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Justin Lacour

Sonnet (Till the seat covers fade)

​In this time, when “alternative prom”
is merely a euphemism for work,
and people cry when it snows in movies,
I’m waiting for you to come hiking across
the highways and scrub grass, looking for me.
I have a concept of beauty predicated
on loss, while yours is this weird sort
of truth-telling meant to get us past
the black lipstick phase, the trash can punch phase.
We should exchange concepts of beauty
like sleeping on each other’s side of the bed.
In a room where dreams pass through osmosis,
I want to wake up next to you,
wrapped in your long, violent hair.









​Jocelyn Ulevicus

In Transit

There was not a single person in the park 
with me the instant the soul of my father came 

on the back of a flapping bird / the sort of 
detail that said your life is either about to 

begin or end, like pulling sap, metal to bone, the 
atomization of the body, change / can come in 

many forms like the black and white tube of my 
father’s chapstick and his dry and cracked knuckles 

holding back, pointing the gun / not at me but at 
my mother, he said, he didn’t shoot / yet the sympathy 

of some things remain eternal like / how each leaf 
is an individual, curly, drying, catching light / the oak

are perfect when you see them, rooted in time to wag 
and sway the violence in my body / the world is alive, 

so am I, sometimes I forget it without a map or a 
lead to locate the color of want, the pinked edge 

of the waning moon, the silver and purple twilight 
on the tip of my tongue / without being aware, I am

in the process of becoming / and then everything fell 
out of me watery and pale, the want to be transformed 

into something subtle and seething and wild / I am 
in transit, a transition not complete but suspended, 

a mineral womb swollen with worship, vegetal and 
heavy: there were times my tough-guy but also 

funny and loving father held his fist to me, a part of 
me wanted him to use it, to hit me, wanting to see 

exactly what he was made of / the time we try to make 
things last that we want to come to an end, I keep remembering 

that the heart is the size of a human fist, and so I dig my 
feet into the ground and wait / for the comfort we feel 

at the sight of ourselves in someone else, as one would 
encountering the petrified and the fibered.








you find the light by stumbling upon it randomly

as the hard lines of Manhattan were replaced 
by the pastoral, I was struck with a particular, 
unsettled feeling that I couldn't name. I once 
read a story about a woman who saw 100 times 
more colors than the average person, there was 
even a name for this condition, tetra-chromate, 
she was a tetra-chromate, and I wondered who 
I was, and what I felt, as I squinted my eyes out 
at the passing Hudson Valley. The essential
unknowability of myself felt acute: there was
a life that wanted to live through me, though I 
I didn’t know how to access it, I didn’t know I
could / I read somewhere that commitment should
come from the spectator—the people within are 
already involved / to be named, you have to believe
in progress/ so I reached down into my shirt to touch 
my left breast, and imagined I was someone else. 










​Kat Bodrie

Deep Sea Blues

At this depth, light does not

penetrate color. The sky is unimaginable.
Listen,
can you hear the solitude?
All I wanted was a place to sleep
for a while.
Enough time passes
and you don’t know which way is up or down. How to get out?
Maybe life is out there. Maybe not.
But poetry, and stillness.
I take my heads and shake them. No.
Like dolls. They split into fathomable
rainbows. Behold: A light
inside the skeletons of whales.
Ovaries dance and tremble.
Why now?












Charles Kell

​Lost Letter

It drifted from the back
window into a field
of poppies. I am drunk now,
again, on gin, thinking about how
poor & happy I was back then.
How the shack I lived in adjusted
to each contour of my sharply shaped
body. Who would walk
in Spanish circles at the foot
of a dry creek bed, balancing breath
over a precipice? See the finches
fly from my skin. Who else would let
you tell him, over & over, how to begin?
I love how this cold tin cup feels in my hand.







Lucky’s Dance

Caught again in the net--
arms contort at bone breaking angles,
legs splay to catch
the last shift of dust on the edge
of Berlin’s Hermannplatz, where smoke
from a burning garbage can
blocks our vision—what a desiccated
linden, what skill to sidestep withdrawal,
to use the moon’s sliver
of light as a fluorescent closet strewn
with plastic bags, smell of burnt foil,
where the red radish in the shape
of a gun droops from a split coat pocket--
look in the mirror at a queen’s smeared makeup.
His liver bulges a hive of bloated wasps.
Her dress is smudged with small brown spots.
Their fingers sticky, leaving prints
on the mirror, the lawn, the rotary phone.
We wait in the garden for the bomb.








