Category: Issue 1

To Take a Lover   Intricately woven     but very soft, the suds      of catastrophe, lethargic and hung-     over like the eucalyptus trees in September,      October, gently peeling away yet none-      theless charismatic. I was strangely     intrigued by poetrylover-     inthesky who said and I quote…would     look much better… Continue reading Sandra Simonds / Summer J. Hart

Dappled Horses, Pech Merle by Suzanne Doppelt, translated by Cole Swensen        here the world ends said the blind man having touched the wall, but another opens up underground, a long way from the light almost without season, reaching out like a rhizome, complicated paths made of straights and curves, the bottom obscure… Continue reading Suzanne Doppelt / Cole Swensen

My Therapist Says I Learned to Be Vigilant   My father was charming, especially when he hit the Cold Duck. He’d paste on his falsehood mustache, don a smother jacket, appear as a fanfare waiter who didn’t wallop   but walky-talkied his praises like cream-centered caramels. When he wasn’t a dream disassembler, a happiness liquidator,… Continue reading Martha Silano

Rabid Schematic   [I]nfection rates in randomly-selected members of naturally occurring bat populations range from only about one in 1,000 (0.1%) to about one in 200 (0.5 %) […R]abid bats do not usually become enraged and attack people or other animals.  Rather, they become paralyzed and die quietly. —In Ohio’s Backyard: Bats (Belwood)   Klaus… Continue reading Benjamin Landry

I Nominate the Magnolia as Sexiest Tree     Forget the stories of fairy-tailed monsters that spooked you. The wolf of local women’s eyes is the one who will eat you for brunch with ambrosia salad. There is no forest outside the tradition’s silk tent: an alien must wed a southern man to keep the… Continue reading Alina Stefanescu

Dreamless Your face in that hour between two nighttime hours is the place your breaths occur  without you. An unlatched gate opened by the wind settles back to rest on its hinges. Leaves on the branches, leaves on the ground are red, gold despite the bleaching of night — its palette of yes and no.… Continue reading Marc Rahe

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