Joseph Gage CC



     There are so few things I look forward to as much as I do sitting down to write these editorials, which are but all the emotions kicked up in me by all of the incredible and aching soul-work that you all share with us each season. Usually I have a pretty good idea of what it is that I want to say here, but all of my words seem to have moved up ahead of me quite a bit and I have lost sight of them. They'll return when they're ready, I know. So let me just say, in the absence of my own, that I am so grateful to have found yours. There are some things we could never say to anyone before, there are some things we could never even say to ourselves. It helps to feel that there are places where we can say the hard things. Artists aren't always known for keeping the circle warm and open. That could be said for any of us though, in any configuration. We try hard to keep our ear to the track running through the other, but we get in our own way a lot too, lose hold the thread, the muscle and music of the moment. Hopefully returning, more often than not, to warmth and to opening. Home base. 

     Reading the work that you each share helps me immensely. It helps me pay more emotional-attention, listen-deep and wide, and hold more space for all the things that I'm not holding nearly enough space for. Often enough I'll be going through something painful that a submission will hold an answer to, or a soft metaphorical-shoulder to lean upon. Or someone shares with me that they too found an answer or a kind shoulder in our pages here. Whatever else I am in lessens in intensity when I turn to this work, to this place. 

     I am grateful. I am awed. I am but such a small part of all this. Thank you all for making this place a real home, among the many that we must find and make for ourselves and each other along the way. We are here, always, for soul and heart, and there is so much of it in this issue. And pain. So much pain. There's a line I read recently of Winnicott's that I love: "If we have these problems, we shouldn't rush too quickly to try and solve them. It's better to see if we can try and work with the problems we have." Joyce Carol Oates once said that people ask the wrong question when they ask her "how" she is able to write so many books. They almost never, she said, ask me "why". Stories, for Oates, are the way she works out (and with) her problems. Is that not the truest thing? We create to better partner with our problems, digest hurt, hold our losses close, move through old rooms, into open fields, into a bitterly beautiful half-light. Mostly we don't know what we're doing but that we are doing it because we have to. Not just because we need it, but because others need it too. There's no choice. It is that serious, that necessary. 

      It's been such a hard, dark year. Nothing certain, nothing safe. You might think soul doesn't stand a chance in this long dark night of a world, but I must tell you it does, it does. As you move through this issue I think you'll see a little of what I see: such open field brimming with sadness and song, muscle and soul, laughter and light. Mostly, I hope that you'll feel less alone in whatever heaviness you're feeling these days. That all these poems and stories will ring the bell of bells for you. 

        Until we meet again, friends. Thank you for these words. For this very special, warm, and open place that you all have made into what it is because of who you are. A place where soul can shine, and truth and heart stand a fighting chance of beating back the dark. 

In service and gratitude,
James Diaz
Founding Editor
Anti-Heroin Chic

    Henry Söderlund CC




How to find yourself

                 After Isabelle Correa


Listen to the sound of a watermelon cracking

as it grows. Find a hole in your brain

the size of your heart. Take a walk. Test the theory

that it hurts to explore. Turn off your TV 

like it’s a faucet. The soul is full. Wear your first heart-

break like a g-string. Show it off. Never return 

a library book you masturbated

to. Pay the replacement fee. Thank the clerk

and get the hell out of there. Get the hell

out of there.





This morning, I wake up and play

with my feminine 

like a match. The resting bitch

face, the stench of morning

breath, somehow disappears 

once my underwear catches fire. 


We are all godly, 

I think, until our feet touch 

floors, our mouths creak 

open like tombs,

our faith, first strong like black,

waters down to grey 


by noon. There is no rest

for the human in us. So take 

a little time, make a little fire.





I don’t do Father’s Day

cards. I do Father’s Day

thoughts. It’s kind of like wishing
​
someone a good

life and then not caring

if they’re fucked

in the head like a chicken

on a farm. But, he might only

be one feather

away from flying, I think,

one year away from dying, 

so I cough up compassion,

bow my head and wish

him well. And it’s not nothing.

