by Mackenzie Carignan

“striking how the moments have space / between them / how quiet the quiet is / captured in unfurnished moments…”

by Samantha Hund

“I only fuck metaphorically / if you look at it / sober-eyed and sweat-free / it becomes hysterical…”

by Mark Parsons

“Her catabolic gaze reverse-effervesces, / ‍Breaks down to assimilate all who surround her, / ‍Wherever she casts her eye or attention.”

by Dee P. R. Kay

“you rapped / on the hotel door / framed by darkness / thru the peephole / larger than life…”

by Nick Crowley

“My ex was my principal therapeutic experience / which is to say / i was monitored constantly / to see if i was being ‘authentic’ / i’m not real at all / that’s why we broke up…”

by Lachlan Brooks

“Monstrous byproduct of sculpture, / and strange contortionist / Caught in the slow pose of / an emerging form, of entelechy / That reveals a great courtship with / nature and a messy divorce.”

by John Repp

“Slumped tear-soaked / in a red brocade armchair that smelled of stale farts, I’d shut / my eyes & hum “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” till Dr. Burl / gently coaxed me back to the mundane muck of the present…”

by Ron Arbuckle

“Being hit by a train / gracefully / takes decades / Make your life choices / with its inevitability / in awareness”

by Colin McGuire

“You are the Ultimate Warrior / and I am the Undertaker / thudding / like boulders above the living room / while Mum and Dad watch Casualty.”

by Natalie Nee

“Five bottles of almost-empty hot sauce, an oil-stained to-go box of empanadas, a gifted psilocybin chocolate bar I’m saving for a rainy day…”

by Devon Fulford

Women: You dont get married for instagram. You dont get married to spend money. You dont get married to annoy your ex.‍ ‍You dont get married for fun, or freedom. You get married to BELONG to an

by Kathi Crawford

“Our lips the same shape as our pussies— / ‍banks full of dividends wasted on misogynist mules. / ‍A mountain is a mighty injustice.”

by Howie Good

“A committee of biased judges travels from town to town with a portable guillotine. If the chickens in a coop can peck a fox to death, and they can, no one is safe. Whang!”

by Mike Ferguson

“That / beneath / the flawlessness of straight lines / ploughed and planted and growing / in those forever fields) / there are bodies buried / dead or alive.”

by Garth Martens

“Cousins share a thing or two. Or so we find, braiding thirty-year-old pain. / When their brother died of heroin, our mothers, / in separate houses, locked their doors. Cigarettes in ash pits, walled in.”

by Shannon Guglielmo

“I want to experience transcendence / & go beyond this life / to hear the birth givers who have come before / not just my mother grandmother / nor my ancestors of the last millennium / but 135,000 years ago”

by Olivia Bell

“I had sex on molly and accidentally fell in love. They say don’t ever have sex on molly because no sex will ever be that good again.”

by Clara No!

“his pierced taint hangs over you / like a roof over your head / botulism at the kink brunch”

by Craig Constantine

“Yes, your uncle carried you off. / Cry me the River Styx. / You soon had the besotted old goat / Bent to your every whim. / Not tragedy - destiny.”

by John Repp

“…glugging goat’s milk from pickle jars on a wedge / of un-sand. I did my best to fit in. I listened hard / & stripped at the right times, worked to grok / the squashed vowels & absent irony.”