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Aphrodite as a Fat Woman
By Elizabeth Higgins I. Seventh grade humanities class. Ancient Greece.Each table group is a city-state. Each teacher is a god. I sit in the southeast corner of Corinth.Our teacher stands in front of the class and tells us she is Aphrodite. There’s snickering because the idea is absurd,the comedic formula familiar: fat woman thinks she’s…
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My Mother & I Put Our Differences Aside to Poison Benjamin Netanyahu’s Fish Tacos
by Ivy Raff You mean you could poison anyone on earth& you didn’t choose me? Her mouth an O.She wasn’t wholly wrong: temptation it wasto flick a grain of cyanide salt at its center. We got bigger fish to fry, ma. She didn’tlaugh at the pun. I sprinkledthe poison into the batter. Adjusted my KN-95against…
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I Second Guess Religion in Place of Humanity
by Nnadi Samuel Ma is unrehearsed mayhem:vendor of uppercut & jawbreaking kicks.attacks with both twins strapped to her back.infamous for pulling off wigs at the market place. she that volatile. though gentle, if a brawl profitsor leaves her littlun in safer hands. Ma tells me ‘stay’,tells me, I wasn’t raised to demand from the government…
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after afterimages
by Mack Rogers when you were a kid you played too many video games & the pixels got stuck in your eyes. your mother told you stop staring at them screens so much, boy. & you tried to stop but it got worse when you played less & played more. they came from the television…
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It’s so Quiet
by Dmitry Blizniuk The darkness thickens diagonallyas if someone plays Paganini’s caprice on the violinwithout strings, without lacquered cartilages,without hands or a bow,on the pure vibrating clot of shadows.I want to come to the open windowand take a big lump of the blue sky,dazzling bright, cooling down, with my bare hands.Anti-evening.An anti-moth flies into the light…
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You ask me to cut your dreadlock in half
by Shana Hill When you turn forty-six, I halve it with a blunt scissorI dread history, thick like the rings of a treeWhen you were sixteen, I was lonely for you sisterWhen you turn forty-six, I have you with a blunt scissorIt smells like children running, the lock on the floorI stare into its mustard…
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Of Shame Withheld, Apocryphal
by Tuhin Bhowal Already my belly looks like something to tolerate. The navel; a wormhole —head of figs when plucked raw. Golden beard lacing only the left side of My face. Burgundy, huh, says the barber before touching, one more time after the trim,his scissor-hands paying attention, like an average mind to an anomaly. Ballslarge…
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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
by Matthew Tuckner It’s true, I will most likely die in starchy sheets completely foreign to me, but what am I to do,for now, with this onion-light reaching through the crosshatch of conifer & hornbeam I only notice because I wish to be ordained with the truth, absolutely smothered in it, like the student who came to me crying…
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Postcolonial Beauty Contrapuntal
by Jemma Leigh Roe the way moves through streetsheat-stained i breathethe stagnant fumes— man’s greed, a mane of smoke—unfed by the cravingof mammonmy own hunger withers on a fruitless vinewhile truth bloomsin the jacaranda my mothergrew. be my mother. my mother has died. i have onlyher beads, not her strong handsor long black hairthe scent of hyssop and jasmine.the…
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The Long Way Down
by Abigail Chang I was stagnant for so longthat everything quit blooming, andI could no longer get a sunburn or a credit card.Through the eye-hole, I spied onall these dark theaterswith slimy popcorn and plasticked wallpaper, not caringthat every film was almost over, that the creditswere already spinning by.And all the nights I missed,the outings…
