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Fearfully unmade
by Erica Charis-Molling In the beginning,god unsaid the dark.He drew in a long breathand unemptied his lungs.And the spirit of godunfloated, while the waterswallowed her, untroubled. In the beginning,god unmorned the nightand unmooned the day.God disconnected waterfrom water, breakingthe blue in two. God pulledback the sea from the landas the waves dug clingingfingers in the sand,…
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Yolanda & Selena Don’t Talk Anymore
by Melissa Lozada-Oliva I stopped you just in time.Now you’ll be remembered.They’ll never hear me sing.Most of the time,I’m a Villainor a lesbian.Jealousy revealsa polaroid of the women I am not.When I called you a “Bitch!”and shot youWhat I meant was,“Love!”I just didn’t want you to go.In another life,I am someone I can be proud…
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My Mouth Is the Mouth of a River
by torrin a. greathouse Language is a slick-tongued thing, how you can say thirst & mean instead desire. But hasn’tlanguage always led the mouth back to what fills it? Between the teeth, there’s a dozen paths to every meaning. Do you follow? I can say the oldest profession & mean I’ve made a living in…
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Inhabited
by Kathleen McNamara It’s late March, 1936, on a farm in Wald, Switzerland, a village in the canton of Zürich. A thirty-one-year-old woman, nine months pregnant for the first time, begins to feel a warm pulse of back pain snake around her hips. This is the start of labor: contractions that require silence to bear,…
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Such a Good Man
by Dustin M. Hoffman They told Eggy they’d be calling the cops soon if their missing kid didn’t appear in the next ten minutes. Eggy knew their type, fussy helicopter parents, the rich kind raised on fistfuls of pills and internet, who could afford to be chronically anxious about terrorism and plastic straws in the…
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Mail-Order Groom
by Lisa Low after Ali Wong I flip through a catalog of mail-order grooms. I want one from a colonizing country, the whiter the better. I want the hair & disposition of a golden retriever. I want money sprouting from his follicles like Rapunzel. I want him strong & soft as a rope of hair. Like toilet paper. I want his last name changed to…
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Exegesis on a Chicken Wing
by Quintin Collins Pull apart the fleshbetween drumette, wingette.Rip and tear the meat with your teeth and fingers,cheeks greasy if you eatchicken wings the right way. From end to end,a linear timelineof fat, gristle, skin as you stretch the wingstraight. The spanfrom the ax to the chicken’s neck —we expect no bloodin the pan of wings from Sharks,no reminder…
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black as: portal
by Kemi Alabi and even their pitch was a fever became essential shouts we can live on a bill the bodyowes for our magic all living would fall apart without our Black greasing the way between home and home grief our thickwater spirit vision double shifts Black motherblue back home Kemi…
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black as: wound
by Kemi Alabi Not all of us survived. Grief came home, back to our throats, our lungs. Grief been Black—blue Black. Tires-bald-between-work-and-home Black. Monday-through-Sunday-double-shifts Black. Asked about those visions—if spirits still slicked my mother’s sleep—and she said she’s too tired to dream. Too-tired-to-see-nothing-but Black. Grief came home, to our lead-thick water, our Big-Mac-breakfast-greasing-the-way-between-work-and-home-and-work-and-home Black. Begged…
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On Seeing My Favorite Instagram Lesbian Couple Has Broken Up, I Begin to Question Love & Thereafter Unravel
by Gabrielle Hogan i’m a man of romance.give me a bear,i will split it in two & give you the better half, the half with the teeth & the heart with all its ventricles & coils. that’s how much i like you.look at you.upturned car in the desert, smoke- leaked, tarmac-hot. engine neutered, tires fattened by heat. let’s make fat wrecks of each…
