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Dear Trud,

Matthew Johnstone

To empty at / the bursted pollen, onto unevenly lit slabs,

head filled / with shade, how a currency of years in space

to close performances / attached. My hid specified from

work / & uninvolved in shippings of myself, less amid body,

my inventory / omits over counted shadows. It was warm

where you wane certain to / obsolete, still your earth tells

me that some proximity sifts / us through breaking grades.

Syrupy

Ivy Alvarez

Spine of the world: its curvature: sheer. Here. Consider each tangle. Impossible at this angle. A honeyed slickening, skin scaffolding, thin viscosity whips falling, how much vertigo our earth diverts, divests for the ceiling. So crystalline. Everything begs for a licking, a taste of armature, pure musculature, sweet architecture. Such a candied, candid space between these buildings. A teeth of stones, shadows, signposts. Blinds. A muscled bite. Concrete bones beneath each bright surface. Right. Simply scurfless. Open doors to cavities, decay, every roof shiny with condensation, haze. Let’s scoop the drops, boil it up. Reduce. Evaporate.

Night Prowl

Ion Corcos

I am a rattlesnake, wrapped in a purple blanket. A route over water and mountains. The forecast is for snow, half a world away. I am human with fire in my belly, burning wild. A mad dog, prowling the streets at night. It is raining now. It is snowing. My house is on fire. I am a tree holding a nest of eggs. A rattlesnake comes. Steals them. I will not hold fear, tend to it like a baby. It is snowing now. I hold a broken umbrella. An umbrella is a tree without spirit. There is someone in the dark.

Practicing in Snowshoes

Sonja Johanson

Focus your gaze
 on fur rippling
around your vision

 Heels press down
ovals of ash-splint
 sinew underfoot

Mittens, boiled wool
 caked in white crust
fingertips burning—

 Stone chapel, closed
c’est L’eglise
 the arched red door

Look up; snowflakes—
 they drift in,
settle on your boots

Mole

Caitlin Scarano

mother made of moles
hereditary cluster discolor
my back but she
stepped on another crack
vertebra snap clenched
wineglass my mother stole
my mirror for her scratching
post my next lover pocked
with fingerholes tears
in the corners of my mouth
babies in my teeth is every
shame sexual knees between
tall grass many organs
mutate father in his fist coat
wiping oil under
the archway caged bear I
revere claw luck talon
tuck Is it strange
for me to tell you
to make it hurt?

so big this deep reeling,

Annie Grizzle

 and   no   place   to   put  

it there was a wall I once miss find in difference over

ice and sweet easy

I hope I do I disappoint you

again and again and in seen through the straw

green fix at the site

of my legs in a towel

the gnawing has nowhere to climb anymore please

a million need looks confirm sea in me

Ariadne on Naxos

Eric Pankey

She hears the goat bells descend. It must be nightfall. Fireflies, little lamps snuffed and relit, survey the woods’ depths. The cloud-fed mosses on the ridge-edge grow inky black. Thumb-struck, the match flares brighter, noisier than it ought. She closes her eyes, untangles a maze’s abstruse distance into a line.

The Return of Odysseus

Eric Pankey

To gather the evening’s cool, the shutters are left open. All at once the cicadas, dumbstruck, cease. She turns toward the shore, senses a squall in the offing. In anticipation of a kiss, she swallows; touches her tongue to her lips. The moon sheds light as transparent as a threadbare dress.

Relax

Brad Rose

The sign in the window says Ladies dresses 70% off. Can’t be sure whether that’s an invitation or a warning. Like God, the cause of the incident is still under investigation.

Stop me if you’ve heard this story so many times, you can’t remember what it’s about. Administratively speaking, you’d do the same, if I were in your shoes. With the deluxe nightmare, it comes at no extra cost, excluding normal wear and tear.

I may look like I’m hiding in a drowning, but I’ve learned you can have an excellent memory, if you don’t spend all your time trying to forget. It’s as easy as an electrocution in standing water.

It’s such a beautiful evening tonight, don’t you think? The breeze, cool and slow, your eyes, dark dead stars. With my hand in yours, I feel relaxed as an ax lounging in blue sequined moonlight. The throat of the moon pulled out like a drawer.

five fragments

Kyle Kinaschuk

from selections

§XXV:

an encomium for
miscarried form

§XX:

i met u on the coast
with long hair, dull eyes

& u vibrated elegiac couplets
skimming pastures anew

for a monaulous
stressing to unstress time

like
penelope

§XXIX:

a pall of spondees & trochees
tonsured upon a dactylic head

§LXIII:

witnesses stand the coast
with sculpted bodies

breaking texts
& injured brochures

healthy growth
atop the coastal city

blow the foam ribs

§III:

o, the tips of the
wounded faces

& when you look back
your loved one will

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