine-tuned eye which sees
the chipmunk, and we are the chipmunk, and
no one steps to the edge of what she knows.
Everything is me; I am everything.
This goes for you too, and for the fly, it
goes. All is One. Imagine what god hears!
God hears how my cat hears my smashing the
keyboard keys. God hears my tuneless gnashing
teeth in sleep, my teeth's vibrations, even.
God hears the tree's heartwood tremble as
the storm rumbles. What is it? We're all it.
Our country is dying, the nation hears.
The universe expands; the sun burns, the
fuel is limited. To be is a blessing
in this iteration. Others follow. The
cycles are endless, cold or fire a door.
Someone breathes a long exhale. We go to
the end of it. Then the long inhale. The
exhale has a bit to go, in my mind.
Of course there are things we all should.
Of course there's a right, and it's the only.
But let the sea-doors and air-doors open!
The doors of fire and night! We can walk from
the world and still be of the world, of the
endless fixing. Injustice hurts the heart.
So we must. But meanwhile, hunger. An
exquisite meal made by your enemy,
brought to table by your foe, who
you tip twenty-five percent. When he gets
into his car, a murmuration in
tune to the bass line, starlings taking risks
and just killing it. Dusk rises from the
pavement like a mist. He's in no danger.
Neither are you, the arugula of
your salad poised on your fork, becoming
a part of you bite by bite. It's in a
country, this country, this happens, my friend.
Note: This golden shovel uses Joy Harjo's “This Morning I Pray for My Enemies” from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia. https://maryannhonaker.wordpress.com/
Alex Stolis
Mary Tyler Moore dyes her hair blonde | Mary Tyler Moore doesn’t tell Rob she fakes her orgasms
Mary Tyler Moore dyes her hair blonde
wants to look dangerous; Barbara Stanwyck
-Double Indemnity-femme fatale - cool.
She lives in a bright guilty world, rich,
rare, savage strange.
Imagines being called dame, slapping Rob
across the face, knowing it turns him on.
She gets to hell in her own way, chooses
her own circle; the shape of death
is a shadow cast by her embrace,
a noir moon burns bright, street lamp
flickers her awake. This babe means business;
the gun’s in her hand, the money’s in the bank;
she’s one dead-end alley away from freedom.
I’m frozen wonderstruck and cold-irons bound.
Mary Tyler Moore doesn’t tell Rob she fakes her orgasms
he’s sensitive in a way only a man can be.
She hates to make him feel less than.
He rolls over to sleep;
she brings herself there. He’s a tall Greek
or Italian, Michelangelo sculpted bad boy,
connected, dangerous;
his sole desire to give her pleasure.
Closing her eyes, she looks into his, drifts
away on the Ionian Sea.
She wakes in her own bed. 5:30AM
rise and shine bethehappyhousewife time,
put a flawless Good Housekeeping© breakfast
on the table. There’s an obligatory thanks honey
peck on the cheek. She clears the dishes, pours
a cup of coffee, a secret smile follows him out.
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections, Pop. 1280and John Berryman Died Here, were released by Cyberwit and are available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Ekphrastic Review, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbooks include Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife, (Louisiana Literature Press, 2024), RIP Winston Smith (Alien Buddha Press, 2024), and The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres (Bottlecap Press, 2024).
Jessica Purdy
My mother taught me to love my body | My daughter writes a story about me after I'm dead | Ghost Horses on Nevertouch Pond
My mother taught me to love my body
by showing me how she didn’t love her own. Grabbing her thighs, she’d shake them and squeeze until the cellulite dimpled. She hated her stomach which I’d only ever seen after she’d given birth to two babies, and would grab it like the shoulders of someone who wouldn’t listen to her demands. I grew to love boys who gave me red roses, and when I was about to marry someone who didn’t, I left him before the ceremony. I moved to the city and became a detective. I spent my evenings picking gum out of my shoes. Interviews with suspects became like first dates. Each one I dissected, looking for truth. Picture the stark concrete room. Metal table, but with a cloth over it. A lit candle and vase of supermarket flowers. Who loves you? I’d ask. And does that person love themself? Over and over I ask. Even in my dreams I ask. In the asking I’d fill with helium and float over the precinct. Over the bodies of victims, as if that could help me see the lies. Could lies be landmarks with arrows? Murderers’ signatures written on the skins? What if I’d gone in the original direction? The tears staining my wedding dress evaporated. Each time I loved myself, I allowed it to take root. Like in early summer, how I’d rip open the thin skin of nursery pots to reveal the roots’ shiny white threads before plunging the tender seedlings into holes. No thought of how, far into the future, I’d be pruning and displaying cut blossoms.
