February Contributors
Clayre Benzadón, g.a.costa, Salvatore Difalco, Meg Freer, Cyndi Gacosta, Cody Gohl, GTimothy Gordon, Joey Junsu Hong, Luke Janicki, John Jeffire, Craig Kirchner, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto, Kathryn Lasseter, Zev Levinson, Dusti RW Levy, Raul Meza, David P. Miller, Amelia Napiorkowski, Brooke N. Plummer, Patricia Powers, Jason Reid, Olivia Rose, Carol Shillibeer, Hayley Shucker, Ben Starr, Yuchen Tao, Jordan Trethewey, Grady VanWright, and Philip Venzke
Poetry
February Highlights
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the sound of 1000 people saying “foop” all at once
by Meg Freer
“Beware magnetic particles / and unhinged brachiopods / in your breakfast cereal, / make space for the absurd…”
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before brooklym
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.”
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winter dinner
by Yucheng Tao
“…time is a shattered mirror, / reflecting her in the arms / of a golden-haired man, / meeting me with cold silence.”
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ringing in the memories
by Philip Venzke
“I go to bed / comforted by the electric hum / of the pseudo-candle.”
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the poet as nike aphrodite
by Dusti RW Levy
“If I am made in the image of god, then god / has been set on a pedestal, glared at, stared at, spit on…”
five poems
by Catfish McDaris
“Her freckles were devil’s kisses / showering down from purgatory.”
five poems
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.”
five poems
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.”
you want it darker
by Patrick Johnston
“A knife can be a tool / A dagger is always a story”
vaccumed off the carpet i’m in the vaccum now
by Rebecca Warlick
“You carried me to the sink / I woke up to luminous columns / And turned into dust“
two poems
by Cynthia Atkins
“Now I drive / with death on the passenger side./ A revenant finishing all my sentences.”
five poems
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”
breakfast machine
by Angel T. Dionne
“my blood supply is half-moon citrus / filtered through a gnat…”
after ma bell there was the hunchback
by Philip Venzke
“Quasimodo dials the number again and hears the steady buzz of a busy signal.”
postpartum
by Jesse Darnay
“Our newborn sounds / a fracture, / chipping my summer.”
grifted
by John Jeffire
“She regifted all, a painless sloughing of skin.”
through the cubes
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…”
five poems
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.”
two poems
by Ingrid Marie Jensen
“…bright horses, bolting in from the blue / and I know that’s borderline / affirmations written on the mirror in lipstick…”
five sonnets
by Rodrigo Toscano
“Ok, why not, bring on the asteroid / Gotta start—or end, somewhere.”
five poems
by Mitch Christensen
“Route A./ There’s / a woman. Her close-cropped hair / glistens in the soft yellow light as she talks / about a flight she must take…”
two poems
by Nick Power
“We are precious, / our dreams are precious, / we’ll dream them together, as the dream / of each other. ”
five poems
by Jones Irwin
“Muerte la inteligensia! Viva la muerte! at Salamanca / Deep song of the duende”
feral
by Emma Wells
“Here, stillness reigns. / Irritation stops.”
three poems
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.”