Author: rebeccaslehmann

Jane before Her Mirror     Far easier when I was always merely warm enough not to die—   when I subsisted on weak coffee and blackened gruel, broke my teeth on the mill-stone gravel baked in the bread, and not enough of it.   When hunger was familiar as breath, a lack like comfort.  … Continue reading Erinn Batykefer

The Last Bees     Bees with hairy eyes visit the lavender.   They’re disappearing,   but workers leave plenty of food behind; they remember to do that.   Mormons named their honeybee deseret   and their lost, desert empire – Vegas, San Bernardino. San Diego.   A convert corridor to promised land.   We… Continue reading Christian Gullette

Ceres in the Field of Bones Be real with me            for once           and answer:      So one season of destruction            is not enough for you?             I’m not sorry     I was never drawn to you like I was drawn to the high sea.   Somewhere along the way, I developed an internal ocean. Underwater, there’s… Continue reading Anne Barngrover

It’s Been a Year since I’ve had a babysitter. But my parents are vaccinated now so Saturday I’m dropping my son off at their house 3 hours away and I have plans, 1st thing: car wash, Ultimate Deluxe because it takes a full 7.5 minutes which is the same time it takes to listen to… Continue reading Holly Wilson

Blotch             My body makes of this country a flagrant museum of pain / endless shelves bowed with incessant shivers of glass / the ways in which I fail myself everyday / field- dressed & floating / face down in white corridors / mouth torn wide / I live with the   privilege to swallow… Continue reading Adam Fell

Testimony of the Alpha Please rise. Please sit. Yes I loved these dogs. The second was better than the first, who is a busted hag-dog. The first bared her hag teeth and her saliva fell over everything. I carried the hag-dog by the neck until she could not speak. I filed these papers because despite… Continue reading Jenny Molberg

Transportation Distance to a camel is but one form of memory like the weight of aviaries dead lakes cities without roads—. Distance to the mule is work; for the horse it’s a kind of detachment. Bulls use distance to careen and lash. For a gun it is an instant; for the spider, crude conversion. To… Continue reading Chris Santiago

In Sorrow Thou Shalt Bring Forth Children but still we called you forth                         Alicia Jo Rabins, “Babies in the Apocalypse”   i.   It was like this: an unearthly wind overtook me, knocked down a stand of trees, broke open a bright blue space in the woods of myself. Or call the wideness violet,… Continue reading Claire Wahmanholm

House Hunters International      They’d wanted the two-story two-bath above the creperie in De Pijp,   though they’d been willing to reconsider   the budget for old-world charm and sleek, modern finishes in Zagreb,   a quintessential hacienda in the hills   flanking Quito, or a lanai shading the Russian district of Phnom Penh,… Continue reading Jaswinder Bolina

Laying   the thief          the pockets the unfound    the looking the seen           and unseen the bent           the fluent the misplaced the measured the wreathed   the mirrored the buried       and planted the vining       the drying the hung         in the shed the tethered    the strung the thinning    and… Continue reading Melissa Ginsburg