Water Birth
By JoAnn BalingitThere’s no usurping her pain
now the baby’s head is crowning
mom mom mom mom mom
no panting I say
take deep breaths through your nose
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Body Under Another’s Tradition
By Aliah Lavonne TighEveryone in Anatomy pairs up,
receives a small baby pig.
The scalpel shines like water or a mirror—if you look, you see
yourself: gloved hand pushing a blade to open
the other animal’s chest. Someone drops
a knife, shouts,
Clean it up. This is how we learn to
dissect a body.
Performativity
By Kat AbdallahMy teachers ask me
after seven months of genocide
if I’m holding up alright.
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Chasing Helicopters on the Way Home from a Bowl of Spaghetti
By Robin GowSomeone I love is turning into an asterisk
and so I am running and the vultures are
as hungry as they’ve ever been. The size of genders.
The size of fatherhoods.
Training Wheels
By Joanna Acevedo“I just wanted to check in with you about your friend who passed,” my therapist says at the end of our session. “Yeah, he’s still dead,” I quip. We share a long laugh.
How to make salabat
By Kay Ulanday BarrettHoy! Listen, This is how to cut ginger, it’s a root, she said from
Chicago basement on first snow of the year. It’s the 90’s. Snow is
a big deal. Tear salt missing ocean salt, she cleared her throat.
Based on where we’re from, nothing can prepare us for frozen.
Fast forward: college friend asks How do you make that tea again?
The one you used to drink when it started to snow.
Stem Cell Transplant as Chimera
By Walela NehandaI am run ragged by another woman’s
immunity transplanted inside me.
I am not myself on a cellular level.
Somewhere, in my biology.
I am in Greece. I am a good woman.
Thirty five and Santorini chic.
Emotional Wasteland
By Suzi F. GarciaIt is April now, with its mix of sweet and snow. I stand barefoot on an apartment patio to vape. My toes curl on themselves to fight off the cold and my legs shake under my leggings. I have been drugged officially and unofficially, some would say gone, but I can feel light in my hips as they sway to the song I’m playing in my head.
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MOURN MEN WHO HAVE NOT TRIED TO KILL ME
By Gisselle YepesAnd in twenty-five days, we make a year without
Tio Freddy alive, without his flesh inhaling
cigarettes or bud once filled with wind
like that winter after Wela died, the only winter
we got with him here, we walked
every time we linked
downstairs to smoke, to watch the trees
mirror our empty.
Sick pastoral: a sick ecology poem
By Kay Ulanday BarrettThen how does candy spill? This way? Stare at the sky
as the MyChart results record blood levels. Peach laden,
cherry lacquer, lilac blossom marathon more at a window
sill on any almost-evening in... what month is it? When
statistics splay, when the masks are forgotten, there'll be
more of us we'll have to teach: catheters are ivy, monstera
fenestration consoles when you're on hold with the pharmacy
again.