lauren rushing CC



A Bright Spark in the Distance


Sometimes you think 
about North Carolina, the boys 
with the dimpled smiles
and tattooed arms hooking 
around your shoulder.

One was all burnt gold hair 
and rippling skin and crooked 
little smiles. 

You asked him to teach you 
to defend yourself--
that moment like a red glow,
when your arms locked behind,
his chest to your back
body bent low 
over yours.

His half thought, half murmured, 
I could do anything to you like this.

The thing is, 
you wanted him to. 
You still do. 

Some nights you burn 
at the thought, blood rushing to cheeks 
and other places
that clench.

You think about the shunt, that hole 
in his head with only 
a thin patch of skin. 

On a couch
he once said you could feel
for yourself. So you braced above
him, ran fingers through his hair, 
traced the bumps and ridges of the shunt 
that pushed at skin. 

You thought he would take you 
just like that, arms on either side of your head, 
heavy body above you, all around you, 
pushing 
in--

On the couch
your finger pads quickened over him, 
bruising his membrane, 
digging into skin. Years later 
you will map your skull
feeling for a glow
from within. 

​

                       lauren rushing CC



Everything Breaks that Isn't Plastic


Me and Toy go skinny-dipping 
after dark in the suburban canal, 
lit by back porch lights.

Toy is more fun than anyone 
with a reputation 
for being shatterproof

a living action figure 
manufactured with rivet-pocked arms  
designed to disrupt nature.  

Why crawl to Eden when it can be
run to in a vein? he reasons.

I haven’t called him by his real name 
since freshman year when we met,
a decade before his diagnosis. 

He says, I won’t be here long & adds, 
I want you to feel like you’re levitating
as if he’d laid waste to gravity.  

Night puts its ring on us, 
sparrows fly overhead,
extra bone in their tongues. 

Stray dogs trample Miracle-Gro blades 
dunk their muzzles into the brackish high tide.  
Do they know they are looking back at themselves? 

Stars breach, shake like Yahtzee-cup dice, tumble. 
The night-torn moon,
full from eating tides, howls.   

​


H.E. Fisher is pursuing her MFA (multi-genre) at City College of New York. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Okay Donkey, Pithead Chapel, Tiny Flames Press, and Animal Heart Press's anthology From the Ashes. She is the 2019 recipient of The Stark Poetry Prize in Memory of Raymond Patterson, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Barren Press Poetry Contest. Her lyrical essay, "Ocean: An Autobiography" (Hopper Magazine), was nominated for the Best of the Net (2019). Fisher is a writing tutor, and back-deck gardener with a wicked interest in medicinal herbs. She lives in Rockland County, New York.

                    lauren rushing CC



If there was a fire tomorrow 


When I was a kid, I used to watch videos of people being interviewed
After their house caught on fire 
Before you judge me,

1. I know it’s a weird thing to do 
2. It’s not for the reason you think 

I wasn’t looking up the videos because I’m a sociopath 
Or an arsonist 
I just enjoyed watching because 
In that moment, as the people stood outside of their burning houses 
They truly had nothing material left 
Just each other, and maybe a handful of things they grabbed 
A wallet, an old family photo, a computer 
It always made me think about what I would grab 
If flames started roasting away at my home 
Sometimes I thought about my 1999 Batman figurine 
Which was surely worth thousands by now 
Other times I thought about our family photo album 
Which had black and white photos of everyone 
Dating back to the 1890s 
But then I thought about coming outside of my home
Empty handed 
Looking the cameraman square in the face, pointing to my family and saying 
“Everything worth saving is already outside”

​


Samantha Savello is a Puerto Rican-American writer and poet living in New York. 

                  i wen† lef† CC



Spring

              On Uighur internment in Eastern China

In Xinjiang, hands collect unfelled promises 
in government compounds and the wind picks up 
dust and leaves from poplars that give 

and give. The trees open like an orchestra,
and their branches, fluted ribbons, thrash. A man down 
the corridor sews ashes over his body. No one remains 

the same. No one predicts how hunger whittles citizens 
into dancers. No one knows they only spare the dead. 
See: a mother handed her infant son’s corpse. Guards return 

another girl to the cell in the cavity of night, her skin 
stamped black and black and blue. Electricity: the silk 
of muscle and bone, a flowering of fiber optic cable bulging 

at the throat. A forest of tiger chairs earth these paper bodies. 
They are your brothers and sisters. They are mine. The wind 
is picking up speed. Like orchestras, the poplars open.

