I Want a Tiny House I want a tiny house for my tiny life. I want to sleep efficiently in a solar-powered hole and expend as little energy as I can. I want to breathe less often so as not to suck in and kill microbes who have done nothing to me and whom I shall regard as my models for living. I think … Continue reading Four Poems by Erick Piller
from Dear Gone It’s almost like we still lie to each other but it’s just me now. In your inventories, several light bulb jokes I wrote myself. In your inventories, it is too dark to read. In your inventories, I was 9 granite columns, pulled up the Nile by slaves. I held fast, a sky overcast with crackling leather, polished in the reduction … Continue reading Grey Vild
by Hope Lyca Youngblood I am on house arrest. I got out of jail five days after April 7 2016 and I am facing felony assault charges. I may wind up in a serious criminal mental institution. I’m afraid of my own mind. After getting out of a therapy session on the 7th I was filled with guilt. I write horrible things in … Continue reading 4/7 Vampires
by Emerson Whitney This book is the black of a wide open mouth. There’s no other place to start, really, just agape. I like this idea of an open mouth, lips at liberty, the reckless brush strokes of a painting, open and possible. Here’s the opposite, category like a clenched jaw. An endless portrayal: mirrors, ace bandages, bathrooms, doe … Continue reading Without Setting Fire
by Jer Bryant “Why do you want to wear those bracelets? They’re hearts. They’re not for boys.” Ms. Davis, a teacher at my elementary school, extends her hand toward my small five-year-old body. I slip off the plastic bangles, gifts from my friend Christie, and drop them on the wrinkled hand before me. Her cheeks, parts of her face that remind me of … Continue reading Coming Kingdom
THIS BOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF: BOOK RETURN Avren Keating‘s a poet and artist. They’ve published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Omnivores, and THEM: A Trans* Lit Journal. Avren also hosts Waves Breaking, a podcast for trans and gender-variant poetry. Continue reading Two Poems by Avren Keating
by Joy Ladin In summer 2000, Emi Koyama’s influential “Transfeminist Manifesto” defined trans feminism as “a movement by and for trans women who view their liberation to be intrinsically linked to the liberation of all women and beyond” (245). For Koyama, and for many trans and non-trans feminists since, trans feminism is a no-brainer, one among many efforts to “broaden” feminism to include “women who … Continue reading Diving Into the Wreck: Trans and Anti-Trans Feminism
magnificent, the way one year folds into another the way skin stretches into infinity the way a few bones and some breath fill up this space inside follicles are follies sprouting trees and your breath is a gale oh laughter i haven’t seen my thighs in over a week just because i haven’t looked doesn’t mean they aren’t there and what exactly … Continue reading Three Poems by Gr Keer
A Table Filled with Interest Or a clothing summary of the king Dandy acres untours pronunciation Bracketology, a bracelet made from her teeth Frame moment frame Damnation’s prayer for a higher tax bill Contagion and aftershock in a few paintballs more Envy’s minor reflection, brother velvet A bright new room called Boise Jerseylicious, write an autism haiku Her artwork is an argument with corporate … Continue reading Anne Gorrick
by Charles Alexander Increasingly, I want my friends around me, and my friends are everywhere, anywhere. David Miller, the Australian poet who has lived in London for about 30 years. Simon Pettit, the British poet who has lived on the Lower East Side of New York for about 30 years, David Abel, the poet and performer from Deming, New Mexico, who has lived … Continue reading No Matter Where: Art & Community
(in)decent-exposure for Ballinger & Arkansas HB1986 picture this the phone’s tied up to my body & yr call yr legislator calls my body legislation territory to exploit explore & skin border to picket our flesh a fence we can’t kick down & a tension rod keeps building a dark curtain in the photo booth we call the state of Arkansas Arkansas a heavy weighted boxer … Continue reading Brody Parrish Craig
Carnage At Dark Towers The Melbourne Protocol states that tennis and other famous sports stars are welcome guests of wherever they happen to be at any given moment Nadal stares into the eyes of the sun, but not directly, Mum The Melbourne Protocol states that tennis and other famous sports stars are welcome guests of wherever they happen to be at … Continue reading Michael Farrell
from Ghost Snow 2 (Unwinding) * Where is Owen (Como)? where’s Baloncé? where’s the pumpernickel where is “adults move magnetized to the earth” where’s Leslie where is t’otherest guvnor where’s “all other insects forage at random” where is David G? where’s the fucking pumpernickel? where’s David S who wrote this? where are … Continue reading Tenney Nathanson
Review by Petra Kuppers SapphoPunk j/j hastain Spuyten Duyvil 2015 “Wings are being read as they are being spread like thighs. It is possible to read a body without knowing how to read the words that might be used to describe it. Inscribe by presence.” The prolific j/j hastain writes queered priest’s words, steeped in thick somatic cauls, in sexual winged ecstasies, in a … Continue reading “Wings are being read as they are being spread like thighs:” j/j hastain’s Queer Academies
Clad, Clawed, Clandestine Eagly Pig E I I id eye: Lie as eyes lie, I. Delineating it, disentangling inclines in lies; incidentals cast a delicate sign. Cling in line, eyeing diligent penalties, laws, claws: it’s eyes in lies. Anteceding id, laws distancing I, clasping ties, inspecting id, an eye, a lie; all ID, and stenciled, penciled eyes. … Continue reading Three Poems by Larissa Shmailo
Sunset City Friction underneath California tongues, Walking in Bakersfield heat brittle against dry ideas. I’m a crux forced into a smoke world, we lost the best of ourselves, Smoking out of chimney lungs, pressure put us down, called it a giving in. I keep thinking how that Tuesday slaughtered all my old vices, Tempted me for a shapeshift, Stoic at best, cost myself … Continue reading Two Poems by Mateo Lara
offset by glamour and the perfect pose prominent among the belles of the land digested in small amounts and refreshed frequently browsing among the misbegotten brings faulty results a veil falls down, and then again and again never letting the light penetrate to the favorite spot deathless in motion and motive, a frontier of delights from … Continue reading Two Poems by Richard Staub
THE DEAD LANDS empire equals fitness and guns and used books, if the world is state terror, he forgot joy, dripping in his skull, “it’s just a path, don’t be nervous,” promise me the rich can’t sleep, “America,” my parasite, my seizure breaking word and world, health insurance health insurance health … Continue reading Joseph Lease
500 Dead Crows ___________________________________________ Isabelle Shallcross (she/her) writes poems about the South, nature, and being a sad and problematic person under capitalism. Her favorite writers include Chris Kraus, Ross Gay, and Mira Gonzalez. She has received a scholarship to study poetry at the Bread Loaf School of English and is originally from Alabama. Continue reading Isabelle Shallcross
The Other if there wasn’t a 10% after the 90% if there was a code if the belly drank more fluid when justice sat and discussed at a round table if obliteration meant just this one time if radiation were laying out in the sun if Paris wasn’t so far if it cost less if everybody cheated if a person didn’t compress into just one … Continue reading Pazia Miller