Emily Antrilli

The Hillside Inn

The motel didn’t have a kitchen                just a pint-sized coffee carafe
packs of stale crackers          lozenge drops          in the night-side drawer
next to a single condom                Mother left three days before with talk
of bringing sister and I                       a list of gourmet foods we couldn’t 
pronounce         Leaning my head against the double bed           I thought
 of Nonna’s tomato sauce     cloves of garlic ground    under a thick knife
      a hot bath of angel hair pasta      leaking into      the double wide sink 
The noodles were as thin     as the sheets of skin         I’d pull away from 
my nails on nights         inside the room        and I’d think less of Mother          
       Room 315        a sort of empty inside my thinning gut          the shot 
I saw Mother give herself      to keep from striking fever              I swore 
       once I watched the double beds     close in around my shoulders               
the plywood of the bed posts       cut scrapes into into my aching cuticles               
I let sister suck on the small crumbs of Saltines          thought of the way 
her shallow       breaths matched the depth of the               wooden spoon 
I’d used        to stir gravy to pot








Derek Thomas Dew

Drink

There was a small statue 
that I kicked over 
by accident
 
and then again on purpose
on the island 

where once a head was carried 
to make a lesser thing

of fearing hope  
when I order a beer
and hear the man say 

No sir, 
this is a keg of nails.






​
​
Kintsugi 

The rind of sink
born everywhere.

A rib.  
The vending machine,

and everywhere
without one.

/

For most, 
almost all of it

couldn’t be explained,
but a little bit of it 

could and this was 
the same little bit

that those few
who could explain 

almost all of it 
puzzled over.

/ 

Ever since,
I wasn’t born anywhere.

There’s even a plaque
 
and a lawn.








The Landholder

I somehow keep waking in your morning lambs

in your urn until clavichord 

wraps the last piece of apple on the end of my fork 

and coffee is everyone.


Cloistering a forever in a driver’s license takes time.

Your father did good at the track,

so there’ll be a hotel.

Your sister won’t sleep until you talk of helium and Ireland.


Chariot makers in the coffee.  Chariots in the coffee drive-thru. 

The last to travel did so to read aloud.

The last to read aloud did so anyway.

Faith is sustained eye contact with the deer that left a moment ago.


Slipping a Ford pickup through a gate of deer takes faith.

No raven will land.  

Cú Chulainn has turned down the dog meat, 

stepped over the tide.


And so I keep waking out here in your morning lambs,

sure of the cold that has groomed the last of me

I have known and must learn

to begin by laughing.     









K Janeschek

Before You Wake


You must imagine mother’s tongue
in mildew. Her collarbone 
damp, her violin still—the strings taut
with patience’s end. A pestilence
settled in her bed of blades. The grass
dripping its green hue onto
yesterday’s brow. Dirt in her
crow’s feet, a glean on their
beaks. They peck at the pucker 
of her lips. You know 
they have not been fed. And 
they won’t be. Not until 
you mourn the chords of dawn
coming over the hill.









Josh Feit

Blue Balcony 

In the shower, the blue plastic mat is a balcony.
Look at the city.
I can see where they’re building the new light rail station.
I hope everyone can see.

Certainly, not everyone is able to stand drunk in an apartment
and sing a perfect rendition 
of Elvis Presley’s
Heartbreak Hotel.

The cell phone rings.

“Elvis Presley here.”
“Hello, Elvis Presley. This is Molly Ivins with the New York Times.  
I’m calling to write your obituary.”


In the shower, the blue plastic mat is a balcony.
I hope everyone can see. 








Joanna Acevedo

Talks With God

He said, no.
He said, spare the rod and spoil the child. He grunted. He smoked a clove cigarette. Now I am getting used to the fireworks, but the gunshots wake me up at night. I am standing up to the
firing squad. If you were an infection, what type would you be? I am seriously considering the guillotine. I am pondering the usefulness of the ball-gag. What is your favorite sort of weapon?
Mine is your face, after it rains.

I walk along the edge of a blade, trying to keep my balance. The cuts to my feet are shallow and
bleed freely. When I talked to God, he said we should spend more quality time doing things we
like to do, like playing chess, or sadomasochism. I am starting to learn discipline, one day at a

time. I am loosening the straps. If you were a question, what kind would you be?








