Poetry
Guiding Stars by Kelsey Jordan
My nipples shine cold and hard in the night sky.
The moon revolves around them
as my breasts swell with the tide
to erode the earth in waves as I walk.
And in the climax of time and gravity,
they point below my bellybutton.
Guiding pinpoints in the ever-moving universe
as they travel back
to the dark beauty of creation.
YouTube Tutorial: Saving Possum Babies by Piper Rasmussen
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The headless woman in the frame
wiggles a bare hand into the pouch,
jabs, swirls her wrist three times
rips them eyeless from the roadkill womb:
the last two living joeys have latched
onto dead teats
which stretch
to rawhide strings in the extraction.
Hungry squirming maggots land in the bag
with the rest. Acrylic human nails
curette the dead wombskin,
a clinical final sweep checks:
“everybaby out of the pool?”
The dead possum can't feel it, I know, and anyway
she wouldn’t not know the difference between these nails
and her belly’s former contents,
a burrow-cornered, tearing mass of teeth.
I am learning,
a progenitor-to-be, to carry
latex gloves;
on the off-chance, oh god,
babies
in the ditch
coming home with me
for a warm box, a blanket, a cuddle.
Surprise, I’ll be busy
for the next eighteen years or so.
The duty nature gave me can be seen on an MRI,
my opposable thumbs,
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which send me seeking out hidden wells
of youth and tenderness, which give me the power to save
all half-hidden shreds
clinging to life.
But, surprise
I am unformed and pink myself,
no mother – at least,
not for tiny mouths and teeth
which have tasted the dead.
Food-loathing by Luke Horsey
The shade of his top lip tickles the Pinot in his glass
as he sends me down the hall with blown kisses and a panettone.
I loathe that man, and I want to
fold into him like batter so we are one.
He revolts me like the film on clotted cream, and
he is as abject to me as the heretics who put the jam on their scone first.
In his revolution, he invites me to join the feast,
and I’ll say I’ve other dinner plans, then dine alone delicately.
He is the cream cheese oozing from my blueberry bagel,
and the spilled milk on my button-up. He is sugaring
the sharpness of my clenched jaw as I enter the library
and with a sigh of relief, I read: no outside food or drink.
We pass the freezer bag between ourselves, we take turns
locking away the flesh. He’ll get up for a stroll,
and I’ll stay sat in the grass with strawberries and cream,
in the borders of the blanket and a force-field of buttercups.
In a dream, a God-woman came to confirm the blockade:
she described his style as collaborative in greed,
and mine as hyperbolic in need, as we sipped hibiscus tea
to untwist his knot in my stomach.
We are both men, so it’s cannibalism anyway:
I’m in a stupid, sickly haze.
Yet I still dream of finding icing so glossy
I see my reflection again.
Dürer’s Hare by Linda Stryker
Why am I crouched here, in front
of this man who scuffs a piece of paper?
All I want is to run through fields,
catch the eye of a hardy jack, raise my leverets,
sing the dusk song that calms the community
after a long day of loping runs. How often we leap
into burrows, and, like acrobats, escape gnashing
teeth to avoid being breakfast for diving hawks.
Rest now, perhaps to dream
about those tiny sparkling lights
that fill the black ceiling; the sky’s eyes––
like the glint in my jack’s eyes in the moonlight.
How this man’s eyes dance when my familiar figure
appears on his magic page,
and he gladdens that I am caught there.
UNDEAD by Harmony Mooney
​
My siren said my skin’s so wan and dead.
White coral reef. I’m ghostly. Spider veins
like cracked sea glass adorn my thigh. She said
I need to tan. My cheeks look roseate
with swollen capillaries. Dolls
have cheeks like this, just painted onto plain
white porcelain. My oyster flesh has gills.
The sandy shores exfoliate my toes
and tides have tried to rip and tear and pull
me out. I want to haunt this lonesome coast
when I become a ghost. I won’t go back
to where I’m from. I'll seek out the siren’s throat.
