My Dead
By Arisa WhiteEverybody she died another is dead everybody
dead and AIDS of AIDS my dead she is
there are more I know with the same story hiding
lips stitched hesitant to speak of someone you knew
Search Results
Walls and Mirrors, Fall 1982
By Deborah ParedezThe English translation of my surname is walls
misspelled, the original s turned to its mirrored
twin, the z the beginning of the sound for sleep.
_139_134_c1_smart_scale.jpg)
In a Thicket of Body-Bent Grass
By Jessica JacobsArkansas is aspic with last-gasp summer, making running
like tunneling: the trail’s air a gelatin
of trapped trajectories.
The River Wanderer
By Yona HarveyThere was a river turned to Goddess. Was kin to river turned to Flame.
As a child I dreamt that river. None could keep me from that vision.
They lowered me in the Mighty Waters. Lowered me in the Creek of Shame.
impermanence
By sam saxsometimes i wonder what happens to people’s hands when they disappear
in their pockets. of course, my rational brain knows they go on being hands
but there’s still the question. i wonder if object permanence isn’t the biggest
trick of them all, a scam, a way to ground the brain in its thin bath of liquid
_139_134_c1_smart_scale.jpg)
Six
By Ely ShipleyThe neck of the guitar stretches
out, every other fret painted with a sharp
dot or dash, flash after flash
of reflected light, marble or pearl, the shape
of a fingerprint, ...
THE NINE
By Tara HardyThey call it dissociation.
I call it THE NINE (children)
who live inside me.
Each of them encased
in amber, frozen in a mosquito-pose
philosophically immune
By Evie Shockleycan i deduce the nature of humanity from the relationship of american and multinational pharmaceutical corporations to african women with hiv?
En la Casa de Mami Tita
By Tatiana Figueroa RamirezI wake up to the alarm clocks
of cocks & gallinas struggling
for their corner of the callejón.
Step out
on the preheated concrete.
Faux Feminism
By Lauren (Lo) Maytwitter feminists will scream
my brown eyes be beautiful
while labeling the grey and green “exotic”
love my “black girl afro” when it's plucked and fluffy