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issue 03.

Flying Geese by Margot Nelson

7/18/2020

 
For pink: – madder root – avocado pits For brown: – foraged acorns (boiled) For yellow: – daffodils and – dahlias For blue: – Japanese indigo, handled with care Soaked in mordant and strung to dry on the line in the breeze. Measured and sliced stacked beaks pointing south piles bound with twine. Pinned and stitched and pressed like outstretched wings bound to the flock Quilted with thick white thread between spaced out safety pins Cotton on cotton on cotton growing heavy under thimbled thumbs. Left to take flight in the windowsill, fluttering above the downy hedge spring sunshine and cherry blossoms filling the batting like a sigh.

Margot Nelson

​is a French-American writer currently living in the green mountains of Vermont. Her writing has been featured in Teen Vogue, Q/A Poetry, The Honey Mag, Capsule Stories, honey & lime, and as an upcoming featured poet in Mineral Lit magazine. Her writing was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net award. When she isn't writing, Margot is usually reading, knitting, or taking care of her community garden. You can find her on twitter @margotnwrites

two poems: Nodes / Four by Jacqueline Brown

7/17/2020

 

Nodes

In which we’re digging through any potential consequence and circumstance
(Before and after when there were tulips in cups and flowers from dirt)
The confluence of water and earth
Moon slivers on the backs of the fields to which you feel near
Did you forget to plant the seeds?
Take your time, and in any case, I’ll tell the universe you said hi

Four

After Fiona Apple’s “I Know”

All the while
Waiting for you
You don’t need to try
As you wait for the world to come to
The senses you seek to find
When you open the
Door and see all this time you had the lines
For all you needed to say to
Someone hoping to speak
Patiently wanting to tend to your
Silent light and ease what you mind

Jacqueline Brown ​

is an Irish-American studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has previously been published or is forthcoming in The Blue Nib, FEED, The Blake-Jones Review, the debut issues of Truffle Magazine and The Initial Journal, and elsewhere.

two poems: Sunspots / Why are you telling me this by Alicia Byrne Keane

7/16/2020

 

Sunspots

There was an unlocalizable hissing
That for a second I thought had to
Be connected to the rain smell, the
Landscape like a struck match. An
Angling of the head in relation to
Noise seems to echo against how
We are all waiting to become some
Other thing, currently, or for time
To become some other thing, to
Diffuse or melt. The buzzing part
Came from a haloed tangle, the
Dense clot of wire conversing. If
Predictions serve us I suppose the
Peak will be in four days, or seven
Days, and I hate how they don’t
Know. I hate how I don’t even
Know what a peak means, really,
And would you notice one in its
Pre-crash swelling translucence
From the couch, from the folding
Chair in the garden. I hear tell in
Video calls of people wearing
Masks in places closer to town, or
Police coming to a friend’s house,
But out here I can’t really imagine
Centres, space appears to have
Both grown and shrunk as I angle
My way into the backgrounds of
Sitting rooms in Germany but I
Have not seen Grafton Street in a
Month. As I cried the room began
​To swell with sunshine like there
Was some sort of fizzling energy-
Spike, most pathetic of fallacies
Really. The desperate feeling itself
Seems like something that lights
And wells, nervously filling corners.

Why are you telling me this

&&&&  It’s such a narrow note like sap beading the crescent of a torn stem  there are one or two fissures skirting tastelessness so I try to fill my time  I cook foods that seem like something you can hide in like a robe  & the wind starts sucking the curtain around the room knocking ornaments off the table & the heat drains from the corners  & I have to stand up eventually & make everything closer to everything else  (but at least these days a cloud of one’s hair smells like sun when it damps in the shower)
Picture
Picture

Alicia Byrne Keane

is a PhD student from Dublin, Ireland. She has a first class honours degree in English Literature and French from Trinity College Dublin and a MSt. in English Literature 1900-Present from Oxford University. She is working on an Irish Research Council-funded PhD study that problematizes ‘vagueness’ and the ethics of translation in the work of Samuel Beckett and Haruki Murakami, at TCD. Her poems have been published in The Moth, Entropy, Abridged, and The Honest Ulsterman, among others. She has poems forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, The Account, and the Berkeley Poetry Review. She has performed at Electric Picnic, Body & Soul, and Lingo Festival, and has had two spoken word performances recorded for Balcony TV.

