R. Miller CC




Quarterback Boyfriend
​
Breaker of horses and other boys spirits and leftist nihilism,
with the field lights all hitting his helmet like a dying star,
he takes his grace and gets it dirty,
he takes his might and makes it hurt.
Fit like pre teen daydream,
sexless in his sweat licked state,
flicks his hair back, doggish as he turns his face to the light,
his pupils all indigo polaroid flash,
looks up at me like I’m a scoreboard miracle.
I cheer for him like I don’t know the concussion statistics or that he still texts his ex.
He does it for his dad, and he does it for the girls, and he does it for the glory, and he does it for
the fun,
because it’s fun, losing like a bitch, and winning like a bitch, and saying things like that with a
straight tooth smile.
And I do it for that smile, and I do it for the status, and I do it for the sex, and, okay, I do it for
the fun,
screaming on the bleachers, and standing for the anthem, just for Friday nights.
And when it’s over he’s choking down onion rings like the deep fry is anointment,
thanking God when he’s asked, like it was God’s fault, this body, this red hot american heart, this
late September air filling his lungs till they sting.
On the car ride home he says things like chip shot and hand off, and hail mary pass, and, “You
looked really pretty tonight.”
My untragic hero fells me like he fells this small town with no other Friday night plans,
earnest, strong, and gleaming,
with many false starts, breathing hard, his face out of view the entire time.​





​Hatchback Babies

They are careening towards sleep
what little flesh they have, all speckled red,
The neverending twisting knots of hair, their crowning glory.
These girl-boys,
rest their bird bone ankles on the radiator,
though the summer’s run a fever like someone
stuck a swiss army knife in its engine.
These boy-girls,
play sick and play dead,
play Ophelia and Hamlet,
forget their lines by act five,
play that sad song cassette again.
When scars are traded like baseball cards on a frosty schoolyard,
they are reliable.
This one on her inner thigh from scaling the fence to the public pool at one in the morning.
This one on his lip from when the fist caught his cheek and the tooth peeked through.
Maybe it’s gone to California,
this doctrine of teenage tumble.
The fog might do them good.
They bite like wild animals, you know,
gnawing on each other's skinny limbs,
undoing so much damage with their spit.




Ramona McNish is an emerging poet in the Bay Area, attending Bishop O'Dowd High School. She is a junior staff editor for Polyphony Lit, and in her free time enjoys reading, listening to music, and staring at her bedroom ceiling. 
​

        R. Miller CC




Impressions

I used to faint every time
we talked about broken bones in class

until a few years ago the world ended
and I painted my body with ink with blades

when I was young I would burn
infinitely in the night cigarettes

pressure against the skin leaves marks
that even secrets can tell

and I’ve tried to die twice but
neither time I was successful

I wonder often if that makes me stupid
that I don’t understand my own

mortality or how to re-take it
and there’s a wonder in being 

unconscious and thoughts are
overwhelming when you’ve been stabbed

in the arm by a thick needle’s eye recently
 my friend quietly incising my flesh 

over and over and I remember why
I went on psych meds now

Rx containers were the vessel
of my first death it’s only natural

I should paint my body with tattoos
of the things that should’ve killed me

​
​

Noah David Roberts (they/them) is a non-binary poet and artist attending Community College of Philadelphia. Roberts is the author of the poetry collections Us v. Them, Strips, Slime Thing [and other poems], and Final Girl Mythos. Roberts has poems published in Big Scream, Tribes Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, and more. 
​

       R. Miller CC




Too Much Water

If she’d lived, she’d have drowned nonetheless--
in all the madness. When she drives to work 
every day—from Willow Street, up the highway 
that runs aslant Brook River, the weeds are 
hanging off her, streaming out the window 
of the car—long purples, maidenhair. Upon 
her head rests a crown of crow-flowers and 
nettles, entwined with the stems of her 
bifocals, pushed back on her hair for the 
drive, cheap sunglasses on her face instead. 
She pulls into the parking lot, and as 
she steps out of the car, the water sluices 
from the open door, around her clothes, 
spilling across the asphalt, filling the 
parking lot. Daisies and ragged robins 
sail past her feet on a stream filled with 
broken glass--glinting fantastically in 
the sun--and candy wrappers. The hoary 
leaves sweep by, towards the sewer grate--lifted 
on the muddy stream. The billows of her 
coat carry her along, buoying her up for a while in 
the flood, shoes ruined again. Her briefcase, 
full of essays, pendant on her shoulder, 
and clambering for attention. She sings
snatches of old songs plucked out of the 
airwaves—a poor singing wretch. Indued 
unto another element, she leaves 
a nettle on the counter at the grocery store
checkout, and puddles on the floor at the vet.

