Tzef Pine CC



All of Our Recoveries

My father is sweeping moss off the roof when I come home.                 There is a leak in our house:
once every few years, one of us takes a shower and water pours 
through the ceiling of the room below.             I suppose it could be the work of the moss,
                                that which keeps low to ground and spreads its thousand hands across 
the shingles. Not unlikely a finger caught hold of our pipes. 
                                                                          My mother no longer calls me when my brother relapses. 
I no longer leave the bar patrons unattended 
in front of the wall of Johnny Walker, Tito’s and Sapphire reflecting their faces,     no longer         
               listen to her voicemails in the bathroom, just in case it’s about him again. 
After a while,                   these moments stop feeling                   like something has happened: 
              more, like we just pulled out our winter jackets from the basement 
                           so we can go out in the snow.                                                  Each time--still--I feel 
a sudden ocean between us. The bodies of        my family become invisible behind moon-
light fracturing over water. My face is wet. It became so          without my                 
              knowledge or consent. 
And yet: even in the dark,        where my feet don’t touch, and liquid presses its hunger           
               against my skin, I feel him treading water. 
I see his neck encircled by pools of fluid silver, as if it wishes                              to caress the air from
his throat.                                                      And so I push toward him, because
                I need to tell him that today I picked herbs from our Dad’s garden to dry and my hands 
                still smell like sage. I need to tell him that our father is still                   too soft-hearted 
with the plants:
                               he lets them grow wherever they would like. 
The more ambitious ones are leaving their wooden corpses out in the winter, 
                              scattered among the snow, like children too lazy to put their toys away. 
                 I don’t know when my brother will be home next. He needs to know. 

​

                         ​greg CC



Baptism by Name

Jill stood on the tracks alone, raising hours 
I left empty in darkness, engine-flame stroking 
rear the pitch-blue house we shared. Webs of paint – 
blue to red, red to black – flung slack in darkling rain. 
 
Corey overdosed alone, bluesy and mottled in bruises, 
pill-bottled and boozed. We used to make jokes 
about suicide. We laughed a lot and it helped,
till it didn’t. When his sister came – I couldn’t face her.

Billy was lightning jaked at a runaway pick-up 
that shucked-up onto the baked sidewalk – some drunk –
of a no-place road in Palm Springs. Cruel heat
I can’t believe. In love with me. I had laughed, ashamed.

Michelle was murdered. It was on the news.
Stabbed to death by her boyfriend. A spitting wolf-trail
scats black from the door, staggers at the telephone, 
floods the floor. The reporter didn’t know I loved her.

It was not long after her sister Melanie was shot
and killed at a house party. They say it was accident.
Meant for someone else. Nobody knows what happened 
to their dad after that. Rick – my best friend once.

We stutter among our living and the dead not knowing 
much about the touch that catches us, what keeps.
What the choice to live requires from kindness
and what I owe each hour. My choice – love or fire.  

Halved and halved again, I sink to my knees 
Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, who surprises me – 
this cursive, loping scribble of voices I hear. I imagine 
angels listen, crouching the spaces in-between words.

“But there are angels everywhere,” Stefanie says, 
“all around you. Why go on your knees?” And my sister
stands and kicks this joyous, arm-out, shimmy-shimmy,
winging wind and sea, ether to strange ways, blown open.

The storm struggles all through me, garbles half-mouthed,
and I moan as it sets wet into my eyes, the sky like the ocean, 
wily, froth - ocean like the sky. This drowning sensation –  
the flood. So much blood. Will I rise believing I’m worth this mystery?

​


​
Dog-boy

Dog-boy take me down the tracks, I’m shaking, 
can’t you feel the train? Give me something, I said. 
Where are you taking us? The end?

Hollywood at sunrise, no hero, no heroine – 
this isn’t a fucking movie – 
the streets are broken glass we rush past Sunset. 

Today will be better, Dog-boy said.
Dog-boy could never stop dealing.
Let’s go get on. This time we’re going all the way.

It’s coming down so fast. 
It’s coming through so hard.
Let’s go get on.

​

                       Marketa CC



Mrs. Bentley is Still Here

All these years later, all those kilometers laid out in ribbon behind,
Shoulders squared half a million times, and an icy neck held stiff and proud,
A thousand clouds that I screamed down from on high,
Every skirmish I won, every deal I brokered. 

