ISSUE 7
Cover Art by Sam Thornock
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Matthew Roberts Matthew Roberts is Assistant Professor and Librarian for Literature and Languages at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University. His scholarly publications examine the theatrical representation of trauma and appear in several journals, including Comparative Drama, Modern Drama, and New Theatre Quarterly. He is the editor of the Harold Pinter Review and an alumnus of the 2022 Community of Writers Poetry Workshop.
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Esther Fox Esther Fox is a Chicana queer poet and undergraduate student studying Sociology, Creative Writing, and Art at Truman State University. She writes to re-open conversations with the ghosts and haunted houses of her lived experiences, drawing from loss, everchanging identity, and the unspoken. Esther aspires for her visual art and writing to uncover and express to those who view her work the beauty in falling in love with the debris that comes with being human.
Esther Fox Esther Fox is a Chicana queer poet and undergraduate student studying Sociology, Creative Writing, and Art at Truman State University. She writes to re-open conversations with the ghosts and haunted houses of her lived experiences, drawing from loss, everchanging identity, and the unspoken. Esther aspires for her visual art and writing to uncover and express to those who view her work the beauty in falling in love with the debris that comes with being human.
Ruby Ferris Ruby Ferris is an interdisciplinary poet and writer. Born and raised in the city of Chicago, she is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Ruby Ferris Ruby Ferris is an interdisciplinary poet and writer. Born and raised in the city of Chicago, she is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Darius Simpson bird in the sky says freeze! bird in the sky got iron talons bird in the sky says i am your god bird in the sky says i am not a bird bird in the sky casts a wide net city-sized viewpoint from the crow’s nest to the bird in the sky everything is a meal the bird in the sky doesn’t sleep and so the bird always catches the worm the worm is whoever the bird hungers for the worm has no rights the bird must acknowledge the worm ain’t never went lookin for bird trouble the bird swears it must consume the worm to survive now it’s 3:00am and the flap of the bird’s wings against the makeshift rooftops scattered across downtown lets the worms know it’s time to hide or become food Darius Simpson is a writer, educator, performer, and skilled living room dancer from Akron, Ohio. He is the author of Never Catch Me now available everywhere. Much like the means of production, he believes poetry belongs to and with the masses. He aims to inspire those chills that make you frown and slightly twist up ya face in approval. Darius believes in the dissolution of empire and the total liberation of Africans and all oppressed people by any means available. Free All Political Prisoners. Free The People. Free The Land.
Jayson Keery Let’s say I’m turned on by the ball pit. At Burger King, we call it Play Palace. This the type of memory that shivers tinsel when touched. I am encased, in a glistening globe of soft-boiled plastic. Dewed sweat dripping like flies. Behind me, the nervous twitch of netting. Before me, a slide. The pit. The children shrieking at the balls. The parents. I am safe in my perch. Poised for a sensual descent. I must permit myself this pleasure. I’ve had a hard day being a child. The pit. The parents. I watch them watching. Children from the waste up. There is something to this. A strategy, yes. For all I know, their genitals are plastic, smooth like baby doll. Like the balls glittered in spit. Bleach-fume oblivion, a hot breath out the mouth of the slide, beckoning. I take a last look through the porthole. The chaos of children who snuck fries into the pit. Greased pagans slinging spheres of primary color. Creation. It’s Christmas Eve. To me, the other children are also some sort of Jew-ish. To me, Jew-ish means something uninteresting and elsewhere. Who else would be here, on this day, in this shimmer of moment, between things. My people. The palace. The parents are the Christians and their crotches. Curious that there is something rather than nothing. That all of these children were made for what. For their upper halves. Their mouths. For what goes in them. In. Are they really having it their way. For these are the sites in which we are taught choice. And so I slide. Friction tickles out a suggestion of body hair. Pursuing my fullest pleasure, I lick the plastic interior. My tongue crackles, bubble wrap. I’m safe. Swallowed. Forget form. The words I’m held to. The prismatic light growing, an arachnid forcefield spindling into my groin. I land. The sticky pit slow, infuse me into its sugar-sweat and oils. Pleasure when I feel nothing. Void is sensation. I want to slip a ball into my panties. So I do. Have it my way. The smooth fupa of a Ken doll. Or fuck it, why not Barbie, if I push in. Come on Barbie, let’s go party. Pop. Pleasure. My momentary shiver cut short by shouts. Children’s shouts. Then the parents. Because it’s me. And so I am told to split, meaning, to go elsewhere. To get out. Out. Jayson Keery is a writer, editor, and arts coordinator in Western Massachusetts, where they completed their MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They are the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Choice is Real (Metatron Press, 2023) and the chapbook Astroturf (o•blēk editions, edited by Peter Gizzi, 2022). Their work is published and forthcoming in Mundus Press, Hot Pink, Boulevard, Black Warrior Review, Overheard, The New Guard, b l u s h lit, Peach Mag, and others. They have been anthologized in Nightboat Books' We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics and Pilot Press London's A Queer Anthology of Rage. They are the recipient of the 2022 Metatron Press Prize for Rising Authors, selected by Fariha Róisín, and the 2021 Daniel and Merrily Glosband MFA Fellowship, selected by Wendy Xu. A complete list of publications, awards, and interviews live online at JaysonKeery.com.
CAConrad CAConrad has worked with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. They are the author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration (Wave Books, 2021), which won the 2022 PEN Josephine Miles Award. They received a 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Award. The Book of Frank is now available in 9 languages; their play The Obituary Show was made into a film in 2022 by Augusto Cascales, and they exhibit poems as art objects with recent shows in Santander, Spain, and Lisbon, Portugal. Visit them online at https://linktr.ee/CAConrad88
Ben Simmons Father and mother taught poets to wander in the garden and to hold a dislodged heart between their chin and chest. The game? To pass it between them, arteries spitting blood into fuchsia petals and valves clapping, slack as the clothesline their hands tied behind their back. Ben Simmons is a writer, musician and a selected poet for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series in 2016. His work has been published regularly in Ireland and the UK. In 2021 he relocated with his wife to Riverside, California.
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