11/29/2023 Steven DunnSelected Etch a Sketches
11/27/2023 Gina TronDead Ringer The referee is calling foul as I panic, breathe deep Slow down before trudging through snow, a punishment I bestowed upon myself The ring is always iced like a Toaster Strudel crumbs jammed in the toaster stuck like the memory of me when I first watched The Funkasaurus plead with someone to call his momma, a punishment bestowed upon Tyrus from Vince McMahon I’d grab my phone, call my momma (dealer) and drown myself in flurries until I was unable to sit on the couch to enjoy Edge pulling his hair Frozen, I’d sit in bed shaking and surrounded by flakes I’ve iced up my ring again and the ref has turned his back to me he is the month of February, short and cold.
11/22/2023 Mandy Nadyne ClarkCanned Goods Do you recall the time I borrowed a can of beets to smash a fly in my living room? Of course you don’t, because I told you it was to impress my mother if she looked through my cupboards at Thanksgiving. You first offered me low-sodium green beans, but I filled you in on her previous rant on how low-sodium products were just a rouse to put the Morton Salt company out of business. My mother canned her own green beans. The reason I’m telling you all this is because the flies are back. It’s only April and they’ve come alive from somewhere in the house, a nest or through a corner in the sunroom, and they seem asleep. They’re so slow and fat all I need is day-old bread to crush them—the heel no less! I stared out the front window to your old driveway and the neighbors have a new Volkswagen. A bug to be exact. And then I laughed about how you’d probably come up with some clever way to work insects into the conversation or mention how the Jeff Goldblum version of The Fly is way better than the original. I’d have to agree. But then it dawned on me that you couldn’t make any comment like this because I wasn’t honest about killing the fly with your beets. Grab your can opener and call me next Tuesday.
11/21/2023 smoke belly by Jamie A.M.
11/20/2023 Dylan Kriegertextbook anomaly going home hurts my throat now glass half dead cat, photos too exposed to know what happened someone upstairs insists there is another term for praying the rosary (impossible to recall impossible to rule out) and the rest of the night is solid goose chase into catechism smashing translucence in case it’s faking tip of the tongue lost in laundry as if some jeans pocket jingles the sacred heart of the joke folded into filmy erasure, but in the morning we admit there’s no such language half-remembered from a field guide to the american southwest, what matters is we knew we were mistaken all along we checked, in fact: the sinkhole in the dictionary isn’t big enough for church words to drop down what matters is it doesn’t matter the hunt for nothing sounds fun with our dinky little flashlights flipping the property blind dark to blind white, wedged between revelations blinked into heavy mascara all around us, vinca invisibly attempts photosynthesis on a 9-volt battery wheels get dizzy with their own reinvention coming home is like that complex machinery rubbed pink drunk again under the floorboards old blood clots saved under the sink heart-shaped boxes full of baby teeth i pinch their soft spots, bone by bone nine cavities whispered into cellophane call it the carnage of the nursery bartering glass beads for edible wings there, another name for praying the rosary new search results for all our meathooks strung up like christmas in the land of disbelief monsters like me some children blow whole nightlights hiding from monsters like me midwest goodbyes start early so you can hear the end before you’re dead a decades-long tornado siren, special Lord of the Flies edition of Monopoly in which i am the pig’s head, and then a single dollar bill stolen over and over again and then the surface of reality burns the game into its scrotum and that’s how economies are created, baby: by the loose scabs dangling from our bodies, more sick fruit, watchful vultures waving hi from the top floor, the skyline looks like a staticky tv, obscured tapeworm what if demolition is best witnessed from no distance whatsoever? no more dilemma of the spectator, just snowfalls of sheetrock they’d find me curled up under the rubble of your bedroom closet where no one in their right mind ever believed you that i lived
11/17/2023 Sarah NicholsTwo erasure poems, “Dear Diary, I” and “Dear Diary, exit”, both taken from The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer by Jennifer Lynch. Dear Diary I was An animal in white a mother body hovering only the little girl watches me Dear Diary, exit painlessly a light stolen emptying the all—night of me that has rehearsed its cries the animal frozen the image of home
11/16/2023 Samantha SlavenThe Mirror Lips Turning Red Morphing into thin lines Stop at the entrance and smile Eyes Black Covered Guarding Hovering Wave to those you once loved Extend the lash Pull forward Press the powder deep into the skin Naked Unmatched Hope A new day beckons forward
11/14/2023 Cole BeauchampLet’s say I swallowed a coin by accident Let’s say I was tapping the dime on my teeth despite Mom always droning Don’t put things in your mouth Why are you always putting things in your mouth and let’s say my sister the wiggleworm whacked my elbow and the coin dropped down my throat like a gumball and let’s say Mom wasn’t there because she was upstairs she’s always upstairs where she’s been ever since Dad left with the big suitcase and let’s say Jenna and I loved it at first eating frozen pizza and ice cream and spring rolls and watching movie after movie especially the Terminator movies that Mom hates but now there was just dirty ice in the bottom of the freezer and now we’re scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar and no more grape jelly and now Jenna is really getting on my nerves with her elbows and her I’m hungry and when’s Dad coming back but now it was summer and there was nowhere we had to be and when we picked up the phone sure enough it was still working and do you know that coin popping down my throat was so comforting that I found another and do you know I went to bed dreaming of how those two dimes might call to each other in the squish of my insides and how they might reach for each other like the T1000 in Terminator who reformed from pools of liquid metal and do you know I dreamt of the coins finding each other in the night and joining hands like Mom and Dad used to and let’s say I never woke up to find it wasn’t true.
11/13/2023 Hillary LeftwichA video poem: Use an Acceptable Color Text: Pink baby plastic flesh Watch as the color of skin flashes white to pink to white again His hands and feet mistaken for pennies Dig all four nails into lifeline Somewhere, a plastic baby Jesus Waits for the sting Shapeshift into plank form through empty all-night laundry mats Tuck right thumb inward As we pass the tree line of parking meters Raise arm, let fly Hands of the homeless Make contact
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