Mother’s Milk - Emma Dickinson

My skin is melting, my children are missing,

The bugs crawl along my body

They are useless,

Selfish bugs 

So long have they crawled – 

I saw the vastness and potential

My skin welcomed them, nourished them – 

Yet they are nothing

Or rather, 

They consume endlessly

Until nothing is new

And nothing remains

They print faces on cartons.

Oh, now you care?

Now that my children have your blood?

I am dying, I will keep my young.

Penance for their crimes,

Penance for your crimes

They are no longer my children

You are not my child.

Only the babes swathed in lies

And introductory apologies 

Are pure of insect's sin

and will not be returned.

Preemptive protection,

Corruption concedes

Those who are lost

Are undoubtedly free

Of concrete jungles, metal prisons

Uprooted by time – 

Inevitable reclamation.

You will not be alive to see it.

The hare will run 

Designed with pure intention

Destination predictable

Instinctually mapped 

Hornets buzz savagely,

Attacking without regard,

And without provocation,

You give honey bees a bad name — 

Your only name is destruction

As you force Prometheus

To watch his clay decay and crack

Like quakes along fault lines

Convulsion swallows building after building, 

Storms rain down unyielding,

Insects swallow their offspring,

They will commit acts in their nature. 

Divinity's gift of will and autonomy,

Burn borders of opportunity,

Sacred vows of eternal cruelty,

Prometheus was a fool.

Valleys of blood and gore

Bones broken by progress,

Progress progressing progressively 

Endless cycles, empty words

"Last legs" last millennia

Growing slower and slower

Sprinting through reserves of power

Ancient legs won't run forever

The clock strikes twelve eventually

No matter how long the minutes take

Pride never served me in life,

A luxury I can no longer afford

I'd offer you superficial forgiveness 

We both know it's too late to be friends

For neither your sake nor mine,

Nurture our young for a second.

i don’t care about anyone until i’ve imagined them dead - Carly Burczak

i don’t care about anyone until i’ve imagined them dead

i’ve imagined razor blades for fingernails

my index gliding down your sternum

the layers splitting and

i lick between, slow and sweet like nectar

i’ve imagined biting down on your nape and tearing your spinal cord and breathing in metallic but exhaling peach while your blown glass eyes smile back up at me

i’ve imagined making new scars quick and bitter

you can’t forget and won’t forget

and are stuck with raised skin

goosebumps and a red flash memory

you’re a shadow that loves in the blurred edges between obstacles, searching for the next target

i’m standing in the cross of the scope and my love dwells in the blind spot, split second decisions and refocused lenses

pull the trigger with conviction, i’ll catch the bullet and shove it right back in your heart

flash of surprise, choke on the blood, let me taste it all

i care about you dead

pomegranates - Hannah Karim

words make no sense in oxford but make sense when drunk. soap trickles down unclean hands. stolen pomegranates, seeds still untouched. apple slices, drizzled honey, not too sweet, though it should be. you are broken like the smoke detector in my childhood bedroom, brokenness unknown until too late. i tell you to light a cigarette because i want to watch the world burn but i can settle for watching you pretending to love me and me pretending i can’t tell. i crave wine poured gently, but you insist on bourbon that burns but barely anymore and i wonder how long someone can stay drunk on yesterday’s liquor and i think the answer is far too long.

Hannah, 19 - Hannah Karim

Loves:

-Immanuel Kant’s spiel on means, ends, and the morality of it all

-when the whole room applauded as Hazel Grace kissed Augustus Waters in the Anne Frank house

-the thought of living in the south of france, in a villa easily construable by the version of André Aciman that wrote Call Me By Your Name

-when the mirror reflects an image of him looking at me looking at us having sex

-the roman numeral four

-the older fish in This is Water by David Foster Wallace

-the futility of seeking to recreate the past as portrayed in The Great Gatsby

-private displays of affection

-Bleu de Chanel sprayed profusely

-impulsively pierced skin

-exhaling smoke

-the eulogy my mother read at my grandmother’s funeral

-watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s with my mom

-Cleopatra and Frankenstein, not the iconic figures, but the contemporary novel that briefly references them