​


Maria Giesbrecht is a Canadian poet whose writings explore her Mexican and Mennonite roots. Her work has previously been published in Contemporary Verse 2, Talon Review, and is forthcoming in Queen's Quarterly. She is the runner-up for the 2022 Eden Mills Poetry Contest and a graduate of the post-graduate Creative Writing program at Humber College. Maria is the founder and host of the writing table, Gather, and spends her days nurturing creative folks to write urgently and unafraid. mariagiesbrecht.com
​

    Justine M CC



​
Portrait of the Body with Blood Rising 

Even now           remnants of that life settle
like evidence                     on the ash field of my body: 

dog hair on the breast   of my blouse
gray cascade of fur         from my anemic throat

hunger like a sheet that can’t be lifted
rusted                  with a mottled stain
 
Even now there is longing         that violet
contusion of desire        pressed red in the mirror

your little finger snaking inside me like a hollow knife
& bruising my hard blood          into softness

cutting a little slit                          in my belly
& licking your tongue to the eggs        in bright clusters

& rising from between my legs             like a bloody sun
over the halflit field       your teeth stained

a red so close to black 





My Baby 

                                                                                                                                                                                      My baby wears all black
                                                                                                                                    says that we both die inside of every dream he has
                                                                                                                                                                                       —Nicole Dollanganger 

My baby poses with a semi-automatic
calls me baby     but not like that 

My baby drives drunk on the third date
my eyes fixed on the road          as if it would steady her

My baby in the chemical solvent of morning
rising & falling like a dirty sheet over our unmade bed

The smell of her underarms sharp & beautiful
& terrifying      like the bile that lingers in my mouth

My baby in my dream lifts a semi truck
& tosses it at me like     it’s nothing

Hand on my neck like a dull blade
thick with rust & fur 

I tucked away my tremble
to make peace with       my baby

My baby says you make me feel like
a child                  molester 

My baby says I don’t have
that gun    anymore 

Violence never touched me but it lived with us
in her history                   in the animals too

waking in the acid dawn with a dog-
bruise on my breast 

I hate you like a gin baby hates its mother
which is to say I love you             & I wish you dead 

My baby says I’ll take care of you
My baby says I look at you & almost see

a child 





A Red Bruise Shaped Like a Bird 

                                                                                                                                                                    after a line by Emily Skaja

In our closest moments                            the wall between us 
only ever thinned          to a membrane

the waxwing casing                      of your stomach lining
red light shining through                           like a bruise

In the topography of Real Life                we’re always eating breakfast
& when I sleep                I’m never not dreaming

the phantasm of your face        a right version of you

In our closest moments                              my hair crumpled
like wet Kleenex             sickness gathered like frost 

on a windowpane           dirt gathered 
like sickness      under your fingernails 

In the view from here                    I’m drawing lines
around everything    that’s fallen out of the story

Who was it that said               the way we are
is the way                       we love? 

In a memory of Real Life        or a dream
an injured rabbit          frees itself from the trap

only by luring                another animal in
to take its place                           among the torn-up trees




Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a poet, editor, and instructor with an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. She is the author of the chapbook Plainhollow (dancing girl press, 2022) and the editor of Dream of the River (Jacar Press, 2021), and has work featured in Sinister Wisdom, CALYX, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She is Managing Editor of Jacar Press and a PhD student in poetry. Find her at poetnatalie.com.
​

    Henry Söderlund CC





Duck, NC

Because I love you: mascara.
Blush. Cotton-swished ankles. The beach
after sunrise. That first beer can,
then cap after bottle cap.

You want to sift this sandy stretch
before time’s marching swallows her.
So I am shoving plastic disks into this
blue helium star we rescued,                
this morning’s makeshift garbage bag.

Before I knew to love, I had to learn
to love, my brown eyes
blinking from my sister’s face.
And then to teach her to love,
ply her with milky pull tabs,
bejewel her with them,
call them kindness rings.

Girlhood wonder: how she still craved
my rings after she knew
I made them up, like 
crusted sweets, like poems, like hand
clapping games.

