Issue 4 – Mar 23

we’ve no choice but to see, our eyes clicking like jaws: a pond of black porcelain, thawing;the browned apple, bruised while on the branch;that choir of pill bugs,…

To soothe the injured Tree SCRAPE the ragged edges off the Wound leave the bark smooth and tight to the wood the bark heals AROUND the Wound’s edge…

Under armadillo armorrough torn patchesiron tough. Beneath taut scarsabraded tissue tornto compost fodder. Down, down into dark –cry to sleep, count sheep,dashed dreams and nightmares: childhood locked away…

“Not me, says the boxing writer. Sayin’, Boxing ain’t to blame,There’s just as much danger in a football game. Sayin’,“Fist fighting is here to stay. It’s just the…

Water and its sounds taking rounds of de-devotion.I wish I could say it was gentle, that it would listenwhen I mimicked the sun.What stayed was weightwashing over, a…

I.Dorsal surface of a mouse skullas unflinching as its neck.Circle close just above clavicle,spiraling outward, slippagethen clean, sharp clamping,feel the bone shutter beforequieting the unquietness. II.A sentiment that…

To grow up is to shed our exoskeletons of childhood,then spend our lives trying to climb back within them.Bones of our own making repose in parks, reminding usof…

the other night you found me in my binary shell:one finger dancing over the emergency sos switch on my phonethe other being dragged around by unwanted thoughtsone glance…

A rebounding spray of water on bare skin, such innocent intimacy. Maintenance workers watering the softball field at a liberal arts college in March, Southern California; my father…

When I heard my epidermis ticking like a time bomb.When I heard him whispermy name as he touched the soft parts.When I heard my voice say “no.”When I…

The First Woman grabbed the First Daughterfresh on the chin, just moisturized,spectator and the object,red nails on skin reddened and blade puckered,and there did she say,“Do you think…

I’ve tried to say this before, in the wrong ways.  Everything is real until it becomes true.  Like standing straight up in my corner-enclosure shower in my first…

for Malakai how would their parents reactif they knew what these children were doing at night? in the hidden safety of rehearsals, of group chats,of school lunch tables,…

It’s here. What is? Ah, yes! My seeing, hearing, and speaking; or well, the eye of my I, the here of my ears, and the drouth of my…

I am a childless mother who teaches teenage boys tenderness. I lose them in malls and to life sentences. I shop online for a skeleton key. I repeat…

The first snow happens quietly, midnight on a Sunday. It tells no one its whereabouts, and before it shows itself, we wait with the frustration of bored soldiers,…

I reassemble myself well inside the scope of non-duality, which we deem salubrious or at most, biological. Waking up as the same person who went to bed the…

Skin taunt like over ripe fruitvelveteen under your mouththe way it eventually yieldsand splitswetly against the guillotineof your teeth I yield to your sharp edges I yieldI yield…

1 Kinda glad poetry is dead. The New York Times pronounced it. I’d rather speak to the dead in a dead language, if you know what I mean….

I put my fingers in the hot sand of the dune and close my hand, but the sand disappears between my fingers. I imagine being a gecko, a…

I’ve slept on a floor for months andin the same room lives a man on bed.The man is only twenty three in his IDsbut his face looks old.He…

Due to the formatting of this piece it is being displayed as an image. It is also available as a downloadable PDF.

In the white haze, in black spots, in the blizzard of time, in the fact that winter is coming, do not pronounce the names of the past, they…

Scene One The Lioness sits on stage in the sand.Her tail flicks.She yawns.The Lioness scoops sand into a bucket. SUNWhat are you doing, Lioness? The Lioness turns the…

not a swoosh or a slide or an oh dear more like a j-j-j-j kind of anti-fluidity pliant like butter in your microwave, and i know who did…