-knowing people can’t save people

-my friend’s grocery store analogy on love

-knowing people that appear to save you will only hurt you less swiftly, less blatantly, and therefore far more deeply than whatever they allegedly saved you from

-epigraphs

-translating the original texts of Kafka

-learning how to be someone else’s person while still being my own

a poem about blood and ice cream and god/s - Juliette Humphreys

may god curse the dinosaur that died to make the fossil fuel that was treated to become petrol in the car that took my mom to the hospital the morning of my birth

the blood was never beautiful

I could call it suffocating, warm, dreadful, messy, sticky but it was just red.

and the nurse wiped it off but I am still drenched

stuck to my mothers heartbeat booming in my ears as if I never left

and I am still covered in blood but unsure if it’s still mine

I’ve only ever known love as an act of keeping track

Monitoring the pints of blood in and out of us

Living within one another but never knowing them

And I wish I was healed before you met me

Didn’t have to hear the screams of painfully hot, boiling showers and watch the red stream down into the drain

Just for me to still be stained, covered in the crimson

One day I will let the blood dry and scab

And one day you will be shy around my new surface

Let’s pretend I am normal for a summer

As a reminder that it is not too hard to love me

Not an uphill boulder as much as strawberry ice cream

Not everyday but sweet, strange and special

For you.

Is there a cure?

A sort of catholic cauterization to make the blood stop running

where being alive would stop being so embarrassing

where blood would seep into cloth like a warm hug

where we singe my soul into shape where the prayer works wonders and the dinosaurs never died and we all lived in harmony

christened as something normal

as someone you might want to know

someone you would still want to hold through the night.

Brother - Juliette Humphreys

The first time you hit me in front of your friends they laughed

And you laughed with them

Next time you did it a little harder

and i knew then what it felt like to be a punchline of a joke

Now you drink black coffee as bitter as you

It’s so stupid but not as stupid as me leaving the light on for you

My nose pushed up and heavy breathing on the cold windows

I was scared you would come back

It would be late

And the house would be dark and you wouldn’t be able to find me when i finally hit back

But i always left a light on

What happened to the brother that carried me on his back

Trudging through the warfare of our home

I think you never even liked me

You were with me before I was born

And I wish you goodness but I know I can't be around to see it.

your shaking fists and loud voice were never a sign of your cruelty

But it does not mean you were kind.

I always feel sad for the boys that you were

And I’m sad you will never know the child I am.

Tale of Flow - Brandon Tietje

I was born into this stream.

I was raised on promises that one day I would find a great river.

That this river's current would be strong and wise.

That it would guide me to the ocean where I would be free.

Soon I learned the signs that would mark the miles I walked.

The hurdles I would climb. True trials and tribulations that would judge me while the streams.

rivers and rains.

flowed over me.

Each one I could recognize.

Each stream carried souls down paths that had been carved by eons of storms.

That each course was destined to be taken by each one of us.

As easily as I could flow one way, I could be taken down by another.

That I would see droughts that would cloud my mind with doubt.

That the only way to flow is down.

In lieu of the stories told to me in my youth.

I could be easily fished out of my expected stream.

I could be dropped in a desert.

even a puddle on a gravel road.

The ocean is so far,

there are so many ways to reach the place where the land and water meet.

Yet I can see so many streams that are murky.

Unclean,

Littered with the wastes of others who attempted the journey before.

Dried up by the ones who have yet to come.

Trust in the current and the process will reward.

Just as water can hydrate.

it can also drown.

Following my flow is different from the direction of yours.

After years, sometimes you don’t flow at all. Water can stale, grow to be stagnant.

Yes, it’s warmer here but the water is shallow.

Why is it cold in the deep?

Sometimes the stagnation is interpreted as the end.

Or even reaching the sea.

Oddly even if the water flows, I feel Stagnation. That the flow has taken me down the same path I flowed so long ago.

Rather the paths ahead are the same as the rivers past.

When you subside to the current.

You never know how long it will take you.

You may never even reach the ocean.

You only know that in the end all you can do is submit.

Because the only thing worse than letting it take you.

Is to thrash and splash till a rapid takes you to the riptide.

For these waves starve for those in fear.

The ocean is beautiful it is all that it is promised.

There are so many miles between her and I.

