by Karina Longo

“If closing my eyes means / only meeting you in a / dream, / I’ll hold my / breath; / bring the / insomnia / beats.”

by Ani King

“lips stained pink or red or purple or black / let them be tender as overripe fruit / let them be girls / bursting sweetness / new names plucked from field guides to flowers…”

by Melia G. Stern

“God is a dog / a big one / the kind of dog where wary mothers ask / is he friendly? / before they skirt by with their children”

by jp thorn

“maria mentions / florida is the birthplace / of disaster and calamity / but i was born in arizona, / you in illinois & / together we’re a blizzard…”

by Claire Nelson

“Oh chicken nugget / shaped cloud / Oh stubbed toe / Oh perfect song / played randomly / The algorithm of my / heart spits you / out again like a / Polaroid…”

by Anthony Landicini

“Adam West almost murdered me. / But who cares? He’ll always be my favorite Batman.”

by Devon Bower

“acid soil births abundance in the folklore of my grandmother’s garden—we go berrying—drop the bluest and the biggest in the bottom of our pale—fingertips hued purple…”

by Alice Blackwell

“I felt the failed relationships, the failed marriage, my dejected life trajectory, deaths of my grandparents & near death of myself…”

by Craig Constantine

“Now the desert heart of the city beats, / With the coldblooded pulse that deep-down lurks. / Murder and ruin prowl the hillside streets. / LA, straw house inside a tinderbox.”

by Dan Russell

“We drank wine in the cellar near the abbey / Where the suicidal poet yodelled his songs / About love and death and feeling / Things others might think wrong…”

by Zev Levinson

“Talibanic and unamericanned stones into skulls    herenow so bethroned by screens younglings flected    from earthbeat conversation beaten by scoars and lykes…”

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

“i breathe in the air as if it were silence / i smile as if i'm still not dead / i stay away from you as if і don't love you…”

by Sterling Davis

“Jesus & Judas— / The first individual killed by / The first cynic. / Now all I see is girls that look / Like tortoiseshell butterflies.”

by Luz Aida Rodriguez

“Candy-coated rigor mortis / I keep the body under my bed / Strawberry shortcake, unicorn spit / It all floats inside of my head”

by Will Alberts

“Perhaps we forgot him first, / exhausted from fathers who love / keeping daughters edible / and the son conditional.”

by Nash Keune

“There’s a Rothko hung behind the front desk / On the entry floor, the unnumbered floor, / Just a hallway to the elevators. / A huge rectangle of mushed up blood red / Another thin black sideways one on top.”

by Patrick Meeds

“What good are all these scars if I can’t / show them to someone.”

by Erin Owens

“They scattered like bullets- / copper shrapnel / from an / improvised explosive. / The screams reverberated, / a war with no victory.”

by Allison Noonan

“Riding down the glass road, / cool air beating my face blue, / I think about how I’ll find my way back, someday. / Later, I’ll floss the bugs from between my teeth.”