No matter how much you beat it,
the heart is a dog. It will lick any man
who looks on with adoration.
I know because it’s inevitable.
I too have beaten myself at the threshold
of desire and have tried dragging
this body back. But look,
here I am, naked knees grazing the floor
of yet another room. He says,
You look like my childhood friend,
by which he means I could be loved
if I were someone else.
Oh, trust me, I know, like a new dog
in the family

after the first one has died.

Ashish Kumar Singh (he/him) is a queer Indian poet with a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Lucknow. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Frontier Poetry, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Fourteen Poems, The Texas Review, Atlanta Review, Foglifter Press, Diode Journal, and elsewhere. Currently, he lives in his hometown of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, where he teaches English to high schoolers.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

I’m curious why you have binoculars hanging
from your neck on a faux pearl string.
I kind of hope you’re not looking past
the swelling dawn to watch tenants
in the student building across the street
eat dry cornflakes with their fingers,
a buffering screen in front of them.
Not that I know anything, but if you wait
until dark, you might be able to see
into their half-furnished, unintentionally
ascetic living rooms even without the binoculars,
provided the blinds aren’t drawn, though
it seems like they always are.

I’ve lived in three apartment buildings and
have known exactly none of my neighbors.
Sometimes, as I’m locking my front door,
I hope one of them will pass in the hallway
just so I can see what they look like. I hear
their music, their breakups, their snoring, but
I don’t know their names, their faces. Sometimes,
as I babysit my boiling pasta, I hear footsteps
outside, and I run to the peephole for a glimpse.
I never see anything but the beige wall
and stained carpet, and my water boils over.

I think what I’m trying to say is
the binoculars might not be enough.
You may have to enter the building
and sit in the hallway, waiting for someone,
anyone, to emerge. They have to appear
at some point, don’t they? If you give me
some signal, look at me looking
at you for long enough, I can take
the elevator downstairs and let you in,
and together, we can find out who lives
beside me. Just give me a sign.

E.C. Gannon’s work has appeared in Peatsmoke Journal, Assignment Magazine, SoFloPoJo, Olit, and elsewhere. Raised in New Hampshire, she holds a degree from Florida State University and is pursuing another at the University of New Mexico.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

there are no worries on the beach;
we can flaunt our near-naked forms,
as we build derelict sandcastles
that we pretend will last forever
on a shore lit by our ancestors’ sun;
we can find this ancient comfort,
this primal escape, only here, now

it is as if we’re reminded
by the vastness of the ocean
how frail and powerless we are,
so we set aside our conflicts,
instead choosing to navel-gaze
and sunbathe and permit ourselves
to forget the two degree goal,
less than two minutes to midnight,

the world is so fucked; sometimes
i just want — need — a cigarette
an indulgence concealed by a sea breeze;
we can linger until each dune
takes on meaning, shaped by wind,
insects, you, you from weeks ago,
us from years ago, us here now

Felix Grygorcewicz (he/him/his) is an experimental writer, mostly of fiction, though he dabbles in poetry and non-fiction. He has worked in education for over 10 years on the East and West coasts of the U.S. and is currently residing in the middle of the country where he teaches. He is often inspired by nature and people.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

“The SAP Ariba spend management solution portfolio is empowering companies to move faster and spend better. The solutions connect millions of trading partners worldwide to SAP Business Network to enable direct, intelligent connections that redefine how organizations communicate and get work done.” – SAP Ariba website.

1

Ariba, I have failed you again. I have
placed a box fan in front of a cattle fan
and called it ambition. I sent my resume
to the paltry gods and it contained 
a typo, a misplaced “y” or “i” and now
I must cleanse my relevant experience
at the river of the many-headed girlboss.
I asked a career coach 
for a smoke. Ariba, with your four-step approval
process, your sacred ladder, and me,
a mere renter comprised
of trustworthiness scores. I live in terror
of your guided buying,
as it should be.

