Um yes it’s possible to fall in love in three sentences
in line for the bathroom at Manny’s, full bladder

rearing to go you do selfless things like let the star of the show
cut you in line, it was Alex Edelman. He was crazed & jogging

on stage but in line he was a white deer, i know
because in 1949 Charles Howard bought 53 albino deer

ten bucks a pop & released them to kill for fun
near Point Reyes, but some survived & i pulled up

a few years ago to a lot in Olema – saw the moon thing
glowing elk reindeer just standing there in my headlights like Alex Edelman

blinking at me sweet in line & i said you should definitely cut me, so he said couldn’t possibly
so i said go on & he went since it was 5:30 & the thing was starting

at 5:30 but probably 5:29 i built a house in his dewy gaze & by 5:30
we’d lived our whole lives together in it – real true

love, always for me. I’d say it’s my problem but this French philosopher
Gabriel Marcel, says swap “mystery” for “problem,” see

what happens. It’s my mystery. It is. I’ve got this guy in LA
writes me vignettes on God & we talk

sometimes his hair is worth living for. Or what about that director
in New York i met in silence, my boyfriend

in Berkeley, super weird but intriguing in this Neptune type
of way. Did you ever hear “Dirty Girl” that FELT song

where Murs and Slug sing verse for verse about girl after girl?
There really aren’t enough stanzas like that in women’s poetry

& i’m making up for it – call it Dirty Boy
i’ll go on & on about all my mysteries.

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Genevieve Greinetz is a San Francisco based poet who lives near the sea. Her poems appear in NELLE, Honey Literary, NomadArtx, Jokes Literary, and Pink Disco, among other publications. Genevieve’s first full length collection is forthcoming in 2025.

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Anna Boughtwood is a poet and fiber artist living in Albany NY. Her writing has appeared in Hypersaturation, Impostor, and Beaver Magazine. She enjoys reading and working on elaborate knitting projects.

Give me more wine, bloody
like the stain of Fosse on Pippin’s hands. Give me Ben Vereen,
sex made incarnate
singing of Charlemagne’s addiction to dopamine and
glory.

Bread/like security/a trigger in the
lizard brain/reward me/decadence trickling
from gaping mouths, the viscous juice of
supple fruit/dripping down chins/onto
breasts/hunger/licking/satiation

Give me Dionysus, God of madness, God of
ecstasy. Give me Dionysus, the frenzied
cult of souls, the ecstasy of worship.

Hedonism/hedonism/pleasure/glinting off
golden headdresses/communal rapture as the last high
and delirium, delirium
to avoid the sunrise.

Give me Zarathustra, the ubermensch, he who is
a seizure of power, the overcoming
of mediocrity. Give me a deity to
venerate, to kill.

Men and men and women and
/fucking/
limbs twining among limbs/byzantine paths of
thighs and tongues and
climbing/to climax/to clarity

Give me a Bacchanal, to
forget the Buddhist suffering in this world. Give me
a Bacchanal,
because I just want to feel.

And I can only feel/
when I feel to excess/
like the long-ago followers
of Bacchus, ascending to rapture
and praying for conception
on the dawn of equinox
at the birth of spring.

---

Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) resides in Philadelphia with her children and soulmate. She is the author of “The Wendigo of Wall Street,” a novella forthcoming with Emerge Literary Press. Shannon is a former Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy and a multi-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. Shannon was recently a finalist for the Ohio State University Press Journal Non/Fiction Prize. Follow her on her website at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks

On this leaden day
my husband cuts
and brings inside
a fistful of daffodils
frilled and yellow
as the organza dress
my grandmother
gifted me when I
was three or four,
the one that itched—
I never was a very
girly girl. They bear
a floral perfume,
a high whine, with
a lower coffee note,
like a scented lady
at the theater in
the seat next to you
and nowhere to go;
it’s strong enough
to dissuade the deer
and they eat
almost anything.
They almost glow
in my white kitchen,
turn million dollar
smiles at my
seasonal malaise.
I can’t stay mad.
Yes, it’s just
stupid April,
but what else
have we got?