two poems: on the morning of my colposcopy / the territory you’re looking for has no map by V. S. Ramstack

7/14/2020

 

​on the morning of my colposcopy

the rain began at 4:36 a.m. i had been dreaming about a way to get everything done - in this, just a list of mundanities, mostly shuffling papers into piles and screaming at my hands for not working like they used to.

i, woman destroyed, & simone de beauvoir: seated on the table behind my head, all together swimming - we were waiting for the inevitable snip of tissue. under a microscope, what do i look like? what do i look like with the sunlight trailing across my arm? my whole and my parts, skin sucking in and promptly spitting out.
​
i think about ladybird beetles, the infestation in my parents’ old house when i toured it for the first time. the landlord said a quick poison would do. but i saw their eyes, the pockets of red coalescing in the door frames and along the window latches, drinking each other’s wings as i stood above them.

​the territory you’re looking for has no map

sand, pine, baby gnat wings
stuck in the corner of her eye
subtle swab of cotton
to wipe it clean

shaved her head beneath
a halogen lamp, dust-soaked fan
heaving with static, feeding and
whirring the forgotten cells

she dreamt of riding her bike through
five states, water bottle kept
between her legs, a sharp 45-degree angle
maybe a few drops for the snails

took to a trail, 172 miles in and collapsed
in a bush outside of Oatman, Arizona
a donkey shuffled by, clattering hoof
a silky buzz of lost adrenaline

if she gets up, feet a revered tool,
she’ll see the bike resting deep
in a patch of desert marigold
tracfone cracked, 12 prepaid minutes left

sticks her hand in the side-leg pocket:
a gum wrapper, bike key, a loose nug
another donkey in her periphery,
what could she make from this?
​
a fly lives on her eyelid for one minute
and lives the rest of its 38,000 minutes
elsewhere, like it knew the body
would have to go home
Picture

​V. S. Ramstack

 is a Pisces, a selective extrovert, and an avid crier. Besides poetry, she enjoys cats, flowers, and checking out too many books at the library. She received her MFA from Columbia College Chicago. Previous work can be found in Columbia Poetry Review, Night Music Journal, Curator Magazine, Oxidant | Engine, and Posit.

Ol' School by Oak Morse

7/11/2020

 
Paste a wife on me.
Spend the evening
engagement ring shopping.
Plan out a fancy proposal.
Wash my life in wedding white--
anything to put a wife with me.

My grandmother will marry me
to a toilet if she could.
Does everything have to be
bouquets and baby names?
Does everything have to be
cooking and cleaning conversations
with the wife she is casting?

I understand my grandmother
is super old school, but I’m more
than just a handsome man who looks
like husband material. Grandma,
you do not have to always throw
flower petals in my face or ask me
about long-ago lovers, they’re just as
dead to me as bridal veils.

When the right one comes, I promise
we will all be able to pop champagne
over it. Until then, you don’t have to
shove me in a house with a wife and kids
and call it happiness. Happiness is
loving life without having to love it
with someone.
​
To be frank, I’d rather be an old bald
bachelor writing poems about when
she comes than to be tied down
with the wrong one.
Picture

Oak Morse

is a poet and theater instructor born and raised in Georgia. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature as well as a Semi-Finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Awarded the 2017 Hambidge Residency, Oak’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Indianapolis Review, Star 82 Review, Menacing Hedge, Nonconformist Mag, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere. Oak has a B.A. in Journalism from Georgia State University and he currently lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches creative writing and performance and leads a youth poetry troop, The Phoenix Fire-Spitters. 

three poems: Quarantine poems #131 / #128 / #125 by Hunter Gagnon

7/10/2020

 

​Quarantine poem #131 “public health is confirming 5 additional cases...”