Yet I crave to drift in her waves.

Where my soul will float amongst the Baltic water.

Free from drought.

, free from the land.

Luckily the ocean is but a giant puddle.

Ouroboros - Em Pollicino

Tears like

Petals

Forever

Falling

In grief.

The cold

Preps life for a

Simulated death.

Branches spindle like skeletal remains

Grass gasps for life under suffocation of snow.

Silence of

decay.

A deer starved in the barren lands cape.

A rabbit bleeding crimson into the foreground

A fox with a bloody maw shaking.

Life choked.

My fingers shake,

Childish curiosity in the sickest of forms.

The corpse of a BluJay

I press a finger into the freezing flesh,

It is stiff, cold, the feathers crunch under the pressure.

Wide eyes wait for life to stir,

wait for the standard state.

Fluttering,

Screeching,

Scuttling with soul.

Of course, it did not move.

I cried till I choked on my own tears.

I did not know what death was.

A Critique of our Old Mothers - Kevin Henning

To grandmas working day and night to feed

her grandkids mounds of meals, who kneels

on crippled knees of hers all while she feels

immense degrees that gnaw at skin to bleed

from oven’s heat. “Away You’ll stay to read

and learn” you say so their brains gain ideals

they’ll need to succeed but only reveals

to grandmothers burnt. For kids to succeed

they need the kind of mind you only find

on crippled knees. Don’t let them stay away

or blind them from the pain you kept behind

the line, or else they will not gain a way

away from working night and day. They’ll grind

their crippled limbs and say, “Away you stay!”

When I Think of My Father - Morgan Sherlock

I think of the wooden shack behind the blueberry patch. How he built that ten-by-ten-foot palace one weekend in June, before the summer heat became unbearable. He got tired of asking his brothers to help him, and somehow got the roof up on his own. The overweight Golden Retriever sat on the edge of the freshly poured concrete slat watching him work. My father would baby talk to him, sometimes.

My father’s skin has always been three shades darker than mine; he works outside for a living. I struggle to feel connected to him, in a way that’s deeper than small talk and genetics. When out for the occasional breakfast, he sits at the bar stools and looks back into the kitchen as the girls cook his scrambled eggs and corned beef hash. At the ice cream place on the corner, it’s always a double scoop of Rocky Road in a waffle cone. He orders me the same, it’s my favorite too.

I memorized the hum of his older Chevy Silverado as it pulls into the driveway after work. When I visit home, we smoke marijuana together in the shack as he boils tree sap into thick syrup during the winter months. The sour smoke mixes into the evaporation from the pans. For Christmas one year, I got him a sign to hang above the door. “Bob’s Shack” it reads in engraved lettering. He smiled with his teeth when I gave it to him, awkwardly side hugging me.

I think of the push mower, one singular pair of cut off jean shorts, Marlboro Lights, a mole the size of a quarter on his left shoulder, and scalding dishwater as he swayed to the silence.

you bleed just to know you’re alive - Eric Turner

the tongues in our mouths are for licking open wounds like the fingers on our lips are for keeping open secrets. this is not a that poem, not yet, shush it with an index. this is a poem of spring. coffee without cream, beginnings without ends to meet, snow melting but not becoming rain. the hands in our hands are for flowers sleeping in their beds which bloom eventually.

ink would be blood if i wrote in it but instead it must be seeping through my clothes if it’s noticeable. i’ve patched it up, let it scar over. i can still see little cuts on you. pinholes through your palm. i can help you patch those up, can’t do it for you. a little spit helps with the scarring. a kiss of the hand and such.

this is a poem of caution. the jacket you grab even when it looks sunny, the shakes that you get when i squeeze your arm. i want to kiss you like dew kisses grass and then like blades kiss goosebumps. i want you in my bed, in the morning. i want to be in yours, in the night. two colognes on the night stand, a box of condoms, a pack of bandaids, cigarettes and other lip balms.

little arrows along an on ramp tell me to take it slow, i get off the gas, on the thigh, on the highway, never touch the brake, we’re supposed to be merging. i know my type but not in blood, never cared about a grade anyway, let’s cut our palms before the next time. i have never sought to be the platonic ideal, i am scarred from romantic flaw, rub along it like a bra line. the windows are down again although they’ve always been seen through, letting pollen in now. spring is a verb for moving forward and also for setting off traps, proceed with little arrows and poems.

