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Josh Nicolaisen lives in New Hampshire and teaches writing at Plymouth State University. He holds an MFA from Randolph College and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. He has been awarded a grant from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference and a fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. His work has appeared in Colorado Review, Hunger Mountain Review, Permafrost, Appalachian Review, Four Way Review, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. Find him at www.oldmangardening.com/poetry

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d.S. randoL (she/her) is a delicate flower, a slam-dancer on the east coast. As well as poetry, she also has an eerie acoustic EP out, called Guitar Knots, on all streaming platforms. She is published or forthcoming in Passages North, Door is a Jar, Don’t Submit!, and more. You can view their full published works at www.linktr.ee/dSrandoL!

The AC is out
and the sun gives us 92 in her good moods.
The red heat warning flag looms in the yard–
A bloody spectre.
Good Lord and Fuck It’s Hot and
They Don’t Care How They Do Us—
the walls whisper, sweating.
Sometimes this place is not 192 women
Sometimes this place is not 192 tough, sticky, Alabama-sun-toasted bodies. Sometimes this place is 1 organism, 192 cells
Endlessly merging
Endlessly dividing
Endlessly destroying each other
Our crimes exposed in the light of day–
The sun does not forgive.

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Rene Baek Goddard is a U.S-born Korean socialist organizer, journalist and sex worker formerly incarcerated for charges related to the 2020 George Floyd Uprisings. She was referred to as an “amateur pornstar and domestic terrorist” by alt-right media (which she is very proud of). She was recently released from federal prison and lives in Chicago with her two cats. Her work can be found in Them, Truthout, Autostraddle, Sinister Wisdom, Xbiz, and the Arkansas Worker.

I wanna say

I bite into flesh
just to hold someone’s skin in my mouth

I wanna say

I’m only hungry because you told me
a belly of rocks and worms
still feels like a full stomach

It’s easy to pretend
hourlong sweat
tastes as sweet
as morning dew on the one hundredth day

wild animals can’t think there’s a forever
they take what they can
and pray they’ll survive another winter

now it’s January
my teeth are dull,
my tongue is salt-scraped,
and I press my lips into another stranger’s shoulder
breathing in bitters and pine sap
forgetting what I was hungry for in the first place

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Paolina Acuña-Gonzalez is a Chicana writer and performer based in Los
Angeles. She’s performed her original poetry at LA City Hall, Dynasty
Typewriter, and schools across Southern California as a Get Lit Player with
the viral poetry troupe, Get Lit. Her work has been featured in the LA
Times series, LA F.A.M.” and the film Summertime, which made its debut at
Sundance 2020.

Wanting for warmth, evening’s
wonderstruck and has folded in
upon itself and, in the darkness,
snow’s falling in deafening silence,
flake upon flake upon frenetic flake
laundering the air with a will
to soften the world’s hard edges
and bring abundance and beauty
back into this world, obliterating
bleakness, ghosting the landscape,
rounding out the wide wounds
that wish to hold it, while windless
hands, in hushed assembly, rebuild
stacks of firewood, raise snow-
capped roofs, level tilted porches
and add heft to doorsteps bordered
by evergreens bent low in prayer
and in the farther field a few
boulders remain exposed just
above the bluing drifts like heifers
foraging for thin winter grasses
when a stream of light from
somewhere beyond my line
of sight leaks through the darkness
slowly revealing the world’s
second, better self just returned
from the afterlife, stark and still
and miraculously luminous.

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A resident of Connecticut and a lover of all things chocolate, John Muro has authored two volumes of poems — In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite — in 2020 and 2022, respectively. His third book, A Bountiful Silence & Other Poems, will be published later this year. Since the publication of his first book, John has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, twice nominated for the Best of the Net and, in 2023, he was chosen as a Grantchester Award recipient. John’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Acumen, Connecticut River, Green Ink, Sky Island and the Valparaiso Review.

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This poem previously appeared in Green Ink Poetry.

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Maya Sol Levy’s work has appeared both in print and online, with publications including The Poetry Project’s Footnotes, Wendy’s Subway’s Endless Playlist Series, HAD, Hoot Magazine, and others. She has worked on editorial teams at Gasher Journal and iteratio Journal. Maya is an MFA candidate in Writing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Find more of her work at www.mayasollevy.com or on Instagram @fuego_taki_queen.

Eagle-winged cock on my phone. I joined
the apps not earlier than I was allowed to,
but earlier than I should have. A man, twice
of me – in age, in size, in audacity – stretches

a talon through the screen: Sweet boy.
Soft skin. Baby calf. Milk trough. Can I
touch? Can I smell? Can I taste? Are you
really only 100 lbs? That’s so hot.