He walks from the hill a little kid inquisitive he won’t hear a word he’ll give you these theories like
putting their bulldog to death was a sign from god and ghosts in the wheelbarrows and did you lose power too ? because he did down there and who needs water ? we wondered what happened with a white bandana around his face and mosquitoes like telephone poles strung up silt-splashed legs and in his hand, balanced, a saucer of meat and onions grilled in blue smoke he walks to a patch of sand and dust stripped of long grass then steps through an orange door, a long step, too long for the carcass of his mom, which bends at the waste in bush shade that sits in leaf slur and shadow dance give me a car he says I’ll be president I’ll give them the wind too and lungs to have it baskets like rubber chickens everywhere like dog toys in the store

Quarantine poem #128 NV → UT

Stepping darkly over sage mound Nevada the night wheezes, a rain of orange cones, 4 closed rest stops 5,691,790 confirmed and the breath, sweat, salt smell of our necks against rolled jackets in tilted grey seats asks of red brakes, of white lines twirling through the black mountains for sleep for Utah coming, parked outside a casino, at 3am, shirts pinned over the windows, the bucket hanging, I squat, you begin to hiss, I hear the tires sheriff rolls up, we go ask for dawn I die in myself, don’t, you bring us in, a nautiloid tower the salt flats, the curved hills, lavender soft spreading over the sandlands, dried mango like a snake coffee from the green bag, no headache at all 355,629 deaths and the cracker damp smell of our need and change in the corolla, a thin lake 2,350,088 recovered, spraying death on the five gas pumps 1,699,176 US Utah, our desperate windows, reached and passed and tasted us virus travelers to mom, the desert, its wide rose-flushed tongue 105 deaths, 5,499 recovered (local), some hotspots, like cactus buds, thick in the nation’s teeth, blooming aheadPicture

​Quarantine poem #125 remembrance through farm pits of sound

Late in the heart, beyond the night, worried for the gas station hand, the glass cocoa bottle, emptied of powder, holds wine, with its snapped plastic top, the sheep dogs tell the lion to go, the skunk the coyote mobs of the Jug Handle estate the reed-folk that bulge and roll to the empty sand some learn to swim in the river, its stones like striped faces I learned in the shouting and chlorine of a pool I could dive too and wore my goggles that pulled my hair, we ate burger king after I was told not to breathe through my mouth in the house lights and dark walls of woods and posts no one likes a mouthbreather, a helpless one in his mom’s white carPicture
​

​Hunter Gagnon

 lives in North Berwick, Maine. He has worked as a State Park Seasonal Aide, a bookseller, and as a poetry teacher for elementary schools (before the pandemic). He holds a degree in Philosophy and has served in AmeriCorps and FemaCorps. He is a winner of the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference 2019 Poetry Contest. His work has appeared in 7x7, Joyland, A) Glimpse) Of), Cabildo Quarterly and elsewhere.

street games by Stephanie Hauer

7/9/2020

 
"car!"
and every child moves to the side--
that is the rule
of playing in the street.
these kids part in the middle,
two on either side.
a black sedan passes between them.

when i was growing up, i played
baseball with my neighbors,
first and third base marked by
a broken paving stone on the sidewalk.
second base was the lane line.
my biggest fear was breaking a window.

“shotgun!”
the yell reclaims my attention.
these kids are not fighting over
the front passenger seat.
they’re playing shoot ‘em up,
their “bangs” echoing off buildings.

“double knife!”
they are screaming
"double machete!"
slashing at each other's necks
with flat, empty hands.

they’re playing in the parking lot
stepping on weeds in the cracked pavement
and crumbs of broken glass.
​
as i watch their games,
i wonder what these young
eyes have seen.
Picture

​Stephanie Hauer

works as a contracted staff writer at Rehumanize International.  She contributed to the fourth edition of the Catholic Youth Bible from Saint Mary’s Press, and has published articles with Array of Hope, To Write Love on Her Arms, and Celebrate Life magazine.  Her poetry is featured in Young Ravens Literary Review, Pinnacle Anthology and Create | Encounter.  When she’s not muttering at a manuscript, Stephanie is usually sipping an iced chai tea latté or fussing over her succulents.