A Fantasy by Diana Raab
​
Tomorrow my seventh decades knocks
as I ponder how I arrived here—
the stories and people who’ve crossed my path.
I stop for a minute and decide what change
to bring forth and for me, it’s not to be flappable
about anything;
to expect the unexpected,
whether it’s cancer or a car driving too fast
or someone who abhors my life mission.
I will not whimper, brew anger or gossip.
I will not contradict, but choose to listen
and be the elder who slows down time.
I will be the one who gets down on the floor
to build Lego towers with grandchildren
like my father before he took his last breath at 70,
even before I got to tell him I loved him.
But now, I don’t wait to tell my loved ones
because in this life we never know
the shadows which arrive tomorrow.
THE BLUE PAINTING by Stephen Cribari
Notes made in The Courtauld Gallery, London
looking at Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” (1881-82)
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The mouth kissed once too often and the eyes
Filled and filling with all the wrong things and their light
Leaking away into the blue night.
You imagine the lace collar sliding down
Slipping from white shoulders the velvet gown
Warm against her warmer flesh. She bears
The indifference of all the others, the too many years
Away from the days of sunshine beside the shore.
Thus she would endure you, but nothing more.
The band around her throat no band of gold
But slavement to a life that does not hold
For her champagne or roses or tangerines.
Music and mirrors: no, not hers. She leans
On a marble counter-top blue-veined and cold.
White globes pulse, reflect in polished brass
The noise the clatter the chatter the ruthless fun
In trading one for one for another one.
Cigars and perfume. Chaos. The clinking of glass
And silence at the center of her eyes.
Emily as a Book of Joy by Darren Demaree
​​
Not every ocean
wants to drown you
in their will,
but Emily does
& hallelujah,
she really does
want to roll me
beyond myself
& close to a joy
I can’t manage.
Sex Dream, With Splinters by Haylee Shull
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The man in the dream has a tree branch for a penis. Yes, a literal tree branch,
rough and pointed, intimidating. The dream is scary. Scary, but
definitely still sensual. I’m not sure what that says about me, fear and lust
so tangled in my brain. Angst and orgasms. Dread
and desire. Am I allowed to admit I want this? That,
yes, I still fucked him, branch penis and all. I’ll try anything twice. I google,
“sex dream tree penis meaning,” and then, “sex dream tree penis meaning reddit,” find
a list of every combination of sex dream you could think of, and their meanings,
but find nothing resembling the lush green of my
subconscious; no flowering bushes, no bulging branches. I think: I’ve stumbled upon an
entirely new line of human thought. I think: I am the
loneliest girl in the whole world. Is this poetic? Am I allowed
to say the word penis this many times in one poem? The next time
I have sex with a man, he has a perfectly normal, perfectly lovely penis,
but I guess I’m still distracted, still thinking about the dream, the bark
scratching my tongue, the softness of my body suddenly so obvious,
and how I ache to be bigger than I am, more tree, more bark
than blossom, sometimes, more stone, less stream, more mud than anything
else, sometimes just the mushrooms giggling and gossiping in bursts
of electricity underground. I’m embarrassed by my desire,
my wanting too big for my own skin, seeping out of me
in thick streams of sap drooling sticky down my limbs. I’ll pine,
I’ll puddle and bloom; I’ll double, quadruple text; I’ll
simp; I’ll get on my knees, tell you, yes, I have a crush on you; yes,
I want to climb you like a tree and explore every branch, trace the lichen
and moss spreading feverish like a blush across every slope of you.
I send my mom my updated spreadsheet of all the people I’ve kissed,
along with their 1-10 rating, and sometimes other details, like, how many
espresso martinis I’d had, or where they put their hands. Sometimes,
she offers to send money for extra therapy sessions, tells me, you’re too sappy
for your own good. I tell her, the people in this town just can’t handle a gal like me;
they’re not real lovers, not built for devotion, for worship,
and worst of all, they don’t take kissing seriously enough.
