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.
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.
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.
We agreed on Halloween cookies and mint chocolate chip ice-cream
for dessert, but I ran back to the freezer when your next text said you liked Neapolitan
too. We ate brown Japanese curry from a cube and threw out a backyard blanket
beneath the salt-speck stars and you leaned over to poke my face with a blade of grass
and closed your eyes to laugh when I told you I once slept on a hard hospital floor,
how the doctor opened the door on my foot. We were so close, I could feel our lives
folding together like curry in the pot then into your spoon, its taste salty and so fat
with the future I forgot about the ice-cream and cookies in your fridge, or the red wine
on the counter, or the ribbons of air floating with your breath wrapped in mine. There was so much
I missed, too busy watching the glint of stars pressed to our skin in this lifetime
of sky, and what were we but two little bits of taste on its tongue.
Josiah Nelson is an MFA in Writing student and sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in San Antonio Review, Arboreal Literary Magazine, spring magazine, FracturedLit, and The Rumpus. He likes thrift stores, slow cinema, and cardigans. He lives in Saskatoon.
The aisle offers all manner of masculine trophy / each package a beast / mounted and glaring. Each package / a sphinx speaking riddles in a language / my parents refused to teach me and / surely I’m confusing onlookers with my confusion, / so I grab one like its contraband and pay / with a wad of singles and an apology, / like it’s a crime to self-actualize / and I’m compelled to confess / to the cashier: I’m buying these boxers for myself. And she says nothing / because the trans / action is obvious.
I lock the door, blind the windows / leaving only the mirror / and my reflection as witness. / Girly boy hips wrapped in / sapphire, reserved for royalty. / I peacock ’round the privacy of my room, half-feathered / and pale as the moon. Fresh / waistband kissing the hard-earned peach fuzz / below my navel and / blush at the gesture. I make / a stage of the floor tiles, spinning / theatricals under fluorescent light buzzing / like a crowd cheering encore! / Encore! / Nobody gave me permission / to perform, I did that all myself. I wrote the role / and cast myself to act; such is / the nature of becoming.
James Ambrose is an agender poet and writer of all things weird, queer, and macabre. He is a professional college drop-out and can be found roaming the valleys of Virginia. This is his first publication, with more forthcoming. Find him on Twitter @caninebrainz.
We were leaving the park— the weathered benches and big-kid swings and wide expanses of green-turned-yellow- turned-brown—and the kids were asleep in the back seat and their little lashes fluttered like fallen leaves resting against sun-stained cheeks and our song came on all melancholy and quiet and you smiled at me as we linked fingers over the console and we headed toward the highway signs pointing home, and I thought: let’s paint this bowl, our fruitful life. Let’s hang it on the fridge.
Mia Herman is a Jewish writer and editor living in New York. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hofstra University and her work has appeared in over two dozen publications including Barren Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, ELJ Editions, F(r)iction, Ghost City Press, [PANK], Stanchion, Third Coast, and Variant Lit. Awards for her writing include an Honorable Mention in the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest, nomination for the Best of the Net, and finalist for the Frontier Poetry New Voices Fellowship. Follow her on Twitter @MiaMHerman.
ride the train alone / get on the Amtrak / take a coach seat / down the aisle from the skinny bearded guy with the smoked oysters and the tiny silver fork / sit next to the boy who shows you his party videos where he drinks too much Boone’s Farm / knowing any amount of Boone’s Farm is too much Boone’s Farm / talk to the girl in the tie-dye shirt in the observation car while you sip a BuzzBallz margarita / it’s her first time on Amtrak too / no one but strangers / be whoever you want / you are from a small town in Illinois / you are from the big city / you ghost-write country songs for a living / you are an accountant / America is an oil painting slicked and sliding by in a riot of color / you are born of the wild wind / you precious beating thing
Amanda Kooser (she/they) is a writer, rocker, Aikido student, and journalist specializing in space and goofy rocks on Mars. They graduated from the University of New Mexico creative writing MFA program in 2022. Her work has appeared in Yellow Arrow Journal, Conceptions Southwest, The Twin Bill, and The Hallowzine. Amanda lives in Albuquerque where she listens for train whistles and plays a pink-sparkle guitar in indie rock band The Dawn Hotel.