four poems: 3 1/2 Sonnets for 7 Minutes / Size Zero / poem for a Blue Page / ways to harm a seed by Sal Kang

7/8/2020

 

​31⁄2 sonnets for 7 minutes

here’s a confessional.
the first time I kissed a girl, it was in front of everyone
I held dear at the time, a few feet from the bathroom
with both calves pressed to the ground. imagine a
bullfight, if you will, except the estoque is my tongue &
there is no marked climax. still, the boys cheered us
on like racehorses. we were all there, semi-aroused in
the semi-light, & there was always someone missing
out. all i tasted was the absence of taste. (if this is what
           heaven feels like, I don’t ever want to know hell)


fastforward:
the first time I kissed a boy (not you), it was an airless
summer. we were spinning bottles & inflated stories &
no one yet knew what all the bases were. the girls were
never brave enough to ride their crush’s shoulders. but
more of us were starting to understand—what all the
perverse references meant, where they were looking
when they stared—& I think, at some point, our hands
morphed into broken glowsticks. I remember all the
imprints, how they stuck to skin like chlorine, how
some interactions just couldn’t be washed away. the
girl I kissed got hypothermia, possibly from sticking
her head in the clouds for too long. is going to heaven
                      really a choice, or is it more mandatory?


let me try again:
she kissed him first, even though she wasn’t single,
how does that work? WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
we’re on the margin of november & on the peak of
adolescence. some say things like I’m a teenage boy,
I can imagine fucking her next to your bed if I want.

we don’t skip scenes in any movie, not anymore. we
skip entire movies to make our own scenes. some guys,
amidst the chaos, have to be categorized as collateral
damage. honestly, I’ve known her for a while now, &
I’m still not sure if she’d go that far--
ah, beauty of
hindsight. what was it about your scentless breath &
effortlessly pretty palms? are our heavens relative?
                                 if so, is hers better than mine?


have you done it yet?
there comes a time when you can’t just brush off that
question. the gossip’s a healthy blend usually, jealousy
disguised as judgement & vice versa--how many times?
—as if this desire were quantifiable. (we still played
truth or dare at this point, just without all the ‘mild
stuff.’) we all wanted to do shit but no one wanted to
be done. they held a contest to see who could colonize
the most bodies & we took it too far, once or twice.
somewhere along the way, I woke up, & she was gone:
probably for the best, that I stopped seeing so much
of her. no more feverish pipe dreams. looking back,
it doesn’t seem so bad, our makeshift heaven in the
semi-light.                                  —I think I miss it, just a little.

​Size Zero | Pantoum

Stretch marks are a sign that I don’t belong
in this body I was given. I don’t exist
between the lines; I remain invisible
until I am able to squeeze my thighs
into the crevice of these jeans.

In this body I was given, I don't exist
without emptying myself to feel whole.
Until I am able to squeeze my thighs
into the crevice of these jeans,
I'm just a tsunami that over-floods, crashing

without emptying myself. To feel whole
is to cut a hole in my stomach. Today,
I'm just a tsunami that over-floods, crashing
silently, packed away in the mud.

Today, I cut a hole in my stomach.
It's hard to locate something silent
when it is packed away so thoroughly. Look,
nobody bothers to search for me under
​
water. Nobody tries to locate something
between the lines, so I remain invisible.
See? There is no hand that bothers to look
under                      ​these stretch marks.

​poem for a Blue Page

​when their daughter first started speaking
to my parents again, she asked for blue
                                                                  wallpaper.

overwhelmed with joy, they said anything
                      you want, love


and proceeded to let my walls bleed azure

//

that same year, the girl lost 20 pounds

–

in the blue room, the girl forgets
how to take mirror selfies: her phone
doesn’t capture her body properly

underneath all the cracks. the girl
buys more baggy clothes to hide
her bruises under. she got them

from a failing immune system (it wasn’t
long before her entire leg started growing
purple), but she doesn’t know that yet

–

girl starts drinking blue vitamin water: three
bottles a day. Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

–

girl finally learns about anorexia
in health and wellbeing class. they teach
her all the symptoms & all the ‘warning signs’ &
any stressful or traumatic event
could lead to it: abuse, rape, divorce...

how do we seek help? just don’t

have a traumatic experience. girl listens,
laughs as she sucks on a gumball. the
most satisfying meal she’s had in months.