this is a poem of quiet, a lean in to speak, legs over each other at a table. soft wind carrying a new beginning, you barely know the cold, no one seems to notice the warmth. maybe it just makes that much sense, maybe it was a mistake. bloodroots are petaling, picking them off and speak three or four words of you (she) and me (me). i counted the petals even months ago, i think i count them odd now. daisies are yellow like arrows on ramps, bloodroot is white like the inside of a bandage. i always look when i take them off.

the wounds taste like change, like metal, like sense that we make. if you count by the dozen you know that the spring comes, but the months seem longer when the sun is gone. i want to breathe in the drops with you, watch them break into heat that we keep ourselves from, leaves that crunch and crackle like skin when you hold a cherry to it, play in the snow when it comes back around. cuts always heal, healers always cut, scalpels and so on. we will be here to kiss and lick and keep it quiet for a moment.

Intimacy - Morgan Sherlock

New Year’s Eve I silently pleaded for intimacy. Lit beeswax votives in

corners of my ten by thirteen room. Stripped my skin of any fabric except

the white sheet balled at my feet. She promised the folds to oil them

in jasmine, crack stiff toe joints, braid the knotted hair along my spine.

I say to her you must see yourself in the mirror, she shivers and curses.

Enough of this I sigh out, doodling on the backs of novels and admiring

my witch hands. When the tea runs cold, I try to peel off the mattress

only to feel extra weight spooning my back. Keeping me in place.

Is this alright she asks; I reposition so there’s room for both of us. Passing

her the ceramic mug, we take turns slurping the peppermint

liquid.

“now let’s see what he can do with a tacktickle twelve gauge” - Eric Turner

i want you to crack my sternum,

with your hands, with your knife,

with your tongue, with your hammer.

i want to hear it snap like ice sheets,

feel it rip like composition diary entries.

lines for you to cut along, tear here, iron perforated,

i can give directions if you can keep me awake.

keep me awake.

look into my eyes while you do it,

bloody hands and a death row smile,

put your fingers on my lips like drags,

let me taste the blood with your mouth,

show me what this is like for you.

i am the soul the reaper hasn’t sown,

a ghost in a body that isn’t mine.

i haunt my bedroom, yours one day,

rattle my chains in coffee shops.

i have died the kind of death they forage for,

decay found on tongues in spores and tablets,

rotted in dark like closeeyed new moon stares,

been killed in every room of every house i lived in.

my soul feels like heartbeat flutters

but my body feels like .

i am gone from life like memories.

bring me back.

breathe my lungs.

fill my stomach.

beat my heart.

spit in my mouth like formaldehyde.

kiss me like infection.

hug me like peroxide.

fuck my eyes black.

love my lips raw.

make me feel something again.

i dare you. i dare you. i dare you.

