Single-headed.
Flowering inwardly.
Barely felt in the birth canal.
Medical marketer.
Sick with planet.
By MEGAN PINTO
Say Chicken Little was right, that the sky
is falling. What I want to know is,
will the moon fall too? Will it bounce softly
like swiss cheese, or will it crumble
like a stale cookie? Do skies bruise?
Do they ache? And is the sky
a metaphor for all the ills and evils
of the world? A testament
to how the earth can only hold so much
pain and grief? But why
would God send a chicken? Would you listen
to a chicken? Is the chicken a metaphor
for Jesus? Did the Bible mention this
and somehow I missed it? Is this because
in 6th grade my teacher made me promise Jesus
my virginity in a gift basket? Actually, if the sky falls,
By ZACK STRAIT
This is the body, broken for you, the minister says, placing
a small moon on my tongue. I pull it into my mouth
there’s like 30 miles of Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway then another lil highway
til the lake. the pines fall off occasionally & the pre-dusklight accentuates the
gold in the dust & dirt. dead trees chalk line ones still standing. it’s so quiet iont
have words to describe it properly. Myrrh calls me out for projecting onto this lil
kid i said looked gay & i am proud of them for holding me accountable; they’re
right. we talk on the hike down about the violence that manifests w projecting,
By JOHN FREEMAN
Backlit by the glow
from a small passageway,
he kneels into the fog
of yellow light,
head kissing the carpet.
I step around him,
respecting his privacy, when
the mat becomes not prayer
rug but builder’s tool,
a black piece of tarmac, laid down
before the bank so he could
peer close, fix the dead
motion sensor so that people
with money could
be seen, all doors opening
for them.
Blue, the infinite within a boundary hue.
Edo artists relished its blood-drain
of sea dawns. Westerners learned to brew
from the Virgin’s mantle the brim celestial stain.
I come home and for a moment before the door clicks shut
you don’t hear me. You go along singing Morrissey, cooking
what smells like potatoes, pouring Bulleit into a glass I bought.
By TARA SKURTU
It was the first time I’d lived
with a man, and I wanted him
to translate the name of our street.
He was holding my cold fist
in his own, and we were on
Ofrandei, in the middle of unpaved
Bragadiru, Romania, on our way
home. It’s something you give
to get something—like a sacrifice.
Like what you do for a god.
By MARCUS MYERS
If our bodies are vessels, hers sailed away.
I am sunken eleven months deep, away from her
hazel eyes like aulos pipers for my oarsmen,
away from her
and then I remember the faint aching hiss of nitrous leaking from the tip of the siphon into the open mouth of me
a hit off the pressurized cream of me
in the darkened storage room round back of the restaurant of me
at twenty-one, the different sounds that rustled in me
freezer hum and thudding voices, conversation concentrate inside of me
who I used to be, was then and then and then: still me
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