​



Pool

Don’t save me, says the child. The child is barely
treading water. Their little face is just 
poked above the surface--nose pointed up 
at a turquoise sky—the flaring nostrils--blue 
eyes, darker than the water, and bright, like 
sapphires--blueberries--night-sky--the droplets 
of water in their hair, on their face, in
their eyelashes, shining. Cheeks rosy from 
exertion and the sun. The pool around 
them is cerulean and stretches out
in a wide rectangle from the child in 
the deep end. We are right there. Stout little
legs are kicking hard beneath the water, 
and they are puffing mightily, their small 
lungs pumping. Don’t save me, they say. We look
at each other. We know this child. We do 
not save them. We let them kick. The sun is 
beating down on us. The wasps are patrolling
the patio. Scrubby bushes poke through the red dirt. 
Pool toys are strewn everywhere, bright-colored 
towels, careless lounge chairs grouped in disarray. 
Don’t save me, says the child. The child is still 
kicking. Don’t save me, the child says. The child 
is grown. 
They are still kicking. Don’t save me, they say.





Plenty

Everybody brings food--when it hits. 
Those whose house it has missed, for now, bring 
offerings to our secret god: the 
butterbean casseroles prepared, the hams 
of sympathy--baked in honey, green beans 
with curled onions and cans of condensed soup, 
containers of fried chicken, both in buckets 
and boxes, or lasagna, vegetable 
or sausage, macaroni and cheese from
a variety of recipes, baked 
ziti, brownies, bagels with cream cheese and
lox, pastries, salads with broccoli florets, 
and quiches. Called to the temple of 
grief, they bring the food in baking dishes 
or aluminum pans, not their good 
dishes, because who knows when things will 
come around, when they will be returned, 
when it will all come back to you. The 
people fill the house, talking, some laughing. 
They bring the food. They are not dead. The 
refrigerator fills up, packed sideways
and backwards, and stuffed into chaos, and 
the platters come out of the cupboards 
and the china cabinet. The high 
priestesses take charge, and onto the table 
the women and girls pile the food, the plates, 
the napkins, the spoons, forks, dull knives, 
while the shamans and acolytes 
drink shots of the burning water 
of life on the porch, or away, 
behind the garage, at the back 
of the yard, or accept a beer 
in the driveway from the cooler 
in the trunk of a car of a 
true believer. Spread out on the 
dining room table, and kitchen 
island or counters, Pyrex dishes 
of scalloped potatoes, stockpots 
of vegetable-bean soup, and cornbread, 
baked in a skillet, chicken and 
rice, and poundcake, banana pudding,
barbecue, buns, and coleslaw
are arranged with fruit salad, 
cold-cuts, chicken pot-pie, ears of 
corn from their garden, chocolate-chip 
cookies, croissants. The grieving heap 
their plates and come back for more. They 
eat in silence, balancing dishes 
and cutlery on their laps, perched on 
benches or folding chairs, the good, 
upholstered furniture. They know 
there is plenty to go around. 

​​

Wendy Barry is a Connecticut Yankee living in South Carolina. She has recently had poems accepted for publication at The Meadow and Santa Clara Review and is the co-editor of The Annotated Anne of Green Gables from Oxford University Press. She is a poet, gardener, jewelry-maker, painter, teacher, and friend to dogs.
​

       R. Miller CC



The Spring 

I lived with my children and a man not their father 
in a half-built house on an old logging road.

We drank from a pipe     that ran from a spring 
and when the pipe froze we drank melted snow.

When the boy wet the bed every night in his sleep
the man made him wash his sheets in a tub. 

When the girl left her coat the man made her walk
the three miles to school and all the way back.

When I left him we hid until it was safe
and moved to a town in the east of the state. 
 
I think of the spring that welled in the woods
and I think of the wood that burned in the stove. 

Kind water and wood that did not condemn
but gave all we took for thirst and for cold.

​

Marda Messick is a poet writing in Tallahassee, Florida. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Verse-Virtual, Muleskinner Review,
The Christian Century, Literary Mama, Delmarva Review, and other publications.
​

       Seth Stoll CC



Slipping
 
 
The scar of this poem is buried beneath it.
It gives strength, swaggers through the body,
 
its fingers pressed against the flesh,
its name—skin,
 
a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed 
a thousand fissures spreading mood
 
& flattening dreams. Don’t speak,
the skin will melt. Find parallel words
 
floating along side the highway
& pluck them like roses.
 
