Category: 17.2

by CD Eskilson Night quiets in his ruby look. Night dispersed as snowmelt, wings stretched and imitating flight. A soughing stretches between pines. He recalls the chime-like startle when it happens. Recalls a boy’s ache of what is owed. His throat recalls pruned orchids, something earned with excise. How he clipped the red curls off…

by Jose Hernandez Diaz When my twin brother tells me stories aboutHis troubled youth: running with gangs, drugs, etc. I think how lucky he is, and I am, and the family isThat nothing worse happened to him. I know he’s Actually a good guy, even though he ran with wolves.I think he was just looking for companionship. He…

by Diannely Antigua after Ocean Vuong/ after Roger Reeves/ after Frank O’Hara   This isn’t an apology but rather a confession:I loved your body before I was born. I counted your future fingers and toes, touchedyour hands before they ever touched another’s, my left in your right, and we slept in the womb that existsbefore wombs, mouth pressed…

by Shauna Barbosa If I say his name then I’d have to hear mine, how he says it, unintentional and mispronounced and from behind his gold frames, all eyes. I don’t notice he’s sweating until he tells me he’s sweating. Says he walked twenty-five minutes down undone hills from his hotel to mine, in a…

by Shauna Barbosa I don’t touch the earth every year. A soil break a soil live. I’ve been described as last minute and weak with the ocean welling up inside my womb. Sun whore crossing an incredible credible bridge closer to nearly clothed freeing weaning ground closer to me. Memory bows to rage. If climbing…

by Omotara James How do I love1 this body?Cradle it in gauze, like a thirddegree burn? My mother loves2 my fatto be covered, specificallythe affected areas:arms, belly, back and thighs.The darker the meat, the morevulnerable to light. Her hands,the first to sheathe and swaddle.Her wrists, weaving the inauguralspells. Her fingers, holding the spoonI open my…

by S. Yarberry The roadkill-deer has its neckslung back— nose to spine—throat taut, the skinunbroken, but barely. I’d say it was swooningaristocratically. Graceful—balletic. When we first met,you would text me:u make me swoon. Of course,I would think: u make me swan.B/c? Why not? I revelin false cognates—An aesthetic bird, the swan.Aggressive. Violent. Beautiful.The soft hook of…

by Faylita Hicks Lying in my bed beneath the covers, the hours turninto pools of years—sans distinction. If I stay here long enough, still enough,I can hear the cloud of my own ocean aching to fill my crowded nook.The waves of my pulse easing its way up the sand of my legs,up the sand of my hands, into the…

by Faylita Hicks If I am in Albuquerque, it is to borrowtime as a reclaimed silhouette of womxn singing in my lover’s entryway—a cloud,heavy—over the headboards. Look I am here now. An ache gyrating through the artist’s studioin Houston, jerking on a bear-backed rug, my fat breasts in my lover’s hands like wet bowls of feathers.What smokes more…

by Katie Berta as many of them as I’ve eaten, to the chagrin of my husband,who eats every meal: meat and carrots meat and carrots meat and carrots.Now I buy the fancier ones, not the Hot Pockets of my childhood but vegetarian kormaand vegan lasagna and Thai coconut soup heated with a plate over its…