by Olivia Rose

“All the bright parts were veering toward the hail that drummed the earth / new. Jesus, did you save this part? The mice in the road scream Caesar! Caesar! (I’m not / kidding.)”

by Brooke N. Plummer

“the last book I skimmed through / before break was a collection / of recipes from I Love Lucy.”

by Patricia Powers

“I saw a news story once about a dog eating its owner’s face. / She was drugged up on medicine and slept through it until she woke up and / realized something was wrong.”

by Joey Junsu Hong

“You smiled the way you did at the hall the night before, / freckles lifting briefly, / as if the welcome might hold.”

by Ben Starr

“I was thirteen when I first noticed / dirt under my fingernails. In my hair, / between my curling toes. Indigenous / grasses sprouted.”

by Hayley Shucker

“I gave away / or lost / soul mates and sanity.”

by Carol Shillibeer

“It’s bad enough when she’s a huge-assed bird, but in her human form—it can get kind of awkward.”

by Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

“Stepping on Colors is deep in my consciousness. / As we step forward / we heal the ground with each step. / The world will know where we walked.”

by Yucheng Tao

“…time is a shattered mirror, / reflecting her in the arms / of a golden-haired man, / meeting me with cold silence.”

by David P. Miller

“In these waste circles, I seem more like waste / than my body would be, cut to shards.”

by Zev Levinson

“Ay the mainframe fails And we flail in isolation Physical pandemical unprecedentical Ne’er knowing thing beyond these walls”

by Raul Meza

“it falls from the mouth, the white bone / drying red. number six, bright red / juice lips shape, count in the dark and / cold. aged bare white hearts sit in a / pile, teeth crunch loudly, lovely and red.”

by Jason Reid

“The little paws stuck to the glue, they die / One way or another. Some try to chew / Off limbs and then the blood flows.”

by Kathryn Lasseter

“ Hands together now. / Let’s ovulate side by side / in drowsy serendipity.”

by Salvatore Difalco

“Hounds outside hunt fox / or men who play God.”

by Philip Venzke

“I go to bed / comforted by the electric hum / of the pseudo-candle.”

by g.a.costa

“In the sacred home of every woman, every girl, the paper flesh breaks down, strip by strip, it separates itself from the walls, melts into a calm stream, then whirlpools down the drain —”

by John Jeffire

“Temptation hangs across the avenue, a toothpick dangling between his lips.”

by Grady VanWright

“The laughter fades to a whisper of feet / marching, marching / lockstep to the edge of their graves, / no applause, no encore…”

by Cody Gohl

“A violent green that shrieks in waves of yellow and chartreuse. It shouldn’t work but it does.”