Issue 5
Cover Art by Dana Booher
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Joseph Lee Meads Forgiven: this: the sincerity of all my dead spermatozoa: lined up, one by one by one, under a swell of stifling sun in the wild of our hinterland. To smuggle into / out of: black and white motives, algorithms of the ulterior, the pangs of war or sport and our earth’s harsh spin. That’s blood money on my purse, penknife, and rope. That’s bloodied money frothing from my nose holes; waiting meekly for the soft gulping of the humanistic warmth of clots: as juxtaposed to the naïve & obtuse transgressions: like the breaking of a curfew or tooth. ▪ Forgotten: this: my Hippocratic Oath; as well as what I said when I said: no. ▪ Forgotten: the names of lovers past; my cripplingly outdated dementia praecox. Forgiven: the weight of the gravity of laughter. ▪ All the women of all my dad’s pornos – VHS’d & assumed shattered; forever exhausted: yet immortal; aloft in TV static, as glue. ▪ And it was I who was that arsonist setting ablaze your museum of sentiments; because they’re all so fucking lame. Joseph Lee Meads is a diagnosed schizophrenic and currently an MA student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has previously been published in Columbia Poetry Review, Chicago Literati, Lover's Eye Press and elsewhere. He posts images of his muted television onto Instagram: @joseph.lee.m
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Joseph Lee Meads Our loving wives drive us drunkenly into the neighbor’s knot garden; scented bruising leaves coupled with gasoline, equations of mud flung afield via whitewall tires balding – O how so Americana! – we effort in vain in howls over the miserable growls of the Buick & its radio speakers heaving into that midday disarray a cello concerto by Schumann, &, somewhere, toward the rear of the lot – somewhere; countless hummingbirds – a-humming. Joseph Lee Meads is a diagnosed schizophrenic and currently an MA student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has previously been published in Columbia Poetry Review, Chicago Literati, Lover's Eye Press and elsewhere. He posts images of his muted television onto Instagram: @joseph.lee.m
Kim Ellingson My first love is sitting at the edge of my bed. I wet a washcloth and clean the blood from his open temple as he holds a bag of frozen peas to my bent, distended arm and tells me what it’s like being dead. Something about waiting for a train, looking for someone you used to know, and needing an unbroken bicycle. His head will not stop bleeding, yet my ligaments and veins proficiently stitch themselves back together while we talk-- I know he can’t stay. I’m readying him for whatever comes next, even if it’s nothing. He is wearing a white T-shirt. I pour salt over the bloodstains, rinse the shirt under cold water in the kitchen sink. I stand in silence, watching red stream down the drain. Outside, he is on my bicycle, riding towards the tracks. Kim Ellingson holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Lost Balloon, Wilderness House Literary Review, Prometheus Dreaming, and elsewhere. In 2020, her work was shortlisted for the Cagibi Macaron Prize in poetry. She currently lives in Milwaukee and can be found on Instagram @its_a_lemon_tree.
Saffron Ezekiel Sofiane I cut your tongue and refuse to listen, Blood-covered white tulips remind me of your lies. This vessel you call home is still my favorite nightmare. Coiled hair and gentle smiles light blazing candles in my mind. But I see past the charming smirk and denounce your true intentions. Cigarettes lit on Moroccan balconies will have any woman you want on her knees. I encourage you to seek the validation you require, Though fair warning I refuse to allow you to step on me to get any higher. Saffron Ezekiel Sofiane is a first-generation, Latinx, nonbinary, queer, raging feminist who uses their writing abilities to explore different aspects of social injustices, body imagery, and identity. They aspire to be a means of exploration of uncharted territories for people who read and support their work. Although they know that it is nearly impossible for their work to change the world, they hope that it will at least change the worlds inside their readers for the better. You can read more of their work on their Instagram @saffronwrites.
