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11/10/2023 Juliet CookWhat Do You Believe? Who knows what might be burning inside this Easy-Bake Cremation Bin? My little sister decided it could be used as a conveyer belt for Barbie, but wouldn't elaborate where she was being conveyed to. I wondered if it could work as a special sort of threshold for my dead fish. Mom said it smelled like Hell.
Keep an eye out for Juliet Cook's chapbook "Your Mouth Moving Backwards" coming soon by Ethel Zine.  11/8/2023 Yamille MossBlessing Dogs The humans are all gone. Last Sunday I buried a bone and went to sleep. This week was a blubbering and drooling blur. And this Sunday, today’s Sunday, which should really be renamed, because it is cloudy and covered and there is no sun. This Sunday my bone was gone. In its place was a tree where I had buried it. A big, hulking tree that couldn’t have grown to that size in a week. But sometimes the neighborhood kittens get quite big overnight. Sometimes the puppies' barks deepen and it is only the day after they learned how to yap. So maybe the tree did grow quickly, maybe the soil is good and maybe, if I ask really politely, it will give me my bone back. So I ask. And the tree doesn’t talk. It doesn’t have opinions or negotiations. It doesn’t have fruit or vegetables or anything other than dark green leaves. The sun sets and I sleep. The tree shades me from the morning sun, and the afternoon heat, and suddenly I am always under it. I come to like it more than the house and my many, many beds. The tree doesn’t grow anymore. A week passes then two. I babysit for my sister, carry the puppies one by one in my mouth, careful not to cut them on my teeth. They play in the sprinklers at the park and race each other back home. My sister thanks me, gnawing on her favorite bone. I think of the tree. When I arrive back home, on the branch is something white and obtuse. At the slightest shake the object falls. Wrapped in white wrapping paper, protected by a green ribbon, is my bone. I can smell it. I peel away the layers and lick at it. I chew and chew and chew and chew until it exhausts me. I curl myself into a C at the tree’s base. In the morning, something falls on my head and I wake up with a start. A bone. Not my bone, but a new bone. One that smells like summer and sprinklers and puppies. I look up. The tree has bore fruit: all variations of chewable bones. Beyond the wooden fence of my backyard, a nosy bloodhound looking over is wagging his tail excitedly. Yesterday his plum tree started bearing beef jerky flavored plums. Outside of our suburb, in a high rise, a tabby cat is discovering strawberries that taste like turkey. All around the city, little miracles are sprouting.
11/8/2023 Eliot S. KuBlumenkäse On some dark day when there is a downpour I will invite you to my peanut butter house stacked upon the knees of bald cypress trees in the swamp. You will hear me waiting for you amidst the frogs and insects shrieking outside my warm abode, my melorheostotic bones weeping like candles on the porch steps made from the scrap wood of drowned canoes and derelict playhouses. And I will receive you in my single room lit by a jar filled with lightning bugs, where you can shed your wet clothes, dry off with a fresh towel, and change into anything you want. Then I will share with you a wedge of my favorite cheese. It is a riddle on the tongue and splashed with primary colors- cornflower, marigold, and rose- like the war paint of rodeo clowns. Afterward, our bellies full, we will lie down on the earth matted with lost feathers and shed snake skins and listen to the rise and fall of each other’s breath. We will drift off into a starless slumber where everything is just as wondrous, while the lightning bugs die off one by one.
11/6/2023 Kalyani BinduOne musty summer I had one musty summer to dissect your absence, feet clothed in patterns of salt, as I stood watching the waves swell, like heaving, undulating strings of lungs. Wish I had more of them to spare. I'd piled up my clothes in the hotel room. Later, with salt-crested feet, I'd re-enter this museum of pretense, unstack them in all the ways we arranged our limbs after touching, poke holes in cushions to let the feral sighs levitate, unsew the leather edges of the shoes to see a taut thing come apart, wishing I had less of them to spare. Wishing that memoirs would return as seismic activity, and stay until the seer crosses over to where the sun drops dead. What if I had more of them to spare, to make up fables that could erupt, and burn holes into this muted act of spinning away, a waltz churning out salt in a sea that could pool into my house, like cat pee, from gravel.
11/6/2023 Joey Gouldhave fate Put away the basin wrench or whatever talisman you’re holding. That sink will get fixed, you say, closing the undercupboard with the regret of a layperson. Sometimes you’re the layperson, sometimes you’re the expensive mechanic with a secret nest of wrens in his chest. Treat everyone as if they’re a small bird until you can prove otherwise. Don’t stop watering the cyclamen. Naïve, sure, an apartment is the opposite of a nursery but the light’s near southern & it grapefruit-colors a rug. See a specialist about the spirits coming through that door. You are hallowed, not haunted, not downstairs in the disused wing. You’re nouveau in a baby of a country, it’s a child, showing the place to its parents, the gods, who are proud their dearie made a tree. The walls outside your room say have fate & you chat to a bartender who gives you free shots. It ends there for once, innocent, the credits rolling early in Gramercy then the 1, the 2, the 3.
11/3/2023 Teresa MestizoTwo Erasures from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman  [13] The mouth Has a heart As soft as A friend I wish it may Answer back So often Has my judgment Deceived me Truth slipped Quietly To the world's end But I hate disputes I cannot bear suffocation For which reasons A new Beginning No harm In the last word Caught whole Not mistake Readily conversation  [14] The world A tide of little evils And distresses Thickened This part of my story Every line I write Prompts me To write a thousand things I could not help Ink won't argue with you The wildest moment Imaginable
11/1/2023 Rebecca LoudonFrom the poem The butcher I live under the world’s true skin sweet poison laps the sweat on my wrist let me sing for wine at nine whiskey at ten mother speed at eleven cocaine at twelve sugar listen to the alcohol in my blood my eyes are rotting peaches I drowned each day in the Spokane River I drowned on Glass Street I drowned at Saint Anthony’s I did violence to myself in Spokane a coffin factory slap me awake I’m dying in ripe alleys in shuttered houses in bright factories I’m dying in gymnasiums I’m dying in concert halls stop me sugar stop me hey sugar just a glass of wine oh please just a line just the crunch of oxy between my teeth slap me sugar I’m dying in hotel rooms in banks in malls in grocery stores in schools in restaurants in cars in parks in hospitals slap me give me one more line sugar one more drink I’ve never been so thin so beautiful my bones shoot away from my hips my bones break inside my hands my bones slice my shoulders open I’m dying oh sugar I’m drowning in meetings twelvestepping through America slap me sugar I have done violence unto myself I ate the grape the priest the host oh sugar I have done violence unto myself slap me awake I’m dying under your strap your heel I have done violence unto myself this little war of mine I’m gonna let it shine let it shine let it shine let it shine
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