And yet, even now, I am in the prairie house, tacking carpets to the window-gaps
To hold off the dust storm that swallows us alive. 
No other pair of hands to help. There is grit in my teeth.
I know it is not the same house. 
I know it is not the same storm. 
But after all of it, after bringing a pan and a wooden spoon
Together in the unforgiving night,
You won’t get rid of me so easy!
I’m not going anywhere!

My words mean something true that I didn’t quite mean. 
That storm ended, but it might as well have kept on. 
I am still here, in my own house, preparing for siege. 
The invader doesn’t even care to come in. 
The house just happens to be in the way. 

I press my face to the carpet I am hanging and breathe in mould,
In dirt, in footprints. That is the most of affection
I am getting today. 
Behold your warrior now!
She fought for the right to stand in her house and say,
I belong here. I will insist upon my place. 

She didn’t know this is what belonging is,
Reaching your hand out into the dark and touching nothing that responds,
But plenty of dirt that needs cleaning. 

Tomorrow I will get vinegar, baking soda and rags made from old shirts. 
But tonight we may need to sleep in the cellar.

​

​

Dreams of Summer Rain

I plan for a month of sunrise swims; I never expect
May Day to dawn with a frost, though it always does.
I never thought what I would be homesick for would be mildew,
would be clammy thighs, would be a typhoon rain, bringing
the violence of the ocean to where we sit. What I wouldn’t give 
for a typhoon rain, the kind of summer that forbids dryness,
that forbids clean skin, the kind that sees a body home, always caught.

That puts us on sheets on the floor, in our underwear,
panting, and stinking, and not ashamed to be so.
That wilts the magazines in our melting red hands,
heat that swells the tips of my fingers with blood, makes my cheeks
rounder, half-closes my eyes with swelling. How later, a bucket
full of sulphurous water, the rust smell of the old pipes,
we will lift before us, and laugh, as if it were champagne, ready
to be spilled, indulgent, over our nakedness and our floors.
You bow to me, your bangs bright with droplets; All hail the tap-water heiress.
 
The neighbor boy comes home, cicadas clinging to his shirt,
just as his shirt is clinging to him. He closes his eyes and opens his mouth.
His arms open, as a dozen pairs of wings close,
as we lift the hose. Our laughter sliced through by the trains whistle,
the red and grey engine cutting through the green, making us
suddenly aware that here is the valley, here has long been the river,
here once was a glacier, in the cradle of this heat. White cranes

lift like steam from the treeline. They are not hurried.
Anyone, from a time that isn’t now, stands behind me.
Sweaty hands come around and bump at my thickening waistline,
the linen slip sticks to us both, and I 
do not shy away. I lean into the touch, let my belly expand in gratefulness. 
A radio, half-static, announcing that the heat may break tomorrow. 
If only tomorrow would never come. 

​

                         ​Kaoru CC


​
let the blood tell it 

Hammer to the anvil, 
hoof to the gut. 

The sound of life getting in the way of itself, 
of plans becoming irrelevant. 

In my dreams you bleed like a stuck pig
as hopeless as roadkill. 

In my dreams, I call you by your first name. 
The bus drives past your house and I think
of all the ways a person can hurt themselves. 

All the ways you can be poisoned.
How do you mourn the loss of yourself? 

The cold house, the unhappy marriage,
unremembering the smell of chocolate cake and blood. 
The body betrays you,
parts of it turn to stone. 

You are a collection of everything that has happened to you,
and guts and blood and bone. 

What will remain of you once you’re dead? 
What do you know how to do with your hands? 

Let the blood tell it. ​




You load the gun

You load the gun and I’ll fire it.
You hold my head under the water,
and I’ll like it.
I’ll believe that I can breathe,
and that way it won’t be your fault
when I drown.
It is never your fault.
You won’t get what you want,
because one day I’ll realise not everyone is keeping score.
-
Everything is essential,
until it isn’t.
I am glad you aren’t the sort of person
who knows what accidental blood looks like
blossoming in the bath.
I like water so much more than fire.
today I will restrain myself,
pretend to be normal as rain
-
Your muscle memory of wrongness
lets you down again.
your body
finds safety outside of itself -
sets your house alight
tells you to go home.