Raye Hendrix if the ceiling is not a ceiling but a sky if the plaster popcorn protrusions are stars if the walls of this white room are not boundaries but low-hanging clouds if the gift of the flower is blue if linoleum does not mean floor but field where each speck of gray is a dandelion gone to seed if there is only one way out that dark hallway then I will bear it this hard living I will live as hard as I can and while I live the seeding dandelions are wishes or if not wishes prayers and if prayers then the lonely door and hallway are the mouth and throat of god and if the gift of the flower is blue it’s because I have swallowed everything red Raye Hendrix is a writer from Alabama. The author of the chapbooks Every Journal Is A Plague Journal (Bottlecap Press) and Fire Sermons (Ghost City Press), she is also the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and Southern Indiana Review’s 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award. Raye's work has been featured in Poetry Daily, 32 Poems, Shenandoah, Cimarron Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere, and they are the Poetry Editor of Press Pause Press. Raye holds degrees from Auburn University, an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and she is a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon. You can find more of their work at rayehendrix.com.
Marissa Forbes Ghosts can whisper into key holes & ignore the smell of flowers -- licking bricks & quill tips because ignoring is harder than ignorance to pull off. My ghost has wrenches hanging from her neck spectacles close to her eyes, she pulls away to focus. She can see the truth but there’s a light fueled by gas that keeps her awake at night. Can my ghost see clearly through her stained-glass window? The morning sunlight refracts casting rainbows across her cheeks, her hands. She grips a wrench & shifts her eyes to her own specters. Are we a collective ghost? We, as women who fold our thoughts into drawers -- tucked between stockings & braziers. Covert & forgotten. My ghost has a past among men in muddy boots & drafting pencils perched on their ears. She’s hidden in the smoke-filled parlor surrounded by starched shirts & cigars wet from chapped lips. Am I becoming a shadow mortally attached to a man cloaked in his own vanity? Haunted by the smell of panic soaked in honey & then dipping my feet in it. I’m in an empty room, curled on the floor salted with sweat & tears pooling on amber surfaces. Aching for my ghost who isn’t scared of the water she dreamed of drowning in. Worn out from holding up crumbling arches -- the bridge she’s broken herself to build. But my ghost still carries a rooster. Even in death, she’s got victory in her lap. & we are writing at the same desk, reaching for each other’s fingertips. Marissa Forbes began writing again after a 10 year hiatus late in 2020, she has since published short stories in "The Dillydoun Review," "Twenty Bellows," "Millennial Pulp," "Exit 7," plus poetry in "Dreamstones of Summer," "Prometheus Dreaming," & "The C.R.W.P Collection: The Story Behind the Poems." Marissa is a student in Community Literature Initiative and is editing her full length poetry collection about Emily Roebling called "Bridging The Gap: Poems & Ethos for Emily Warren Roebling." She has resided all over the country but found her way back to Colorado where she lives a colorful life with her two sons, dog, and cat. Her works can be found at marissaisch.com and she can be found on Instagram at @word_nerd_ris.
Jonathan Chan woke up. prayed through the mist of a recalcitrant kettle. counted the ways to remove sinewy glue from the eyes. wondered how many ways there are to cross a river. wondered how many songs can swell from an abandoned complex. the hauntology of a spilling vessel. the light breathes between the shutters. a glare shoots up across angled louvers. the wind has whipped the leaves from autumn to spring. shadows dance like the glistening on water, rococo for a naked ceiling. still, somewhere, the sound of violins, practicing scales, mellifluous amidst the heater’s crackle. the gush of rain has shattered and ended. eschewed the split-second snap of an umbrella, the water trickling down the hood to the neck around the shoulders. i am mere auto-narrator. i am sheer self-ethnographer. reflexivity is a precious thing. in one pocket, social capital, in the other, a jangle of coins. what is a field but an ambiguous system. a comb of grains births a new concept. the wick bends: an oath, a horror, a curse, a taunt. then the organ swells and the bright sorrow is more than the eyes can take. two rocks overlook a bare valley. their laughter is expressed in exactly ten syllables. a fine use of metre. tumbling off a cliff they enter an immanent sweetness. remember to be kind. remember to call your parents. the sighs of a girl can only be heard once the clacking ends. hands taken off a loom. soon they become coarse from lifting a sword, reining a horse. when two rabbits run, how can one tell which is male, which is female? on a day within and without the seas, an official gives thanks for broad waves. it was never for glory, he etches in ink. brushstrokes fine enough to elide a foreign hand. a lonely cloud. count each time you are asked about divinity. count the statements about living in an estate of regeneracy. midnight marches past its own ends. try to hear the celestial music. a love of form is a love of endings. Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor, and graduate student at Yale University. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore and educated in Cambridge, England. He is interested in questions of faith, identity, and creative expression. He has recently been moved by the writing of Lucille Clifton, Boey Kim Cheng, and Spencer Reese. More of his writing can be found at jonbcy.wordpress.com and on Instagram at @fivefoundings.
