maneuverability (Stephanie Anderson)
& he kept saying over and over i was a star leaned against the hood crusty with a cig while i set up cones & a gem & a good job & great at this & a natural & made it look easy if heaven were a truck it would have a front bench seat…
Guns, Sex, Phones (Katherine Schmidt)
My friend says let’s go to the shooting range and I tell her I don’t know anything about guns. About hunting. About how fun it is to let loose. To pretend we don’t eat microwaveable Mac and cheese for dinner, plugged into our phones, plugged into our Bluetooth headsets. My boss Karen texts me while…
Gallows Humor (Charles Michael Pawluk)
Today my students asked me how I wanted to die. They gave me options. The guillotine, drawn and quartered, broken on the wheel. We went back and forth. They told me, Bene mori est libenter mori. They told me, Melior est dies mortis die nativitatis. I said where did you learn that word. They said…
Late May (Matt McBride)
Every garage door in Ohio is open.And all the UPS drivers look ready to stripfor a bachelorette party. My daughter chases taxidermied rabbitsin the grass lot next door. The municipal worker in her neon vestsells tickets to use the excavator. I write birdswith a question mark in my notebook,but it’s not a question. *** Matt…
things my family said in southside accents that gave me sucha a dopamine hit i wanted to miss my flight home (Romy Rhoads Ewing)
-bag-pod-too long since-running through lower wacker-muggsy bogues-guaranteed rate field-(g-spot for short)-lou malnati-oh don’t go yet-aperitif-psilocybin-hey hot dog-personal injury lawyer-love youse *** Romy Rhoads Ewing is a writer and photographer from Sacramento, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, JAKE, Bullshit Lit, fifth wheel press, BRAWL, Querencia Press, Nowhere Girl Collective, Major 7th Magazine,Y2K…
some of us don’t attach well (Nathaniel Calhoun)
is caring something we can choose to do more of? setting aside what seems to be the literal no is there a pathway to follow? steadily the dependable accumulate those who value constant things who come together like proper…
I bit into a nectarine (Ewan Glass)
and the stone was a diamond. My front teeth shattered but now I was rich I could get new ones, better ones! This plunged me into a thought crisis. How could they be better? Sharper? More durable? Absently, I ate the flesh of the nectarine. Mechanised? Branded?! Wiping my lips, I realised I’d eaten the…
Séance at the dinner party (Tori Palmore)
Uncle asks if I teach minorities. Brother is dead. Yes I do. Cousin asks if any boys hit on me. Uncle tells me to smile. Cousin says how about any girls. Haha. Says she’s kidding. Brother is dead. Women in the kitchen. Men anywhere else. Someone’s neighbor’s daughter is a queer. Woman says Oh Lord.…
nts (John Janelle Backman)
They show up in the kitchen each May, here and there if the counter is spotless but in swarms around food, any amount any kind, even orts. Ah, you’re thinking, a typo in the title: she means ants. But only ants of a certain size qualify for four letters, and these teeny-tinies don’t make the…
The Job of the Poet (Jordan Ranft)
A mote of dust settles on her eyelash as she takes a deep breath above her morning coffee. The dog waits by the door with butterscotch fur. A perfect Cara Cara Orange from the farmers’ market enters the scene like a bag of gems knotted at the navel. Skin flashing in the grey haze of…
A List of Things to Talk About When You Get Back (Aubri Kaufman)
*** Aubri Kaufman is a writer and a therapist from New Jersey. She is the co-founder and co-EIC of Icebreakers Lit. Her work can be found in Pidgeonholes, HAD, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere. She wants to talk to you on Twitter – @aubrirose. *** image: Ashley Beresch. Check out more of her work on Instagram @ashleyberesch
I had this weird dream (Sofia Eun-Young Guerra)
It went like: we were in the park and the grass was tall as skyscrapers, there was this cricket, he was wearing a North Face windbreaker and he had a big backpack, he opened it up and inside he had boxes of crayons, the kind restaurants used to give us when we were kids, the…
Sonnet Counting Days (Adam Spiegelman)
I gave it all up once, got it all back, then went And did it again. I woke in November as if From uneasy dreams. Woke from one dream into Another. The mornings that second first winter were Sheer and perfect and cold as bar soap. I had never been so young so easily. I…
I nearly sign up for a free tutorial on how to market a book on social media by a writer who has sold 50,000 copies this way, until I realize she is a tik tok poet and I would rather throw away my phone than tick the clock (Reece Gritzmacher)
and anyway, I don’t have a book all swaddled for the runway, just a hundred pages here, a hundred out back, and words cobwebbing the ceiling. I have no active accounts at present, not even bumble for romance. I think I want to tin can communication, to ships with poems on their masts tucked into…
Under the Desk Is a Good Place to Hide (Elena Zhang)
We start by lighting candles, two white, two red, all of them tall and spindly like fingers reaching toward a promise. Then comes the prayer. Closing our eyes, we recite the words we know by heart, a polyphonous melody, dissonant and grotesque: Cross the bunny ears. Pull them through. We do not know to whom…
4 poems (Ana Carrete)
innocence sticking your tongue out all the way for pictureswith your friends’ friends comparing tongue length in picturesfor pictures while drunk holding drinks laughingso hard don’t want to kiss and don’t want to cuddle they lied and i believed we’d get our student loans forgiveninterest continuesto accrue and accrue bitch whatever i may be short…
Mushroom Poem (Renny Gong)
the key to foraging mushrooms I think is to go when it’s raining just a bit not for any reason other than that the drizzle puts you in the most mushroomy of moods you should also probably bring a mushroom expert who can say those are good those will give you terrible poops and those…
Canyonlands (Alex Gurtis)
Before learning of my grandmother’s impending death, I meet desolation on an island in the sky. After Mesa Arch hiccups sunset, light alters the distance between mountains and canyons. My tour guide app whispers of erosion, bridges suddenly collapsing in the night. Families once lived among these crags. Now a lone goat grazes between the…
Devotion (Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez)
I have animal breath pressed against your ear. You don’t have any blinds on the windows, waking up is child’s play. We trade kisses like baseball cards, proud of what we give, hoping to get something better. Your fingers clam to my bare thighs, etching your name like a diary entry, tracing constellations of overgrown…
Slow children at Play (Peter Kaczmarczyk)
I was always confused by the signs that read Slow Children at Play Did these children move at half speed or less Trapped in some special effect? And how come I never saw them As I rode through their special land? Were certain streets reserved for the slow children Like some kind of redlining to…
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Rejection Letters 