But how to explain to you the phantoms that motivate a hunger like mine? Once I had a hankering for honey so strong I ate nothing without it for a week. Our honey jar was old, the golden insides turned cold—in some places, crystalized. You told me to just buy another jar, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the effort, the bees, all those trips back and forth to the hive. To not attempt to use it up seemed, to me, a cruelty. The night before you finally admitted there was someone else, I was contentedly working my way through the same old jar. It was late and I was tired and there were no clean knives left to scoop out the dregs, so I used a fork. When you caught me in the dim of the kitchen, I had already excavated down to the bottommost layer, where there was a surprise pocket of soft remains, a place where the crystals hadn’t yet hardened. I was only trying to salvage the last of that smoothness. Still it kept slipping through the tines.
Alyson Mosquera Dutemple’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salamander, Passages North, Arts & Letters, and Cincinnati Review‘s miCRo series, among others. In 2022, her collection was a runner-up for the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Alyson teaches and edits in New Jersey. Find her @swellspoken and at alysondutemple.com.
my body, your body, our bodies, bodies, fading in and out and in and out until suddenly we are both nothing, nothing but whispers that echo like leaves beneath our feet, nothing but whispers like the creaking of a tree on a hill, nothing but whispers like i love you to people we will never hold again
i am in and out and in and out of love with you, with me, with your body as we tumble into bed, with my hair as i will it to grow every day, with the growing comfort of us, i love you like i love the sun after an especially cold winter, the way the sun can take away all the darkness that festers inside me, i wonder if we would fall in love again if given a chance, i wonder if we were meant to be or if we were a mistake i learned to love, i have made so many mistakes and i have never learned how to love any of them and still i wonder if you love me the same way i loved the girl i used to be
i don’t think this is a love poem, i am so scared, scared that if your eyes ever set upon this, scared that if you ever heard these words, these whispers, the faint murmuring of my voice, you would think that i don’t love you, that i don’t love you with my whole heart, when the truth is my body is made of love for you, but this isn’t a love poem, it’s an outpouring, a river from my fingertips, from my mouth, a form of love that i just don’t know how to give
time let us grow up, grow close, shed our skin for new bodies, sometimes i wonder how you can love me after everything i’ve done, after everyone i’ve been, how many people have you loved by loving me, will you continue to love me if i continue to fade, will you love me if i fade in and out and in and out, i am not a ghost but i am scared that someday i might disappear, fade away until i am only a memory of someone you could have loved
Josafina Garcia is a writer, photographer, and zinester just trying to figure things out. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University in 2023 with a degree in Integrative Studies. Her future is unknown, but she is ready to head down whatever path lies ahead.
Come here. Among the elbows of deciduous trees and lighthouse beacons of fireflies. I want you close enough to feel the tightrope tension when I say nothing with a full mouth. My throat dissolves each I love you thatpromises to earthquake my roots before it hits the pink of my tongue.
So stay there. Between mountains and the possibility we might not survive you. It’s too expensive to bury the codependency and broken vows hidden in the basement. Consider the black and blue of falling for someone who can love you out loud.
James Roach (they/he) is a queer/trans poet who currently resides in Olympia, Washington.
You will get arrested for the first time, under the disdainful eye of the Victoria’s Secret regional manager. Upon seeing you chained to the front of the store chanting about trees, she will sigh, roll her eyes, and say, “Oh, it’s you,” crossing her arms over her smart black blazer.
But first, you will teach others on your dorm floor how to do laundry. How to separate the loads—what needs cold water and what wants hot. How to measure and where to pour the soap. How to remove clothes from the dryer right away, warm. How to hold them to your face and breathe, though that isn’t part of doing laundry. But isn’t it?
You will navigate public transit home from the Castro on Halloween while rolling on MDMA with your friend, all wigs and shouting. You will learn to find your way using the hills and the stars as guides, even though they double themselves as you hold yourself against a lamppost. You will know that sometimes shame smells like coconut rum.
You will let Eva Hesse save your soul more than once. You will come to understand that bell hooks and Angela Davis have the answer for everything. You will let Fiona Apple and Tracy Chapman rock you to sleep. You will have your fake ID confiscated at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at Great American Music Hall, but you will not hold that against them. You will discover that you are more of a Brontë sisters person than a Jane Austen person, which is saying a lot.
You will smoke clove cigarettes under the neon signs in the Mission, the smoke curling into a vision of your future like a horoscope, while you wait for the bus on an inappropriate street corner, electricity crackling overhead.
You will stare down the man in workshop who describes the poem about your grandmother’s death as being “not credible.” Your face will grow hot, its own incredulity. In that moment, you will grow up and resolve to be more choosy about the people you fuck. You will struggle to imagine the future: that you will find a life that is everything you could possibly want.
You will feel tempted to become a religion major, a pull that will make no sense to you as an agnostic. The only gods you have known have been horses and the sound of their hooves splashing through creeks.
You will feel kinship with your elderly Irish Catholic World Religion professor, and will be drawn in by his warmth, a grandfather free from disdain, the grandfather you did not have.
