I feared it would be like pulling teeth,
all hide-and-seek to avoid betrayal, not easy
like removal of a five-year-old’s wiggled incisor.
Then the miracle that my cupped hands
in hers hold water, no leaks,
no protruding river veins or age stains,
they look prayerful rather than begging.
My pointed toe could be bold, an arch
to perfect the gymnast’s leap in open air.
Never a moment of still air. Memories
a rib-crack and a hard hard way to breathe.
In the living room a dream like an infection
hid beneath the couch covers. I kept my eyes closed
tight. What happens when a past looms against endless sky
spilling cyclones and debris. Whimpers, strings
of saliva, the space between his teeth, her doggy
long tongue. I kept my eyes closed. Displaced wind,
outside squeezing through the crack beneath
a door. What happens when history gasps.
Delta Mouth Moon pull swift tide bringing arrowheads quiver dropped loosened skirt strings tight arm and notch to bow dead elks bloat in the shore foam Moon swift pushing so saturnine up a slick and bawdy ship hull up a sickly girl-thigh on a naked shoreline Moon full drip ink on a violet dry notches […]
Read more "Delta Mouth"The REDRUM of Gray Matter and Oxidized Crows Postmodern dinosaurs can now read fluent Times New Roman and the New York Times, the idiocy peninsula is surrounding me on all three sides, information is the enemy now, the body, the devil, the mother, the degeneration of it all, the passion of past restraining orders and […]
Read more "The REDRUM of Gray Matter and Oxidized Crows"JuneLather that Place below the navelFingers treading waterTime transcending timeShe trails the oceanDrags it behind her Moves through it like glassCutting continents in halfI floss myself with her bonesshe sinks into me like poisonTeeth grinding teeth into ash Niamh Burns is a 23 year old queer writer from Alberta, Canada. Through their love of written […]
Read more "June"Kaitlyn Gaffney is a north Jersey poet and senior Writing major at Rowan University. She serves as a poetry editor for Glassworks Magazine. Her work is published in Avant Literary Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and forthcoming in Gone Lawn. She has produced two original plays through Rowan. Rest-less She pulls at herself every day, […]
Read more "Rest-less"Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, […]
Read more "Tomorrow"when i couldn’t speak she drew me a circle there were no words to communicate the shape i didn’t understand but her circle did not close and it turned outward on itself and i was sad to see it stop. she called it “spiral” and i begged for her to complete it until it reached […]
Read more "ex nihilo"I always thought she was a pretty girl—until she opened her mouth, anyway. Between those soft red lips, man, was an impressive set of ivory. When my imagination took me there, at first, I thought of a rat: protrusions pulling away from the gums and then slanting inward. So that made it easy for me […]
Read more "Big Tooth"
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