Healing doesn’t speak. It’s easier that way.
It slips its curved fingers down
 
the throat & pulls out the strength in echoes.

​


​
Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, LLC, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches (Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, 2019), America in Solitude (Staring Problem Press, 2019), and The Human Body Falls at a Rate of 32 Seconds per Second (Alien Buddha Press). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She is the founder and publisher of ELJ Editions. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.
​

       R. Miller CC



Polychrome
                after Megan Falley

I tracked my mood every night 
                in graph paper scribbles to see if the medication was working. 

Picked up a paintbrush on New Year’s morning--
                the January I wasn’t sure I’d stick around to see--

put those 365 variegated pixels onto a canvas
                reminder that the bad days are not my whole picture. 

Tangerine for the birthday my friends baked
                two cakes to celebrate because I deserve to feel full. 

Periwinkle when her ghost kissed 
                my cheek in a dream and I could almost taste the song of her

laugh. Onyx when her suicide 
                note looked less like a stoplight, more like a map. 

The canvas is soot-stained and tear-smeared 
                but I’m more struck by the warmth of this life,

the tenacious waltz of apricot and saffron. If I squint 
                my eyes just so,  I almost can’t see the black anymore. 

It was the year  I spent the longest day clinging 
                to my sister in the emergency room while the nights got greedier outside. 

The next morning I inhaled 
                a whimsy of wildflowers and watched a moose lope 

through a Rocky Mountain meadow. Marigold 
                skinny dips in Maine, siena sobremesas in California, strawberry 

ice cream with my dog and lavender boba with my nephew. 
                The night we got too high and painted the living room August 

so it could always be peach season. The night it seemed easier to die 
                 than to feel. I flushed the handful of pills down the drain 

instead of my throat, wept 
                with the eastern light. This cocktail of capsules

makes me mourn the sunrises I almost dyed
                whiteout, so I write myself a love letter in a kaleidoscope 

of Sharpies and tell myself to keep going. 
                There will be more good days. 

Holy prism of wonder, you will paint more good days. 

You who wanted to leave but stayed
                to see the backyard apple tree blush into spring.

Sway to Billie Holiday with your niece
                perched on the dimple of your waist. Kiss

and be kissed and be and be and be. Every day you write
                yourself a horizon you become 

your own redemption.

​



Eleven Truths and a Lie    
             after Willa Tellekson-Flash

1. Don’t ask me to choose a favorite flower, but it’s dahlia season and they look like fireworks without the terror of a gunshot.
2. I know how 5pm July sunlight warms the linen duvet, fills the bedroom—it’s honey and I’ve always had a sweet tooth. I might not know it if depression didn’t put me to bed so early. I think I’m glad to know.
3. After 72 sleep-deprived hours with a new puppy, I panicked and almost gave him away. 
4. Now I can’t fall asleep until his head rests on my thighs, reminding me to exhale.
5. Most days I want to live. This isn’t the lie.
6. There’s a box under my bed filled with every handwritten letter, birthday wish, foreign postcard I’ve ever received. I reread them more often than you think.
7. The lightest I’ve ever been was the day I spent floating in the Adriatic Sea. The same day I stopped believing in God.
8. Maybe it all works out in the end. Maybe we make it.
9. I bought a book called How To Live When a Loved One Dies. I didn’t find the answer I was looking for but here I am anyway, living. 
10. Petrichor also means there’s sweetness after grief.
11. I wish I loved myself better when I was younger. 
12. My favorite color is now, and wherever we’re headed. ​

A Catalog of Gender Euphoria

My first tattoo, a bouquet of all the places I’ve called home. A reminder I can replant myself anytime a place starts to feel too small. Tie-dye coveralls, indigo softness. Chopping off 8 inches of hair to start fresh in the spring, even when a former friend told me not to. A writing workshop where everyone used they/them pronouns for me & it was helium. Floating belly up arms open in the Pacific, more levity. The snail tattoo crawling down my forearm. Bubblegum pink lipstick. Chunky, dangly, inconvenient earrings. A closet full of shared button-downs, androgynous & colorful & well-loved. Periwinkle nail polish. Tortoise shell glasses & summertime freckles on the bridge of my nose. The picture of me & the dog on the beach, walking toward the wet horizon. We both turned back for a moment before our toes met the waves again. My languid dress the color of daffodils. I look like a flower blooming right from the sea.