My daughter writes a story about me after I’m dead
In it, her father and I have a great love. Even our bathroom sink grows soft as baby rabbit fur. Vines invade our empty bedroom. She doesn’t know we invited their greenery in when there was too much space between us. In her story there is no darkness or doubt. Though she notices our wedding photo tilts every time the train goes by. Twice a day, the beach we stand on in our finery becomes a new landscape. Once, it transformed into the rim of a volcano we’d never visited. She writes how the photo shows us in a panda enclosure. The pandas are doing somersaults around us. We remain as fixed as plastic. Me in white lace and he in a black suit with a blue ascot. Our closet never revealed the secreted gun. I never left a note.
Ghost Horses of Nevertouch Pond
In the dream I’m sleeping beside my husband’s coffin. The coffin is splintered and brown like a vampire’s. His bones rattle inside it when I twist on the mattress. There is nothing strange in this. It’s four in the morning in my childhood house behind Central Cemetery on Nevertouch Pond. I go out to the dock to continue painting. The sun isn’t up but I can feel it coming. The trees glow pink in the muggy silence. The pond drops into myth. Its depth is legendary and unknown. The paint on the railing peels and I scrape. The tool’s metal edge lifts the faded chips. My hand is satisfied. The old paint sticks to the sweat on my skin. The new paint is ultramarine. Lapis lazuli of Mary’s robes, blue of the headscarf worn by the girl with the pearl earring, blue of sky in the museum paintings I’ve restored. I’m accustomed to the softest brushes. I dissolve the soot of age. This paint is velvety as a dog’s tongue. Grooves in the wood fill with it. More of the dream comes back. A horse was in front of us in the dark. We had to wait. We were riding horses through the forest. The pond is smooth. A mist hangs over it. I don’t want to do another layer so I put the paint away. I take off my clothes, dive in, and swim. Under me in the water is a small dead horse. I can see its head and open eyes staring up. They look milky blue and unseeing so I almost don’t help. I think I’m too weak to pull it out on my own. I grab at its neck and it leaps out of the water. Fish on its head fall off. It runs, streaming water from its white coat, up onto the sandy shore towards Bathsheba’s grave, the oldest in the cemetery. There was a dead woman found submerged in a pond. They were drying her out after reeling her in like a caught fish. They tried not to look at her naked body but they did. She looked mostly normal but hung from a rope in the air. All around the pond’s oval other small horses are running. They must be from a family but lost from each other.
I swim. I swam. I have swum.
Jessica Purdy holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of STARLAND, Sleep in a Strange House (Nixes Mate, 2017 and 2018), The Adorable Knife (Grey Book Press, 2023), and You’re Never the Same (Seven Kitchens Press). Sleep in a Strange House was a finalist for the NH Literary Award for poetry. Her poems and micro-fiction have been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best Micro-Fiction. Her poetry, flash fiction, and reviews appear in Gargoyle, About Place, On the Seawall, Radar, The Night Heron Barks, SoFloPoJo, Litro, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. See more at jessicapurdy.com.
Ilari Pass
Surprise | What it Means to Be Beautiful | On Following the Wrong God Home
Surprise
Last night I recited some poems to my cat to practice for my big reading and this morning she left a rabbit head beside my sandals, saying, So, we’re even now. Later in the morning, I weeded the garden and discovered a color gamut of vegetables and a crepe myrtle, only to stumble on a Belgian statue of some guy pissing all over them. I love the long beard of fronds on this palm tree growing outside my afternoon. I sit and watch the sun roll over my pink-painted toes, knees held in curves of my elbows.
This piece was previously published in SWWIM, September 2022.
What It Means to Be Beautiful
There is a planet with a moon
inside my water bottle. A breeze
makes small faces, expressions
of surprising love, I thank you.
