They say there are two seasons in Michigan, winter and construction, but today it feels like spring. I’m getting comfortable again with feeling. Must all the poets fully feel our senses? I was pretty comfortable feeling numb. I was pretty comfortable being dead to the four seasons. It’s surprisingly easy to be sad when it’s always summer.

And then comes the hurricane rain—that muddy welcome-mat intrusion. That smell of the languid lake, and the birds trilling louder as we speak of the dead. They want to join us. Who is the “they” in this poem? Is it the living or the dead? By living do I mean the virgin maples in the forest, or the deceased ceilings made of knotty pine?

I think they both can hear us. I hear the orchids could bloom here under the right conditions, but we keep cutting everything that grows differently right down. Spring is different when there’s no snow before it. When the crocuses have nothing hard to push through. When the bitter winter never comes.

---

Nicole Tallman is the author of Something Kindred and Poems for the People. Her next book, FERSACE, is forthcoming in November. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and nicoletallman.com.

---

S. Shaw has been a librarian for an urban, public libraries for 29 years.
His poems have been published in African American Review, Rattle, Split
This Rock, Rhino 2021, Obsidian as well as having a short story in Mighty
Real: An Anthology of African American Same Gender Loving Writing. He is a
Cave Canem Poetry Fellow as well as a Pushcart Prize nominated poet. He is
the author of the chapbook The House of Men from Glass Lyre Press.

---

This poem previously appeared in the Potamac Review.

---

Born in Kyiv, olga works in the (intersectional/textual) liminal space of photography, word, translation, and installation. She is interested in memory, dream spaces, absences, inheritance, (dis)place, and the construction of language. Her work can be found in Cleveland Review of Books, TQR, New Delta Review, Peach Mag, and elsewhere. She is getting her MFA in creative writing at UCSD, and her debut chapbook cities as fathers came out this spring with Tilted House. 

(write something devastating,
will settle for simple)

head on tired neck
cursing your own name
frothing at the lip
copper coated tongue

yelling at yourself
heavy weighted bone
frantic soaking wet
tail between your legs

mouse crawled in my mouth while i was sleeping
I panicked, bit, and swallowed
splinters catch my throat
there’s no going home

will this be forever?

I was only dreaming
wake up wake up my love
you’ve wet the bed
go sit in the tub
and try not to drown

go sit in the tub
the showerhead on
a murder was here
the shadow of one

the shadow appears
when you’ve become weak
a bird in a tree
who mimics cicadas

who mimics cicadas?
the bird in the tree
I think you’re becoming confused

listen. will this be forever?

Yes. No.

I love the cat but the noises he makes.
I’m too tired to finish this.
I? You.
You’re too tired to finish this.
Is that true?
Yes. No.

It sounds like a bird is dying.
It sounds like a cat at play.
sounds like a war machine.
sounds like anything but the truth.

You’re too tired to finish this.
No, I don’t think that’s fair.
Yes. No.

Will it always be this way?
Yes. No.

---

Terrell Worrell Jr is a writer and musician based in Virginia. His writing can also be found in Free the Verse and at terrellworrelljr.com. His music lives under the name Green Woods on streaming services. He hopes you have a nice day.

In this one, I’m talking
to me. You can listen
if you want, but I am only
telling me what I need to hear.
You’re good-looking! You are
desire! You will live to see.
The things you are asking are not
hidden. Pain is the body saying no
or is it? Pain is the body saying.

Listen if you want, but I am
only talking to me. I love you.
You’re beautiful. I want to live
with you inside this mirror.
You are no closed mess, you are no
uninterrogable system. You can do
what’s you and you already have
this. I need you. Constantly.
You miracle. You bliss.

Abdominal discord. Lung breach.
Uncertainty is not barren. You
aren’t dying it’s only another
mystery, pain is the body’s way
of saying listen if you want but
I’m still only talking to me.
The gurgles you hear are
your spleen singing. It’s okay
to feel vulnerable. I’m holding you.

You can listen, if you want.
To your feather heart. To the
sinkholes in your belly. Your
ribcage animal. They are only
telling you what you need to hear,
that all bodies are future ruins, that
some things are poison but loneliness
is not one of them, that this
is a temporary gift.

Your arms are divining rods,
and other people are water.
I miss you. Come back to me. I want
to nestle inside your skin. I don’t care
what you think you are guilty of.
Everything is imperfect, everything
is lovingly cracked. I give you
permission to forgive yourself.
You can listen, if you want.

---

Eric Raanan Fischman is an MFA graduate of Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He has taught free writing workshops in Nederland, Boulder, and Longmont, Colorado, and has had work in Bombay Gin, the Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press, and more, as well as in community fundraising anthologies from Punch Drunk Press and South Broadway Ghost Society. He curates the Boulder/Denver metro area poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com and is a regular contributor to the BPS blog. His first book, “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” was published through The Little Door in 2017.

I didn’t tell this story often
but now I do.

When it was a secret thing
a Don’t tell Mom thing
a Don’t scream thing
a midnight-when-I-was-supposed-to-be-sleeping thing

I said nothing
I did nothing
I felt nothing—
nothing except what I was supposed to feel

I wasn’t mine but ours
and then he grew up
and I did not,
seeking sex and approval
from people who had no business getting either
when I had no business getting either

I always dated older
I think this is why—
the lab-rat conditioning—
I slept with my best friend the first chance I got
& still called him my brother
because what was different
except the pleasure I received?