2

Ariba, you must understand that I lived for years
in a tempest of misremembered Morse code. They refer
to it as the ancient ‘90s. Your origins lie
in a hush of patents, but my eyes
still sting with since-dead neon. I remember
the sign of the hatchery, a cracking egg.
I remember the flamingos, so many, and a wildfire’s worth
of green gas station dinosaurs. A teapot atop
a building. A water tower of painted bees. A green screen
computer with a single blinking cursor. Heretical
childhood. Modus operandi: Midwestern. O Ariba,
we are but public four-year arts majors with flapping fruit bats
for memories. Deliver us from our contract requests,
our blanket orders, too.
We ask this of you, not God.

3

Ariba, an office door slams in the afternoon
light and I cry. If the employee of the month called
eternal suffering a pain point, 
middle management may learn to practice
active listening. List the ailments: 
your upskilled heart, your quiet
quitting soul, your obsession with how even a pandemic
could not finally slow the grind. Label your faults
as a series of rooms: infinite rooms, rooms
for growth, outreach, engagement, and quality assurance.
The Voynich manuscript is now understood 
by no one but Ariba, we know you as a precision 
of timestamped pleas. 

4

Ariba, I wake in the night to pain
everywhere. I think I hear the Earth trying
to dislodge from its orbit. I will not stop
thinking of you, force of habit, fever dream
of process improvement. Ariba, I once ran
from you and saw perfectly rusted mopeds
flit down a gade in Copenhagen. I tasted the crisp 
stars against glow-in-the-dark velvet. 
I understood metaphysics. I had never been
so alarmingly sober. I returned home
to an eviction notice. Ariba, are you 
animal, lamentation, or dream? I am  
but a child at your feet.

Katie Berger is the author of two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press and several other essays, stories, and poems. She hold an MFA from the University of Alabama and works at the University of Nebraska at Omaha as a project coordinator.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson

they’ve got me running in circles again,
spinning round the old mouse wheel, 
lunging for scraps 
and we retire at 70 now
with no time left at all
and it feels as if
the world has spun
completely out of control.
little houses for millions of dollars,
fortune-busting interminable educations
that lead to no jobs,
to mcdonalds and fat-choked arteries
because the rent is due this week.

i sit here and read 
the job postings on the internet,
all the digital madness,
all the arcane terminology and technology
that no one could possibly understand
(or would ever want to were they sane),
and reflect on what it must have
been like
to live like a real living being
in a jungle or a forest
all those millions
of years ago,
to do things that made sense,
to hunt when hungry
and sleep when tired,
and to die when the time came
instead of being stretched thin
to such obscene degrees.

and we jump through these hoops
because we don’t know
what else to do,
we are scared
and don’t know
any way out,
some of us drink
and some of us turn to stone
and some of us have families
and some of us go mad
and learn to love what tortures us.
they throw us crumbs
to pay the utility bills
and we keep churning along,
day after day after day
until in a heartbeat
20 years have gone by
and the muscles and joints are aching
and the mind is fading
and the rest is crying right along.

and cnn blares in the background
and traffic lights go green and red
and the holidays come and go,
the endless cacophony of a few
billion choking throats,
religion and money and passion
and sex,
the computers blink and run
interference
for the suits
with their fat fingers
in the cookie jars
and it just seems to 
get worse and worse
with each passing year.

the freeways are jammed,
the buildings are bursting,
the fields are burned,
there is no room for love,
there is no room for grace or simplicity,
there is only this
diabolical fear of starving
that keeps us chasing carrots,
this fear of drowning
that keeps us afloat.

Scott Taylor hails from Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world traveler. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online publications; his debut novel Chasing Your Tail has recently been released with Silver Bow Publishing, and his novellas “Freak” and “Ernie and the Golden Egg” are slated for inclusion in an upcoming anthology with Running Wild Press. He graduated from Cornell University and was also a computer programmer in a past life.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson