I have always loved creating different kinds of characters from various generations, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic classes. I think it’s just a matter of doing those characters justice and treating them with empathy and compassion.
Read MorePregnancy, Art, and Censorship by Sarah Dalton
To the best of my knowledge, unless you include women’s private photo albums or personal social media feeds, there is no Madonna with Gestational Diabetes, Madonna of the Amniocentesis, or Madonna of the IV Tower and Labor and Delivery Room. I feel kinship with these images that portray the complexities of being pregnant. They challenge the demands for silence and censorship around experiences that do not follow the prescribed, imposed narrative of a joyful and celebratory pregnancy. These images revolve around loss, distress, powerlessness, a beauty often called grotesque, and, despite all its astonishing advances, a medical system that sometimes leaves more questions than answers.
Read MoreThree Poems by Mykki Rios
"how do you play hand games with ghosts/ expect souls to hopscotch the river styx/ let favorite toys become grave markers"
Read MorePusha Man by Evan Massey
“Breathe, dawg,” I declare to one hand-length worm. Because I want everyone and everything I love to breathe.
Read MoreReflection in the Waiting Room of the Dermatology Clinic by Lucas Jorgensen
"the only one/ whose shore has shifted, flesh expanding from one bone/ to the next. A jagged coast…"
Read MoreFridge stocked with food
Disordered Eating: A Chronological Annotated Bibliography by Mauri Pollard Johnson
At age eight, you watched an episode of Full House about dieting: D.J. eats ice pops and hangs pictures of thin models on her fridge; you know this is to bring awareness to the dangers of extreme dieting, but you keep these as techniques instead.
Read MoreHorses by Walter Weinschenk
"We run as one, staunch, impassive, each of us different, all the same: bay, roan, pinto, palomino, as many types as there are dreams imaginable but we rush as one array, jet-like above the gravely ground at horse-speed, a single panoply that thrusts forth in perpetual motion and straight pursuit, headlong into pitiless wind"
Read MoreAquifer by Sean Theodore Stewart
"When I spoke, I surprised myself by saying things I had been too bashful to admit to the aquifer before. I gushed. I waited for her response. The water enveloped me."
Read MoreA Normal Interview with Béatrice Szymkowiak by sami h. tripp
"I think art holds the power to shift and multiply perspectives, which the world desperately needs right now. Single-mindedness is dangerous. What I love about poetry in particular, is its capacity of subversion, of dissent, against ideas but also against language itself, as language and ideas are intertwined."
Read MoreThree Poems by Andrea JurjeviC
“Don’t cut the tongue—torn
strips conform smoother to the mold.”
HOW WAS SALLY ON THE NIGHT OF THE BREAKING? by Abigail Chang
Sally’s dresses were too big, they swallowed us, gobbled us up, we tied the cords too tight and they left these great, swooping Xs across our bodies. The day was drawn, frigid, there were goosebumps running across our arms. But Sally wasn’t there and couldn’t say anything. Sally was dead.
Read MoreFlorida Woman by Lenore Myka
The most frequent and famous of the stories sent to me wasn't about a Florida man but a Florida woman. A twenty-something former-model-turned-meth-addict, she'd been responsible for burning down a 3,500-year-old bald cypress tree which, at the time, was considered to be the oldest of its kind and the fifth oldest tree globally.
Read MorePOSTCARDS by Lee Campbell
Of Pumps and Death by Marcia Aldrich
I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
Read MoreIn the Rearview by Gaye Brown
When you become invisible, as widows do, you welcome opportunities to reappear.
Read MoreThe Sick Diet by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
because you left a good-bye note written on paper made of mummies.
Read MoreThe Elephant by Riley Kross
My wife kept to her alcove. I kept to my nook. The elephant played between us.
Read MoreThe Things Not Seen by Krista Lee Hanson
If you are going to stare. If we must be so visible. I want you to know some of the depth, the multitude, the layers of us.
Read MoreJoy and Pain, Sunshine and Rain: On Teaching/Reading Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Even when his poems take a darker turn, such as recalling the murder of a friend and colleague, or the bittersweet memory of a childhood crush who has since passed away—there are moments of true grace within these elegies—a slowing down, not in pacing but in memory’s leaps.
Read MoreThe Last Kiss by Lawdenmarc Decamora
I stay alive though, sensing velocity
as an ambulance would in a dream—
brisk, accidental. Remember the first time
your little bones cried for milk?