Poetry
That Monster Beneath the Bed
by Beth Cato in Issue Seven, November 2022
bedtime is the worst
mama off giggling and cooing
with her latest boyfriend
me sent to my room
ordered not to come out
the thing beneath my bed
oozes out and wants to talk
about stupid stuff like
what I learned at school
what I watched on TV
how I should do my hair
I tell it to shut up
a...
S— Estate, After
by Sarah Cannavo in Issue Seven, November 2022
First published in Literary Hatchet, Issue 22
The dark house sits brooding, high on the hill;
heedless of time passing, of age and decay,
my love walked its halls—he’s roaming them still.
As spiders spin webs from windows to sills,
as velvet tapestries fade and fray,
the dark house sits broodin...
Paradiso: A Found Cyborg Poem
by Tiffany Morris in Issue Seven, November 2022
(taken from 2020s advertisements)
it’s written in the stars:
the ingeniously simple
magnetic mechanism
of the making process —
a depth of field
stitching together
trees, mythology —
cosmic archetypes
adjustable and buzzing.
the orchestra of the future
emerges through dream
in underlying ...
One-Way, Through the Fire
by Lin Darrow in Issue Seven, November 2022
It’s the first thing they tell you in Temporal Navigation 101:
Time is water,
But it knows no gentle ebb,
Only the rage and riot of rapids.
You can’t go back, the Temporists say;
The currents are too strong.
On this, the handbooks are agreed: don’t cling to lost time.
Drift forward, travel on...
My FEMA trailer
by Gary Bloom in Issue Seven, November 2022
Early in the morning
I can hear my neighbor’s TV
Reverberating through the tin foil
Walls of her FEMA trailer
And into my own
Consciousness
Lying on the paper thin mattress
In my own FEMA trailer.
We are together
In a trailer park built
On the ruins of Katrina
And no matter what
They say...
Little Arson Grasses
by Jennifer Crow in Issue Seven, November 2022
If you love me, you will burn.
Put your cheek against mine
and feel the heat my bones
release into the world. We plant
ourselves in dry soil and gather
water from every deep and shallow
source, and our thirst grows
like the weeds between rows
of corn, and the river sinks
between the stones ...
In and out of water
by Overcomer Ibiteye in Issue Seven, November 2022
There’s a fierce audacity about water:
the way it barges into palimpsest buildings unannounced
the way the buildings are sucked into a void
the way the water barrels our bodies into a concave
cross-referencing us with open tombs.
There are different ways to view the sea,
different ways to zigz...
Two Beaches
by Devin Miller in Issue Six, September 2022
I want to show you the beach
that has been with me since I was in utero.
Now I carry it inside me in my turn:
the rocks, the barnacles with their
fronds and sharp edges,
the shards of bathroom tile and blackboard,
the mud and grabbing kelp and broken shells,
the living sand dollars and starfish and...
Skyscraper
by Annika Barranti Klein in Issue Six, September 2022
First published in Fireside Quarterly, January 2020
I was thinking today of a
world without traffic lights
where pushing the button
on the dashboard for recirculated air
would send the carbon dioxide
we breathe out from the cabin
into a special compartment full
of plants and the compartment would
be...
send down the rain is no song when the belly goes to war
by the_people in Issue Six, September 2022
zephyr sings a lullaby into my body
that she may light my eyes and dulcify my tongue
don't listen to her—
the aphorism of my stomach roared in hurt
and reluctantly, i was submerged in its words:
that a lay cannot quench the lust for bread
the lyrics to sweet melodies won't enchant
food into my ...