so you do the next best thing
and you cut your hair

you follow a youtube video
and a confident-man-hair-stylist-type
shows you how using a mannequin head and swift movements

on your turn you take two ponytails
and the shittiest pair of scissors money can buy
and you snip away at your kinda-long hair
until it becomes less long and hopefully more shape

arms overhead
you’re diving

into what no one can say

today was the first day of April
you got rejected from a job opportunity
you remembered it’s your abuser’s birthday

you sit on one friend’s porch and don’t talk about it

you sit on another’s futon and you do

the night wears on
the day folds in on itself and you catch
a glimpse of your body in the toothpasted mirror

arms overhead
you’re picking fruit

we’ve seen this before

in fact we saw you in this exact position three months ago
in a stranger’s bathroom using arts n craft scissors

you saved the hair before immediately losing it

one day sooner or later you might find a bundle of your locks
wrapped up in a sheet of printer paper with November 24th 2024
scrawled on it in green crayon

there is so much you cannot control but you can choose

the crayon
the scissors
the bathroom where you’ll cut our hair the next time you have to do something

and you can choose what you do when that is no longer enough.

---

Sarena Brown (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and a big crybaby. They founded frequent crier club which is a shape-shifting disabled art-making space where they often host virtual artist retreats, workshops, and socials for artists of all mediums. You can find more of their work at Grist, Night Coffee, and on crierclub.com. 

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This poem previously appeared in Frequent Crier Club.

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Jill McLaughlin is a Maine-based writer whose work has appeared in Stonecoast Review, Pangyrus, and Channel: Ireland’s Environmental Literary Magazine. She is the recipient of a Martin Dibner Fellowship, an Ilgenfritz Scholarship, and a residency from AIR Litteratur Västra Götaland. She can typically be found submerged in the waves, attempting to become a mallard duck. 

Dad was on the couch, mostly
starving to death in front of us
cancer, stage IV

(for this type, many don’t catch
the earlier stages, and of course
there aren’t later ones)

we hung pinecone bird feeders close
to the house, bringing Nature near
when he couldn’t go out

we talked about our shared
favorites: the praying mantis, female
cardinal, blue herons, black cats

we talked about Chris Christie taking a swing
at the Bully, about what the hell would make someone crazy
enough to walk into North Korea

we talked about how to take care of mom
where to find the passwords,
who to trust

we talked about the final moment
and how I might not make it
(I did, he waited)

we talked about how a summer would never
be enough time, as the days stretched out
my son, his namesake, waited in the cherry tree

---

Annie Powell Stone (she/her) is a fan of peanut butter toast. Her poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives on the ancestral land of the Piscataway and Susquehannock people with her husband and two kiddos in Baltimore City, MD.

Let’s be monsters.
Let’s be witches and bitches
and crones
and just
hideous.

Let’s be powerful.
Let’s take and take and take
and grab the world,
just
fucking hold on with claws
and teeth
and refuse to let go.

And let’s be gluttonous.
Let’s devour.
Let’s see what we want,
what delights us,
and let’s inhale it with no
regard for propriety.
With no regard for you.

Let’s be insolent.
Let’s be wanton.
Let’s be ugly.
Let’s show our teeth as a warning sign
before we sink them into your neck.
Let’s be savage and angry.

Let’s say,
This is for me.
This is because I want.
This is because I exist.
This is because I take up space,
as much as I want, and more,
and I survive despite your best efforts
to tamp me down,
and I will fucking wear my defiance
like a punch to the gut
or—

Go ahead. Tell me
the red on my lips is too
suggestive. It’s my
fucking mouth. And I use it to
bite more than anything else.

---

Maia Brown-Jackson is a Pushcart-nominated, award-winning writer whose second poetry collection, Gifted, opens for pre-orders this autumn with Nymeria Publishing. In her spare time, she volunteers with a Yazidi NGO, accidentally starts studying quantum physics because several hours ago she looked up the qualities of neutrinos for a poem, and wastes time with the world’s sweetest, clumsiest cat.

