by Mykyta Ryzhykh

“i call a light bulb the sun and I don't see new likes thus because no one loves me / now / and my late grandma and grandpa can't dodge anything anymore / and my late grandparents will never see anything again”

by Jessica Brauer

“Dead weight of unspoken screams echo back / from a body in the other chair. / 36 inches between our toes / might as well be none. / Your feet are mine. / My blisters yours.”

by Maura Way

“This is not my white noise— / spliced into rife silence / my ear inserts a dusty, wordless chorus / to break the blades’ grueling, / birdcall-killing drone…”

by Sophia Papasouliotis

“We count our lives in endless days that taste / of cheap orange squash / and resentment - bitter on the / tongue, medicine ceremoniously swallowed / then spat under the running tap.”

by Patricia Russo

“I put my suitcase on the floor, / my backpack on the bed, / knowing full well / the house was loud with ghosts…”

by J. Alan Nelson

“in the black silt of oceans, / or buried under Arctic snow / that no one will ever shovel away.” 

by Allen Forrest

“Experience is what you get, / when you don't get what you want.”

by Maxwell Bauman

“The mighty Kraken drags long ancient tentacles; / the remains of sunken ship stick to suction cups.”

by Trae Stewart

“Inside, tea burns amber, / tilted toward spellcraft, / sugar dissolved beyond consent. / Mint rises—green constellations,
leaves bruised by deliberate fingers, / knowledge transferred skin to skin.”

by Matt Zambito

“Your ticking / heart? Thanks to / plagues of / gloom, it’s gone / beyond zombie, / you’ve died inside…”

by John Horvath Jr

“My father told / it never snowed / where he was young / but the drifts were / five-foot-six deep.”

by Robert L. Singer

“I took a survey of the ghosts / Who undermine long rooms at night / A sighting of simply scarce / Bastards floating freely as you think / Yes, you’re the late one so / Enter the performance…”

by Mike Wilson

“He gathers red feathers of rage for flight / and launches on wings of hate in a hologram / soaring above the Capital, beyond the reach / of the Constitution, a scarlet vulture singing / a song to make mobs spin around him, the / May Pole of mayhem, enthralled and armed / for a giddy carnival ride”

by Jim Murdoch

“I really don’t think / cats know / how dreams / are supposed to work / but more fool dream me / for expecting more.”

by Mykki Rios

“cake darkened with cocoa / to resemble the woods around the babes / who wander from the narrow path / with red hoods and breadcrumb trails / in the dark…”

by Susan Demarest

“Then Ugolino, who was gnawing the back / of the Archbishop’s head, confessed he’d eaten / his children after the Archbishop had starved them to death, / and I thought God, it doesn’t get much worse than that…”

by Patrick Trombly

“When the rain comes, / they stay perched / and wait out the tempest.”

by Yucheng Tao

“In this cruel winter, / only Shiva — the puppeteer of death / remains expressionless.”

by Britni Newton

“What is desire? A wine bottle without a migraine. / What is desire? A warm meal cooked together. / What is desire? The complete stranger who stays.”

by Akhila Pingali

“The rain / shrieked in sharp pelts on tin shed and
kiln-hardened brick and I did not sing / to her, black bird that I am. Did not / speak to her again of the motherhood”