–

that same year, the girl loses 20 pounds &
everyone congratulates her for the glow-up

//

the color blue represses your appetite. it’s basic
psychology
, her friends said. best weight loss
technique out there, the internet said. we all tried it
together as a joke at first. it wasn’t supposed to be
serious. we didn’t mean to turn an entire girl blue.

​ways to harm a seed

after kaveh akbar

forget about it for a while.

remember
that you were supposed to not
forget. try your best to
cough up some guilt. pass it on.

give it water. give it acid. give
it moonlight. overcompensate.
let it germinate, then
give it hormones. approximate
& formularize & repeat. marvel
at how easy & simple life
must be for the seedling.

sever the branches that repel
you & graft new twigs onto the
remains. bestow it a surgically
attached, calculable path
it just has to follow. marvel
some more
at how little it’s grown.
when the tree becomes too big
to raise in the yard,
remind everyone of where it’s
rooted. ingrain the texture of
toxic soil in its veins.
ignore all the bruises &
self-inflicted slashes on it.

gift it a name & a destiny. a
heart & no means to follow it.
I learned of love
as a drought, scavenging
for scraps of light
in a dark room. it wasn’t that I
never knew how
to speak. it was that you didn’t
let me.
Picture

Sal Kang

is a professional sluggard and occasional writer who spends most of her free time sleeping and reading Anne Carson. Her work has been published in Canvas Literary Journal, The Rappahannock Review, and Yes Poetry, among others.

two poems: An Asian-American Becomes an American-Asian / Watered-Down Youth by Cole Pragides

7/6/2020

 

​An Asian-American Becomes an American-Asian

New friends greet her, as she stands at the foot of flowing hills, dips folded in the slope of her palm, something on paper. Words containing contrails of entropy which never intrude upon everything, gathered in a pen: She’s coming from the same place. She was pregnant, one day split open giving birth to an arrangement of blue columbine. Together, whether breathing or holding their breath, they were passing the same thing; driving through the tunnel from one golden poppy sun––––––––––the next, descrying articulated arroyos, hugging between hot brown hills, the orange-bellied kit fox ducking its head where the honey runs like plump quails along the shore. Pretty is as pretty does.
Walls of cliffs out there always seem to stick around. Eddies pulsing to Soothe her brain into topography. High tide happens, churning below the boardwalk––shooting toward the sky there is sea glass rejuvenating her old apothecary jar; meticulously textured beautiful, tent rock trash baby splashed by the water––Picture
it’s spring, raining over an orchard slope. She’s still surprised when the green emerges, jaguar-print jumping days spent in the afternoon, and always more trees like hair she never knew they had from the waist down settled unevenly into the ground, postures adjusted for one another. An ancient, stunted apple grove can hang new meanings for itself. Emanating fresh ponies and their riders are stained glass effigies. She had to wash the windows in order to see them.Picture
The West is really everywhere: where the verb “to welcome” might multiply, where cows build and warm their own barns, where the taste of starlight whispers swan songs in the corner of dusk. Her mind is a full vase of this time, pictures stuck to living branches. She had claimed the radio nights for her own–– no more sunless, full-bodied wilting, gutters all up in the air static then silence woven into wind. The rainbow was simply a tunnel, a very short one; She allowed herself tumbling aches, fingers filtered out the window, flitting images of bunnies with sleeping ears breaking into chorus under the brush. Nothing new can be discovered here––Picture