​

                        Marketa CC



maternal language 

you first learned the word 
bitch 
from your mother. it is how
you made your religion. 
practised it in the mirror 
until your teeth hardened. 
your mouth became just like a 
hard mark, almost as straight
as the horizon from the window. 
razor sharp. a fine line. at night 
you say it like a prayer, seeking 
out the soft ridges that press into your 
tongue. if you looked past 
the curtain there would be 
a dead girl underwater in 
the old cow pond. maybe you’ll
end up like her, eventually, with a mouthful
of plastic. isn’t that where all 
the bitches end up?




​
The Canadian Death Undercarriage (and True Crime)

     1. 

seasonally                        our hair 
freezes when bones are lifted 
out of the dirt. papers once 
promised the bodice of the country
as whale bone aesthetics, bordering
white blanketed plains of space. 

      2.  

formal papers serve to remind 
effigies of Sex Offensive behaviours. 
over time we take hands to skeletons
pulled from generational grief to 
examine the silhouettes of their bones. 
admiring the upright thumb. 

       3. 

our eyes skip over pigs farms and 
celestial bodies. a dozen stars could
fall and not a chart would document 
it. Canada is lingering here;     giving
and receiving, shedding and accepting. 
we cannot pause long enough to feel 
a singular loss. 

​

                          ​Ross Griff CC



​HOW TO CLEAN YOUR HUNTING KNIFE

It’s impossible 
To open
When you need it
The most

So rinse it  
In water

The stream’s
Gleaming cold

To wash off
Breadcrumbs

Built-up rust

Feather fixed
To blade

Then dry it
On sleeve
And wrap it

In rags
Plain paper
A picture 
of Elvis 

And bury it 
Under cedar

Let the grass 
Grow over

Go away

When I go 
Away
I leave footprints

You can’t 
Track





THE FOREST SPEAKS FOR ITSELF
    
Can you admit:
               i. the wound                                                                                                                                   {yes}        
               ii. your limb, lost to the trap                                                                                                    {yes}    

Did you believe that severing your own foot was:
              i. a necessary act                                                                                                              {yes}
              ii. an absolute blessing                                                                                                           {& yes}

Did you consider:
              i. the hunter                                                                                                                                   {yes}
              ii. his bloodhound                                                                                                                        {yes}
              iii. that whoever set the trap would come to set you free                                         {no}    

Do you:
             i. feel pitied                                                                                                                                     {no}
             ii. fancy yourself to suffering                                                                                                  {no}

They talk about you in town. They say:
              i. you wanted this                                                                                                {yes}
              ii. you willed this                                                                                                  {yes}
              iii. no one forgives you                                                                                                              {—}

                                                                                                                                  {Personally, when I                                                
                                                                                                                                            read that, I got                                              
                                                                                                                                                   kind of scared.}

Mostly what I’m trying to say is:
              i. it hurts to look.                                                                                                                    {yes.}
              ii. I look.                                                                                                                                      {yes.}

Do you want:
              i. to make whole again                                                                                   {yes & yes & yes}

Then:
              i. choose your life                                                                                             {if I could just—}
              ii. crawl to it                                                                                               {if I could only just--}

Can you afford:
              i. to be naïve                                                                                                                           {—}
                                                                                               {How close am I to animal?}

                                            
             i. there’s a map to that place                                                                                         {yes--}
             ii. I can see its center                                                                                                   {yes--}
             iii. close                                                                                                 {—& getting closer}





Tessa Livingstone is a young poet who holds an MFA from Portland State University. She enjoys engaging the transformative & macabre in her poetry, which has appeared in Moon City Review, Water~Stone Review, South Dakota Review, Geometry Literary Journal, Five:2:One Magazine, Whiskey Island Magazine, and Portland Review, among others. She currently lives and writes in Austin, TX.
​

                       Lei Han CC




Kindness as a Kind of Weapon


So often my name has played 
on the lips of those who hate me

I must be their magnum opus,
a musical made 

by those who confuse the barrel 
of a rifle with the body 

of a flute. What music they create
echoes in the emptiest halls 

and yet they bow as if vitriol 
needed a soundtrack.   