We were so small, and those mornings
so big: burnt toast & spilled milk.

And now those days swallowed
by so many bottles of milk, new silvery
spoons, tiled counters, hobbled stools.

All that’s left:
this bottle cap
damp in my hand,
how it binds me to
those plastic tabs, and now,
binds me to your boyhood 
beach, and to you.


​
​

Alixa Brobbey spent portions of her childhood in The Netherlands and Ghana. She has a B.A. in English and J.D. from Brigham Young University, where she won the Ethel Lowry Handley Poetry Prize in 2020. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming in Rattle, Brittle Paper, Weber—The Contemporary West, Inscape Journal, The Albion Review, The Susquehanna Review, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

    jxj CC




cuimhnich ormsa

the body 
as a fleshed 
forever. the body 
as a bloated 
tide, eddying 
into some 
porcelain 
hope. the heart 
as a temple. the heart 
as a church 
where our lost loves 
still pray. loss 
as a mountain-sized 
universe. loss 
as a dangling 
tear. birds 
as orbiting 
music. birds 
as shards of 
love letters. (birds & I, remembering…)

​



's e abhainn an cridhe

The heart / knows infinite ways / to describe a / river / when it holds / a hand / it holds / a people / the gentle bleating / of a bird’s / birth / we think / (softly) /of bodies / rewriting themselves / melting in / want / an orchard / surrendering its / pulse / plucking forests from / naked / courage / & we think / (yes) / that self is / other / that tree is / other / an embryo / of a distant / kind / remember:  doves / donate feathers / so they can nurse / a planet / palms / shed holding / so they can pillow with / offering / a drizzle of / worship / & remember: / go in / in / in / in / let heart / seek the curvature of / her first / chest --

​



​
Eartha is a woman of Ngāpuhi heritage living on Wurundjeri land. She placed second in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section, was nominated for The Best of the Net Award in 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Creative Writing New Zealand’s Short Story Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Australian Poetry Anthology, Wildness, Cordite, Rabbit, takahē, Frozen Sea, Minarets, Baby Teeth Journal,  South Florida Poetry Journal, Circular Publishing, Revolute, JMWW, LEON Literary Review, and ELJ Editions, among others. 

    Flickr CC




WHAT I’D TELL YOU IF I COULD


I wish I could name what happened 
so I could bury it now that it’s dead. 

I wish I’d imprinted on anyone else. 
All I know is that when my body awoke, 

you were there. The sun illuminating only us.
Why do people always ask about our first kisses? 

The ones that were forced on us, 
that we gave to the undeserving? 

I’d rather be asked about my last kiss, 
the one I meant, the one I was good at, 

fingers threading so it didn’t have to end. 
Girls are little spiders, working the fibers, 

weaving, joining. I remember you telling me about 
the God’s Eyes you’d make at summer camp. 

The way they were supposed to remind you 
that God was always watching, whatever you did. 

The way you learned the world was full of 
temptations you needed to avoid. 

The way you said, whatever there is to taste, 
get out of my way, I have been put here to taste it. 





I LOVE YOU


Under every bridge is a secret museum,
graffiti ghosts of each kid who first found courage there, 
first felt the urge to impress someone, trying out the wobbly 
songs of themselves, SUMAC and MFONE and RAEL*S, 
all those little whorls and squiggles like the first steps 
of toddlers, sooty petroglyphs showing them grow sure 
of their footing. Without asserting ourselves in words, 
do we even exist? Did I exist? I was so tired I wasn’t sure.
And when you looked at me you could see it,
how tired I was of how tired I was making myself,
and you said, Honey. Not Sweetie or Dear, but
“Honey. You just need to go for a long walk.”
No one ever told me to do anything good for me.
People blew smoke in my face, offered me
beers or pills, sandwiches of French fries 
piled high on hunks of butter-drunk bread.
And so I tried it, walking down along the river,
feeling my feet undo their knots, work out their math.
Under the bridge, I watch a train pass across the river,
a slow line of coal cars doing their duty, full of the dreams 
of the kids who’ll never make it out of the mountains,
the kids from Rupert and Rainelle who can’t find the path,
unlike this spiderweb of options in which I’m paralyzed.
Maybe you meant I needed to spend time as a ghost,
exist in the interstices, train my tongue to praise. Maybe you knew 
someone needed to greet those dreams, so I take my hat off
and nod as they go past, blow a kiss as they cough along the tracks,
tell them, 
I hope you make it all the way to the Pacific, 
clean the soot off in that blue water. 
Tell them: 
May someone someday wish you health, and may
you warm yourself in the glow of that implausibility.