​​

                   lauren rushing CC



eating my depression 


fucking it all up
stop talking
don’t gush
take a muscle relaxer
pretend ur in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory
ur jaw isn’t sore
lick the wallpaper
find a way out
expensive language is on the plate
eat it
look for a way to say, “I’m not sad,
I love life, the flowers are lovely”
just pretend
just imagine 
grip the thought bubble like a fine piece of luggage
extinguish what sets you aflame
be light
be the fucking dali lama
or scream, “fuck the dali lama!”
eat eat eat
get fat on that junk food depression
this is not an instruction manual 




hoarding


your purses hung with tags
could have paid my college tuition
packs of diet coke
stacked in the back room
a slow aspartame suicide

quit smoking & the local mall
becomes your ashtray
are you sad? you say 
let me buy that for you 
to make up for the times in the ER
when I was too tired to look at you
in your pain

humanizing hoarding
the constant piling 
of boxed emotions
instead of letting me in
let me know 
why I did this

​

Kristen Mitchell is a queer, disabled poet living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She's studied literature, art history, and philosophy. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Abandoned Library, i am afraid always (Wanting to Die Poetry Club), and Bhakti Blossoms (Golden Dragonfly).

                   whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC



​Thirteen Smokes                  


Marlboro Mediums, soft pack
The flannel that inhaled them
keeping my secret safe
 
The vending machine at the college
on the other side of the woods,
no ID, no problem
 
Cigarettes smell like fall leaves
and look like lakes,
Chuck Taylors circa 1993
 
My mother threatened
the Exxon employees who sold
me cigarettes on Christmas
 
CJ’s mom bought me Parliaments
after I took his virginity but
before he was institutionalized
 
for bleeding the way
I’d taught him, on cigarettes
smoked after school
 
Cigarettes kissing the pages
of my teenage diary
and my inner arms 
 
Smoking from my bedroom window
and stubbing them out on the siding
giving myself away
 
The warm glow of his Swisher
Sweet as he massaged my feet
in the moonlight
 
Bidis from the African House
and the three months I thought
I’d ditched nicotine
 
The half-smoked cigarette
I extinguished when he told me
he didn’t think I could quit
 
Never smoking again
except for the time I was told
a hand-rolled cigarette was weed
 
​The vape pen a woman
half my age left on my nightstand,
her sock beneath my bed


​

Alison’s poetry has been published in various literary magazines including Hobart Pulp, Lynx Eye, and Illya’s Honey. The owner of sex positive adult boutiques in Richmond, Virginia, she currently resides in San Diego. She offers sex writing workshops in Richmond and online. Find her work and info about upcoming events at ThroatsToTheSky.com.

                   rruilisboa CC



The Pros and Cons of Therapy

We cut through the night,
you in the passenger seat
and a beer comfortably between us.
'This is what I learned,' I say. 'How to
use my words.'
And in the hollow of the night,
you tell me
'I liked it better when you
couldn't talk.'

​


Pre Wedding Vows


In a well-intentioned moment,
the woman who saved my life sees a picture of me
and my partner at a wedding
and comments, “You’re next.”

The words feel more like a threat
than something to look forward to.
As though death’s skeleton finger points at
the space between our bodies
biding time to push us apart.

              Maybe this is why he pulls me in so close,
              maybe he sees the ghost pointing at us, too.

After all,
this isn’t the first date I’ve brought to a wedding
this isn’t the first time I’ve exchanged wind pants
for a pretty dress
and combat boots
because fancy shoes make me feel too exposed.

My partner grabs my knee
the way he did at my babcia’s beside as she lay
dying
gasping for the last few breaths of this worldly air.
“I’ll be here,” he says.
“I’m not a flight risk,” he says.
“I’m in this for the long haul,” he promises.

And I taste his words
on former man’s mouth
and spit out the saliva
because it tastes like venom.

​


The Curse of Memory
 
I wish I didn’t remember the easy things
like your birthday
or the first time we met.
 
But you stood there,
against a wall,
and I needed a friend.
Not even a friend.
I needed a body with a mouth
to spit out my name
in a different way than the others had.
Because I’d just chosen to exist in a new place.
and because I’d cut off my hair,
I didn’t recognize my face.
I didn’t need you.
I needed a body.
 
Somehow, a body became something of a rare baseball card that should spend its life in packaging.
People fight over such treasures.
I fought over such a treasure.
 
I picked at my scars with you
until the pink left me red
until there was nothing left to bleed.
And when I was finished,
when my lips stopped foaming,
you told me I’m not broken as I think I am.
 
You said this time and time and time again.
But I didn’t need a friend,
I just needed a body
so that when it sees me
the eyes light up
sunshine in a dark room.
I just needed
 
You.

​

                  whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC



Self-Portrait with Tinder Byline And I Eat Men Like Air


       After the shower’s fog
my eyes smudge black
        with mascara’s smoke. 
My phone dings on. 
        A man wants me
to explain what Plath 
        means by eating.
He asks how big
        is your mouth. 
I caption a close-up
        of my dripping lips: 
how much room
         do you need? 
His texts’ gray bubbles
          blink back fast
on my lock screen, light
          the dark path 
from the bathroom 
          mirror to my unmade
bed. I pull the loose
          sheet up like a noose
around my neck. 
          When I tell him
but I don’t swallow,
          when I ask him my place
or yours, what I mean
          is Will you
hurt this body? 
          I want you to 
split me by my throat.