And if such animosity can be 
a kind of music, then I have crafted 

kindness 
into a kind of weapon 

you can swing with one hand
like a foam sword 

from a state fair.
Here, it's yours.  

Hit me again and again 
until you’re satisfied. 

​


​
To the Flawless Members of the Tribunal 


I have, of course, hurt others
with the same hands I use 

to wipe my father’s 
lopsided face. 

The left half of his lips droop. 
His mouth hangs open 

as if about to speak.
I listen for my name. 

~

Age melts the handsome 
from him. He is wick 

and from him I was born
wicked.  

He cannot walk. 
He cannot drink 

the liquor he wants
so I give him water. 

I decorate him
with a Nicotine patch. 

Flawless members of the tribunal,
while you deliberate 

whether by match or torch
to raze my house,

my old life 
already burnt down. 

​

                        ​ ​​Marketa CC


​
Outcast
              For anyone who has ever felt like 
              they don’t belong... or who likes supernatural shows

My grandmom Eileen
Once set a spark crackling
Through a TV screen,
A cleansing spell that didn’t clean. 

Hands pretzeled in my lap,
Spine paralyzed, foot tap, cycling 
through Octobers and full moon crap,
Cat eyes open for my magic snap,
The witch map.     

Hoping for a generation skip,
My mom’s only magical trick:
Remembering all the bad shit
My father ever did.

No broomstick, no magic
In the walls, no attic traffic
From ghosts, or spaghetti
With eyeballs. And grandmom
Eileen, all withdrawn, still whispering
Spells down her New Jersey halls,
Withholding my Sabrina moment.
I’m still waiting for her to call. 

Or even my grandmom Roxene,
A past-life mermaid singing,
Had men packed like sardines, 
Crashing ships on shores at fourteen. 

Legs crossed, hoping they twist into
A tail of blue scales shimmering, 
Shining like sun rays on rippling waves, oh to
Sail, instead I inhale salty gulps like a whale,
Swimming through summers then winter hail,
Eyes open underwater ‘til I see in clear detail,
The fairy tale.

Maybe the gene missed me, my father’s 
Only sea in the drinks he’s downing, drowning, deep
Diving into faraway streams, wrapped in
another woman’s seaweed.
No siren songs, only rising tides
In my eyes, no sunsets seaside,
Only sailors’ goodbyes. And grandmom
Roxene dreaming, reminiscing
About her mariner’s eyes and 
Her moonlight glow, never revealing
If my own mermaid tail will grow. 
 
The misplaced daughter of Stevie Nicks
Or Neptune, the sunburnt child of the moon,
The princess stolen quick from the life
She should’ve lived, from the palace,
Atlantis, or a dismantled coven that humans undid
And hid from her, raised a mortal convert.
Can this outcast outlast an aching heart, 
the mystery, never knowing who you are? 
Shouldn’t feeling so alone mean you’re really 
a part of a world still unknown? 

Maybe I’m the werewolf girl
With my hairy arms and wild curls, or
The vampire chick with the sun allergy,
With my pale skin and low social battery.
Or the mermaid, or the witch, 
or the pixie, the psychic, 
I must feel so lost because something inside 
Of me has been dismissed and ditched,
Taught to twist, switch, never pull on the loose stitch. 

I have to be something more than this.

​


The Library Aisle on Women in Art
​
I am the Pizza Guy’s Frankenstein girlfriend with beer for blood / President’s lady-carcass
sprawled nude upon classified documents / Slackerboy’s science experiment hogtied with neon
workout bands in his parents’ basement / I am the vision-she / blueprint / waist cut & rope
sewn to scalp / statue for the Conquistador / meat-bride for the Beast / I have Man’s eyes /
socket wire-threaded with syrup pus / mind transplant barbwired in skull / programmed other /
beauty bot with an off-switch flesh ditch / I am the industry of bodies / discourse of whore
and virgin / she-myth / prostitute butchered in the alleyway / watercolor princess plunged in
Sharpie fumes / I am all undead women / Man clutches my skeleton / always watching / from
behind my eyes.