Talks With The Devil

I send you my address. But first, I try to nail the door shut.
You ask me about my desires; I hate that you can see through my bullshit. Who would we be
without our secrets? Autobiography. Auto-erotics.
I hold the Devil in one hand. He looks over my shoulder. He says, yes. He says, open yourself
up. I am looking for new experiences. I am trying not to panic.
You are returning, slowly, like a woman coming out of sleep. Now I am branding myself, I am
trying to leave a scar. These welts are all I have left.

They say the Devil is in the details. I see him in your cheekbones and chin. I see him in your
voice, whiskey-hoarse, coming at me from across state lines.
Now I am crushing angels in my palms. I am working with the mortar and pestle, grinding
myself down into powder. I am applying for sainthood. I am at your mercy.
Given the chance, would you swallow me whole? You know me too well, or not at all. I have
chosen this fate. I have designated these consequences. I am turning the gun on myself.








Marcia Arrieta

I Stumble on a Pebble

falcon poppy adrift   the island & the boat   the pieces are glued onto an old map
bear lion indeterminate   the bandage needs changing   the wound heals
there are many doors in a house   books journals photos   crumpled papers
small drawings sustain








Shelby Pinkham

To Haunt A House from Across the Valley

You see me everywhere you look
in a house I never lived in.
Lacerated my thumb attempting to pierce
flesh of an early girl, slandered
your savior’s name as I wrapped it.
158 miles away, you hear my laughter
nestled in a gob of coffee. My dead
skin cells collect between the sheets
of your bed. Apple cores
I try to throw out plant themselves
between your teeth. At three am
you see my shadow rifling
through the medicine cabinet.
You have convinced yourself that I can
walk through walls, all the while
I find it harder to move through open doors.








Elizabeth Galoozis

Quarantine Poem #1

They use machines 
to travel everywhere.
Every son and daughter
has their own.
Something is always going
that needs to be charged.

The horizon has been sold. 
It folds on itself 
a little later each night. 
They explain 
they need the capital
to keep flowing. 
Explain the hole they made
to extract money
and throw in bodies. 

Hope is a green paper bird,
folded and passed
from hand to hand. 
The hole shrinks, and then expands. 

The horizon has been sold. 







​
Erica Lane

Big Trees

At Sequoia, I find the largest tree I can with you
and wrap myself around its wrinkled shirt. I wish I had
bark arms so that I could love you without jealousy,
no briny thing plucking baby hairs 
from my wrists and arranging them in new patterns 
on the back of my pillow-kinked neck. 
I’m not the touchy feely type but I think
we should set ourselves on fire 
to become fertile, then spend an entire lifetime
only growing one thing. I can learn patience
this way, like you can prune basil just enough
to leave a stalk that covets hands. I want to live 
for 3,000 years beside you, mammoth and inarticulate, 
until our trunks are so big they block the road.


Picture
Clouded Mind, Amber Mooers. Needle-felted and handspun wool.
Picture
Elemental Night, George Stein. Photograph.
Picture
A Woman in Bloom, Jocelyn Ulevicus. Acrylic on paper.
Picture
After The Rain, Derek Thomas Dew. Photograph.
Picture
Natural Boundaries, Amber Mooers. Naturally dyed needle-felted and handspun wool.
Picture
Marcia Arrieta
Picture
My Addictions, Emily Halpern. Oil paint on linen.
Picture
Marcia Arrieta
Picture
Unfinished Battles, K. Johnson Bowles. Mixed media assemblage.
Picture
Marcia Arrieta
Picture
Lady of Remorse, Amber Mooers. Soda fired terra cotta, wool.
Picture
​Clouded Mind (Alternate View), Amber Mooers. Needle-felted and handspun wool.

contributors

​​Amber Mooers has always found herself making work that creates a sense of discomfort in the viewer.  Manipulating familiar forms or materials into unsettling objects, she hopes to inspire people to think beyond their own habituated understandings of the world.  Installations and wall hangings are a key component of her practice, as is exploring mixed media and fibers work to emphasize the ethereal nature of her pieces.  @amberceleste.artwork

Justin Lacour has had poems in Bayou Magazine, New Orleans Review (Web Features), B O DY, and other journals. He edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry.