Ann Tweedy 1. Sometimes instead of action a poem imitates emulates 2. The website on methods instructs pain free are the holy grail and proceeds to rate each of the most popular for lethality, time, agony. 3. Cutting your wrists-- 6% effective but dials in at 71 on the pain scale. The images in my head-- mischievous, misleading, disingenuous. Rationality requires smooth wrist skin riffle of branched blue 4. Charcoal burning reports Wikipedia is relatively painless and lethal. A species of carbon monoxide poisoning, it is not featured separately on the methods site, but carbon monoxide in general is 71% effective and rates only 18 in agony. Wouldn’t it be nostalgic? A little hibachi in the house–summery whiffs rise and fill your nostrils. Red-orange glow beguiles. 5. To issue suffering a cease-fire verges on beau ty but acting it out takes wherewithal verve doggedness-- desire not just to end but to hurt. And, only 1 in 26 succeed, meaning 25 out of 26 breathe on. Ann Tweedy's first full-length book, The Body's Alphabet, was published by Headmistress Press in 2016. It earned a Bisexual Book Award in Poetry and was also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and for a Golden Crown Literary Society Award. Ann also has published three chapbooks, the first of which was reissued by Seven Kitchens Press in April 2020. Her latest chapbook, A Registry of Survival, was published by Last Word Press in December 2020. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Literary Mama, Clackamas Literary Review, and elsewhere, and she has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two Best of the Net Awards. A law professor by day, Ann has devoted her career to serving Native Tribes. In 2020, she moved from Washington State to South Dakota to join the faculty at University of South Dakota School of Law. Read more about her at www.anntweedy.com.
Katie Grierson When the sun scares the winter from my jeans, we leave them empty bodies off the edge of my bed. You stand in the center of my room. My sunscreen smells like coconut. You smell like my sunscreen. The back of your calves, your arms, your shoulders, the small half-circle by your collar the sun will lick. My hands. Katie Grierson believes in aliens. She is a 2020 YoungArts Finalist in Novel-Writing, was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts Semifinalist, is an alumni of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets as the 2022 Jean Burden Prize winner. Besides being prose editor for Lumiere Review, she also overuses the em dash and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Body Without Organs and Dishsoap Quaterly, among others.
Rachel Sandle What do you write about when you’re doing fine? I cut celery with my best knife and laugh at other people’s jokes. My cactus dies. I bury it. How do you forget that night? I tripped desperate into longing. I was a writer then, too, when I wore the air too loose. The grass too long and lusting (lusting!) after hunger. What morning does my skin begin to sag glad into waiting cheekbones? My god, my breath tented on my skeleton. I make myself so pretty. God I was so hungry then. Now. I am never ashamed now. I have finally fallen in love with being. Outside, we burn up and down. The world curls an ache into its scaffold. Inside, my persistent body is water carving out a canyon. Always something is eroding. Rachel Sandle (they/them/theirs) is an MFA-dropout-turned-crisis-counselor whose writing has appeared in What Are Birds? Journal, Occulum Journal, Into the Void, and others. Rachel lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where they are pursuing a master's degree in clinical social work. You can find them on twitter @floating_orb or on instagram @sachelrandle.
Jennifer Mariani I. Kalopsia A postmortem photograph Showed you Incarnadine And I wondered when you are Reincarnated Will you remember the Viridian days That summer Or the onyx nights That wept stars For the sorrow you would stain My life with Obsidian sins That would creep onwards Oil seeping over water on a moonless tide II. Ataraxia Burlywood Soft Dusty Sepia brown There sit layers of sediment That should have been childhood All lost now In time we will gilt the edges And remember Heliotrope days Lusty-gallant sunsets Tyrian nights where the stars Blazed Bone burning phosphoresce And we could imagine We would live Unscathed III. Acatalepsy Photographs of sex in public parks And upside down a blackbird perched on your upturned foot Would you tell me We didn’t walk upon the moon Or would you rather believe this We are wholly lost And the world (whimpering) at its end Burns Jennifer Mariani was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. Her first collection of poems “All Forgotten Now”, a chapbook, was published by Off Topic Publishing. Her poetry has also been featured in Mosi oa Tunya Literary Review, Uproar (The Lawrence House Centre For The Arts), Off Topic Publishing, The League of Canadian Poets Poetry Pause and Wingless Dreamer anthologies.