---

Marjorie Tesser’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Cutleaf, Sunspot Literary, Molecule, SWWIM, and others.  Marjorie earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and won a John B. Santoianni Award from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, co-editor of three anthologies of poetry and prose, and editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. More info at linktr.ee/marjorietesser

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Lauren Saxon is a queer, Black poet and engineer living in Portland, ME. She loves her cats, her Subaru, and spending way too much time online. Lauren’s work is featured in Barrelhouse, Empty Mirror, Across the Margin, Homology Lit, and more. Her debut chapbook, “You’re My Favorite” won the 2023 Maine Literary Award for Book of Poetry, and is out now with Thirty West Publishing. 

They make the most of the raw
poverty of our breath, taking
leave from the blighted canyons
of our lungs and, in haunting
timbre, give eloquent voice to
anguish. Barely able to hide
their sadness, they make visible
the holes in our hearts, our bent
towards darkness and the beautiful
blemish of afflictions that often
come upon us like a sudden
abundance of dusk rising through
a narrow embouchure or the
moist lip of a wooden reed.

---

John Muro is a resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate. Since 2021, he has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Award, and, most recently, he was a Grantchester Award winner. John has published two volumes of poems – In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite – in 2020 and 2022, respectively. John’s work has been featured in such journals as Acumen, Barnstorm, Delmarva, Grey Sparrow, River Heron, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review.

---

This poem previously appeared in Sky Island.

---

Kate Cavanaugh is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

1.

The very best Abraham Lincoln
impersonator announces
the release of a firstperson
shooter
as presidential assassin game to a
full cineplex arcade lobby
on new year’s eve.
Concessions pushes peach ring gummies
& candy cigarettes
signifying the burning of Atlanta.

The JFK impersonator discovered
at a downtown Dunkin Donuts
was cordially uninvited
lastminute,
but shows up
anyway. His headwound costume
sparkles in the jumpy light. He speaks about how
American it is to assassinate
surely just as American
as becoming president.

The photographers ask
the two impersonators to stand sidebyside
so that the window of their two heads
together will make a model unit
described as “the perfect target”.

2.

The gamer can choose
to play a typical American with a gun or a
president. The president’s gun is a speech. No
one has yet chosen to be a president. To redeem
lives a typical American has to make
the news. To redeem lives a president must
convince the American people not
to shoot him.

At some point a journalist
character is unlocked. There
are rumors of the journalist’s ability
to shoot anyone for double points
with a movie camera.

There are rumors of a glitch
that causes gametime
to lurch forward whenever a president
who is not wellliked
attempts to make speeches.

3.

After the launch, JFK & Lincoln
wander down the block. They are both
unfamiliar with the area but neither has
arranged for a ride. They dip into
the corner joint with saloonstyle
doors, a Wild Westthemed
dyke bar called Start a War. Lincoln whispers
the word “Asinine.”

The bartender waves
them in. JFK slowdances with a soft
butch in fringe chaps. They do a shot
of Malibu in every flavor. “Come on,”
says JFK, feeling it now, “You fivespot
you five alive you muffin
on the money.”

They take some
painkillers & burn pieces
of trash around JFK’s mattress. Lincoln
fucks JFK to sleep. It doesn’t take
long. Outside the sky offers
its recommendation of slaying
a billion pillowbound
feathers.

If crying were an Olympic sport
Surely, I would medal
I can weep over the Tule elk
Displaced from the grasslands
Their marshes siphoned to make way for cash crops
I think of them while driving through the valley
The stop motion blur of almond orchards tug at my vision
If only if only, on loop between my ears
It’s no great feat to cry at the news
But I will do that too
Mothers move around a pile of their dead children
Each of them wrapped in white cloth knotted at both ends
For a moment I think of trying to find my daughter
Could I tell it is her just by the shape of the cloth?
Or would my hands know better than my eyes, the contours of her small face?
The question itself splinters something in me
Something that will never fully mend
They say stay soft and I laugh
Oh, to have that choice
Salt water washes the silt,
Not away, but through my fingers
Back into the receding tide of this moment

---

Jennifer is baffled as to how her moon can be in Capricorn. She really loves a pile of free stuff on the side of the road. After all these years, the correct usage of prepositions still eludes her. She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills with her family.