Rakpabon (รักษ์ป่าบอน) Ashley Mangtani __________ I do not know them, and they do not know me. The men in the brown trucks call me by a name a clerk typed onto a card. Jeab Rakpabon (เจี๊ยบ รักษ์ป่าบอน) Printed on me like a warning. I am the Protector of Pa Bon…
Read MoreAsphodels, How I’d Like To Be Buried With Them Corinne Klosinski __________ Within the wan and weeping vale Where twilight tarnishes the day,There trembles one tenebrous bloom: The asphodel of unanswered ache. Pale as a patient phantom’s palm, It lifts its languid, lilting throat,Drinking the dim and distant dew Of mercies never meant for…
Read MoreGage Baldwin __________ Invisible Countries Words don’t live long outside the body,Not most of them, anyway. I can tell who is family By the tension behind their teeth The hesitance in their step Like a sinner sneaking back Amongst the gods. Do not believeTheir honeyed Words, let them hang In the air and die. We…
Read MorePornographic Poetry Template Daniel Edward Moore __________ My professor said I might be the first to be consumed by delicious verbs layered between leather syntax and inches of cream before it melts down tall hard peaks beneath a dark hairy sky. But what if I’m just a studly nerd asking a pronoun…
Read MoreJoe Bishop __________ Vacancy This grand hotel has lost its headand the maids march on strike for hazard paycircling parking-lot sinkholes Anarchy overthrew the maître d’Light & Power cut lights and powerThe star rating slips by the hourBaroque wallpaper peels like stage makeup Chef pisses in the soup du jourHis duck a…
Read MoreRicardo Moran __________ What I’m Thinking on October 25, 1986 Someone said they saw Sigmund the Sea Monster waddlingon Imperial Avenue just over the railroad tracksnear the Winchell’s Donut House.Janet Jackson’s “Nasty” bumping on the Mighty 690,but it was just prima chasing the paleterodressed like a mermaid for Halloween. And…
Read MoreDustin Brookshire __________ Drifting Villanelle a collaborative, contoured villanelle using W.H. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You”,written with Joshua Barnes Tomorrow is Monday. Say it ain’t so!But there are, unfortunately, bills to payand so much in this world that I don’t know. I could tell you; instead, let me showhow…
Read MoreGradually She Finds Her Voice John Janelle Backman __________ SuffocatinginherenoroomtotwitchevenbetweenheartlungsdiggingofribsmustgetOUT Mr. Johnson held open his pre-calculus lesson planner, which listed all the assignments for the year, and his finger stabbed at a column mostly of blanks. “See? Here, here, twice that week, here again…John, you’ve missed a ton of homework,”…
Read MoreOnset Gender Dysphoria Meets Quarter Life Crisis Talon Drake __________ I am twenty-six / and sometimes forget / I no longer have to fear the girls on thebasketball team / who hurled out slurs from their seats / in fact they would fear me / my burlyphysique / but there’s…
Read MoreOn Eldering Clayton H Eccard __________ Recently someone called me an elder, as if I’d crossed the finish line of a race I never agreed to run. “One of our elders,” they said—like a museum piece with a pulse. I’m still discovering what that word asks of me. It’s not…
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