---

This poem previously appeared in The Rising Phoenix Review.

Three weeks to Christmas. We bide our time
on the line by conjuring posties of the past—
side-burned and handcuffed, the ones in ‘81
who dared to defy back to work orders.
Got the whole country maternity leave.

Now we fight traffic in trucks that hit 40 degrees,
deliver an endless stream of Sephora and Nespresso,
spend hours alone with the clang of keys on metal,
compete with the Amazon drivers for free
parking spots and as we pass each other on the street
they sometimes stop to ask:
It’s a good job right? For the benefits?

A good job is any job that keeps you out of a tent.
We probably wouldn’t defy like the legends of ’81,
too many struggling with groceries and rent.
Here’s the talking head on the news again.
Sound bites smooth as the 300 thread count shirt he has on.
As if we are a private business, not a rusting crown
corporation. Meant to serve all citizens of the nation,
including its workers who are crippled by inflation.

Every postie’s got a side hustle and a secret dream.
Lauren sews crafts to sell on Etsy.
Reg DJs weddings and Sid drives a taxi.
On Fridays, management makes movie popcorn
to celebrate the end of the week.
Why are we always so hungry?
The smell of fake butter is rich.
We follow it. We eat.

if you are sad: sit, silent, and bathe in the brine of an olive jar. let the salt consume you till you are preserved in acidity rather than memory, and the blood in your veins might well be that of the ocean. if they ask you how it happened, say: “i didn’t know how to swim.” this is false, but so are the teeth they blatantly lie through. (you do not owe them the truth if they don’t give it to you. do not sacrifice your bitterness for these saps.) return to the olives. swallow the pits: wrinkled fools have no place here, at least not since he died. stare as they swim around your plate, reminiscent of almonds, and remember how he taught you that the amygdala handles emotion. maybe by overconsumption you can erase all you ever knew. when asked, say he was your mentor. when asked, say he was kind. when asked, say you’d do anything to see him again. the olive jar says you should take only nine, yet seventeen have passed through your teeth. it is okay. it will all, one day, be okay.

---

Annabelle Chen (she/her) is a teen poet from Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and by the John Locke Institute. You can usually find her consumed by words or agonizing over Greek mythology.

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Tatiana Chaterji is an emerging writer, mother of two small children, educator, restorative justice practitioner, and healing-based theater arts facilitator based on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA. She was a 2017 Playwriting VONA Fellow. Her essays and poems are featured in Seventh Wave, The Rush Magazine, Panorama, The Indianapolis Review and Rise Up Review. Learn more at www.tatianachaterji.com.

---

Diandra Williams is a writer, singer/songwriter, and ambient/noise artist currently based in Philly. Her writing has appeared in BOXX Press, FERAL, and Sinister Wisdom, and her music can be found on Bandcamp.

My dad died
and sports came back.
We wore masks at his funeral
to avoid being next, I guess.

The night before
Joe Kelly fired at Carlos Correa’s head
and cleared the bench
and I get it,
because what other response is there to feeling cheated
than bearing witness to your hate blossoming
from your body,
your spite-filled fingers gripping the splitting seams,
your hurtling release spitting seeds
that will line the graves
of generational grudges.

What song do you serve your ears
the morning after your mom sends you home
with a peace flower
and you say goodbye in the dark
because it hurts to see?

So King Push pummels my skull
as my jaw sits hollow and jagged,
a haggard quarry of heavy stones
and I stare at a cracked tree limb,
angled 90 degrees
in a non-committal breeze.

And a bird cries like a rusty swingset
and now I see the hurt
has just begun to bloom.

---

Marissa DeSantis is a Cleveland-based storyteller, poet, and women’s sports appreciator. They perform regularly with the improv & storytelling show This Improvised Life at Imposters Theater, and with Story Club Cleveland. Their work also appears or is forthcoming with Major 7th Magazine and Snatch Magazine.