Cold Open
By Olatunde OsinaikeThree stories below,
you’d mosey in, depart
in the same way:
short of our buzz or us
letting you in.
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By Gauri Awasthimy friend is dying of an invisible darkness
it’s either depression or loneliness or plain facts:
a) Her cancer-smitten grandpa wants her to marry
b) We think she’s queer, but she can’t be sure
c) She has only two reasons to live and one of them
happens to be me.
Speaking of History
By Simon ShiehSpeaking of History
I don’t want to say too much
[ ]
Your absence made the train car redolent of history
Washateria Blues
By Farrah FangIn Houston they don’t really call it a laundromat
It’s a washateria or la lavandería
Today you go to the one on Airline and Tidwell
The chronic pain and weakness in your body
Makes it difficult to relocate canastos of clothes
From home to your car, to the washateria, to inside the machine
Winter Solstice
By Jonny TeklitToday, the rain comes down in icy fangs. Tomorrow, the same. Nothing here escapes the physics of American violence, not even the weather.
For Gaza
By Noʻu RevillaWe drink this and share the same taste with you.
We mixed the kava in the parking lot, face-to-face with you.
What becomes of children who drink war instead of water?
The rubble, a chronic obituary. I will never waste a name with you.
Sexualwissenschaft
By Miller ObermanPreposition, before location. An indeclinable
word or particle. Indeclinable. That which
cannot be turned aside or shunned. Inevitable,
un-deviating. I practice a kind
of time travel. Bringing beside me
ancestors I never knew existed before,
beneath, under, towards. This travel
unimpacted by time, space or death.
There Is Only One World, This One
By S. J. GhausNearby a spring lamb wobbles
like a song on its first feet, while
somewhere in the same field a lamb dies
in its mother’s womb. This season is all
one choir, the geese on the roof, the ticks
in the grass, the shadowy black
of sunflower seeds oversleeping
in my pocket.
New Exile Poems
By Tuhin Das1.
I am a writer,
the light burns late
into the night in my room.
Silhouette
By Ladan OsmanI enter: carpet, curtains,
large, framed pictures of robed white men,
a glassy glare over a forehead, below the voice box,
students in bland shades.
I don’t belong, the luxury of thinking,
the wealth of talking about thought,
privilege of ease among important people.