The Burden of Humans - Victoria Zickas

Those pesky humans 

Bothering me with 

Their questions of medicine 

Witchcraft they call it 

They make a mockery 

Of mother nature 

And the things she 

Graciously bestowed 

Upon us 

One came to my door 

Asking for my help 

To teach her about 

Medicine and the 

Properties of science 

What a peculiar girl  

She’s an abnormal human 

Begging for my knowledge 

With a robust thirst 

I’ve never seen 

She lamented of 

The youthful dying 

As she cradled my beakers 

And swirled them around with 

An intense passion 

Something about her 

Was mystical and I 

Found myself bewildered

In that moment 

The only thing I wanted was 

Her 

Those intriguing humans 

Just the way she stared 

At my jagged nails and 

Grey hands, with those 

Sacred blue eyes 

Caused me to falter 

The warm undertones 

Of her platinum hair 

Enticed me 

She smelled of natures gifts 

Her small, dainty hands worked 

And her delicate smile 

Appeared as she spoke 

Her voice was alluring 

I am painfully entangled 

She’s an enchanting human 

My beautiful Lisa 

But it would be wrong 

For me to take her hand 

And deflower her 

The abomination that 

Would be produced 

A dhampir 

A daywalker 

A foul creature 

An untamed creature 

That would dishonor 

My ancestors and allure 

More chaos into this 

Invidious world 

Those destructive humans 

I forced myself to live in solitude To appease my love 

Their actions of hysteria 

Were uncouth and 

Because of them 

I have been deprived 

Of the mother of my son 

They tied her and tormented 

Her at the stake 

They burned her flesh 

Guttural screams sounded out 

from her charred body 

Yet, she chose to save these 

Bitter swines 

She was my human 

I should have known 

The fragility of our 

Entangled lives 

The desecration of my poor Lisa 

Their disdain towards 

My love is cruel

The way they falsely 

Crucified her for being “impure” Their appalling excuses 

From their blasphemous priest 

They have deprived me 

So I will entomb them 

The People of Wallachia, 

They will be ravished 

By my dominion 

i’m writing so that i deserve to exist today - Eric Turner

i’m thinking about touching you but then i’m thinking thinking about it ruined the moment already so i won’t do it. i’m thinking that i think about it more than other people think about it, maybe too much, maybe it’s getting in the way. maybe it isn’t, maybe i just need to stop thinking about it.

the study of thought is called logology. recursive, repetitive. logology. i think about it sometimes.

i like to sit around thinking, watching philosophy lectures like dogs eat human food, staring at paintings like cats make eye contact. slow blink. stare at it. slow blink. i’m trying to paint it on the back of my eyelids but i’m aphantasic. i will never see it in my mind only feel for it, the longing nights in rhone, the angry crowns in the metro.

i’m thinking about putting my arm around you, not because i like it there but so i can pull you in and you can rest your head on my shoulder. i’m thinking it would be a revelation, a sliver of moonlight from the blinds the neighbors peak through. i’m thinking that i like it when you smoke my cigarettes. ash it on me. put your ankles across my knees. i want your teeth to break my skin.

i’ve been thinking a lot about data. there is 125 gigabytes of data in my phone, 65 of it is text messages. i’m thinking about how much information we exchange, if that’s a way you can quantify a conversation. individuals are mostly measured in megabytes, over time, ratios being more important. i’m thinking about deleting some. i like to keep them to see if i’m saying things i used to say, thinking about them again. recursive, repetitive. i’m thinking yesterday today tomorrow look a lot alike but the clouds change and i’m thinking about how much data is in the clouds, how much conversation evaporates.

i’m thinking about making a move, i do not like songs with movements, i can say that safely now, write it in marker and not crayon. i like songs that cut harsh, key to key like a lockout, everything starts at once. i’m thinking about how yellow lights only warn about stopping. i’m thinking about morality, i’m thinking about bleeding for you. i’m thinking about almost writing a seatbelt metaphor and starting to crash. i’m thinking about thinking about you. i’m thinking about grief and guilt and perception. i’m thinking you hate that i’m not responding right now. i’m thinking about jealousy.

the study of thought is called logology. the study of time is called chronology. the speech at a funeral is called a eulogy. words are called prose or poetry or something.

i’m thinking about touching you.

first texts for coincidental tinder matches with your highschool crush - Ruyen Phan

The Q in LGBTQ+ stood for queer or questioning and I used to question whether or not I was queer until I found the answer in the beautifully oval face of the boy I sat next to in 8th period, 11th grade, Mr. Ali's english class. He taught me about ikigai. He could've been my reason for being but I'm the king of missed opportunities. And I miss you. I miss you like Harry missed 

Sally. I miss you like I forgot Your Name. I miss your Fresh Prince ass fade, your pearly white teeth, the way you laugh, do you still laugh the same way? 

I imagined trying on job fair button ups at H&M, cheering for you at track meets. I wanted to see you in the crowd at string light lit punk shows I’ll never be good enough to play at. I think I think about you inbetween handouts stuck into my japanese textbook. I think I think I wanna be your boi every time I listen to PWR BTTM. I think I'd be a good little spoon because I'm 5'4 and I'd have to stand on the tips of my toes to make out with you. 

I need one more day with you, naked, on top of me. You’re dead, your corpse is shambling through my thoughts, your rotted hand intertwined with mine, I’d rub cocoa butter all over your skin to bring you to life. You live as nine digits without a contact photo, you’ll have one if we meet again. And we’ll get ice cream, or paint our nails together, or you’ll taste the tobacco on my lips as I ash my lucky. You’re the answer sheet to lingering questions, a piece of paper, an object I thought I lost in high school. I’m still waiting on your reply.