Kat Bodrie is a professional and creative writer in North Carolina. Her prose and poetry have been published in Waymark: Voices of the Valley, West Texas Literary Review, Rat's Ass Review, and other publications. Learn more at katbodrie.com.

Charles Kell is the author of Cage of Lit Glass, chosen by Kimiko Hahn for the 2018 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize.

Emily R. Antrilli is a confessional poet currently living in South Philadelphia. She is a recent graduate from Arcadia University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She serves as an art and poetry editor for Arcadia’s MFA Literary Journal, Marathon. Her work can be seen in The Esthetic Apostle and Passenger. Her poetry underlines the intricacies of mental illness through personal narrative.

Derek Thomas Dew’s debut collection of poetry, Riddle Field, received the Test Site Poetry Prize and is out October 2020 from University of Nevada Press. His literary work has appeared in a number of anthologies, and his poetry has been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Tempered Runes Press, and Hawaii Pacific Review. He is a winner of an Oregon Opportunity Grant and an Omnidawn Publishing Workshop Scholarship. He currently lives in Oregon.

Jocelyn M. Ulevicus has a background in social work, psychology, and public health. Both her written and artwork is either forthcoming or published in magazines such as Hold in the Head Review, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Dewdrop, Oscilloscope, and Entropy Magazine. Ms. Ulevicus currently resides in Amsterdam and is finalizing her first book, a memoir titled The Birth of A Tree, which was recently shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writer's Program 2019 Literary Award, judged by Carmen Maria Machado. In her spare time, she hunts for truth and beauty, and her artwork can be viewed @beautystills on Instagram.

Josh Feit is the speechwriter for the Puget Sound’s regional transit agency. Prior to that, he worked as a city hall reporter. Feit's poems have been published in Spillway, CircleShow, Lily Poetry Review (prize winner) and High Shelf, among other journals.

Joanna Acevedo is a writer living and working in New York City. Her work has been seen in Track Four, Mikrokosmos, and Not Very Quiet, among others. She teaches creative writing at New York University.

Marcia Arrieta’s recent poetry collections include vestiges ( Dancing Girl 2019) and perimeter homespun (BlazeVOX 2019). Her work appears in Otis Nebula, Otoliths, Word For/Word, Hobart, Cloudbank, South Dakota Review, Tiger Moth, Angel City Review, Anastamos, & Whiskey Island, among others. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry/art journal.

K Janeschek is a non-binary writer originally from the Midwest. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Swamp Literary Magazine, Split Rock Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, BAX 2014, and has won Hopwood awards in both poetry and nonfiction.

Shelby Pinkham is a queer, Chicanx poet who has called three Central Valley cities her home: Bakersfield, Stockton, and now Fresno. She has served as an assistant editor for The Normal School literary magazine, as an assistant editor for Rabid Oak, and as an editorial assistant for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest. In her last spring as a lit student, Shelby won second place in the Stafford Betty Creative Writing Awards for her original poem about abortion in the aftermath of apocalypse. She currently studies poetry as a second-year MFA student at Fresno State.

Elizabeth Galoozis is a poet and librarian living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has been published in Faultline, Mantis, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Not Very Quiet, Sinister Wisdom, and Wild Roof Journal. Her poem "The Grove" was a finalist for the Inverted Syntax Sublingua Prize for Poetry. Her scholarly work has been published in The Library Quarterly, College & Research Libraries, and ACRL Press.

Emily Halpern is an artist from Canada living and working in an artist community in downtown Los Angeles. Her work reflects a disjointed sense of unease in an unpredictable world. She aspires to create work that deepens our understanding of the ways in which certain personal meanings reflect the complex matrix of universally shared emotions.

K. Johnson Bowles has exhibited in more than 80 solo and group exhibitions nationally. Feature articles, essays, and reviews of her work have appeared in more than 30 publications. She is the recipient of fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, Houston Center for Photography, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Visual Studies Workshop. In 2020 more than 45 works from her most recent body of work, Veronica’s Cloths, have been selected for publication in 24 art and literary journals across the US including the American Journal of Poetry among others. She received her MFA in photography and painting from Ohio University and BFA in painting from Boston University. www.kjohnsonbowlesart.com.

George Stein is a digital photographer and editor in search of interesting juxtapositions and notable contrasts. He has been previously published in NUNUM, Prometheus Dreaming, the Toho Journal, and Passengers Journal, among others.

Erica Lane, Editor. 
​Published August 14, 2020.
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