3.

concrete: “characterized by or belonging to immediate experience

of actual things or events.”

hi, i’m concrete.  sorry.    i’m a-concrete.   i’m ali-concrete.  okay,

i’m alicia, i’m mattress top.      i’m matter, this matters-matters,

i’m watching a film of a film,   and i’m the conman

conning you out of knowing what you want when you want it.

sorry-   let me turn myself into concrete,   let me-   concentrate.

con-concrete   control myself-   let me start over:

2.

i’m in the front seat when i should be in the back.
i’m living on purpose. i’m living despite my-concrete.

my friend tells me my hair matches the stop light

and keeps on driving.

my eyes are traffic lights and the traffic.

i lick the liquor store off of my lips and thank god,

for the first time in five years,

that i am broken.

i tell my friend that he needs to break, he says “you break it, you buy it”

and i break like a habit, like an inconvenience, i can cheat my way out of anything, make room in store aisles, in line, always cheat myself, walking inside the con-con   convenience store,   i overhear someone say that

“they don’t like the dark – no one does.”

1.

and, suddenly, i’m sitting in the dark, on screen, listening to my boyfriend fuck his girlfriend, and the girlfriend isn’t me, and i should be okay with sharing, really, sharing space, but the space is so limited, (con-con-con convenience (convenience stores, under microscope, open 24-hours, (don’t look at me, i’m not here, (sheets cover me like convenience, (co-ins, i’ll pay with this body (pardon my concrete, concrete, con-contradiction, (i’m asking you to keep the change. 

0.

hi, a confession,   i’m changing my tone,    pressing hands in wet concrete, and everyone i love turns into concrete, and

(why do they have to do that?

(what-why do I have to mold them, walking contradictions

(and am left to conserve nothing but concrete and concrete

and concrete into concrete into concrete,

(and sink into cheap wine and time,

(and i close my eyes for a moment, like a restless driver, in the wrong lane, (carving out time for them to carve into me?

(i can’t say my name but i can spell it in concrete.

the word ‘I’ bonds this body to itself and hardens over time.

talking feels a lot like listening. and listening  feels a lot like learning. and learning feels a lot like concrete that I can’t push through unless i’m already sunk-                                                                                                        sorry.  

---

Alicia Turner holds an MA in English and is a grant writer & storyteller. She can be found writing confessional, conversational poetry in an over-priced apartment somewhere in WV. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Four Lines (4lines), CTD’s ‘Pen-2-Paper’ project, FreezeRay Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Luna Luna, Defunkt Magazine, époque press, Space City Underground Magazine, The Daily Drunk, Sybil Journal, ExPat Press, Rejection Letters Press, Screen Door Review, J Journal Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, among others.

Daddy and Mommy were dancing in the kitchen, their
wedding picture caught in their clapshold, tearing a little
in between them while they swung. I watched, and after
all night long oscillating, they gave up again. Where I
come from, the birds sing a pretty song and there’s always
music in the air. Next morning, Daddy took his lunch down
into the mine, but missed when the canary brushed his cheek,
him thinking it was a bat. Adjacent the funeral, Mommy and
me bought a bird to learn our new, sad language. It’s best
to buy your standard cage birds in the spring better for them
to be feathered enough for snow. Most die in transit. Keep
them fed on finely chopped meat, a reasonable quantity of
spiders. Let it sharpen its beak on a cuttlefish bone. Now
we finally awaken to a familiar voice after we left the radio
on for a month straight. Our bird sings like Tammy Wynette
and Mommy snaps wildly out of time with its tune. I’m just
so glad that other hands have gone down the shaft again this
morning so that we could sit here amongst this music and stare
hard into the light.

---

Avery Gregurich is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River and has never strayed too far from it.

Standing in Walmart before a shelf of thirty-seven different kinds of toothpaste, I am compelled to comprehensively read and examine each box as though my life depends on this decision. Partway through the text of an ambiguously named “Glacial White” flavored paste, I remember one I saw in a targeted ad which was blueberry flavored and came in a hand soap-shaped container. It was supposed to whiten your teeth, and I wondered how many times I would accidentally try to wash my hands with it, and wondered what could be in toothpaste to make it worth twenty dollars and I know if I left empty-handed with the intention of ordering it, it would sit in my Amazon cart for weeks because I feel guilty ordering from there and can never be bothered to get my wallet, and I used to know my credit card number when I was younger—I used to know a lot of things. Like how to be decisive. How to like things without constant fretting and analysis of whether it’s good enough to be liked. And I’m not talking about art made by rapists or pedophiles, I’m talking about the color blue and Jane Austen novels, and how I’m twenty-six and have just spent thirty minutes of my life trying to choose a god damn toothpaste as though this one choice can undo the wake of regrets I wade through each night before I fall asleep, and every day I sit at work staring at a wall with chipped paint and pushpin holes, and a shadow of what once hung there.

