June Contributors
Ron Arbuckle, Olivia Bell, Katherine Breeden, Lachlan Brooks, Mackenzie Carignan, Kathi Crawford, Nick Crowley, Francis de Lima, Ryan di Francesco, Peter Donnelley, Bart Edelman, Mike Ferguson, Devon Fulford, Howie Good, Shannon Guglielmo, Samantha Hund, Kiran Josen, dee p.r. kay, Josh Lipson, Kes Maro, Garth Martens, Colin McGuire, Mike McHone, Natalie Nee, Clara No!, Mark Parsons, Emily Pavick, Abish Qamar, and John Repp
Poetry
May Highlights
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swan story: ode to ambiguous pronouns
by John Repp
“…the delis & bookshops, / the cobblers & lectures & resettlement houses jostling / each block, all the free things penniless couples could do, / how they hid their Robeson records till McCarthy / was good and dead.”
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domestic sentences 11
by Bill Neumire
“[Jesse] just got a senior lecturer position at Cornell and he gets to teach a class on happiness, which is a secular replacement for god.
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it was a war, wasn't it?
by Crystal James
“Today, I celebrate my inner child / Her strength and resilience / Her messy hair and shy voice / Her dirty feet and fearless climb / Her vigilance / Her hope / Her love for red poppies in August”
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puppet man
by Frank Haberle
“Come, children, the man standing on a box / In the center of the bridge yelled to us, / In Shakespeare. Let us shut up this box / And put away these puppets, for our play / Has been played.”
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narcissus, repenting
by Hanna Webster
“I lick her palm, which tastes like mercy, her grooved heartline ensnared by the pathetic molecular boundary of her flesh. What a shame. I smell fear radiate from her hair like steam”
excerpts from orbiculus, volume XI, the grammaton series
by Irene Koronas
“this daughter of fingal penseroso / with her gathicomus in a fierie / alphbook (1084-85) / has her byronic purse / shrovetide the shew / with athanatisness…”
two poems
Excerpt from the upcoming poetry collection Sloughing the Shroud from Anxiety Press by Julian Thumm
“…belladonna, oleander, & foxglove— / impart their death’s-head narcotic / under the sensual intellect / & play of decomposition.”
four poems
by Mike Ferguson
“i hear the ALL-ABOARD…i hear thescreech&THESCREECH…i hear the percussive chug&chug&chug&chug…i hear the hornwoo-ooh-woos…... i think it just passed by.”
the jade burial suit
by Michael Borth
“To resurrect into the jade burial suit / In breechclout and worrystone / I become the mudra of Shiva / Or the keeper of the numbers / Written on paper in for-sale cars…”
fire works?
by Dario Cvencek
“explosions are / as real as / apple pie.”
five poems
by Scott C. Holstad
“01000111 01000101 01001110 01000101 01010100 01001001 01000011 00100000 01000011 01001111 01000100 01000101…”
five poems
by Elana Wolff
“The sun shone angrily that day, / white-hot the next / and next. / Then xanthous as a bruise / when it turns from purple.”
sonya soundbiter
by Zev Levinson
“she sinks to her knees without / word / all this music become unsung and Sonya by Babylon so stung”
solar power recalibrates my philosophies
by Kati Flores
“Sun salutations against the pavement./ Worshipping noon’s glorious sun. / High like a basking lizard./ Drunk on summertime fuel.”
i want a word with the manager
by Tom Cintula
“Memo to Alex Rossi: Don't leave your baked goods unattended! / Otherwise the Edible Fairy will take them away.”
five poems
by jms xuange
“The water shines./ She fills two Mason jars and carries them home / in the basket of her bicycle. Her mom lets her use / the refrigerator but the girl sleeps / on the porch for the rest of the summer.”
two poems
by Terry Trowbridge
“They promised never to forgive us / for the time we replaced / the communion wine with vinegar…”
four poems
by Gülen Çelik
“The tip of my youth and tongue. / Functional and elegant. / That’s what we are!”
unspilled milk
by Philip Venzke
“…because no one / with a failed nose / will dismantle those cartons. / I can change the past.”
drone strike
by John Jeffire
“…chest fails…surgeon cannot peel…child from her grasp”
the type
by John Jeffire
“His girlfriend at the time dug the type. College degree in something or other, sweaters he didn’t actually wear but tied around his neck—probably couldn’t throw a spiral or explain man coverage.”
when i check the time
by Grady VanWright
“In the mirror, a stranger with a hollow face / mumbles about markets--copper, salt, / the weight of words-- / but he falters at the syllables.”
five poems
by Blair Hamelink
“I hear a tickling from the bastardized voice / & the windmill of my rot / blows upon my hair / it seems, I’ve gone public / priest of the milkyway, Vincent: / I’m your man…”
true cross
by Michael Borth
“It is obvious in the aura of the green light of Honduras / Intersected by the wounds of the martyr, by the mother / Praying silver on the historical hill of the true cross…”
two poems
by Nate Tulay
“Somewhere in Liberia, / where the rain is falling heavy again… / as the effects of the edibles / start to kick in.”