August Contributors
Daniel Luévano and Saba Zahoor
Poetry
three poems
by Chantel Lavoie
“The last Manson girl-child in prison / whose arm, at 21, grew sore, stabbing / wakes every day, knowing / she’s a destroyer. She regrets.”
of wars and divorce
by Dario Cvencek
“we deem some children’s deaths more tragic than others.”
gunning it
by Dario Cvencek
“you do not need a gun”
two poems
by Zebulon Huset
“Eric would eventually be promoted to drive-thru— / one of the few teenagers content to make a buck / and not fuck off frequently enough to be fired…”
three poems
by Derek Dew
“When memory is stuck / and has no place to go / it becomes a glass shard / dropped in a clear green sea…”
valërea ing in the crabapple orchard
by Zev Levinson
“Valërea Ing gives up on singing Ducks beneath enamelled symphonies Dreams of a village on the far-off mountain And forgets she dreams a thing”
five poems
by Charlotte Cosgrove
“There’s more forest fires somewhere else (phew, not here) / More crazy scientists warning of ecological collapse – / The consequences are dire, we need to act now.”
five poems
by Adrian Frey
“Apple seeds line the altar in the empty church, / Down the one lane dirt road, / They do not grow Shulamite.”
two poems
by Terry Ann Wright
“…we wove a snare. we became / our own noose. o we aver / sour & we savor mourn. we / see moon & we become omen.”
cigarette girl at the horseshoe
by Mandie Lopatka
“you are who my heart can hold / like a penny or an aspirin in my vase of violets / a blank universe that makes me the star / a mirror image I don’t recognize…”
out of joint
by Philip Venzke
“Finally, / to blow this pitiful joint, / I fused into water / and escaped / down the drain.”
8 april 2024)
by John Jeffire
“…bend suppliant / to the shadow…”
confessions
by John Jeffire
“She looks at him as he looks out the kitchen window into the evening darkness. She does not think of whose pain she would be easing.”
a train through the south
by Grady VanWright
“The train grinds into its final station— / a street, present and pulsing, / where a man sells honey / in jars that mirror his eyes.”
five poems
by David Koehn
“Red ink draws a teardrop around a green-eyed tea with no pupil. / What kind of madness might I ask for from the startling whiteness of Labrador tea?”
two poems
by Daniel Edward Moore
“Here, lips obediently swallow / the laws of drunken gods and / salvation is delusional, making / the real, unreal.”
three poems
by GTimothy Gordon
“After the long haul you wait / for the slow still-life to matter.”
job creator heaven
by GRSTALT Comms
“the individual is free to decompose however they see fit the word has been compromised to a permanent end beaten to a pulp by the new literary outlaws…”
waterline
by Eva Alter
“…eyes peeled for errors in transmission I matched my breath to water’s pulse…”
amor y las chuparosas (love and hummingbird charms)
by Jordan Trethewey
“‘Divine hummingbird enrich my life and love, so that my lover will want only me.’ -anonymous prayer.”