​
​


Emily Long (she/they) is a queer writer living in Denver, Colorado. A winner of the 2021 True Colors poetry prize with Vocal Media & Moleskine, Emily has also been previously published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Quail Bell Magazine, & Passengers Journal, among others. You can find Emily on Instagram at @emdashemi, or more likely, you’ll find them paddleboarding, hiking, and climbing in the Rocky Mountains with their partner and rescue pup.

        R. Miller CC



Tammi Calls from Walmart

She must have her headphones on,
I can hear the background music 
and other shoppers and her cart
with a bad wheel that rattles 
and follows her through the aisles— 
maybe vegetables, or frozen dinners, 
easy to cook—soon, eventually,
all her husband will be able to eat
is mashed potatoes or Mac & Cheese.
I listen to her doing the things we do
and call living—dish soap, maybe socks--
surely alcohol. We talk like we are good 
at ice skating—straight sentences push us along
evenly, or accidentally aim us 
right at her husband’s ALS diagnosis at 53. 
I can’t even believe what’s normal now,
she says and we are through—wet, struggling--
our street clothes pulling us down—our hair plastered
to our middle-aged faces and I have to try
to fish her out, make a joke as I pull and tug
her back to Walmart, to the cart
with the wonky wheel, my only tool
my voice and decades of story
between us. Of course all loss is speakable
if you learn—or remember—how to surface.
Blue sky or cloudy, it doesn’t matter which, not really,
just that it’s still there, holding
for now—and anyway you need groceries,
dinner, someone has to mow the lawn, 
wash the car, tell the kids.
I don’t know how but I’m doing it
she says from self-checkout, 
scanning erratic beeps 
and I know I’m a hindrance now,
say, I’ll call again soon, feel that woozy sense
I’ve known so often lately like a thin place, 
maybe the top of a mountain—the air there, 
the view, and all around me scattershot 
of boulder, cloud and tree— 
that steep ongoing Wild.

​



A Presbyterian Walks into a Crystal Shop
for Melina
​
My friend listens to stones, 
says they choose her--What do you want, 
she asks and I don’t know--
I am distracted: rutilated quartz,
aquamarine, selenite, jasper, amethyst,
tiger eye--What do you need?
she asks as if I know. 
I squint and bend and almost kneel 
to read each worn-eared cardboard sign:
clarity, peace, prosperity, balance.
Eventually, I shrug my stone-filled hands. 
She studies my clutch, bites her lip,
replaces one, then two— 
This one’s better, she says, adds tourmaline 
and goldstone. For protection, 
and strength, she says, sure of it.
Usually I just pray, I joke out loud
but even when I pray I half
imagine God’s side-eye
for not doing it right—my dull thud 
of Dear Father for solidity, 
a place to start. Words like protect, 
forgive, surround, heal— 
all small and weighted, 
tumble out my mouth into one day’s end
and the next--
it’s not that nothing is beautiful 
or true--
just that so many things are:
all these crumbs
we hold too, all we try to gather--
our usual words 
that sound like questions, or the answer 
you pretend to hear
when a friend hands you a stone
lit through with stardust
and says it’s just for you.

​

​
Rebecca Brock’s work appears/will appear in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. She won the 2022 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review, judged by Ellen Bass, and the 2022 Editor's Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. Her first chapbook, Each Bearing Out, is available from Kelsay Books. She is a reader at SWWIM. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.

       alaina buzas CC




automatic mouths


My mouth asked:
How are you?
because that’s what it’s supposed to ask. 

Your mouth replied:
Ok.
because that’s what it’s supposed to say.

I watched you take a second
let the word hit the air and see if it landed 
right.

You looked at it
hanging in front of you
wondering if it was the right answer

eyes falling to meet your untied laces,
anywhere but me:
Yeah, just that, I guess. Ok.

My mouth shot off its automatic:
Well, we’re living in the fuckin’ apocalypse. 
(Friendly laugh) (Sip of  beer)

I watched it leave my mouth, automatic
at the speed of a second
drink, first party, crowd of smoking strangers  
I watched it
hanging there
 
and realized,
it was not the right answer.

You let your mouth smile, automatic
your head nod, automatic.

