Poem Without a Title

by Nathan Spoon

A figure sits quietly on the shadowed earth
underneath the spreading branches of
the tree of the mind. Through long night
an owl calls with spaced out singular
cries. It …

Blue Hour

by V. Penelope Pelizzon

The last late rain-scaled light has swum
along the office wall.
An aggrieved

mosquito-whine of all you’ve not achieved …

Self-Portrait As Hit Me Baby One More Time

by Lucy Biederman

Britney Spears, I can hear the static
you make from here. The bass line
beams low and clear across state lines,

they say. Do you miss indifferent
gas station attendants …

B L O O D   P A P A Y A

by Vi Khi Nao

Let’s have a compote duel:
Sweet against sweet
Liqueur against liqueur

Conceptually, I love you
Earthy truffle oil
The pressure to be with you …

Europe

by Chloe Honum

On a too hot bus, my sister and I traveled through fields of sunflowers.

Because we couldn’t stop arguing, we sat rows apart.

I see us staring out the windows. Or eating the food we took …

No Earth Survives a Country

after Samiya Bashir

by Sasha Banks

Long: a measurement; the distance it takes to remember.

Remember: everything that had to fall.

Fall: the end of summer’s tyranny. …

Marina Abramović’s Gaze

by David Hernandez

I find her seated at the kitchen table at two a.m.,
her red dress a large heart in the dark’s chest.

I flip the light switch: she stares past the empty …

Night of Telescopes

by Emma Trelles

I have buried my share and hardly anyone knows.
A house must hold ghosts, writing
Names across funereal woods and windows …

Ode to Your Hyper-Vigilance

by Jennifer L. Knox

Hugging you’s hard enough when you’re awake,
but to worm my arm under your downed trunk,
plutonium-core sequoia, and hold on? Pft. …

Wolf Package

by Corey Oglesby

In the airless, fluorescent lung of a department store,
I am trying not to laugh at the wolf’s face
printed across the crotch of a pair of boxer briefs.

I nearly buy them, but decide I’m not ready to
forget the joke. For how, out of necessity, they’d fall
eventually into regular rotation, become my wolf …

EVEN THE LAND IS TIRED

by Meriwether Clarke

I woke to rain
and wondered if that meant
the sky was trying

to be a prayer. Teary-eyed
and drooping are the clouds
inside my voice …

Dog Song

by José Angel Araguz

Make me write like a dog
gnawing a bone. Not anger,

but that animation, that knowing
focus and breath. The just as easy

letting go,
down into the dirt, …

Channel Surfing

after Forrest Gander’s ‘Deadout’

by Max Early

I.

Procure his bone-dry clay & burnish,
synchronous glide and precision. …

Measured Form

by Devin Becker

The children have left the red ball
disintegrating in the backyard.
Half-gone, it’s a dimpled dome

for dead grass, brittle and yellow— …

Ars poetica

by Leslie Harrison

& the trees gleam wetly under the luminous clouds

& through a water-ribboned window a child draws pictures …

Rabbit Skin Pelt

by Chris Davidson

I recalled for the therapist a rabbit skin I bought
At summer camp, at the camp trading post,
When I was nine or ten using cash my parents
Sent with me my first trip away from home.
I waited a long time to get the rabbit skin,
Waited in line a long time for the popular item,
The most popular item for sale, and in the rush …

[On the one side]

by Stephanie Adams-Santos

On the one side
there are hummingbirds
plucking secret fruits
from the tongues of foxgloves
& a shimmering woman …

Swallows in the Grasslands

by Patrick Coleman

I’ve only seen them build nests on underpasses, on buildings, in the shadows of London Bridge— …

I Wake in Heraklion with Lady Beetles

by Catherine Strisik

I am soft with healing after
I am luxuriant with good fortune after
I am cloaked by lady beetles a scent of salted olive, my nature after …

the condor is a scavenger

by Amy Katherine Cannon

makes simple nests in caves or clefts eats large amounts of carrion

  especially susceptible to poisoning was poached almost to extinction …