You will show no signs of weaknesses. There is power in your womanhood. You of pants on a first date, of fight classes, of weaponry.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Jennifer Lynn Krohn
they want a corpse, / a girl who'll only grow / skinnier with rot. A girl / who will disappear / into a handful of dust.
Read MoreAdventures of Ghost Girl by M Jaime Zuckerman
She longs / for the feeling of slipping / between fresh sheets & lying there / like a clean corpse.
Read MoreAnswer Woman by Michael Chin
The extent of what she knew for sure about her past was trapped inside the glass dome of a snow globe, the weight at the bottom of her rucksack for every move she had made.
Read MoreWomen's Work by Celeste Colgan
I never learned. In a year’s time, Mother, Buck, and the chicken coop were gone. Aunt Betty bought chickens already drawn at the meat counter. I thought a lot about beheadings.
Read MoreDoor Girl by Candace Jane Opper
The whole institution seemed to exist by and for men, particularly male musicians, and more particularly male musicians who’d fully bought into the fantasy of rock and roll, which essentially resembles the kind of up-all-night debauchery romanticized in Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical Almost Famous.
Read MoreThe Only Thing Left by Thomas Price
I know it seems odd that that long, strong bone in the leg can think, let alone feel, but it was still part of me, and as it lay in the bed, night into day and day into night, all it could wonder was, with so much of me gone, why hadn’t it been enough?
Read MoreA Normal Interview with Jubi Arriola-Headley by Arielle K. Jones
Kink has a more expansive meaning. … Kink as just that, sexual kinkiness. Kink as, the kink in Black folks’ hair. Kink as, a kink in the system. Kink as in, broke. So, I play off all the different ways that kink is a thing that we think about.
Read MoreBrief Histories by Joe Bonomo
These images commingle now in memory as my first headlong descent into the strangeness of grief.
Read MoreThree Poems by Sonia Feldman
the small birds stepping like dames / through the green aisles, / and the strawberry plants blushing / on the garden floor-- / I've never known another place / as animal for longing.
Read MoreBlack Cactus by Marc Tweed
The sun bathes the front of the shop in a new white light as he readies to open. A small gray bird has made its way in somehow, slamming itself repeatedly against the big spotless window and he uses a broom to gently prod it out the propped-open door to freedom.
Read MoreObituary (For my Cousin) by Emma Kaiser
He tried to form a band with a group that included my high school boyfriend, but kicked them all out of his house when they didn’t take the music as seriously as he did.
Read MoreA Man Explodes by John Honkala
They want answers. Did the man explode? Can a man explode? Why have you said nothing? Why is the press silent too? The man with the megaphone climbs a fence and calls to the police station.
Read MorePurple Flowers by Kira K. Homsher
I keep hoping a storm will come and sweep away all this clutter, all these dollhouse messes.
Read MoreOne Last Time by Cathy Luna
Memory doesn’t work like writing, one word at a time, one ant in a line. It’s more like a science-class filmstrip on fire in the projector, one image blooming orange-white and black into another.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Nicholas Gruber
i brush my cheek with a lover so bewildered by kissing, he detonates / my clenched gristle instead. in red honey clothes, i am similar flesh / & you know new lovers: always making do.
Read MoreA Normal Interview with Leah Silvieus and Lee Herrick, by Bradley Samore
For me, the way that I’ve learned to access faith or my relationship with God is primarily through poetry. It is this dynamic, ongoing process, and I think that that’s the way that faith has to live in me.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Robin LaMer Rahija
we forced open small holes and planted / their delicate bodies, covered / the white network / of translucent roots. / We watered them and waited.
Read MoreBulletproof by Bethany Marcel
Monica felt her soul leaving her body. It traveled up into the organic, free-range rafters, then looked down at Monica, and laughed and laughed.
Read MoreNature Morte by Michelle Orabona
Get out of the house, they said. Do something. Make something. Be something. They knew, they understood. But it was time, they said. We’re just trying to help, just looking out for you, just trying to help you move on, carry on, get through it, over it, past it.
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