(Friendly laugh) (Sip of beer)

​


Born in the fog of San Francisco, Nicolette Daskalakis is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist. Her work has appeared in Rattle, The New York Times, Pride.com, and elsewhere. She is the author of "Portrait of Your Ex Assembling Furniture." Nicolette holds a BA in Film & TV Production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and is currently pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts in France. You can find her at www.nicolettedaskalakis.com or on Instagram @hellonicolette and @nicolettepoetry

          lgbsneak CC




THE PROSTITUTE’S DAUGHTER

hailing cars in the dark using only her alluring womanhood, my mama made a living off her sexuality starting all the way back in the 80s. my canned peas came from her famously firm grip. people say you hate cops a lot for a white girl, and i ask them if they’ve ever seen their mother’s mugshot. if they’ve ever watched the charges stack up. 1, 8, 15, 19. i want to know if they have ever watched the very thing that sustains their family be called dirty. they say sex sells but only in a specific way. women have the right to profit off their bodies as long as some male producer gets a cut. according to the feminists, the hooker's child is someone to be pitied. how hurt i must be. how damaged my psyche. but don’t fret, ladies. after all, i am a prostitute’s daughter. i was taught that my body holds power. i am aware of my own worth.





habits

the staggeringly strong scent of trapped smoke and dehydrated urine impregnates the air and i make sure to check my baby’s breath. confirm that he didn’t choke on his vomit while i slept. his friends tell me that he’s so much better since he met me and i wonder how much more grim things could have possibly been before. i hate all of his habits, but i still love him. navigating over cum crusted boxers and crushed coors cans, i locate the stain remover from under the chipped sink and get to work as he grunts and moans, presumably fucking god knows who in his dreams. i’ve seen his search history. i know i am aging out of his preferred sexual category. i try not to worry about my worry lines and the way they will inevitably be our apocalypse. instead, i wake early on these mornings and erase the messes he made the night before, mostly so i don’t have to deal with the self-loathing bullshit he will pull whenever faced with consequences. i don’t think i can handle one more session of convincing him that he’s a good person. (there is no way for me to convince him that he is good because he isn’t.) i stay in spite of that. because i know that bad people need love too. i repeat it back to myself in the cloudy mirror: i love him. i love him. even if it’s only because i’m too afraid to love anything else. even if it’s only because i am too afraid to love anything that doesn’t
 
hurt.

​​
​

April Renee is a poet residing in Portland, Oregon. April has been writing and performing poetry since age nine and views writing as an opportunity to explore her identity as a queer disabled woman. April’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Querencia Press, Feral Journal of Poetry and Art, Eunoia Review, Pile Press, and others.

       mark m CC



​Labyrinthine Villanelle
​
I wanted your death to work in rhyme,
as I wanted to hold your terror close,
as I wanted to figure out the world, labyrinthine.

I wanted to follow the unspooled ball of twine
and end in your mortal teeth, in tidy rows.
I wanted your death to work in rhyme. 

Instead, of course, your curly hair, serpentine,
Medusa’s stare that turned my face to frozen
stone. And there, your worldly exit, labyrinthine. 

Put your finger on the maze. Search its through-line.
Dipped in turpentine, your finger runs its curves and rows.
Swerving thus, I wanted your death to work in rhyme. 

I let you catch me. Let you turn and find
the bull at my center, breath hot and ring in its nose.
You never found the exit, dead-ended and labyrinthine. 

I wanted to decenter you. I wanted you to un-pose. 
I wanted to take a scalpel to your death, I suppose.
I wanted your death to work in rhyme,
as I wanted to mete and measure the world, labyrinthine.

​



​Pastel

When I was an ignorant child 
I stared in the face of glory
or was it the face of my mother
holding open a book of art prints
to say Look, look, though we 
were poor, too poor for art.
When you are too poor for art, 
you cannot afford anything 
even the truth. The truth is I loved
my mother and her pastels,
which she kept in a leather case,
and her special paper I wasn’t
allowed to touch. It was a different
time then we could afford to live
in our own town. Not like now
when everybody lives in an apartment
complex on the edge of town
so vacationers can buy
all the shitty little bungalows.
In the streets, no children
are riding bicycles, or walking
to the schools, which have been 
torn down, and the park is full
of moneyed retirees, who’ve turned
the beach into a bird refuge,
so no children are swimming there
or making sandcastles. The way wealth
chews through everything pretty,
pries open your hand, like a mother
pries open the hand of her child,
and says You give that back to me right now.



​
Rebecca Lehmann is the author of two collections of poetry: Ringer (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019) and Between the Crackups (Salt, 2011). Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith and other venues.