William / Katerina Canyon
I cannot catalog
our time together
because we were young
and my memory is old,
but there are a few things
I remember.
Your arm over my shoulder
after grad night.
Your height made me feel short.
So few boys did that
and I liked it.
Redondo Beach,
The way you kissed
me. Your skin salty
like my favorite snack—
salditos.
I broke up with you
for a love bomb
That damaged me.
I bear scars to this day.
You thought you could
forgive me,
but you couldn’t.
We moved on.
Now you are gone—
too young. I wish
I had taken better care
of your heart.
Fishing / Sam Calhoun
Every pier easing into the dark,
harbor lights miming the sun,
minnows huddle in shallow
water searching for warmth.
Quick to cup a hand, I catch a few,
iridescent scales sticking to my fingers,
I dream of mackerel skies,
how these scales are like stitch holes
across my palms, my shadow
eclipsing their lives,
they shimmy out, seeking
consciousness in the act,
water catching on our feet
like diamonds in the dark,
our mistaking the scene
for waking, or having woke,
our lives driftless as moored boats
in the fog rolling gray as our hair.
We too minnows beneath stars,
and worlds beyond.
What can be said on these
late shores not already said?
We too huddle in the crackle
of campfire, waiting for daylight.
Late Night Youtube Bender / at/om
content warning: references to self harm and suicidal ideation
I was so sick back in 2015,
my mind a floor coated in
broken glass for a body that
could not afford a broom.
The night before my flight to a
residential treatment center my
loved ones held me as though I
would never come home. I held
my home as though I would
never return to it.
My sister stayed up all night
in my bed watching our favorite
YouTube channel and laughing
and not talking about the fact I
was flying away with no return
ticket booked. Not talking about
the night two months earlier I went
to the hospital with no intent on
coming back.
We just watched the videos and
laughed at a man who sometimes
hurt himself while making art projects.
His videos aren't the same anymore
though sometimes I still watch late into
the nights when my heart aches the most
and I wonder if I am safe here.
I feel the hurt again, remember the things
I wanted to hold more than I wanted to get
better and I wrap myself in my blankets and
pray that the man on YouTube and I can
finish our projects without hurting ourselves.
Chester, for the relief of unbearable urges, digs a hole in the yard and eats the root he finds / Ellen Ferguson
Nathan Englander wrote the story “For
The Relief of Unbearable Urges,” from
The Talmud, maybe, or the Torah
But it’s in there – a rule for
Us to follow in stepping away.
Rules for the breaking of rules, how
Delicious. When it’s time to break
The rule, here’s how to do it, according
To the rule. Silver Linings Playbook, that’s
A crazy one – rules aligned so you can
Dance and win, according to someone’s
Ways to win, someone’s list of ways to
Dance the right way.
Chester, for the relief of unbearable urges,
Digs a hole in the yard and eats the root he
Finds, then chokes, cannot breathe, and John,
Flying over the fence, removes the root while
Danielle, Chester’s mother, watches him struggle
To breathe. Just stands there. Watching.
Questions / Brett Gastineau
Is it better to live un-surprised
or to love from a distance?
Why must the night feel like an empty room to fill?
Who is it that scratches at my dreams?
Is it the same one who placed a wolf in my heart?
Has anyone ever tried to wish the stars away?
Why do Mondays feel so washed out?
And why do they tromp about on boredom’s puffy toes?
Why is March ambivalent?
And why does terror come at three in the afternoon?
What was that minor curse you laid across my shoulders?
What was that minor tenderness?
Perhaps the curse is being the last one to feel anything?
Isn’t it funny that lovemaking must be proceeded by
the cursing of buttons and stubbornly stuck zippers?
And why must I always be under the influence of your
sleazy vowels?
Has anyone figured out how to close the door on grievances?
If they have would they mind being the last gust of wind slamming
me closed?
Why do the lips of a wound never speak of love?
Do trees envy the patience of grass?
Is there harmony in death?
Or is it just suffering’s white bed?
Why does memory not pass away easily?
Why must each thought of the past become a forest?
Will we always be lost in this blue dream of yesterday?
Do silhouettes have interior lives?
Why do people always talk about the weather with cats?
What questions do you ask of an orange?
Do birds sing simply because no one will write them poems?
Why has “belonging” always felt like such a strange word,
like a way to feel “to be longing for”?
In dreams, are trees like us, just ghosts walking roads that stretch
beyond their lives?
Is living just not asking permission?
Or is it a light bulb in the chest asking to be turned on?
What is that special kind of grief when I find myself missing something I’ve forgotten the name of called?
Where does meaning go when words are forgotten?
My museum of Italian-Americana series: / Nicoletta LaMarca-Sacco
II: living room
grandfather who never got to be
a grandfather made these tables,
chairs, sideboard and cabinet by hand
cabinet-maker, a job, an art
& when they met, my Nonna
had already made a handcrafted round doily that fit on top of his round table
after he died, attempts to save what seemed precious
Nonna lined up knicknacks on the bay window’s curve
one couch, one chair encased in clear vinyl
against sticky grandkids’ hands
could we have saved him, tucked away & treasured
rather than the upholstered seating
AMBITION / H.T. Reynolds
there is a window in the middle
of the day
somewhere between
the lamppost
and the garden
with a sash hung up
loose against the light
so that your eyes sizzle
with each refraction
a tilt of the head and
poof
over the channel
the snapped rail
the head
beckoning you
to aspire…
you pass
through the pane
and into—
what’s beyond
a likeness
unwelcome
Camp First and then Dinner / Gabriel Phillips
Little apple links to Dresden like flames and fur.
I can see it counting out loud,
stuck inside bits of cabbage.
How closely it remains untied together.
In front of us, I wander.
Far from voice reach and grope.
To the cabin. To the fire inside.
Where I ride the rocking horse for hours.
Where the cabin and the rocking horse burn
for hours. I don’t touch fire.
I caress it.
That apples would cook before boiling
in their own little juices. How do we boil instead
without caressing the fire?
Char is the father of glitter.
I want the size of the window to pulse
then throw out the light bulbs to catch
and kindle and crackle.
I make light
without the light’s permission.
Then abandon the light for fitted sheets
to warm the smoldering cabin.
There, there, autumn is so striking.
Unlike the gear which holds me together,
I unfold the tiny space between the stones.
Someone tries to experience my name at night.
Someone goes to sleep beside me
breathing.
absence soon to be / Colin Sturdevant
at the lip of the world,
tell me what’s left now