Thank you for your nightly visits,
your gentle birdsong. Borrowed light alone
can’t make out in this house. This clutter—
the catch-all for my life. I feel
your glare of disapproval.
Come closer. The night
in your eye is a shade colder. Why
does everything have to be beautiful?
I don’t trust it. Let’s go
Ruin something.
This piece was previously published in ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, June 2021.
On Following the Wrong God Home
—after Jenny George’s “A Childhood”
Having lost the hubris of prayer,
I feel no safety in the quietness
or in the darkness.
No place on earth.
Close the candle, quick
It’s too bright, I can’t see.
I forgot about the sun
how massive and calm,
sometimes crushing and on fire.
How pointlessly beautiful—the trees,
how peaceful the way they shade.
The graves and flowers alike listen
through the many ears of the grasses.
A hoopoe makes a hole in the air with its laugh,
the excitement of it vibrated in the flies.
You taught me there is nothing to be done.
The way dirt under this home can’t cry,
pretend nothing is delicate.
When Ilari isn't writing poetry or short stories, she recites Ayahs (verses) from the Quran and enjoys traveling with her family. A four-time Best of the Net nominee, her Greatest Hits appear or forthcoming in South Dakota Review, Cutleaf Journal, SWWIM Every Day, Pithead Chapel, Free State Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Paterson Literary Review, and others.
Andi Myles
Please Exit | A List from the Junkyard of Found Prose
Please exit
A list of found text
please do not knock
please do not disturb
please do not trespass
please do not enter
please do not walk here
please do not run
please do not talk
please do not talk loudly
please do not yell
please do not sit here
please do not sit on the edge
please do not move
please do not touch
please do not touch me
please do not play me
please do not lean on me
please do not scare me
please do not use me
please do not break me
please do not open me
please do not open yourself
please do not stay
A List from the Junkyard of Found Prose
(After In the Museum of Lost Objects by Rebecca Lindenberg)
“We never love a person, but only qualities."
Blaise Pascal
Find unmarked cards obscuring what is here:
censored letters from a death row inmate,
lecture notes from a tedious professor,
a bamboo grimoire, and forgotten scribbles
from a forgettable acquaintance strewn about the floor;
blank pages from an undergraduate poet mixed
with unopened letters from a distant relative.
You misunderstand the minutiae
of existence, tiny wildernesses
stand full of its mundanities—washing dishes,
waiting in line, shifting afternoon light and
outside this warehouse, full walls insufficient to hold
the unsent emails from a workplace enemy
My friend, I have not answered the god
who requested a full accounting
of all the write-only documents I can
never erase. Far away, a crowded forest
quiets without the collection
of deleted texts from an ex unearthed
after a long-concealed absence. You despair,
but you have not discarded the shopping lists
I wrote for you. As for the rest, my atonement
was never meant for you.
Andi Myles (she/her) is a Washington DC area science writer by day, poet in the in between times. Her favorite space is the fine line between essay and poetry. She is the author of the chapbook Fractured Symphony (Cathexis Northwest Press) and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, Rattle, Fourth Genre, and Tahoma Literary Review, among others. You can find her at www.andimyles.com.
Tom Laichas
Thirty Distinct Damnations on the Moon
Thirty Distinct Damnations on the Moon
First. That the crater’s edge is steep. It’s an endless drop to its floor.
Second. That they taught you meditation before you came but heights still make you sick.
Third. That lunar dust eats spacesuit fabric like a plague of breathless moths.
Fourth. That you may knock all you want, there’s no one home.
Fifth. That your dog and cat would’ve died if you’d brought them.
Sixth. Your children too.
Seventh. That, if you import an atmosphere from Earth, the Moon will sigh it out.
Eighth. That from the Moon, you can see the home you’re sick for.
Ninth. That sound doesn’t carry without an atmosphere. You can’t hear yourself pray.
Tenth. That your bones are weak, your vision blurred, your ankles swollen.
Eleventh. That for the quarter million miles round your bed, yours is the only life.
Twelfth. That yours is a small room, the size of luggage. Every day, you hunch your back.
Thirteenth. That there are more stars in this sky than you’ve ever seen. Always the same ones.
Fourteenth. That even when you’re suited up, the sun can kill you.
