by Von Wise

“Off in the distance, the village pervert / watches us making love / in the afternoon heat. We regard him / as harmless, the way we'd regard a dog / or bird and continue with our wet return / into one another.”

by Patrick Johnston

“A knife can be a tool / A dagger is always a story”

by Rebecca Warlick

“You carried me to the sink / I woke up to luminous columns / And turned into dust“

by Cynthia Atkins

“Now I drive / with death on the passenger side./ A revenant finishing all my sentences.”

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

“This verse will be picked up by crows in the morning / And they will be thrown from heaven / On icy concrete heart rocks / All in vain”

by Philip Venzke

“Quasimodo dials the number again and hears the steady buzz of a busy signal.”

by Jesse Darnay

“Our newborn sounds / a fracture, / chipping my summer.”

by John Jeffire

“She regifted all, a painless sloughing of skin.”

by Grady VanWise

“You blink and now she's dressed in shadow, / a shroud of midnight, / with flickers of neon red pulsing underneath, / veins of pure electricity…”

by Craig Kirchner

“Insomnia and I decide to get up / and check out some late-night TV. / It’s a mutual decision, but he gets credit for the idea. / I’m going to have a coffee, hazelnut, /and he’s down with the 12-year-old bourbon, neat.”

by Ingrid Marie Jensen

“…bright horses, bolting in from the blue / and I know that’s borderline / affirmations written on the mirror in lipstick…”

by Rodrigo Toscano

“Ok, why not, bring on the asteroid / Gotta start—or end, somewhere.”

by Nick Power

“We are precious, / our dreams are precious, / we’ll dream them together, as the dream / of each other. ” 

by Jones Irwin

“Muerte la inteligensia! Viva la muerte! at Salamanca / Deep song of the duende”

by Emma Wells

“Here, stillness reigns. / Irritation stops.”

by Steven M. Smith

“They had to accelerate after work . . . away / from their frowning houses, where their spouses / perspired and sighed into pots of soup and laundry bins.”

by henry 7. reneau, jr.

“a euphor/oxia of osmotic diss- / combobulation   it can happen / now !! to you / is only amerikkka as usual   (hear no/ speak no /   see no evil) / a racial diss- / equilibrium of gunshot / splayed”

by Sharon Weightman Hoffman

“like many people, I have hated mimes / with their white faces and quizzical eyebrows, / leaning into the wind or trapped / in invisible boxes.”

by Sumayya Arshed

“the car hums like a throat clearing before confession, / fear sits beside her, always by her side, / palpable as sweat sinking into vinyl seats…”

by Len Kuntz

“…when it hugs you    pats your back    says Son you’re a tall bastard now   that laugh again    his new set of eyes     nearly as black as     the ants that danced    throughout our home   the ones that still come looking.”