by Emma Atkins

“New Year’s Eve, I watch / a moth pull itself into the world: / black head dragging white body up the wall.”

by James B. Nicola

“the days before breaking up when you know you are only days away from breaking up…”

by Damon Hubbs

“A few days in the Province Lands & I am only one / only one girl crowned / & anchored for her heart’s desire.”

by henry 7. reneau, jr.

“rage that plummets our bodies   moan/hearted / to the intrusion of it all . the nihilistic poltergeist…”

by Justin Karcher

“I heard a frantic meow from around the corner. / When I went to look, there was this kitten / with a Cheetos bag on its head running in a circle.”

by Thomas M. McDade

“Once a Locomotive / Assembly Plant / It houses twenty / Cinemas now…”

by David Hanlon

“I remember this heart, aflame— / a pond of restless red koi, / underwater fire-fish.”

by R.M. Engelhardt

“Listen… / Time howling / Withering…”

by Ron Riekki

“My uncle fell and broke his hip / and he was lying on the ground / and his computer was playing / The Rolling Stones / “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

by William Taylor, Jr.

“…listen to them tonight / over more beer, / believing in beauty once again / for as long as the music lasts.”

by Frederick Pollack

“Our impulse is to build the museum / before we’re sure what it commemorates / or mourns.”

by Lydia Rae Bush

“I still don't know what the dead feel like. / All I've learned since then is what it's like to actually / notice when you're feeling someone slowly die.”

by Catfish McDaris

“Her freckles were devil’s kisses / showering down from purgatory.”

by James Fleet Underwood

“…a destination seldom reached where even for the shortest second nothing’s / ever over, where nothing seems to die, where the last I’ll ever learn / and love of you is the glowing purple cactus flowers trembling all around.”

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.”