Hellenic ideal: men whose beards could scrape
the wool from a lamb’s back, wanting to plaster
me upon the hard bed-frame scene circling
an urn. Terra cotta raptor of the Father-God.

Hands, a fire on my thigh on the subway. Hands,
cracking open the hide on the small of my back
in the gay bar. Hands, flying from the messages.
Hands, twine around the waist, across the mouth.

Hands, a god lifting me to a mountain, casting me
in bronze to be a boy until bled dry. To be a stain
of nectar on a chin. To be a cup overflowing:
a cold, metal well from which to drink.

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Patrick Roche is a queer poet, mental health advocate, and Carly Rae Jepsen enthusiast. He is the author of A Socially Acceptable Breakdown (Button Poetry, 2021), which was named a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. His work has appeared on UpWorthy, Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, BroadwayWorld, FreezeRay Press, and his mom’s fridge. He currently lives with his husband and their dog in Astoria, NY.

Borrowing lyrics from The Weekend by SZA

And she’s over there talkin’ ‘bout–

My man is my man, is your man
heard it’s her man too.

Can you believe it?

My baby?

I think actually the fuq not.

Hell yeah, I punched that bitch.
Left her ass cryin’ on the outside
of the club where she belong.
Outside of a job to match her outside mind.

I mean, was I not clear?
That one is mine.

And yeah, yeah,
You can’t own a person.
And they don’t belong to you.

Okay?

They may not belong to me but our time did.
All the care I put into them does.
The life we crafted together does

And will.

And I understand
That people cheat because they want to.

Okay.

But that’s me and they business.
I woulda’ left her ass alone.
But then she came to me talkin’

I just keep [them] satisfied through the weekend
You like nine to five, I’m the weekend

Like, the fuq?
At that point it was just getting disrespectful.

If anyone’s the weekend
I’M the weekend.

I am the joy
the play
the sanctuary
from a long week
the Sunday morning task
signaled with R&B smooth.

I am a joyful work.

It is a gift to love me.
To be loved by me.

And I tried to leave that bitch alone.
Even after she decided to fuq on someone
who don’t belong to her.

Even tried to ignore her desperate
cause I know that side of the mirror too.
Know what it’s like to be fallin’ all over love.
To be wanting. Constantly.

To know what they need and hope
that giving it makes them need you back.

I know that side of the mirror.
And tried to be kind to the reflection.
I tried not to break my fingers on the glass.

But then she called me nine to five.
Called the work of loving me outside its’ name
Something other than what it is– a gift.

She saw me standing in the rain
holding my heart and decided
to roll by just to splash me with the dirt
from the concrete.

And that was just too damn much.
Broke my pride.
So I broke her nose.

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Sarah “Nnenna Loveth” Umelo Uzoma Nwafor (they/she) is an Igbo lesbian poet, performer, and facilitator. Their work explores Black g*rlhood, Black queerness, Igbo Cosmology, Sensual play and rituals of healing. Nnenna published their debut chapbook, Already Knew You Were Coming, with Game Over Books in January of 2022 and has also been featured on Button Poetry, WBUR’s ARTery, VIBEs Magazine, and Ujima #Wire. When Nnenna is not writing, they are somewhere being romanced by the intensity of life. Please follow their work on IG @pleasure.as.compass or at pleasurearthealing.com.

I limped around the house,
bruised and milk-stained,
while my mother whisked
around the kitchen, steeping
teas of ginger and cinnamon,
hibiscus, dark as blood—
her tonic to heal my body.

When I wasn’t marveling
at the rise and fall of the baby’s chest,
I was worrying myself into a winter.
Every sunset brought a bouquet
of dread. Every dinner plate
was a thing to cry into.
I was always hungry for air,
rushing outside, palms open,
trying to catch my breath.

The baby blues, they all said,
but nothing felt pastel.
I’d fallen into the deep end,
dark and murky as ash,
like the time I got lost
in the current at Black Rock.
And again, it was my mother
who pulled me ashore.

She was the only one who could reach me.
She knew what the rest didn’t—
that my baby
was not the only one
who had just been born.

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Allison Mei-Li lives in Southern California, where she is a mother, writer, and speech-language pathologist. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, MER Literary, Coffee and Crumbs, Ink + Marrow, VC Reporter, Wildscape, and elsewhere. Allison is a poetry reader at The Turning Leaf Journal and shares her writing on Instagram @writtenbyallison and at allisonwrites.substack.com.