Marcus McCann Scrapper, if swollen open lids allow before the vanity—cramped, lit like discount grocery—I’ll tilt my skull back, squint, note this bacterial shiner, sacré coeur eye patch. A nightbird laid a heavy pink shit in my socket. A camera is a bad eye, my eye now a bad camera. You...
Jade McGregor When I say poetry saved my life I should mention other forces– by 1999 all the cars cruising the kiddie stroll had power lock doors, crystal meth turned the girls —Amber Dawn, titular piece, How Poetry Saved My Life My mother lived beside herself in fear I...
Arleen Paré if anyone asks tell them I’m sane as stainless steel I heat the pot before I make the tea when the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock I stand stock-still behind the drapes I harden myself against the swords of winter rain against December’s bucket of black night before they hatch I do not...
Jillian Christmas Dear God, Is it wrong that so long after our separation, I still see your face everywhere? The holy water between my legs when she touches me The wet in her eyes, head pressed back, her sinner mouth too full of heaven This bruised knee city Springing with all the wrong...
Pamela Mosher How to prepare for the bed and breakfast lavish with tajines and import rugs, absurd with Québecois music and Americans who couldn’t afford Paris? We couldn’t believe our room of roped curtain, in-suite fireplace, and crystal wine glasses (we filled with cheap depanneur red) We...
Sugar le Fae —after Collin Kelley’s “Saving Anne Sexton” In the library in Florence, Mass, I found her shriveled up small, a sibyl living in the hollow of her own book: a flask, a handgun, neatly rolled cash. Everywhere you looked, her curls!— in the red cursive script across the cover, in...
Joelle Barron All summer I’m growing: sugar snaps, raspberries, fat tomatoes streaked red and green. Plants are easy to love. My dog stretched out on the spruce-shade lawn is easy to love. Flutter in my belly might be you, might be gas. Too early to tell, but every night I drip milk. I...
Alex Leslie We’ve changed You said to me “your assorted minority identities” I misheard it, my sordid minority identities I routinely mishear labels as compliments this is a survival skill I don’t remember not noticing acquiring this skill You are so articulate have you considered being a...
Justin Karcher Sam, we have to clear our mental garbage. It will take work to mend these holes. If we don’t, We’ll end up marooned on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch spanning waters from the West Coast Of North America to Japan. Garbage is magnetic. It flocks to other garbage, like blood...
Dina Del Bucchia and Daniel Zomparelli 1. I don’t really remember much these days, when the bones arrived I talked about paper or the way glass isn’t something I want to be around. Did you remember the way love works, I told you once in a small elevator that the world closes in...
Shannon Webb-Campbell in the truck, on the way up, we talk around the meaning of marriage, we find an uncharted knowing driving down dirt roads, passing sheep, old barns, soon-to-be-made memories, alpacas by the time we make it to the highway, we conclude, love is truce, a pact to honour and...
Lynx Sainte-Marie I stand by the window. The night endures, and shadows are suffered by streetlamps. They mourn for the darkened lull of True Winter: that stillness where light is starved, begging for penance. For a while I had sat by my desk, looking busy. My eyes moved silently along the...
Amber Dawn I watched your breast which was fuller than the night on my porch when I first undid your buttons. The sheet beneath you was green It was almost our anniversary –“Epiphyte 2: Moss,” Jane Eaton Hamilton I watch your breast which is fuller than when we met I thought...
Claire Matthews I Like ferns in the desert, you said we were impossible. I drew you a giraffe, a frond in its mouth, taped it to the fridge, said, Use your imagination. Around your neck hung the patron saint you wore when you saw your mother. In the living room, the only photo of her turned...
Ruth Daniell Everything came back to me, in snippets, later, after the smell of his cologne on a stranger wafted through the doors of a bus and the details swept into me like dirt maltreated by a broom— his hands on me, his eyes seeing my fear and ignoring it, his voice telling me to stay...
Nico Amador Seasons have changed, even if doubts haven’t. Up north we’re together in the final blue curl of daylight, watching each iteration of trees out the window, their latest bit, that wild dead orange. It’s cold and I feel calmer in my clothes. I’m answering the call of old books...
Michael V. Smith I’m in the chapel on the Titanic but it’s modern and kind of tacky. The ceilings are twenty feet high. There are huge dark panels on the walls where stained glass windows should be. When you walk past them, you can see in, see three-dimensional representations of...
by Arleen Paré ask yourself how you bear this state everyday this chromosomal state of x and x like the day you step from the number 17 cross the street up the concrete steps faster along the everyday academic corridor into the university classroom late and a boy with a semi...