​Watered-Down Youth

A forehead beginning to wrinkle–– barely worn-down tire treads. Blinds slip shut overhead, covering another timeline gone to a pattern. Closed eyes see in the dark–– I may have something worth sharing. Grab myself like infinite concentric circles out a bath in gallons of canned consecrated wine––cannot cover my emotional scab-picking. Flay my fingers off until I am just palms––why did I––I just flipped Father off when he said “I looked like you once.” Mixed my peanut-butter so it looked different each time I opened it––is it wrong I licked the knife? Self-control was walking in alone. Laboring Vietnamese restaurant–– waitresses lay their smiles on the table. Lip-syncing to pay for a partner’s meal, acquiescing when the offer is unmatched. Sun cries on my skin, unblind it. Shadowy reflection cracking, marble bust dehydrating, unfolded origami. Which hands now mold it? Waves of my open water-bottle crash–– Weather the metal sides.
Picture

Cole Pragides ​

is a teenage Asian-Pacific-Islander-American undergraduate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he studies Environmental Engineering and Creative Writing. By focusing his work on environmental stewardship and artistic expression, he hopes to help cultivate a world where communities lift each other up. He stands against racial injustice and discrimination everywhere. BLACK LIVES MATTER.

three poems: To be Temporary is to be Chronic / World Wrestling Entertainment / Beata Beatrix by Katherine Beaman

7/5/2020

 

​To be Temporary is to be Chronic

for Eurydice
Picture
for Eurydice       beyond the blue-grey haze Darkness fell      but wait           space or shape       was, for a moment,   enveloped in source.   a passing storm    on an existential level the most pure, physical idea     an endless well of presence at arms reach       anonymity has allowed me to       lose  my fruits    my fantasies,   slipping away         I become enraptured  by the degree of my rapture         swollen with milk    or illusion   depending on the lightingPicture
Picture

​World Wrestling Entertainment

for Stephanie McMahon
 I could do little but blurt out      an absurd joke  a kinda silly thing to do         through the ringer in the face of God   gassing up a       type of hell, confined with  the lowlifes, the battered, the scum, the tweakers the world can’t see life for the landfill        sucked into      Triple-H and Vince McMahon  fucking           each other  God, it really was something, wasn’t it?           irreplaceable, and even          a kind of beautyPicture
Picture
Picture

Beata Beatrix

for Elizabeth Siddall
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture

Katherine Beaman

is a writer and engineer who lives across the street from a Family Dollar in rural Texas. Her writing may be found in 3:AM, DIAGRAM, and Asymptote, among other places.

Dressing Room Drama by Jean Colonomos

7/3/2020

 
--This poem refers to the 1967 Martha Graham Dance Company’s European tour,  performed at the Shaftsbury Theatre, London. 
It was a challenge to dance
night after night in the paint peeling
Shaftsbury Theatre where we three
were crammed into a cubby hole
dressing room while one of us warmed up
up on the floor. When Dana or I entered,
we had to step over Louise, carefully
slide out our chairs while she
contracted and released behind us.

The stink was staggering--
from sweaty costumes,
overpowering b.o. and
from layers of warm-up woolens
rarely washed because nothing dried
in this March-damp UK climate.

One night, after repeatedly telling
Louise to exercise on stage,
I yanked out my chair too quickly
stabbing Our Lady of the Floor.
I’ve had it, I said.  No more floor work
on the floor.  I once had compassion for
this so-so dancer who, it was rumored,
Martha invited into the company because
Louise’s ancestry could be traced to
some saint from the Middle Ages
as if this made her Graham-worthy.

Nothing changed.  Dana and Louise
stuck up for each other and it was two
longstanding members against
a first-timer. So we continued
to clench our razor-sharp fangs.

