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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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Burning Haibun After Geryon
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…
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Cuates
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…
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Someday I’ll Stop Killing Diannely Antigua
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…
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I Look At Everyone Like This
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…
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Aloe
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…
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Ceremony
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…
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Enter the Ghost
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…
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“Sorry. I Can’t Come Into Work Today.”
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…