---

Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a Pushcart-nominated writer and teacher. Her works have appeared in SWWIM, Rigourous, and Honey Lit, among others. Ashley’s first chapbook collection, you were supposed to be a friend, is available from Nightingale & Sparrow and her sophomore collection, black has every right to be angry, is forthcoming from Alternating Current. When Ashley isn’t teaching, editing, or working as an assistant editor for Sundress Publications, she habitually posts on Twitter and Instagram (@ae_thepoet). She lives with her partner and their cats in Baltimore, MD. Ashley is Black before she is anything else.

You are not the plump center of attention.
Not an idealized cartoon rendering– pink, red, orange,

mimicking every color boasted by the sun.
You were never unbruised and are, admittedly,

no longer whole. Unlike the produce section peaches,
plucked fresh off some vine, or whatever plant orifice

it is peaches spring from– you are found in a different aisle entirely.

Already sliced, each sour spot sifted through by the time
you are placed in hand, you are no gamble.

Cooled in the ice box for an unbridled craving in the swelter
of August, a mouthful of summer to pierce the gray crush of January,

you last through each season undaunted,
a syrup guaranteed to drip down the chin.

A few twists of the wrist
away from the edge

of a clean fork, something fated
to be placed on the tongue,

reliable and ready
to whelm an ache in my jaw.

---

Trudy Hodnefield is a queer writer and maker of Japanese descent. Born and raised on the island of O‘ahu, she is currently completing an MA in Fashion Studies at Parsons School of Design in New York (Lenapehoking). Her other poetry and creative non-fiction have been published by Soft Quarterly, Indie Earth Publishing, the Hawai’i Review, and the BIAS Journal of Dress Practice, with forthcoming poems to be published by Eunoia Review. 

for my Mami

we go far to be close, sometimes
& you talk of love: howling, a teardrop
blooming, & aching: an electric guitar riff
laid bare & you say night isn’t for children & the city
isn’t for living & there you are
& there we were & i meant to say
& you sob into my hands
& there’s a reason all creation stories begin
with separation & you say studies say being lonely
is the equivalent to smoking 16 cigarettes
so i look at everyone on the 55 in the eyes
& i wonder what in love means
& you say don’t sit in wet clothes
so i sleep in them & you say
you don’t need lexapro like you need
vitamins & you say they made me go to therapy
& i admitted there’s nothing wrong with me
& i laugh
& i hug you from behind
& we dance
& we split into two
& we are phantom limbs
& i wish i said & i imagine telling you
my pronouns & i sob into your hands
& you’re a tsunami swallowing an ocean
& the water is the kind you drown in
& i want everyone on the 55 to try
to hit the high notes
& i want us to fail loudly & you say
i love you too girl & my mouth overflows.
sometimes, we go far to be close.

---

Yazud E. Brito-Milian (they/them) is a Chicane poet, museum educator, and abolitionist organizer. Born in Winston-Salem, NC, and living in Chicago, IL, they are currently working on their first chapbook, with this being their first publication. They want to send a big thank you to the community and music that helped grow this poem. Yazud can be reached at @yasudbloom on Instagram. 

The man at the hardware store
asks me what I’m looking for.
Oh me? I’m not looking for anything.
My friend is looking for a spigot…
but he’s not my friend.
He’s a sunflower. He’s Jesus
with a tiny braid, mask strap
mashing down his hair
and his big ears, a tape
measure in his back pocket,
a denim jacket, and a backpack
full of clementines.

From the beginning I’ve said I’m no good
at the physical world. I am only good
at words—recognizing the pizza place
meant wood-fired or handcrafted
and not wood-crafted, that enchiladas before noon
are brunchiladas, and that if I take a bath
with this man we’re bath buddies.
Not fuck buddies, not buddy-buddies,
not friends with benefits. Not necessarily
lovers, or people who need a single thing
from one another—just two tender humans
descending into water.

---

Julia C. Alter holds an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appeared in numerous print and online journals, including The Southern Humanities Review, The Raleigh Review, Fugue, Sixth Finch, Crab Creek Review, Foundry and Palette Poetry. She lives in Vermont with her son.

it is summer in the poem and we are living

three of us, in some family apartment

on the fourth floor perhaps sixth

every day, the hiss of onions

in the pan, and the pasta

always has beans in it

stacked on top of one another

                  /another

                  /another

we can’t reach the ceiling

and the doorknobs

keep falling off

at night on the balcony:

your moonmouth on my neck

you tell me another new thing

the plants half crispy around us

I know nothing really

belongs to me, but somehow

I have arrived in this moment like a tourist

in my own life

where having an opinion is terrifying

and exhilarating/               means having

to surrender to my own publicness

I want to beetle on my back

with my legs up in the air

I want to grow wings and buzz

in circles around the ceiling

I want to melt across your lap

and her lap

and hers, with

my top off in some dewy bedroom,

the windows open, and I am saying

yes yes yes until I have nothing

left to say

I love every minute of this stupid life

of loving and not knowing

or caring where

to draw the line

of getting really good at something
and letting everybody watch

---

Hannah Karpinski is a writer and editor living in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lemon Hound, Commo Magazine, My Loves: Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press), and Lesbians are Miracles, among others. She is the Publishing Assistant for Montreal-based independent publisher, Metatron Press.