Fifteenth. That you never bathe. Not enough water. You clean yourself but never feel clean.
Sixteenth. Why did you come here? What did you think you would become?
Seventeenth. That the moon awed you on the first day; that after a thousand days, it’s Barstow.
Eighteenth. That, from the surface of the moon, you can’t see the moon.
Nineteenth. That you walk the moon every day. You never thought you’d hate it but you do.
Twentieth. That you have no possessions of your own. You want possessions, more than ever.
Twenty-first. That the moon is a gray blunt planet.
Twenty-second. That you’re no hero, and you know it.
Twenty-third. That, looking up from Earth, the moon is there. But here? There is no here.
Twenty-fourth. That you know the truth: this is the last house on a dead-end street.
Twenty-fifth. That you cannot call it “The Moon.” It’s “The Hole.”
Twenty-sixth. That your media library, though infinite, leaves you restless and unhappy.
Twenty-seventh. That a friend calls from Mars. Says it’s just as bad. Your reply takes ten minutes to reach him; his reply to you, another ten. In one hour, each of you speaks three times. After a year of this, neither of you bother.
Twenty-eighth. That you dream in green and blue. Then the alarm rings. Again, monochrome.
Twenty-ninth. That you scratch a daily mark into the wall above your cot.
Thirtieth. That there are now three thousand marks. It’s the only art you make.
Tom Laichas is author of three books of poetry, most recently Three Hundred Streets of Venice California (FutureCycle Press, 2023). His latest work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Times, Plume, The Moth (Ireland), the Irish Times, BarBar, and elsewhere. He lives in Venice, California.
Bethany Jarmul
After a Rain I Discover | Essence of Adolescence | It's Cliché to Wish for World Peace, So Instead I'll Ask
After a Rain, I Discover
the underbelly of a maple leaf,
a canvas the clouds splattered
with rain-paint. Each orb reflects
a tiny world. Several cling to the midrib
& veins like glass snails resting
on their slow journey home.
One misshapen drop dives headfirst
into the ever-present green, passed
from mother grass to daughters,
into the greedy ground. Once I dreamt
I dove off the edge of earth. I broke
into shards, dissolved into mist.
Root hairs draw in the droplet,
fueling arms littered with leaves.
When I woke, I found myself
whole, but translucent—
a once muddy window
penetrated by a sunbeam.
Essence of Adolescence
a golden shovel using a line from Li-Young Lee
I was 14 & lean, learning a different kind of hunger
a hunger that made my body needy & vacant
like a seedling in sun-baked soil waiting for a drop of
survival to sink from the sky. But I didn’t know that love
could either satisfy or poison, incubate or slaughter. Is
growing up always like a slap on the ass from a
boy who once shared his blueberries—a bittersweet confusion?
It’s Cliché to Wish for World Peace, So Instead I’ll Ask
for empathy to spread like dandelion seeds,
blown from our lips down to our fingertips,
sprouting new roots in every dirt-covered corner
of my newsfeed. For an end to collisions
everywhere, but especially on Route 8—
when we tuck our kids into bed,
the weee-wooo, weee-wooo of the sirens
travels closer and closer to home, covering
the wind’s howl, the branches cracking
under snow. For every bully to melt
like an icicle dagger into a warm puddle,
especially at my son’s school, where he’s learning
to tie his shoes and count by twos and pledge
his allegiance. For endless quiet
days on the radio, instead of the local DJ
reporting this week’s school shooting
in Alabama or California or Wisconsin
or on the other side of our city, as I drive
with my children in the backseat,
their Minnie Mouse and Spiderman
backpacks at their feet.