The day my shoes spoke to me was the day that I put aside my winter coat and brushed the lint from my eyes. My shoes were tired of being trodden on, a sentiment I could relate to. They demanded early retirement and presented their resignation in a formal letter attached to one heel with a wad of chewed-up gum. I had no choice but to acquiesce. I set them free, free to join the other shoes at the bottom of my linen closet where they all chain smoke and complain that their leather is cracking. My leather is cracking too, so I oil my skin with primrose and lavender, ponder my own early retirement, unlike my father, rotted away before his time.
Ly Faulk has loved reading and writing for as long as they could read and write. They still believe in the power of the written word to save lives.
this is how you cast a spell, child: pray your hands together, weave your grimy, fruit-stained fingers into a basket tight enough to hold the serpent hissing at its seams. this is how you pull your eyelids tight to your skin. this is how you resist the temptation of sight, resist defiant pupils that wander where they shouldn’t and talk out of turn and ask too many questions and echo a heartbeat that catches in your throat like a prayer half-digested. this is how you swallow bad Scripture: mouth the words down and keep your gaze on the ground until the Father in heaven and the father at home are one and the same. this is how you fold yourself thin like Sunday School sheets: pastor’s kid, lightweight, not down to cause any trouble. this is how you smile and nod when Pa and Ma rant about the liberal gay menace (but what if the menace is living under your roof?) this is how you sneak onto Yahoo Answers when Pa and Ma are asleep to find out whether you’re gay in ten simple questions (is it okay to look without touching?) this is how you close the window and shut down the computer before they catch their son in the sinful act. this is how you dodge questions about what girls from youth group you’re crushing on. this is how you hold the shame in your lungs, then your stomach, then your entire body. this is how to curve your back into the shape of an apology that will never be enough. this is how you live with your eyes closed—no boys to tempt you into ruin, no pastors to root out your sins. this is how you cast yourself out of the church before they can: drift downstream, tread water, clasp your chafed hands into a straw vessel sinking faster than you can bail, rock them together like a rowboat in a never-ending storm, pray for the miracle worker to come and change you like they say he will. father, don’t you know you raised me right out of your home? where do i go but away?
this is how Father answers your exile: with a wave of good Samaritans washing over you. this is how, in the first week of college, you meet PJ, then Claudia, then Reverend Jordan (and if a loving creator did not make people like this, who did?) this is how you find God in a family of outcasts; find yourself back on your knees on a chapel floor for the first time in four years. this is how the ocean swallows a prodigal son and spits them back out, salt water welling at stubborn eyelids, flooding them open. this is what tough love tastes like: a rush of light in your mouth, sharp enough to blind at first, too brackish to digest in one gulp. this is how to throw somebody into the deep, baptize them in grief and heartbreak, pull them back out gasping alive. this is the story of Moses and the burning bush, Jonah and the whale, Paul on the road to Damascus, Jesus speaking in tongues. this is the riddle you have left us breathless to untangle. this is how you cast the spell anew. this is how to sing the song in your own voice: i was blind, but now i see. this is how you believe in magic, how you still find light in this world when it is cracking apart. this is how you untangle your hands, feel your grief flood out until all that is left are the fingers, ready to weave together something new. this is how you learn to touch, to embrace, to cast the words out and pray they kindle a path forward. (but Father, what if i never find my way to you?) child, you mean to tell me you have not yet seen me in the searching?
m.o. (or Mo) is a high-school educator and writer in the East Bay. In college, he self-published his first book, speech therapy, in order to fundraise for the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence. They have also published work in the Hypocrite Reader, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Porcupine Reader, and Lake County Bloom. When not teaching or writing, Mo loves hanging out at the local rock climbing gym, scream-singing to the latest K-pop hits in the car, and curating a sick collection of discount frozen dinners. You can find them on Twitter @mokngpoetry and online at mokng.com.
Vast 