Jean Colonomos

began her career in the arts as a member of the Martha Graham Dance Company.  As a playwright she’s been produced in New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Fe and Edinburgh.  Her poetry has been published in several journals namely Askew, Spillway,Third Wednesday and the American Writers Review.  She’s also shown up online at YourDailyPoem.  Most recently M. Colonomos has been writing with poet Ann Buxie.  Their new work is titled KNOCK KNOCK and they’ve been featured readers at the EP Foster Library, the Library of Thousand Oaks and Beyond Baroque.  Her chapbook is ART FARM published by Finishing Line Press.  For more go to her website.

two poems: Taxonomy / Concavity by Lily Klinek

7/2/2020

 

II. Taxonomy

Picture

I. Concavity

Holding emotion in the body is a visceral thing. The center sinks, turning bowl or vortex.
I read somewhere that the fabric of the universe curves around mass. Like that. Cup your
hands, like holding a bowling ball. A round weight. Lay down. Set it onto your chest. Feel
your edges start to flatten. I want to remember what it felt like to look into a mirror for
the first time. To watch a body move as you move. See yourself depicted — perfection,
simply by existing — each hair, the twitch of a brow, curvature of your lip. To lean
forward, watch shadow fall over your face. Closer.

Again.

I have been marked by things during my days on this earth. Sometimes I used to drag
towel to grass and lie for hours. Finger on wrist. Controlling the precise inflation, release,
of my ribcage. All of this air in me — and out again. I could almost see it, as steam from
slow kettle. I have been marked many times. All of this air. I let myself obstruct
everything that happens to me. Writing them, one by one, into shadow. It is almost
empowerment. To do this to myself. Not quite.

In nature there exist groups, containing all different shapes and sizes of things. Protists
and jellyfish. We metamorphose, just like mayflies. These groups. It moves as you move.
Hold its gossamer wings like a goblet. Lift stream-water to your lips. Abstraction has
always been this for me. Comfort, gliding down my throat. I float here, between myself
and this other. Both are me, but one is a stranger. Her body suspended in liquid, jarred
and shelved. Panic stings in the nostrils.
​
How can I look at myself like this other person? Drag fingertip over the surface of the
mirror, and wait intently for response, for movement. The center of the bowling ball,
pulling everything deep into my sternum. Sometimes I believe the weight of this will
crush me. Scatter me as pottery into ash.

How can I look at myself?
​
As I lie breathing on the grass, I feel it travel into the air. This reluctant release of my
lungs, the air pulled out of me, squeezed like paint from a tube. It moves like mist,
slowly, then faster. A migration, from lips to air, fine particles sucked out and away.

And as a faint recollection, somewhere far, I hear the sound of a deep inhale.

Lily Klinek

is a student at UC Berkeley, and is currently Editor in Chief of Berkeley Poetry Review. Her writing, forthcoming in Lumiere Review, Emerge Literary Journal, and Red Alder Review, explores the ways we carry emotion, inhabit our own bodies in illness and health, and find ourselves pulled towards or away from expression. She studies environmental science, but makes room in her heart for poetry and language, always.

two poems: Okay / These Kinda Scales by Corey Hill

6/30/2020

 

Okay

So yes we’re okay
We say it with our saying apparatus
We are good this is
The answer assessed as appropriate 
You register our response
On to the next task to optimize
Cool, great, yeah you too 
So yes we’re okay
You’re okay too
Everyone continue with your assignments

These Kinda Scales

I’m a thousand odd shimmering scales of wonder and terror
A few shards short of cool crystal symmetry
I’m busy bouncing back beams of sunlight 
I’m charred and obdurate all at once 

I’m good and slippery with incantation varnish
Drunk gutted bug eye gonzo heart bombing
Do it! Point out the unworthiest among us 
I got mean magic to dole under duress 
​
I’m half of this and half of that 
Crow feather/ rainbow of oil 
Don’t touch me/ do touch me I guess
I’m big and glorious and I will burst
Picture

Corey Hill

is a human rights activist, journalist, and occasional lizard chaser. On the masthead at Taco Bell Quarterly, the literary magazine for the Taco Bell arts and letters. Journalism at The Independent, Alternet, Yes!, others. Fiction and poetry at Clarion, The Moth, Antithesis, Sierra Nevada Review, Cordite Poetry Review, more. Second place in the St. John's County Creative Writing Contest, Fifth Grade.

    Cover photograph by Dana
    Here you will find a blue room. A golden dog. Submerge in chlorine. Begin to drive. Place your fingers on your wrist. Settle in. Stay awhile.

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