Bethany Jarmul is an Appalachian writer and poet. She’s the author of two chapbooks, and her debut poetry collection Lightning Is a Mother is available now with ELJ Editions. Her work has been published in many magazines including Rattle, Brevity, HAD, and Salamander. Her writing was selected for Best Spiritual Literature 2023 and Best Small Fictions 2024, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on social media: @BethanyJarmul
elizabeth iannaci
ReaList | Bad Signs
ReaList
A single spaghetti is a spaghetto, a single macaroni is a
macarono, a single woman is “a drain on this country’s
resources”
Right now, there’s a woman somewhere walking two,
dogs, trying to reason with them. She’s making headway
Contrary to the going wisdom, dogs are NOT mercenaries
but will work for love
From era to era or decade to decade, the going wisdom
often doesn’t GO
Aristotle thought that rocks fell down instead of up
because they loved the ground
Einstein said that the reason we have time
is so everything doesn’t happen all at once
Physicists say there is still nothing new under the sun—
what appears to be unique is just a molecular reconfiguration
Crackers left on the charcuterie overnight become stale,
inedible. Cheese, left out, will harden and forget us
I told a twelve-year-old that there was a time when
suitcases didn’t have wheels. His response was Why?
Despite recent events, Civility is alive & well, but right
now, it wears a Groucho nose, moustache, & glasses
The exile of a break-up is a punishment
for putting all my eggs in someone else’s basket
Since 9 am, 2306 three-year-olds have put worms in their
mouths, while roughly 23 hundred adults managed to chew
& swallow them
Bad Signs
I should have known when he started listening to Hank Williams
when he mowed his yard all winter long
when he seemed relieved that I couldn’t go
when he hocked the camera I worked the whole summer to buy for him
I should have known when he told me to meet him at Baumanskaya metro
known when he said maybe I should read things that don’t upset me
when he was mean to me in my dream
when he asked me to say something in Canadian
known when all his tattoos were spider webs
when he asked if I wanted to get married anyway
when he confused crudités with crème brulée
I should have known when he mentioned the helicopter
when he asked me if I was feeling brave
when he blamed his whole life on his ex-wife
when he canceled our dental insurance
when he left me on the boat
when he put on that mask
I should have known when he bought me those rubber gloves
when he wouldn’t let me have a lamp on my side of the bed
when he told me that he wanted to meet in a public place
when he told me to go back to sleep
when he didn’t introduce me
I should have known when he was quiet for so long
when he said he wanted to rid my hair of all layers
when he and my sister bought the same Godawful hat
known when he brought up the term “absolute truth”
I should have known when he kept telling his cat that I was company
when he asked me if I trusted him
when he used my toothbrush to polish his shoes
Elizabeth Iannaci is a widely published SoCal poet whose work appeared recently in Does It Have Pockets, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Hole in the Head Review, Pratik and various publications. She earned her MFA in Poetry from VCFA, and is partially sighted, which may account for her preference to paisley over polka dots. Her most recent chapbook is The Virgin Turtle Light Show: Spring, 1968 from Latitude 34 Press.
Jessica Coville
Whispers Across Nine Mirrors
Whispers across nine mirrors
First whisper | The first is an echo of rosemary
the memory of you I want to burn
the memory I never want to let go
I invoke a scar that only I can see
Second whisper | Your blood, your blood
a small cut — soft cotton
to dab it away
I have what used to flow in you
and your heart — echo your heart
I invoke rhythm
Third whisper | Your eyes saw me, so much
of me — more of me than
I intended
Those round jewels I pluck
This sea glass that sees all the waves
behind and before me
Slow the ebb, slow the ebb
still the sand
Fourth whisper | The ghosts you’ve been dragging behind you
I can see them — can’t you?
you bring a banquet of them
to scare me
I am not frightened
They climb on this mirror and
bring clouds
Fifth whisper | All the smoke I’ve inhaled
or exhaled carries a prayer
l blow cinnamon across this late sky
this copal, heads of magi from desert
I have crawled into a new mirror of night
Sixth whisper | This strand I roll three times
and loop leg over arm
tendril around stalks of lake grass
grandmother’s lace through tiny spindles
this is knot magic
this is you floating, umbilical
Seventh whisper | You and I are on a mattress of bones
it’s lean, comfortable, and noisy
that’s us fighting fear, though
the yelling of the last moments
we made that imprint on the bones
Eighth whisper | Salt, frangipani, marigold —
that’s the beginning
like tenderness
like the first time I watched you
take your clothes off
I stole the perfume bottle of that moment
Ninth whisper | I was a child when I wrote my
first incantation
and stuffed it in a bird’s mouth
the bird flew to the underworld
with my wish
as will you
as will you
Jessica Coville is a writer living in Sonoma County, California. Originally from Whitefish, Montana, Jessica has written and edited for the entertainment, technology, and health care industries.
