by Moumina Khan A majestic palace, a darkened stage, a cloudless sky, a blank page A clock in the background. (Tick) (And a five! Six! Seven! Eight!) Words dance and leap and twirl Spinning through sentences and pirouetting around punctuations With carefree smiles, gliding effortlessly through invisible lines Their adorning adjectives glistening: Splendid diamonds dangling off the swells of letters Verbs, their beckoning smiles gently … Continue reading Waltzing Practice
by Josh Stone In jagged wood, rivers run tentacle armsdown meadows made in times pastremnants of Ice Giants creeping into virgin valleys,carving canyons and cliffs and all of thisdone in the silent eyes of the animals who forgenerations roam mellow meadows, grazingon tip-toe tulips by streams singing theirpitter-patter songs in rainbow spray. Rise and fall, thrive and decay, born againunder Immortal Ice Eyes, wise, Glaciers … Continue reading Glaciers
by Nina Benites meteorologists couldn’t explain why the air that day felt like saguaro spikessharp grass bounced once more in the instant, honey-soaked electricity between us two weeks later we sprawled on that same green, cautiouslyyou asked, “should I have waited?” while I traced opal hieroglyphs into your side the night before, the delicious whisper of embarrassment dustedmy cheeks, those balls of dough you used … Continue reading lavender
A love poem would only be a page blankOf everything but the commas: a snowstormAnd the shit dog owners were too lazy to pickUp. A piano has fifty-two white keys andThirty-six black keys for playing love songs untilI take a hammer and smash the instrument to pieces.Chopin and Schumann can eat my ass. by Ethan Resek Continue reading If I were ever to write one,
April 16, 2019 Modern Shenzhen, modern in a post-Deng,Post-technological boom sense, is only aFew years my elder. Growing up, I watchedThe evisceration of a “fishing village” and itsInfantile self-sufficiency a TranscendentalistWould think bucolic or picturesque, you know,Despite the detritus of wars and wrongs and all thatAnd I watched not a snake shed its skin butA caterpillar deliquesce in its rancid cocoon(Death as a prerequisite for … Continue reading Learning to Love an Accident of a Hometown
by Nasrin Lin plastic city room for two / stay for the fireworksup to you / take the downtown express I go and lie, shoelaces untiedacross the fresh flowers / eucalyptus young from the plazatucked a letter, cursive exaggerate / someone else’s name / I tossand think a non-thought / eucalyptus aromatherapy, antiseptics or airfreshener for this room on Avenueof the Americas / released from … Continue reading Veined Grids
by Max Migdail i am not the flowerflowers are beautiful things but weknow only half i wonder what bees seeas they go bud to bud and petal topetal all the bees seem to seek onlyflowers previously visited one comesone leaves and not one minute later buta second visitor has come to spread goodtidings and now a third and fourth allwhile the door next by remains … Continue reading i am not the flower
by Max Migdail to expand on beyondor retreat internal unseenrequires borders to have meaninghas such a thing been true for wildly longand where do you go once the borders are goneit becomes impossible to travel in a place were all was oneafter all is the atmosphere not simply another border passablein our quest to find ourselves we lose ourselves and risk the cycle of harmscience … Continue reading cyclops i
by Madison Reid We are sitting in an Italian restaurant, sunlight tickling the table between us Should I get a tattoo, I ask, I think I want a bird, maybe on my sore hip bone You tell me I’m being cliché And that maybe you’ll ink a raisin on your heel or something Continue reading Gnocchi
by Priyanka Sinha The first Mauritian papaya of the summerWaits for me on the tree. Around it,Thin, wispy leaves dance in the breeze,Beckoning me over before the breakfast of morning birds. As my feet carry me across the grass, it seems to whisper sweet soft melodiesTelling stories of a home I had never known.My roaming fingers brush across its taut, leathery skin,Pulled tight over orange … Continue reading Roots