The soft animal of my body wants only to make out, sloppy style—in the car,
on the couch, in the bathroom stall. Don’t make eye contact
with me, I might fall in love with you, might imagine us kissing,
might think of your hands later, when I’m alone and hungry, writhing
out of my skin waiting for somebody, anybody, to touch me, to uproot
me, prune away my old, dead selves, to churn me to pulp.
I’ll whisper my longings into the dirt and let them rise up in you
through the roots, blooming heavy and ripe; let us feast
on the swollen fruit of our bodies, let’s burrow and blur; twist
my tendrils in your fingers, harvest and hoard me, pluck me
clean, lather me in moon, in breath, in muted
murmurs. I’ll split myself open for your taking but
remember, this poem is about me — about the river
running restlessly up and down my spine, threatening every moment
to burst, to soak everything, drown us all.
My Problem with Gefilte Fish by Brian Billings
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My bubbe said gefilte fish was an affliction food,
and I believed her. She meant the choiceless poor
would eat the curdling cakes to make a meal,
but all I could imagine was a mad rabbi in a lab coat
rubbing his hands above a green-gel vat in which
he grew the grisly fish—oatmeal-skinned
and hyper-finned with eyes along the lateral line
that hypnotized bad boys and fed on them before
bar mitzvahs could make them into men.
At Passover, I skipped the cold-patty platters
that passed down the table hand to hand despite
how both sides of the family guilted me with glares
or pointed growls. Never mind the flashy carrots
and black peppercorns enlivening the flesh when
slime lurked underneath, the poisonous revenge
my monster left behind to creep beneath my fingernails.
Even now, when my wife prepares perfect quenelles
wrapped beautifully in cabbage leaves and zested
with bright lemon, I can only shake my head
while underneath my feet I feel Behemoth swim.
Prose
Where I Used To Live by Susan Israel
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“We’re going to drive by the old house where I grew up! Next block! Look!” Maisie leaned forward in her seat as Tony’s rental Camry slid around the corner and puttered to the curb. She gasped; there was no house there, just crumbled walls in the process of demolition, rooms open to the sky, bricks tumbled over each other. Inhaling hurt so much that she stopped breathing for a minute. The house may well have fallen on top of her. “Stop! Let me out!” She cried, unaware that the car had indeed stopped and Tony looked at her warily. She opened the door and tumbled out and then made long strides to the shell of the house. “Maisie, you can’t go in there!”
She ignored him. He had never set foot in this house. She had moved out long before meeting him to go to college, to see the world, then to move in with him, but once it had been home. She’d been born in this house. Grew up here. Had beloved pets here. She climbed over a pile of bricks. Parts of the second floor had collapsed into the first. “What happened to it?” She asked no one in particular. “They even cut down the trees!”
“New owners probably just wanted it gone so they could build a bigger house,” Tony suggested.
“It happens every day.”
She wheeled around with a brick in her hand. “This was plenty big enough for us,” she seethed. She turned back, stumbling on pieces of broken brick, torn linoleum. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Why would they? When was the last time you lived here?” Tony took a couple of steps forward and then stopped. “Maisie, come on, we have to get to the airport for check-in or...”
“They better let me board with this,” she held the same brick aloft, hoisting it like Lady Liberty’s torch. Tears burned her cheeks. She then cradled the brick in her arms and reluctantly followed Tony away from the rubble and back to their rental car. “I’m going to use this in the foundation of my house someday,” she said matter-of-factly, nestling the brick carefully in her carry-on. “I have room for more bricks. I’m going back up there and get more.”
“No,” Tony snapped. “No, we can’t take more bricks.”
“Then I’m going to get the name of who’s wrecking it so I can contact them and request more.”
“Maisie, we live in an apartment that’s only slightly bigger than a closet, what are we even going to do with any bricks?”
She glared at him. He wasn’t someone she could build a foundation with. Hours later, after they got back to the city, after she unpacked, after she told him she wanted to be alone now, she crawled into bed, hugging the brick to her chest, sobbing into it like a long lost teddy bear even though it didn’t absorb tears, even after it scratched her face.
Music
Goddess of the dark waters by Brian Billings