---

Emma Hair is a poet, artist, and editor based in North Texas. Through poetry, she has found space to explore emotions, capture moments, and ask possibly unanswerable questions. Her work has previously appeared in Black Telephone Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, and Square Wheel Press’ inaugural anthology. You can find her on IG @em.hair or on Twitter @emhair.

I burn most of the things I own
right after buying them. Some of them
are cigarettes, and I guess that’s okay,
but often while driving to work
I’ll forget my left hand set the house
on fire while my right hand set
the house on fire.

I like it when old people tell me
about how everything used to be better
before I was born. I don’t think
I’m the problem. Young people
often tell me to go away
when I sit in the tattoo parlor
and tell them they are making
a horrible mistake.

But I don’t think they’re the problem
either. Most of this city is grass
spread out on each side of the expressway.
When mowed, it’s easy to compare the surface
of the Earth to your very own face,
but there are differences,
just like the difference between architecture
the concept and architecture the actual stuff.

When I set fire to this town,
watching the fairgrounds melt
like metal and candle wax
I will smoke a cigarette, and it will
just be something I did.
Firemen will try to arc their hoses
high enough to put out the ferris wheel,
but up there, at the top, there is no fire
and there can be no water.

Most of the old people
understand this truth,
and that is why they sit there
and let flies settle in their glasses
and let the beer go flat
just so they can tell me
that the town you’re born in
is the only town you’ll ever really live in.
Being Texans, they actually believe this.

Young people, too, think they are wise
about all kinds of things, and even though
they are wrong, this is a kind of wisdom
and it cannot be reproduced.

A tornado came through here once.
Not really, but it could have.
Tornadoes are always showing up.
They never ask if they can stay,
and I guess they never stay that long,
but they leave a mess, an indelible
impression everywhere that they go.
I am not like this.

This makes it incredibly easy to start fires,
and I have started many, but there are always
more, every day, that I haven’t started,
and that’s how I make peace with the idea of it.

There are so many important things to eat.
There are so many important things to drink.
People make movies and often you get to see them.
It’s amazing to sit down after a long walk.
Every few weeks there’s a holiday of some kind,
and your mother sends you card. It isn’t much,
but it’s unexpected so it means a lot.
And then you burn it.

---

This poem previously appeared in Sink Review.

---

Steve Roberts has a bachelors and masters degree in creative writing and
poetry from the College of Santa Fe and the New School. He’s been
previously published in the tiny, Sink Review and the Hartskill Review. He
lives in Dallas with his spouse and two cats.

hot
yoga

morning
sext

hidden apps
photo vault

lisa frank
ponytail

red white blue
wonder wheel

high school boys
track and field

frosted flakes
flâneur

skate park
voyeur

spf
lemon zest

dine and dash
root beer float

teddy bear
carnivore

debit card
vip

otc
daily dose

snuff film
uber eats

monogamy
nude beach

scratch-offs
strap-on

vegan
blood play

matte black
icloud

al anon
threesome

mocktail
halter top

glitter glue
horse girl

italian ice
cutoff jeans

selfish
love

rare
bird

---

Lily Lady Cook is a writer in New York City. Her work has been most recently published by Pan-Pan Press, b l u s h, and House of Theodora Press. In her free time she does crosswords and watches baseball. 

---

Aerik Francis is a Queer Black & Latinx poet based in Denver, Colorado, USA. Aerik is the author of the forthcoming chapbook BODYELECTRONIC (Trouble Department 2022), and the recipient of poetry fellowships from Canto Mundo and The Watering Hole. Aerik is a poetry reader for Underblong poetry journal and is event coordinator for Slam Nuba. Aerik has poetry published widely in print and on the net. Find out more about them at phaentompoet.com

by Marina Evans

I’ve tilled the damp clay of the viper
Bare shoulders mottled
With acacia shade;
Stirred the dry dust of oleander
Brittle branches scraping
Flushed forearms.

Here the birds sing all night long
Atop cool pine peaks
Lulling sleeping daisies.

I looked that viper in the eye;
Oleander’s venomous honey
Dripped upon my broken skin;
But I do not cry
Or coo with the swallows
In the last gasp of darkness.