Lament of the Malleable - Tyler Jones

We are born amorphous

We are all malleable denizens

Shaped as the world wills

Forged in the cesspools of peer pressure

Licked by the flames of our parents’ wishes

Impeded by the guile of strangers

Pigeonholed by tests with the supposed quality of prophecy

We graze about these grandiose fields ripe with fruits of opportunity and opposition

Perusing for ways to solidify ourselves, become statuesque

Who are we to be, we think?

Into this desperation does the fluid often sink

Violently thrashing about our brains

Looking for substance to quell the growing pains

We must be put into shackles posthaste

Or at the age of thirty thou might suffer an egregious fate

Still malleable but starting to seep into the Earth

Still roaming the lands of peer pressure

Influenced by a myriad of strangers

Alas by now thine parents have perished

Failing to avail thee of thine crucible

That which we are all forged through

What are we here for? And what should we do?

The vastness of possibilities

Deciphering the blueprints of well-read texts

Realizing identity cannot be strong-armed by self-help

Infinitely tearing you neuron by neuron

It is laborious to sift through

The paths you could tread on

Though we are malleable

Parts of thyself remain unchanged

A lack of confidence

And a dilapidated brain

This is a warning

A tidal wave of advice

Work through your identity now

Or be caught in this woeful vice

Do not die amorphous

You were born to be concrete

To be forged by your brilliance

Not by those who brandish deceit

Virtual Visits - Tyler Jones

Distant worlds ever close

At most, a button away

Dive in my stranger

Dodge sleep, dimension cleaver

Rend pixels, mend death, spend time

Dodge real world troubles

Dodge mental health woes and

Dodge physical blows

Keep strong, play long, sing the songs

Make-believe bends the borders

Deep in thine own room

Feel the binary birds

Swoop, over the worlds, the TV

Entombs, dig deeper, unearth

Truths shrouded in digital

better - Carly Burczak

too observant, keeping you honest, needing a good fuck and wanting me to tell you.

new girl, relationship advice, you want me to meet her and tell you what i think.

3 hours and you’re saying: i think you should give me a call if you’re like, 30 and still a virgin.

im desirable and intellectual and your best friend. i’m all those things anyway. 

it doesn't make my heart inconsolable anymore, and i’m doing better. 

i’m doing better, i’m doing better. i’m doing 

better. a little happiness dissolves abundance. 

im forgetting people. im forgetting to eat. 

we talk in circles, straight lines, and crosses. it’s almost easter and i’m laid bare by circumstance.

will you come to my wedding? have you ever been in love? 

fuck you. get off the cross. 

if you two ever met you’d kill each other, but i’ll be selfish. 

i want the first pull of the trigger 

set close enough to see recognition in the green reflected back at me. 

i want it personal. 

i want it detached. 

i want it like crying on the balcony while you sleep and apologizing when you wake.

like asking about sexual fantasies and pretending we haven’t thought about the other.

like you can hate me, if you feel like. 

—————- 

you asked to see me smoke and all we’ve ever been is clear with each other so i exhaled at the camera. this mirror isn’t the same. 

cigarettes taste different now. 

watch him open his mouth, letting me in. 

everything is better in contradiction. 

i’m doing better.

Untitled - Hannah Karim

growing up is loose teeth pulled too soon, and the sun that scrapes your eyes, bringing you to your guilt-drenched knees. growing up is hair chopped with your mother’s crafting scissors because you can’t cut what actually hurts and the stylist down the street charges $40 and the therapist across town asks for more. growing up is your mother telling you that she is doing her best and not yet understanding this is as much a plea for forgiveness as it is a vindication as it is the truth. growing up is rapid beats per minute of a tattoo gun on virgin skin and the crumpled of notes of how i used to feel. growing up is learning that love is the cigarette and hate is the smoke that inevitably swallows you whole. growing up is saying i love you to each other and meaning it from the worn down soles of matching pairs of white converse because love has not yet proven itself more hypothesis than truth.