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Call Back to Speak to a Less Disillusioned Representative

by Olivia Delgado

It’ll be a short summer and the animals are growing old. If fear had a weight you’d call it your body. I know it sounds terrifying, but I feel another nervous breakdown coming on and I’m too busy watching trash tv. 

The prompt said to write about love.

Olivia Delgado’s work has been published in the Texas Anthology: A
Celebration of Young Poets, the anthology Hidden Lights, the online journal
Penmen Review, For Women who Roar, Harness Magazine, and Groupie Mag. She
currently resides in her home state of Texas where she works on creating
new poems.

Bud Union

by Claire Gallagher

I tried to draw my part
electrical line straight
measure the kern of each
segment as evenly
as the cherry pickers
pluck center boughs from the
oaks, leaving a Y of
branches holding air, waiting until
someone will come undress them for bath

Today road layers are
stretching new pavement down
our street, we are sessile
on a swollen square root,
a bud union, two birds
on scaffold branches and
you are, despite acorns,
barnacled though I tell you it’s time,
come inside, peel the sweat from your back

I cannot explain time
or count hairs lost braided
say how road sticks to ground
I only know the three
saw cut for removing
heavy branches without
tearing away the bark
cool water, outside machines you lift
your arms above your head and listen

Claire Gallagher lives in Chisinau, Moldova with her family. 

be the person you needed when you were young (while knowing it can’t save you then)

by Alex Russell

I love when poets say
“What I’m saying is…”
because it makes it easy
to know what they’re saying,
and I think of all the kids
in classrooms who don’t like
interpreting poetry having
a much better time.

What I’m saying is
the only thing stopping me
from making a bracelet
out of those letter beads
that says “I know it might seem like
I don’t care about things as much
because I’ve stopped saying
I’ll do something “even if it kills me”

but really
I just don’t want to die anymore.”
is that my arms aren’t long
enough. I’m thinking of
being a kid and the people
who let me have a better time.
I want to make it easy.

I’m thinking of the fact that
the only thing stopping me
from making a bracelet listing
every type of love
is that there aren’t enough beads.
What I’m saying is I’m so glad
you asked me to sign your deed poll.
I’m so glad you have your name.

Alex Russell is a nonbinary poet and an editor at Placeholder Press, who is
currently working on being the happiest they’ve ever been. Their tiny
chapbook about cryptozoology and queerness, Unknown Tracks, is available
for free via Ghost City Press.

a [ ] of and for white conduct

by Shelby Pinkham

more machine   IStruggleToEmbed {

              more machine than [                  ]. STRUGGLE = ;

to suggesthuman – that doesn’t sound

                          quite [            ].

                          a struggle to suggest time = new STRUGGLE (machine.morehuman(“that.sound));

suggestsuggestions . machinestruggles . more than humansuggestions///                  

beforework

                                                                                                      before before work

                                                     which is just afterwork or beforemath

                               or

                                              a time before working class             because           you better work 

                              or

                                              TIMEWRKor classTMEor BECAUSEWRKor FORTIMEWORKor WorK

       Document suggests TIMEWORKER we hit ignore all work in my house

                        OR

                 {insert your capitalism here}. I struggle

                                                                               to suggest a time post

                                              work, but we must

                                                                                {here is a pillformachiningmyself}

<hltherapy = medication coffee-aligned:><strengthtraining ></videos<on>YouTube=nature-walks:99-orgasms-left-to-enlightenment-platinum-status <therapy><&medication> </& yes >, <yes&> / I must insist nooncoffee /too>

even the fucking [       ]?  \\

                                     // , yes grl. especially the fucking [      ].

damn((not my trauma) \\

gonna((stay outta that war over there) \\

gonna((download “apps” for  ignoring decolonized mindsets) \\

gonna((tell your mom to check on you) \\

gonna((thoughts & prayers) \\

gonna((hit release on my dogecoin) \\

gonna((make you something with a lotta mayonnaise in it, hun) \\

gonna((thread my brows so I can tell grls on IG to thread their brows) \\

gonna((                         \\

                                                             but still, long for a way out to the top

OR

                          a lucky lottery ticket degree

OR                   the winning horse

                                                                                  right medication – some combo of bets, bets, bets

Shelby Pinkham (she/they) is a queer, Chicanx poet from the Central Valley. They are currently an editor for Rabid Oak and an MFA student at Fresno State. Their work can be found in PANK, Poetry Online, and Honey Literary.