Helen Gallagher Helen Gallagher is a writer living and working in New York City. For the sake of money, she writes advertisements. For the sake of being alive, she writes poems. You can find her at @helenoftheinternet.
Sara Borjas I have found the face of story lying again. It came dressed as a road to my artist’s residency. And I forget I am not a cup plotting against rain or a bartender’s last call or a man walking up and down the street, or innocent. My therapist asked me, what is it that you can do? And I said, I’ve got this man who doesn’t respect me, this country that doesn’t respect me, this job that doesn’t respect me, this art that keeps lying to my face! It was then that, behind the beautiful lake I was staring at from my writing studio, that I heard myself telling the same old joke about a woman walking into a bar. A woman walks into a bar all alone. A woman walks into a bar all alone. I keep saying it and I can’t forgive anyone for that. Sometimes I get so tired of my sore molars and the music and the dry lipstick and the sweet coffee and the alarm clock and the country road. No one likes a joke without surprise. I prefer white wine this week. And my to-do list is insurmountable and also, written in purple and pink. I give my life to it. Pour it in my mouth. Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award. Sara was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships
Sara Borjas
Sara Borjas is a self-identified Xicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff (Noemi Press, 2019) received a 2020 American Book Award. Sara was featured as one of Poets & Writers 2019 Debut Poets. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, CantoMundo, Postgraduate Writers Conference, and Community of Writers. She believes that all Black lives matter and will resist white supremacy until Black liberation is realized. She teaches creative writing at UC Riverside and the UCR Palm Desert Low Residency MFA Program, but stays rooted in Fresno. Find her on IG @saraborhaz and at www.saraborjas.com.
Colleen Collins Dark-mantled. Advancing; trim. Unlinked; each isled but tandemned, and wick-ed. the heart in my hand is not her heart it is a boar’s heart she lives (I let her go) the boar is dead tusks up in the woods. Signal as noise. Indistinct. An irretrievable ground / a figure in sit. Colleen Coco Collins is here for the birds. On her knees for songs/poems/sea/sky/beats/trees… atemporal… living in rural mi'kma'ki, port greville, nova scotia, Canada admist crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpbacks and fox. She is Irish/French/Odawa.
Teronig Tsoukato Would you believe THEY made my mother into a cool pool of water? i search for puddle in the city where every other eye is a mirror, do not be frightened of the two beams, I say, the headlights, piercing the falling rain, or the stop lights that seem as wobbling angel tongues reflected on soaked pavement every other eye will reflect green and yellow and red, again, stop again even teenagers and their acnes twinkle, when they turn their heads I think disco ball ! and tap my feet to the rain drip drip THEY will look down from their glass cubes, in pity, you will see only the soles of shoes, though they will see all of you this will seem unfair but what more could one need? then green and yellow and red and green and yellow and red Reflected in an eye, or the puddle? Teronig Tsoukatos is an undergraduate student at the University of California Riverside, studying creative Writing and Psychology. She is the recipient of the William Henry Willis Memorial Poetry Prize. She is obsessed with radio static, soda carbonation, TV snow, and forgotten crumbs under beds. You can follow her on Twitter @teronig, or on Instagram at @enemytero.
Issac Lewis The fermented river grey blue, through dry cane scuds wave backward under a cloy breeze. Foam crumbles on muskrats’ mussels shelled like spent roe from Chinook flank rotting, eyeless, credit winter’s flesh on sand. A raving year, bent homeward, craving, wrenching up mountains burst upriver thrashing release up up up river. This end breathless, rotting leaves fermented melting on shores, reeds, banks, beds A winter to ripen feed new year. Isaac Lewis lives in Richland WA with his wife and their foster children. His poetry has appeared in Hawk & Handsaw. You can find his casual nature photography @crossdiver on Instagram.
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