It will make no logical sense to you, until you discover that you are the Buddhist you will write term papers about. You will practice the bliss of sitting in silence, watching the breath that breathes you. You will embrace the agony of aching knees as you watch your spinning, obsessive thoughts and try not to hate them. You will learn that your love of trees and the moon is not merely an exercise as a poet, not only something to digest and regurgitate for workshop.
You will discover that everything is holy. This will happen, too.
Christy Tending (she/they) is an activist, writer, and mama living in Oakland, California. Their work has been published in Longreads, Catapult, and Electric Literature, among many others. Their first book, High Priestess of the Apocalypse, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2024. You can learn more about their work at christytending.com or follow Christy on Twitter @christytending.
Mama always called me a lost little bird. Said my first month of life I held my mouth agape in colic, chirping for more but never getting enough. As a child, I lived with all my belongings sprawled out on the floor, preferring my drawers and closet empty, opening and shutting them endlessly, looking for something.
And so I moved through life with my breadcrumbs trailing to nowhere. I watched other people’s lives. I could tell you what petiteSami19 wore last week in every outfit video, or the story of live_luv_heal chronicling her cancer diagnosis and the exact moment she started losing her hair, or every step professorcrafter took to transform an old pair of jeans into a mini-skirt, but could I do it myself? Nope.
What did I want in life? Perhaps if I scrolled a little more, I’d find an answer. That’s how I ended up in this drippy black-lit basement of a forgotten, boarded up house near campus.
“So what’ll it be?” Dr3amM4ker said, voice soft, almost imperceptible. A friendly painted face smiled, fluorescent in the black light. A midnight blue starburst surrounded one eye, bright pink the other.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“What dream do you want?” The pink eye looked at me.
“Isn’t that why I’m here? Isn’t that why I’m paying you?” My finger poked the foam through a crack in the vinyl chair.
They sighed. “When you were a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up?”
I’ll never forget Mama’s red-hot face at career day in fifth grade. I stood before the room full of parents, lacking a costume, and proclaimed my desire to remain a child the rest of my life. I felt the heat radiating off of Mama’s face on the drive home. Her silence burned deep.
I ripped out a piece of foam and rolled it between my fingers. “Nothing.” I said.
“Hmm.” Dr3amM4ker’s neon nails drummed the cooler top they used as a desk. The blue eye surveyed me. “That’ll cost you more. A dream from scratch. I can’t remember the last time…”
“I’ve given you all the money I have.”
Maybe I should have listened to Mama. She told me to study pharmacy. Her feeds touted job security, decent pay, the good it will do for the aging population. She told me this while scrolling on her phone.
She said, “You might as well do something that lets you enjoy life a bit.”
What life? I thought. My whole life was out there already, hundreds of childhood photos Mama posted. Me at my first soccer game, huddled with the team, her caption Future Mia Hamm! But I only remembered plucking dandelions on the field, leaving with pockets full of dirt, the scent of earth lingering on my fingers. After one game, a worm escaped my pocket and crawled across the car console and onto Mama’s arm. She yelped and reached for it, but I beat her to it. I shoved the worm in my mouth. She told me to spit it out. I swallowed.
My major remained undeclared.
The vinyl moaned beneath me as I shifted to extract my wallet. “I have meal tickets. I’ll give you my card.”
“No. I can’t do that. What will you do with yourself then, without food?” Dr3amM4ker said.
“What will I do with myself, living a life I don’t know how to live?”
The drumming nails stopped.
The pink eye engulfed me.
“You dream.”
I never told Mama I failed two classes last semester. What was the point of attending if the work only fed the entangled path of breadcrumbs that lead to nowhere? I couldn’t bear to see Mama’s red-hot face again. For her to see that I was nothing but a mockingbird, faking my way through. That I wasn’t bold and strong like the goddess Diana, as she called me, saying my moon blood would make me move tides, be fertile, bear children, change the world.
A burden had pressed so heavily on my chest all I could do was empty my closet and crawl in. A burden that perhaps a dream, any dream would lift.
“Occasionally, I allow an exchange of dreams but…” Dr3amM4ker drummed their nails again.
We agreed the meal tickets would suffice.
“Lie back now and close your eyes.”
“Will it hurt?” I asked.
“Maybe a little tingle. Although, not all dreams are painless.” They affixed tubes to my nose. The pink and blue starburst eyes shimmered in the dark.
A switch clicked.
A machine hummed.
A warmth coursed through my body and beads of sweat dotted my skin.
“Tell me, what do you see?” They asked.
I inhaled. Let the air fill my lungs. Let it seep into my mouth and cool my tongue. The scent left me breathless. “Earthworms emerge from their winter sleep. And the rain is warm, the first of spring.”
“Good. Keep going.”
But my throat caught. Words wouldn’t form. All I could do was chirrup. Pink and blue swirled around me. I was in the air, then on the ground. I smacked my lips. I kissed the soil. An earthy taste squished in my mouth.
