Poetry
A Dead Sparrow
Katherine Hessler The city possesses zodiacal light./ I climb along the red edge of day: a cliff with a punch drunk jaw./5:00 am a phoenix fills the sky over the strip mall lot,/and the crumbs of God’s baking flutter to the eaves,/but a sparrow with a broken wing hops & drags itself to fall/over the… Read More A Dead Sparrow
Mother / Tongue / Slanted / Song
Roy Zhu / 朱若忆 A bloodline’s length of longing And a losing silence. A cherry tree in bloom And a balding cypress. A woman sits at work And a child gazes up. Poison in the pipes And poison in the blood. Waking to the rooster Crying just enough. Sleeping while the train Rumbles on above.… Read More Mother / Tongue / Slanted / Song
I scrub trashcans/my Father cleans the kill floor
Katherine Hessler Amongst the cadre of the filth drain I trust that Marquez understood time as a ring of water. The broken potatoes in chemical soup. The sea which boils to kill the fruit flies of corporate trashcans. Black specks flying off black monoliths like periods off a page. The hose spits out hot spells… Read More I scrub trashcans/my Father cleans the kill floor
Jellyfish
Mary Caserio The otherworld has beings like this, these creatures of sunset and stardust. ++++++++ They dwell beneath a crystalline sky with+++++++++++++++++ no sun and no stars. On each exhale they+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ bloom with fluid rhythm, sinking slow, and+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ placid, and silent across infinity’s solemn gaze.+++++++++++++++++++++++ They drift through the ultramarine, trailing+++++++++++++++ ++++++tangling ribbons, sheets of… Read More Jellyfish
Sunday
Ashby Baker Service starts with Simon and Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge Song.” Up on tip-toes, a girl cocooned in blankets watches her mother, arms strong nose to the cookbook, as she kneads unsweet dough, nudging sticky flour into patties, humming to the radio. Floured-hands glow white, and the mother rechristens each countertop she touches, as… Read More Sunday
horse
Marcelo Quesada colts a stampeding swarm of frothing horses clots of earth kicked up in an infinite series huffing beasts huffing muscled legs somewhere somewhere past the tension that rests on the skyline pulled taut like slack frothing up and lapping rocky beds we watch each others breaths coagulate, other times follow as it billows… Read More horse
Samsara
Chloe Chow I can’t make plans at this time of mourning, tangled up in now and then and linen. What I plan to do is make excuses, which is to say I’ll paint roofs onto houses and faces onto bones and then one day I’ll die. I’ll clean out my desk. I’ll carve my to-dos… Read More Samsara
(all the) blackness (you can handle) and a metaphor for intersectionality
Sophia Kathryn Jackson My friend told me a man had to be a radical to marry a black woman. Every time I look into the mirror I see someone new. Inside of my body I have got this meager variation of me who wakes up afraid. I spent the first part of my childhood getting… Read More (all the) blackness (you can handle) and a metaphor for intersectionality
we were always going to end up alone
Sam Alvarez I’ll turn the corner & see you before you see me & before we make eye contact I’ll fake yawn & squint at the horizon & raise a hand over my eyes to stifle the light falling … Read More we were always going to end up alone
vines; or: on disability
Hannah Travali-Peacock 0. they start at my pen unbidden, unwarranted, covering every scrap of blank space every time my mind goes blank. they begin to appear everywhere, always. a gift, an invader, a guest i didn’t ask for. 1. they flow from my friend’s hands to my knee and take root, something deeper than tattoo… Read More vines; or: on disability