​

                       lauren rushing CC



​Mona Lisa


I hold onto a stairwell and a soft hand. 
The party lights crash, blaze through indigo iridescent liberation. 
Solo cups in newly released hands, we go out on our own ready to make the wrong choices.
We cruise through our new discoveries, the butt of everyone’s joke, swaying, 
our breath a brew of enticement and el Pepino. 
I myself look in the mirror, shaky and embarrassed, a wavy paper doll.

Then I leave the long bathroom line and it’s constitutes to continue their trek, 
and I see her,
a woman, new to the drink.
She looks like Mona Lisa lying in the grass. 
Her hair curly and styled,
she runs her palms against the ground.

Those equally as intoxicated bring her gifts of water and scavenged Frosted Flakes 
to soak up the acid in her stomach.
A girl takes her hand, reassures Mona Lisa, 
and suddenly we are no longer treacherous. 

When all guard is down, we resort to our basic instincts.
I am happy to say, those instincts were to protect. 
We bring her flowers and hold back her hair, strangers forming a village,

Between the haze of nicotine and too much booze, 
we paint kindness into the air,
swiping an almost smile from Mona Lisa.




Casual


Her lips blossom
as her legs unfurl.
The sun patters down on her skin,
and I hold my breath.
She reaches out her petals,
and I turn my head.
I don’t know how to take care of the garden
and not pick the flowers.




Astrology


The stars stand between me and her legs,
hands tapered, fingers steepled with what cannot be.
To touch her is to fuck the moon, 
and all its constituents.
Who am I to take an incompatible desire?

Yet, I stare into her indigo eyes,
feel like paper ripped in pieces,
thrown down to make roadways,
the gods cruise, while brewing the weather,
unaffected by our mortal desires.

Still I reach.

​
​

                                    Alessandra CC



​Thirteen
 
Thirteen is a different kind of regret.
It is not a regret of the past
but a silent regret of the present.
A regret that your face blushes red
as soon as your presence
is magnified by a smile,
a question, a laugh,
a moment that would exist
naturally but cannot
in a mind overworked.
A regret for a body taking form,
a shape unused
and a maturity uncalled for.
Take back the body
Thirteen would say.
Take back the braces
on the teeth
and the stickiness
of hands gone wet
with anxiety.
Take back the newly
red blood between the legs.
Childhood ended abruptly
and so did the self.
Thirteen is an unlucky number.
Thirteen is a regret for change. 




Sixteen
 
We were younger then we should have been,
when we sipped our cocktails and drank the beer.
The experience of sneaking out beyond parent’s ears,
to the bottom of the garden, that game of pretending.
They must have known as we danced while we fell,
and kissed while our lips missed the mark.
They must have known that we were a mess
waiting to happen, smeared onto our own canvases-
this is youth we would have said, this is youth
as we laughed.
 
I remember the experience but not the memory.
For that night had gone blank,
for all of us, as we swayed while lying down
on the grass. We all had one too many
and at sixteen it weighs heavy on the skull.
Blackout like a hole in time, as if
we dug ourselves into the edge of the garden
and stayed there. I can only piece together
the fragments that must have looked
like other nights. Trying to remember
us dancing, singing, whistling to the songs
that we hated on the radio because
we were cooler than that, all because I liked
those fragments the most. Trying to remember
that we were safe. 




Seventeen
 
Seventeen and I wished my wound
would glimmer against the surgeon’s knife.
Pull out the ache from the edges of my skin
like an unthreaded ribbon. The longing,
whose teeth hit me in classrooms and parties
where men and women were just girls and boys.
The longing that existed in bells that rang
like a clock on cocaine, in desks
with scrubbed out graffiti,
in shoes that stank in summer.
A longing that came when the iron gates
closed for the day which felt like any other.
It was the listlessness you can only get at seventeen.
The mundane had become too mundane,
the boredom was an itch that couldn’t be scratched.
What were we hoping for?
What were we truly wishing to happen? 




Twenty- Two
 
I decided to be lost
To the feeling of abandonment
Finding the liquor in the water
And the dance in a lonely-filled room
Where I listened to Cuban music
And swayed to a mildly done
Sense of release
 
I could never truly finish self-destruction
Always too fragile to truly fall
I would have kept the apple
Instead of biting into it.
Is this weakness?
I tell myself it is enough that
I like to smoke cigarettes 

Chariklia Martalas is a Philosophy, Politics, English and History graduate from the University of the Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work has been featured in Rigwelter Press, Isacoustic, The Raw Art Review, Loch Raven Review, Bending Genres and the undergraduate literary journal The Foundationalist.