​

                       Michael Spiller CC
=


Max, Carrie’s Mother, [No Wonder]

Max / your death just got even worse / Carrie’s Mother arrived at your apartment / she’s talking about Jesus and telling everyone what to do / she says she’s got a direct line to God and apparently knows  

Max / Carrie’s Mother texts me Bible verses at 5:00 a.m. / I’ve hardly slept in days / don’t give a shit if the pillows are naughty, Max / I’m overwrought over you / something’s wrong with her, I believe  

Max / what Carrie’s Mother said about me when you talked on the phone / why did you leave your speaker on? / she never met me, but she’s got god tangled up in her head / her hair / her throat / and vagina / and you know mine’s a God-free zone / and she’s a homophobe / something’s wrong with Carrie’s Mother, Max / surely, you must have known  

Max / Carrie’s Mother called herself and Mr. Ed We / and I was something Other / not part of the straight girl club / even the horse belongs / she said you never ever loved a woman / I told her you loved seven / something is wrong with Carrie’s Mother, Max / whatever her heaven is, let’s not go there 

Max / you are three days dead with your body on lockdown by cops / your purse / your keys / your things / Carrie’s Mother accused me of stealing your allotment keys / this is shit I didn’t need / there’s something wrong with her 

Max / Carrie’s Mother’s eyes are wild / her hair, tangled ringlets / she gets excited, then angry / laughing and crying / then flinging her arms / no wonder the house burned down  

Max / Carrie’s Mother is interrogating me about your car / the tires I bought / I didn’t tell her why you didn’t talk about me / if she were smart, she would know / something’s wrong with her, Max / normal people don’t act like that / why is she even here?

Max / Carrie’s Mother side-dissed our relationship while reenacting sex and passion with her make-believe husband / three times / literally kissing and groping the air / she flung her head back like a drama queen / it made me queasy, Max / something is wrong with her / meanwhile, Mr. Ed made up with King Henry VIII over the phone / as if your suicide were some private agreement between them / yesterday she was going to kill him  

Max / what does a 45-year-old virgin know about love? / never mind / you are dead 

Max / Carrie’s Mother’s a smug mother-fucker / like no other Jesus thumper I’ve met / something’s wrong with her Max / I’ve packed up my bags and am headed to Manchester / King Henry’s laid claim to your body / I wonder how his new wife will arrange you in their home / I didn’t tell Carrie’s Mother what you said about your sleepovers / or why you became estranged / but I did text her “homophobe” / when I got to the hotel / sorry Max / you had to have known / no wonder you burned down the school  

​



Final Journey: Leaving the Tenement
​
filthy undershirt / bangs girlfriend’s head against wall next door
rolling my suitcase through littered council lots a final time

no small spaces to fit into / trucks parked on sidewalks
from neighbor’s shacked-up boyfriends / times eleven

no reason to say hello or so long

no fucking / shitting pigeons / flapping night stalkers
no grinning dogs full of ticks / tails tucked between haunches

no pale pimply pushers / rusty green trash bins
no stringy Norwegians / Brit widows / bulb noses

no cigarette butts / singed brown grass / clotheslines / no Max
Carrie’s mother said Max thought she was too good for this place

​

                     Ross Griff CC



Eighth Grade Affliction 

The first time you died was like
every other time: 
the red-blaring machine
paramedics towing 
the stretcher through the door
Mumma following 
close behind
her gait low, fast, and
solemn

My body 
in another room

This time
the kitchen
and this time
your day-nurse
distraught--
with tears like black holes
etched on her face

This time two cops
interrogate her upstairs
until she comes down
with no more tears 
left to spill
Black-hole-face

This time I think
your last time 

This time: my fourteenth year
your tenth
just years piling 
like old sweaters
a perpetual unbuttoning

In the kitchen my body
drifts to the ceiling 
the police still standing in my home.

​


For A

the boy in the red wine room 
is younger now
is not screaming
but loud in his hands

the peaks of his knuckles
dance across the screen
of buttons that become
words 
uttered by a 
machine 
whose voice is female

his voice is 
balled fists banging 
with the human urge to speak

I am not this lady machine!

his ocean eyes darting 
his wordless mouth open
grinning

his body

already speaking
a sweeter sound

​