​

GIRL RACER


Too well she knew the life
outside the law, the thrill
that shines in moonlight, the fight
between monotony and pride.
The rides she’d taken in childhood, 

legs dangling next to a cursing father,
a grumbling uncle, red-faced, impatient,
their licenses long-revoked,
were nothing she’d replicate now.
Their radios sang to the clink

of the Jack resting on the dash, on the rocks,
of the bottles she found under the seats
while digging for pennies. She loves
the feel of the road too much
to seek it in an altered state.

Still, she’s never totally safe – 
unless she’s doing ninety she feels
like a snail. What she wants is the play 
of the chase, to be naughty 
and spotted on radar.

Until her rearview dances 
with spinning lights, the world
pales before her, stretches thin,
grey strips of chewing gum.
But to run is to court them, 

to be caught is to do the right thing, 
to erase the past and give herself 
up to the law, already gripping her license, 
certain that this is the place, 
this moment the time.




Jessica Manack holds degrees from Hollins University and lives with her family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared widely in literary journals and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of GASTROMYTHOLOGY (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024). Keep up with her work at: http://www.jessicamanack.com

     Flickr CC




The Deal 

The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong
in my body & in my mind, so they gave me lithium.
They thought I could be bipolar. Possibly schizophrenic.
I was 25 & afraid all the time. 
The diagnosis made it hard to breathe. 
My boyfriend gave me a book by a philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti
& went to play Frisbee. 
I didn’t blame him. What could he do?
I seemed to need something other people didn’t need
in order to live. It amazed me how people could live. 
Life felt flat as a postcard in a rusty rack in an abandoned bus station.
Swimming was the only relief besides crying. 
I brought the lithium to the beach
& was about to take a pill
but dropped the bottle in a garbage can instead. 
Not even the gulls were interested.
I made a deal: If I still felt this way in five years, I would kill myself.
Five years seemed short enough that I could bear it
& maybe long enough to heal. 
Slowly, I got better.   
I read the book by Krishnamurti.
He said loneliness is just loneliness. Something like that.
Once you go all the way through it, you’re on the other side.
Something like that. I read the chapter over & over.
Went to hear him give a talk in an orange grove in Ojai.
His voice was a beautiful body swimming
all the way to where there is no side.
I moved north. Stood in the small yard one morning
& looked at the flowers without being scared. 
The yard was half in sunlight, half in shadow.
I wasn’t thinking metaphor. Only how precise it was.
I kneeled in the patchy grass. 





Little Altar

The Milky Way is bigger than we thought.
At least 100 billion stars.

We can’t fathom things that large,
though forgiveness 

doesn’t take up any space, so quiet, 
you don’t know it’s happening until 

one day you’re walking down the street
& there’s more room inside you.

Are we bigger than we think?
Are we like a safe with a steel door

& when it gets blown open, 
there’s nothing, except the Milky Way? 

I once lay down in the parking lot of a bank 
where I’d deposited a 30,000-dollar check

from the company 
whose faulty tire killed my mother. 

I curled around the trunk of a little maple 
trying to grow in the gravel. 

The tree & I breathed together, the leaves 
making a comforting sound in the breeze.

Cars came & went, I heard their tires, 
my eyes filling with sky. I was part of it all, even 

what I blamed, the Silver River, the Backbone of Night--
other names for our galaxy. 

I had a choice. I would get up in a few minutes. 
Or a lifetime.  





Street Psalm 

I now live in the town where I lived 37 years ago
& I’m walking down Bidwell Avenue,
a narrow street by the creek, sound of dark water over rock,
scent of fennel & as the pavement turns & turns, 
I can feel it in my body, my youth, the house like a small barn,  
paint weathered, porch where my dog slept in the sun
that swung its gold arc over oak & cypress, little red house 
with squeaky floors where I told a good man no,
where I was alone so I could think a clear thought, 
where I read & wrote, each word a divining rod 
as I began to build a life with my waitress apron & bicycle 
that took me across town where duck hunters slapped my ass 
& chowder slicked my hands, street where I told my pervy 
grandfather to get out of the car & I drove my mother & grandmother 
around the neighborhood as if that would change anything 
then drove back, after all it was his car 
& I almost crashed into him, a whiskey-eaten mammoth melting 
in the middle of the street, oh, hell, get in, 
the almond orchard where I ran through tunnels of dust & light, 
row after row like infinity or possibility, hope’s sweat glistening 
& now I stand in front of a fancy house where my old place used to be 
& a woman comes out to water her flowers, saying good morning 
& I say hi & walk on as if it’s nothing, a street in a world of streets, 
billions of lives & dreams, the sky with a few clouds 
like ghosts doing the backstroke.

​


Susan Browne is the author of Buddha’s Dogs, Zephyr, and Just Living. Her fourth poetry collection, Monster Mash, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2025. Awards include prizes from Four Way Books, the Catamaran Poetry Prize and the James Dickey Poetry Prize. She lives in Northern California where she teaches poetry workshops online. http://www.susanbrownepoems.com

     Billy Bergen CC




Hang in There

I know some days are rough
Some days are tough
And most of the time 
You feel like you've had enough

I know you're mad
And often sad
But I promise one day that you’ll be glad
That you held it together
And gave it everything you had.  

Through thick and thin,
One day you’ll win.
One day you'll find your way...
On the horizon is a brighter day. 





Don’t Wait

Don't wait.
Tomorrow isn't promised.
You might not have another day.
Don't put off ‘til tomorrow 
What should be said today.
Don't wait.

Life's short.
Plan for tomorrow,
But don't forget to enjoy today.
One day you’re here,
The next day gone.
Life's short.
Don't wait.

Live each day like it's your last.
Before you know it,
Your time will have passed.
Before regrets fill your mind,
Live in the moment 
Each and every time.
Life's short.
Don't wait.

Time is nobody's friend.
It passes you by.
It blows in the wind.
Time is nobody's friend.
It waits for no one.
You simply cannot win.  
Life's short.
Don't wait.





​Elizabeth Walters, an artist and author based in California, has recently embarked on a journey to share “Poetry and Art for the Rest of Us” with the masses.  Coming from a blue-collar family, she was never exposed to “real” art or poetry in her youth.  Elizabeth earned numerous academic and merit-based scholarships and worked her way through college, teaching art to children and adults through programs that provided opportunities for “under-served” communities to create art.  She also spent 2 years as an art guard, which is what impacted her most.  She spent countless hours “guarding” an almost empty gallery...  too many of the exhibits were “too esoteric, or too academic; they were underappreciated by everyday people.”  In 2005, she graduated Summa Cum Laude with University Honor’s and Honor’s in major from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Fine Arts – a distinction only 12 graduates earned that year.  During her years at university, she participated in the Undergrad Exhibition in 2001, ‘03, and ‘04, and in 2005 had a Solo Student Show.  After spending the past 20 years creating wonderful buildings, she is now ready to focus on sharing “everyday, uncomplicated, and straightforward art and poetry with everyday people.”  

​

     Joseph Gage CC





To the Teeth


Fear too, nipping at the heel. Fear bruising my arms with fingertips of smallness. Pressing down, glancing back. The receding figure of delight. Something I’ve coined anxious immobilization to pathologize freezing of the bones, clicking of the joints. A bad back. A case of hyper-kyphosis my PT called incipient widow’s hump––I thought that unkind. Depression, (Freud called it anger turned inward). So, anger then. Mounds of it. An artillery of anger aimed at young people, at old people, people who have too many children, who chew audibly, who stroll, who clip coupons or ask polite, probing questions. Seasonal depression (that’s just science) except I like winter when there could be wolves anywhere, when you can howl and howl and no one hears. Fatigue––how the days revolt! Think of the Sahara. I’ve never been, but my sister went on retreat in Morocco. Clay tagines, dune-surfing, endless loop of shopping malls. In Marrakech they said she was a real Berber woman, her long blonde hair snaking in the eager sun. Of course she rode a camel. Poor beast, if I rode you I would weep.  





the most intimate thing 


didn’t involve a man’s cock in my mouth 
or a man licking sweat off my sleeping back 
or a man holding me like a measure 
of water, his forehead pressed against mine 
so I was blind when he came, or my first 
orgasm, my calf seared on the tailpipe 
of his bike, the idea of pleasure 
forever fused with the smell of burnt flesh––

                                  it was wrestling the duvet into 
                                  its cover, marrying the loops and ties
                                  to their corresponding corners, getting
                                  it wrong, us on opposite ends of the
                                  bed, the whole mess twisted in the middle
                                  our torsos inside the linen, reaching.

​



Goodbye Horses 
​
And you say, “All things pass into the night”
And I say, “Oh no sir, I must say you’re wrong
I must disagree, oh no sir, I must say you’re wrong”
               - William Garvey


You told me your heart might stop at any moment, white tee incandescent, Parliament a fixture between your fingers. You must have given me your number then, posturing through the shakes, the infancy of our twin rehabilitation static as an ocean. I want to say you had a tape-deck, slate blue station wagon, mint gum, “Goodbye Horses” on repeat. I loved the defibrillator on your chest, its thumping edges, how it left an arcade claw on my breast when you came inside me; your alien rib-cage, the crime scene scrawl of your torso, how that pulsing body slid through the halfway house window, a powder-blue Christ-on-the-Cross hung over the bed; how you took me to the Mermaid Motel, a mirrored pay-by-the-hour palapa, how we fucked theatrically, management pounding at the door when our allotment ran out; how we stayed as long as we could, our colt-like, fearless bodies reflecting back at us, the refraction of your hair-trigger heart, from which I would never recover; how it was all of three weeks. You came back to me a month or two before you died and I believed, with more faith than any god could inspire, that you’d stay. I climbed a tree to see how you felt before the drop, the shades of blue you might have seen, the recoil, that sharp angle to the ocean; how I was not on your mind, how the obit plucked a strangers’ quote, how she said, I didn’t know you but I saw you jump––paper flew out of your pockets like snow.

​



Anya Johnson is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. Her fiction, poetry, and essays can be found in Hobart, Stone Canoe, Scaffold Lit, Counterclock (Emerging Writer’s Award, runner-up), and on poets.org (John B. Santoianni Award, winner). Anya holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is the current Poetry Editor for Exposition Review and an Editorial Assistant at Fonograf Editions.
​

     John Brighenti CC




Mornings at Calle Floridablanca 

The ones where 4am keened, cold as floor tiles / your flatmate cleared her throat as she left for work / you wondered what she wasn´t saying / friends sent you facebook videos on how to survive a break-up / the cat jumped on your door handle / swung like a question mark /  you needed codeine to get out of bed /  your carrots slimed to black in the crappy fridge /  people fought for Ikea furniture in the flat you used to share with your ex / your flatmate told you chickpeas were a natural antidepressant / you woke up after eight hours on benzo /  the river called from the end of the street / Nina Simone sung you into the day / you taught the third conditional to students – if it had not been for therapy, I would not have survived / the blind rolled down by itself / the cat took the bathplug for its plaything / the sky was studded with starlings / you hung white sheets out to dry/ the roof terraces spread out like dancefloors, freshly mopped.



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Becky May is currently studying for an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her poetry has been published in various journals, including PN Review and Ink, Sweat & Tears and is forthcoming in 14 Magazine. She can be found on social media @beckymaywriter
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