I awoke to darkness. To an ache in my head that ran down my spine. I groaned and rolled over. My fingers held the scent of the earth. The moon cast pale light across my bedroom floor and to my closet. The door ajar. Standing up, I cradled my aching head in my hand and stepped carefully over my belongings scattered across the floor. I reached the door. I slid it open. What I found released from me a barking laughter, sent my belly aflutter. A single dandelion laid on the closet floor, glowing in the moonbeam like a miniature sun.
Abigail Kemske (she/her) is a writer from the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She finds endless inspiration for her stories wandering around the forests surrounding her home. When she isn’t writing, she can be found hiking, biking, or spending time with her spouse, two children, and their cat.
But I’m still crying, still a mess, still remembering that I’m the reason she died in a wheelchair. How, when I was still small enough to be carried, she slipped and broke her hip while holding me. Everyone is whispering amen and I am all blasphemy, a faith tied only to soil. The preacher speaks about ascension, but I’m grounded, can’t stop staring at her hands. How they look like they could reach out. How they must have held me so tight when she hit the asphalt.
Kimberly Wolf is a poet and parent selling books in Texas. She is often dreaming of a mountain.
I stood at the edge of my life to inspect if there is a new way to begin,
but all I found was the same familiar silence swallowing me whole.
My ears were bleeding white, I ran out of my body and slid into a coffee shop.
There is no sane way to escape
the body. The boy behind the counter offered me his teeth and wanted my name in return.
A boy has no name today, stranger— I’ll carry your name as mine today.
A cup of hot coffee on the table, and in it, the art of a cat letting off an atomic bomb.
I tug at my shirt, and I am the cat. I tug at my fur and I am the bomb.
What is there to do now? Why is the jukebox playing the same song
over and over, and over, and
Animashaun Ameen is a poet and essayist. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Salamander Magazine, Foglifter, Lolwe, Third Estate Magazine, Roadrunner Review, and elsewhere, and he is the author of Calling a Spade (forthcoming). He lives and writes from Lagos, Nigeria. An oddball. A butterfly.
It’s all computer screens and cables crammed on a gray desk that’s built into the wall. It’s drawers filled with crumpled up rough drafts and quizzes. It’s drawings in faded pen and scribbled notes your friends cared enough to mail, taped on each corner and stuck to the wall.
It’s passing an acquaintance from high school as she lies in the field on the edge of campus and fiddles with her hair. It’s exchanging hellos before hurrying to class.
It’s sticky note to-do lists and checked-off assignments, fluorescent lights staying on until you finish the book you should’ve read over the weekend. It’s late nights perched in your office chair—white noise and headphones drowning out screaming tinnitus.
It’s all road trips back home and potlucks. It’s waiting for the uncle who smells like cigarettes to arrive on Thanksgiving. It’s small-town Idaho gatherings at The Pond, where sixty percent of attendees have the same nose you do sticking out an inch from their faces. It’s fireworks that break a laundry list of laws crackling into the night until the sheriff shows and demands Whose property is this? despite knowing it’s his cousin’s. It’s battered cans of beer you turn down even though you’ve been twenty-one since August.
It’s pouring yourself a gin and tonic and curling up in the stiff chair by the window of your friend’s cabin to watch the rain.
It’s all friends you should write back to but never do.
It’s all thrift stores and tacky pants. It’s a shirt with frills on the front you’re holding up in the mirror. Your shoulders are too broad to wear it, and your chest too flat. Your friends all say it looks cute. It’s three a.m. tea parties in the living room of your dorm. A place you decorated with six-dollar paintings of a girl in a blue dress feeding ducks in a park, and one of a hunting dog posed on a rock—all purchased to make up for the shirt you didn’t buy.
It’s daily texts from your anxious mom.
Motorcycles roaring you from sleep at four in the morning.
The box of old clothes left on the stairs labeled “FREE.”
Mason Stubbs is an undergraduate at the College of Idaho currently studying biology, history, and creative writing. This piece is his first publication. As he enters his senior year, he is excited to continue writing and hopes to gain experience and feedback working with editors and peers. He is passionate about music, poetry, and all things fantasy.
some days I start to think I’m done with the whole lot of it but then again there are so many stories I haven’t heard yet
and I find myself standing in bar bathrooms and grocery store lines thinking maybe I still need more time
more time to hold hands for hours on a futon in a tiny apartment tangled up so long we become one limb
more time to dance in the headlights of your car by the river on a fake spring night then swing in the park until we forget what it’s like to worry about taxes or to-do lists
more time to plunge off a waterfall cliff to wait for the sun to warm the mulch underneath our bare feet
so much more time to see all the versions of myself I will one day be becoming
Katie Holtmeyer lives, writes, and teaches in Missouri. She is a pushcart-nominated poet, and her work has appeared in 3 Moon Magazine, Words & Whispers, Stanchion Zine, The Shore, and Jupiter Review, among others. Her debut collection, She Asked Me Where, is forthcoming with Unsolicited Press in early 2024.
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