Patrice Boyer Claeys
Pale Folded Hands | After 40 Years
After 40 Years
Here’s the switch. I was once on top,
too deep and smart and sexy to fall
under anyone’s sway. And he was flat as the plains.
A milk- and corn-fed man. Open, honest,
straightforward—a 1950’s Catholic son.
I drew him in with hanky-panky
and an overwrought mystique. His easy style
pulled me to his sphere, and with his friends
I climbed in, ready to go wherever he drove.
I sat up front, thrilled and yet looking away.
My gossamer craved his ballast, that practical
bent that caulked the tub and booked the flights.
His mind roamed free from doubt, while my fuse
box sparked and smoked from frizzed wires.
And so we came together, not smoothly, but for life.
Now decades after holding back—scorning
what once attracted me, wishing for a twin,
expecting him to master what I had failed
to build—I am stunned in blunt shock
by love. This dumb struck force of yes.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Pale Folded Hands
You appear in the cold clarity of a high voltage day. The vine leaves across the street flash like semaphores giving garbled instructions. Out front, the step holding my huddled form is painted the blue of old skim milk, curdled and flaking. The rented frame house, in which Weed and his skinny girlfriend fill the second floor with hoarse poker voices and fragrant smoke, cannot contain my swelling joy of subversion. I am oblivious to the cold. You alight from Old ’55 looking like a bitter orchid of ecstatic arching, a beautiful rare steak bathed in butter, the distillation of Tom Waites before he turned to carnival barking. I rise from the step, smiling, expectant, pumping and choking from too much valence. Thirty years later I am still pricked with the cold fingers of that day and all that my pale folded hands forbade me to carry into the future of borrowed eggs, flooded basements and the endless curving sweep of green couches.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Patrice Boyer Claeys is a Chicago poet with five published collections. Her two most recent books with collaborator Gail Goepfert explore the world of fruits and vegetables through verse and photography. Patrice’s work has appeared in many journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Review, NELLE, The Night Heron Barks, Passion Fruit Review, Scapegoat Review and Tiny Moments Anthology. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart (2019) and Best of the Net (2014, 2019, 2022). More at patriceboyerclaeys.com.
Logan Anthony
angelic in a mistaken hue of light | either the hammer or the nails | more than the memory
more than the memory
each morning brings the hay bales & their shadows closer.
pillowcases of rotting wildflower clippings & a head crowded
with bees. haunted. i’ve remained still too long.
i can’t stand at the window & anticipate the approach
of something never coming. my voice consumes the room,
chilling & vacant as an evening drizzle. the air smells of wilt-
ing hyacinths. outside, i’ll scatter poppy seeds beneath
the bird-nested alders & hope for something to return to.
consolation—i’ll admit, i still need something to believe in.
years ago, you told me about the romance of a person
prettier in pieces. the need to be broken to be lovable.
your teeth held my name like a promise. smoke in your eyes
& fire in your hair. you were the closest i came to burning
for someone else. i should have defended a love that builds,
because now, collecting my shards from the garden,
i wouldn’t mind some help. someone with strong hands.
someone to remind me to be gentle, who knows of more green
than what we have left dwindling in us. past the narrow streets,
beyond the neatness of cornfields & ordered, obedient trees.
i want more than the memory of wild. somewhere untamed,
where solitude still means peace. somewhere to be alone, together,
with pockets of chipped glass & a head emptied of bees.
angelic in a mistaken hue of light
1.
years after the stone shackles shook loose
their jowls, skittish and ivory-gowned,
the angel rubs raw their wrists and wishes
for a room big enough to swallow the coarse
salt from their secrets once spoken into existence.
for the last lick of flame to healed flesh, still tender.
the last of the silence, that panicked discomfort.
if only the room would listen. if only a voice
like smoke, unfurling in tendrils, could be heard.
2.
light withers a mere step into the dark,
as quickly as the body reverts to the old
ways—where failure is a home i cannot
rebuild. the gold in your voice flakes away.
i realize, after all this time, a shadow only
appears angelic in a mistaken hue of light.
3.
this world remade isn’t what i stayed behind
for. all these limbs scattered in the streets.
voices festering in the walls.
the smoke and yellowed grass—all that’s left
to fill our throats and hands.