Warm

by Karl Michael Iglesias

I remember when one popped up on Easter weekend
family reunion. Where the primos stay home
as new parents, the titi’s go to service
as daughters under their mother’s roof

their father’s roof. All the abuelos and
abuelitas have gone home on a long road trip
to a church convention in heaven. No one is sure
where all the tio’s go. Maybe it births at a warm

near your sternum and when you look down
you’ve discovered you’ve been baptised
with your niece’s cheerio spit-up. There is a rag
for that and I don’t change my sweater. It opens with me

being the uncle. With the yuca soaking
in warm water before being brought
to blade. Begins with patience. And on the southside,
it always pops off because in every long family, there’s a couple short

tempers and I’ve been an uncle
since I was five. I know
where the hole in the hallway
comes from.

Originally from Milwaukee, WI, and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Karl Michael Iglesias’ work can be read on Apogee, The Acentos Review, The Breakwater Review, The Florida Review, RHINO Poetry, Kweli Journal, The Breakbeat Poets Vol 4. LatiNext, The Westchester Review, Wisconsin Life, Third Coast, and The Brooklyn Review. His debut chapbook, CATCH A GLOW, is available now on Finishing Line Press. Karl now resides in Brooklyn, NY.

On Mirrors

by Grace Yannotta

When I first met him, he had a mirror above his dresser, facing the bed. I got nervous – I didn’t tell him this, but I got nervous, because I had read online somewhere (unreliable) that he was being foolish. With the mirror. Because supposedly any spirit, any being, could crawl through and replace us with other people as we slept. After about a month, he reorganized and the mirror was relegated to an alternate location. I wonder now if it was an omen – a good one? A bad one? I’m Italian, so omens are everything, but I’m also Catholic, so omens are nothing. Nonetheless, I find luck in bird shit, but I pray too, and I struggle for words when I’m asked if I’ve written any love poems lately. Because I’ve written love poems for every other man I’ve been with. But not for him. Something about the intimacy, the potential, the possibility, feels almost too frightening to dwell upon. The mirror’s leaning against the wall on the floor now. I can see my ankles, his bedspread, when I walk past. It’s better that way, I think. I can’t afford to take any chances.

Independence Day

by Kelly McKay

sitting on the front porch
of the poor house
staring straight into the sun.
iridescent beams fill both eyes
with sweating promise
to the brim like two
water balloons tied tight
by little fingers pinched
begging not to burst.
“my favorite movies are the ones
where everyone gets everything
they want in the end.”
answering to sobriquets; sweetheart
big guy, little one-
could grow up and two-
step off of this stoop
into almost, and almost
is immeasurable.
it’s unjust and one
might land fixed
in the center frozen
like a fly in the jello
on the fourth of july.

Kelly is a folk-loving home grown vegetarian and a collector of selfies at national park welcome signs. She works in the mental health field and lives with her partner, rescue dog, and fish. She is a poet who has had previous work published in Ariadne Magazine. 

From the Garage Floor

by Allyson Whipple

On any other Sunday we might be gazing
at the afternoon sky, but today we’re staring
at my car’s grease-splattered undercarriage,
flecks of dirt falling into our mouths
when I jostle a fixture too hard. Our fingers
leave grimy prints where we press them,
our gloves useless against 60,000 miles
worth of work commutes and road trips.

To fix the axles, we must remove
tires, unhook wires, slide joints
and bearings from their housings.

Your sweat drips into puddles, mingles
with dollops of grease that fall as we pry
singed metal rings apart. Grease running
all the way up to my shoulders, softer
and smoother than I’d imagined, more green
than black, more velvet than tar. Grease sliding
under my collar, into my bra, streaking across
your forehead, running down your nose.

Fixing what you’ve broken requires
dismantling even parts that work.
Then the hard part: rebuilding

My back aching from hours
of lying on concrete, your knuckles
ribboned with scratches, my head
a field of bruises from each time
I sat up too fast. Learning the body
of this vehicle, feeling the connections
between systems, understanding
a machine the way I never have before.

To fix a car, you must believe
in your ability to restore everything
you’re about to pull apart.

Allyson Whipple is the author of Come into the World Like That (Five Oaks Press, 2016) and We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and co-author of the interactive fiction Choice: Texas (www.playchoicetexas.com, 2014). She serves on the board of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and teaches technical communication at Austin Community College.

Morning Poem

by John Salimbene

On my block,
morning is
when the German
shepherd speaks
its fury at
a cardinal.
I have not
yet learned
how to speak
my fury.
Our lawn is
a teenage beard;
patchy and
glistening
with angst.
That mailman
always flattens
our garden, and
fills our box
with Christmas,
bigotry and
obituaries.
I lost two
friends before
I could vote.
The town journal
left out the
pills and ropes.
The air is thick
like the glue
behind our peeling
wallpaper, and
the birds clear
their thin throats.
I’ve become a
student of silence
since there is
so little of it.

John Salimbene is a poet and editor based in Philadelphia. He is currently
the poetry editor for Tint Journal and will be starting his MFA in creative
writing at William Paterson University in the fall of 2021. His work can be
found in a locally published anthology called queerbook, as well as
Typishly and elsewhere.