Switchback by Barbara Lawhorn Rattlesnake Gulch. We switchbacked mid morning, up the sides of Eldorado Canyon. I was high on sunlight, elevation, lack of sleep. Far from home. Hung over from 16 hours in the car, an excess of joy-confusion, the six drinks with and after dinner. One shoulder kissed by carpet burn. We
INVISIBLE CITIES by Kenton K. Yee A barkeep goes to her therapist, says: I can’t sleep—hypnotize me. So you do and take her to Central Park and fall madly in love. She cuts tail and you’re on your couch rifling through web pages pricing colonoscopies. It’s hopeless. You’re mediocre. Your mother was right. And you
by Brad Rose Like a phantom limb, I pay people to have fun on my behalf. If it’s done right, eventually, you get used to it. Whenever the music is as friendly as a pastel trench of twitching pit vipers, I’m perfectly comfy dancing inside my comfort zone. After all, veterinarians are animals, too. In
by Cynthia Atkins Swung in trees to write notes on a branch, carved her name into the cleft where the bark Y’s into a myriad of decisions. She wrote in the margins between the crumbs and the broom. While she was pickling cucumbers, with the juice and the seeds
by Caleb Bouchard Tell me, what is tangible about innumerable tabs? These days a sinkhole closet claims one foot while the other whines or Adderall. It’s like I’m in a Beckett play. Turnips, please. Caleb BouchardCaleb Bouchard is the author of The Satirist (Suburban Drunk Press 2023). His poems have recently appeared in The Laurel
by Frederick Livingston which is farther: Seattle or my own heart? some years I visit the city more often – once for two weeks have you ever lived in your heart so continuously? we’re so contiguous I’d arrive in two weeks walking our paved veins far simpler than reaching into a cage of muscle and
by Shoshauna Shy because do I nurture your trust or undermine it, jump on the friendship carousel or blow it to smithereens? Who has not learned that we value most what we have to earn – so before I reply, I want my continued absence to turn the sugar of anticipation to acid as the
by Winston Widjaja Lin 1) Speechlessness demands to be verbalized. 2) Hand sanitizer can’t cleanse the heart’s woes. Antidepressants: an option for the woes instead. Sushi lunchbag gives me solace. Hymn for my pain, please sound now. Maybe I’m in the middle of a breakdown. How can I prevent it? 3) Despair, be expunged from
by Kurt Olsson An artificial intelligence somewhere is writing this poem and writing it better. Images truer, the voice not so limited and identifiably mine, and what your eyes are compared to neither hackneyed nor trite but laid out in meter and perfectly rhymed, and, if read backward, encrypted in code for a fleet of
by Sue Guiney By mistake I left my toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom standing at attention, awaiting my return. All day long I remembered to retrieve it and bring it back to its home in the cup upstairs. I remembered when I brought the dried towels from the laundry and put them on the shelf