For the wolves (they say)
Are hungry,
Prowling down the hills.

---

Marina Evans is a musician, writer, and teacher based in New England and Italy. She has written and independently released four records, toured across the US and in Europe, and supported such greats as LeAnn Rimes, Judy Collins, and Dar Williams. In 2018, she was selected as a writer in residence by the T.S. Eliot Foundation at The Downs, Eliot’s summer home. Her work explores themes of heritage, belonging, distance, and separation. Learn more at marinaevansmusic.com.

back out

this chest

        feet first

                 pulped skin

                        an exposé

step into your mouth

my newest home to rot inside

here — open wide!

follow my heaving

its dulled incisors

lunging

gnawing

collapsing

                  on the beat

is this familiar?

do you know

        what comes what’s next?

no invitation needed

with the naïve

sorry —

i mean the welcoming

wait!

i promise

if i could love

you

i would

pluck

        pluck

               pluck-ed

each lash to wish you lover

enough to replace

a bloodline

please

take this

shivering fist

soured throat

bouquet of wire

all i can scavenge

of my pre-disposition

please

drag me closer

to what keeps me

                                  alive

---

Mae Verano is a queer Ilokano writer, researcher, and MSW student from East Side San Jose, CA. They are a Pink Door Fellow, and their writing can be found in The Offing and Caesura. Their work aims to unravel our understandings of tradition, canon, and empire – centering a return to community and to self. Follow them on IG @mae.summer.

     Have you ever watched yourself

get sick? Doesn’t it always happen

     faster than that? You wake up

& something clicks. Your body

     was your body. Like a change in voice   cracks

where there never used to be. A friend says

     how on Zoom, we can’t do anything

without looking at ourselves.

     But when I chug wine from the bottle

I look right at my partner   trusting me — I worry

     if I test my limits   & fail

I might not even know it.

     When we watch The Walking Dead: every inch between your body    

                             & what’s out there

matters. I often forget   how many hours

     are wedged between us. I stay up

drunk & think of her sleeping, of how I’m the one stuck

     behind. I’m sorry — when I said I look at her on Zoom,

                   I lied.

My throat   filled with wine   is like red flesh

     faintly emerging from a stem   green

& withered.     I stare at my body.     Off camera,

     I hold it.

---

Zach Semel (he/him) is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing at
Northern Arizona University. Some of his previous poems and essays have
appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, CutBank, Eclectica Magazine, The
Nervous Breakdown, Wordgathering, Breath & Shadow, and other places.
His debut chapbook Let the tides take my body was awarded the May Day
Mountain Prize by Hunger Mountain. Find more of his work at
https://zachsemel.wordpress.com.

by Lu Chekowsky

fuck ‘em those assholes with their stupid dicks
in charge of us all glad to kill us for a buck
they don’t know shit about love
and they’re ugly too
so ugly that’s how they get so mean
their mothers never loved them and the girls are too smart
i feel bad for them almost
baby men in gold rooms crying themselves to sleep
so afraid they don’t know how to feel afraid
they really thought it’d be all suits and handshakes and pussy george clooney or something
i could’ve told them keeping people alive was hard work
but joke’s on them and nobody asked me
all that power gives them those sad boners we’re goners
but i imagine i’d have a boner too if i were them
a real pretty fat one with veins throbbing purple
exploding out of my designer wool dress slacks could you even imagine
it’d be so fantastic to do anything
without caring about anyone else
how free i’d be too with no fingerprints or heart
it’s the bones they have to worry about now
the piles of bones just piling can’t explain those away
all these little boys with wet toilet paper stuck to their shoes
we know what they don’t
that ugliness isn’t good for business
that’s why we’re always smearing lipstick on our teeth plucking endless chin hairs
making jello molds for bad neighbors
if i were being honest though
i’d tell you the most surprising thing is that i never thought
i’d live long enough to see this again
rotting bodies stacked and counted
everywhere the echo of anger and applause

---

Lu Chekowsky is an Emmy-winning writer and creative director who built a successful career in media through gut intuition and addiction to approval. Lu has been a writer in residence at MASS MoCA in Massachusetts, Gullkistan in Laugarvatn, Iceland and SPACE on Ryder Farm in Brewster, NY. In 2020, she attended the Tin House Summer Workshop with Saeed Jones and won the Pigeon Pages Essay Contest, judged by Morgan Jerkins. Her work can be seen in Bending Genres, The Main Review, Hobart and at lchekowsky.com.