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Postpartum April
by Anna Meister baby fights throughpainful growth newunderstanding worldexpanding like a capsule-turned-foam-horse-in-wateragain he settleson a sleepless weo so symbiotico wonder week shushed but not savedin the blue-black roomwe relocatei picture my eyes scooped outwith a melon ballerthe thought comforts me now halfway throughmy hours i teeterjust this side of dangerouscould never say aloudall of what the brain…
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Drought
by Jane Morton There was the time I drove the car into the creek.And then the time I was the creek and almostdrowned. There was a year that turned the creek tostone. It wound its way through woods that aren’tquite woods. Trees too pale and nervous to be trees,and grass that reached up taller than …
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My Therapist Asks Why I Think I Didn’t Deserve the Assault
by Anthony Aguero Night breezes seem to whisper, “I love you”There is a soft kiss that is easily mistaken for a whisper and the night dragging along like abody in the middle of some desert I no longer belong to. Dream a little dream of meI no longer belong to. I shut my eyes and sharp blades of…
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The Inscrutable Illness of Things
by Satya Dash My grandmother often in bouts of angerturned stone pink in silence, quietlyremarking: it’s impossible to silencesilence. It took me years to understandmy awe for the way she could deal a nounits own verb. I think about the last yearsshe spent paralyzed, a body washed slowby warm cods of light, preparing for deaththe…
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Elegy: to the boys of before
by Marie Baléo After nailing a dead rose to the wall, she puts down her hammerand wrings her hands, shipwrecked; speaks of her father,how he once shot a boy in the head. The child had seen whathe shouldn’t have, she says. He was bound to betray them, menof the maquis who spent nights scheming by…
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Days of Candy
by Caleb Nichols Of course the oranges you picked tasted like candy.I tasted them days later,days later thought of you,how we wrote the new moon,spoke it; how the fire refusedto be put out. A green flame—boron burning you said,a green flame, then blue,how does a blue flame taste?How the sky tastes at sunset—softpinks, orange creams—the…
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A Bedtime Story about the Heart
by Laura Villareal The only thing sensible about the heart is its shoes. When the heart is sent away from home it only takes a small brown suitcase filled with air— the reason is unclear, but like I said, the only thing sensible about the heart is its little white sneakers. Every heart starts out like this—with pristine shoes…
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Rain teaches us
by Aleš Šteger, translated by Brian Henry Rain teaches us:Don’t search, place yourself in the rain. It teaches us, rain, how to scatterThe clouds inside us.For whom does it rain from a clear sky? Rain tells us:Every correction is a detour.They are only approximations of large storms. It secretly confided in me:For others, I will…
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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…