4.
skinless, homeless, we are no longer ghosts.
we are no longer alone. i enter only windows.
only trapdoors. our bodies writhe beneath
the ground on which we stand.
fingernails full of soil. skeletons of sorrow.
5.
under flickering fluorescents in a stone
-shattered mirror flecked with gods-know-what,
you scream your secrets to white bricks
that wall you off from the world. salt spills
from the ceiling. lost in the burning, thunder echoes
around you and rattles loose shards of glass
that rain to the tiled floor, shattering into drops
that glisten like water.
6.
in the mirror—a warped reflection of lightning.
a storm gapes outside like a wet mouth,
panting breath, painting a film of fog
over the single uncovered window.
hungry, searching. all the gold in the world
couldn’t convince me now. the limbs haven’t
left the streets, nor the voices from the walls.
7.
the angel collapses beneath white light
to a beach of salt, echoes of the past
rattling their knees, and the knocking
so like stones—like teeth,
like worlds colliding—
linear time in a cascade.
either the hammer or the nails
they say take time, all you need.
the time i’d take has passed—long-since
disappeared over the horizon. now
snaking away from memory, too.
the hammer drops apologetically,
despite the steel and heft.
the nails are steel, too,
just a different kind.
as if frozen, the wood shattered
instead of split, limiting our supplies
to a mound of kindling.
minutes to burn away.
ashes ride the breeze over the valley,
on to live other lives as soil
and dust and if it’s lucky,
maybe even
bone.
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a freelance writer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Madison Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and more. You can read their work at www.thewritinglog.com and follow them on social media @the_writing_log
Esther Ra
ars poetica | Spring Cleaning
ars poetica
wake up! i trumpet to the poems fast asleep
like ground squirrels under the snow
so many lines leap through the air
& my soul spins around at each one
what is the use of poetry
if it cannot lift the spirit from its shell
or deepen the rich silence of the lilies
this is poetry the night lamps winking on
one by one soft stars on a pale blue street
& this is poetry: the lemongold
daffodils strips of sunlight
on the faceless corpses in the fridge
& poetry: what dies unsaid with prisoners
who are stoned with their mouths full of rope
& the flowers dostoevsky bought for his wife
with the few roubles he hadn’t gambled away
& the long lines of mothers waiting
to clothe their babies in clean diapers
& my mother’s first laugh, as pure as the sound
of glass raindrops after a drought
& the wheat fields, a lion’s mane shaking
& the river whispering come run with me
& the first cat i fell in love with
& the first dog
& on new year’s eve it was raining cats & dogs
when my sister & i ran through the sleet
she kept tilting the umbrella my way so i wouldn’t
get wet her icy fingers closing over mine
we were so young so lost in these dark foreign streets
where we ran nearly crying with fright
then boston harbor burst onto our sight
the fireworks
were a thousand night lamps exploding
like a window broken to bright shards
daffodil flare fistful of flowers & laughter
& wasn’t that also poetry?
God is a poet & the world is His poetry
all creation declares His majesty
i will never write a line more lovely
than the deep, open face of the sea
Spring Cleaning
Reluctantly, my room yields its long-ignored secrets,
the inner recesses of its embarrassed and dust-thick
privacy—bared open in the fresh, cold air.
Sleeves of sunlight and silk wind waft
through emptied drawers, the open fridge.
Baptizing the sauce-crusted egg tray
with a flood of hot water and soap,
I watch the clouded glass grow clearer,
more radiant, clean arms ready to cradle
their water-pearled, berry-bright storage.
Arms deep in the swelter of my unending sins,
I jerk open the shelves of my winter soul.
Darkness, in which sadness spun its webs.
And now, this hard scrubbing. This coming of spring.
Esther Ra is a bilingual writer who alternates between California and Seoul, South Korea. She is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023) and book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018). Her work has been published in Boulevard, The Florida Review, Rattle, The Rumpus, PBQ, and Korea Times, among others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize, Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Award, 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and Sweet Lit Poetry Award. Esther is currently a J.D. candidate at Stanford Law School. estherra.com
Kate MacAlister
ritual: how to plot an abortion
“I remember standing in front of the train station sometime in the mid-1970s and handing out leaflets. At the time, this very doctor had been shot, and everyone was afraid that the file with the names of his patients would now be found.” - Dora
1. whisper. for witches are never silent.
but whisper: of the woman
who was once regarded a factory to good
society. whisper of the woman who
was never here.
2. steal. what you can.
specula
upper blade, lower blade,
sharpen your courage, soften your voice.
cannulae, also soft. flexible.
disinfectant. rinse off everything men called holy .
3. give. Everything give. nothing
whatever is available
more or less suitable:
a bicycle pump, a picknick
basket full secrets clattering,
dried kelp. trust
4. wash hands. hold
hands. move across
the sternum and symphysis
take good measure. centimetres last weeks
5. push down gently, locate the fundus,
gently palpate, seek out the cradle
of her fathers dirty looks, her mother’s gasping, the ruin on her breath
humiliation. Leave both of these
outside, at the door.
#witchesbelike 7
6. stand. next to the bed. wait.
for the sign. open
and pump. gentle suction - release
the tissue into the glassbottle
waves of blushed seafoam
and listen. the scratching, grave sound
of letting go.
7. feel out the emptiness, the complete waters
exorcise the spectre of guilt against the
light of the cave once again
and watch it bloom
into choice
into life
8. Leave advice and comfort but not yourself- remember
the coathangers, the knitting needle,
chicken bones, soft bodies crashing
down the stairs and out of windows.
the bloodrush verdict
running down all our thighs.
the personal is political
when my cunt is public property.
9. remember this
is the simplest, hardest thing to do
support every outcome of pregnancy
the wicked women are not going
anywhere
they will always send us
back to the shadows
Kate MacAlister is a poet, medic, and feminist activist whose work interrogates language, embodiment, and resistance. She is the founder of Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion, a multilingual community arts and literature project for women and genderqueer people. Her award-winning poetry films explore the intersections of ecology, narrative, and defiance, framing storytelling as both a site of connection and a radical act. A graduate of the Manchester Writing School under Carol Ann Duffy, she is now undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing and Medical Humanities at the University of Nottingham on the female body as anti-patriarchal resistance. Her poetry collections are published by Querencia Press and Sunday Mornings at the River.
Mike Zimmerman
When to Cut
Wait for the Goldilocks day,
Not too hot, not too cold, just right
for that twisted machine—black and red
and gasoline. Yes, I am afraid
to be too weak to pull. And I am.
We try again. Prime the pump, rip the rope
and hope. But I never make anything happen.
You start it for me and say
“Watch out for big rocks.”
You point them out; I hit three.
Yes, you kept it during chemo. It trapped you once,
Caught you under it while I was at work.
And yes, near the end, Goldilocks. We sense and see
The day is not too anything. Grass high and sharp,
rioting, an overgrowth of green.
You are afraid. Too pale, too weak to pull,
So I start the mower and move.
I’m cutting all the time now, Dad—
you’re lying still.
The Line Outside a German Sex Club
As I rest for a moment near the grated gate
and chug my wasser from the bierhof Rüdesdorf,
the naked weight of history reorders everything:
Oh, queer men. Oh, in a line. Uh oh, in Germany. Grab a number—
and plastic bag! Place all valuables now!—a number,
not a name, for the night. The other men, standing
somber for fun, like convicts in the yard, simmering
with all my same aches, all my same lush leniencies.
I adjust my eyes to the dark mouth of this place
and think: judgmental American—tsk tsk, small-minded little
Puritan boy, he’s already poking out of his shorts.
Inside, it’s like cageless zoo at midnight, these hours
of distress and longing. Puritan boy. My mouth is open,
my mouth is wrapped around someone’s long
evening. In the red light someone shakes his head
and tells me, don’t go down those stairs. For you,
always up. Never down. Around and around
there are the colors of hurt, and weapons
that could have been borrowed from any fortress
or from any camp. Among the sweaty walls,
the delirious music pumps on from invisible speakers.
It begins. I want to be locked in; I want to be made
A prisoner of our pleasures all over again.
Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a high school teacher in Queens. His work has been published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, Florida Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Zingara Poetry Review, and various anthologies. Social media @mazaffect.