by Ian Macks To protect our culture from racial biases and transgressions To emasculating cis-het black men and teaching them a lesson To eschewing accountability via manifestation and platitudes To manipulate through tarot readings and strike down religious beatitudes “Big Al” “G-Unit” Team Ally! Taking anti-‘s at the speed of light The “bad bitches” at
by Madeleine Beckman At the Cézanne exhibit – I cried looking at his drawings, reading Cézanne drew every day. He made pencil and paper breathe the way you could – while waiting for me to emerge from ballet class quickly sketching on a restaurant napkin. Some of Cézanne’s work in the exhibit wasn’t good, he
by Chelsea Fanning : the hole in your tooth your tongue keeps probing. : the break in the dust from a mislaid book. : the chair depression where the cat always napped. : the condensation ring on the bedside table. : the steady thrum of a record needle after the last track. : the crushed
by Marjorie Maddox Give me the pattern of pucker clinging so unsweetly to each cock- tail glass of seductive deceit cracked beside a creased napkin briefly branded with blots of Cruel Ruby— no ambivalent Rorschach of lips but this identical XOs match beside a pale corpse with cheeks tattooed so beautifully with the indelible smack
by Kristie L. Williams I asked you to use flyer miles before I am locked in the circumstance of my body betrayed by disabled limbs whose only function is to subtract autonomy by degrees you suggest we facetime while I count random variants on crooked fingers terrified by how my freedoms will be divided through
by Guillermo Filice Castro let your aunt amble in looking as she did in her 50’s let her return to the front patio of the house she never owned but loved let her talk about past holidays tables filled with cider and panettone let her say nothing as you watch her bob cut reach stillness
by David B. Prather I am my father’s anger, his hands at my throat, his fingers a ring of flames around my neck. The Ohio River catches fire, a glaze of industrial chemicals raging through the night, witch’s hair, devil’s tongue. The hottest fire I know burns in the wood stove. Embers fall and scorch
by Carol Alexander Red plums are the bodega’s daily special, at rot’s very verge. Wednesday crowds flow over the hump of bridge & tunnel traffic, delirious greasy smoke. The plums sag, well fingered. Leaning from unscreened windows, children dump dishwater on raku cement. At Greenwood, Brooklyn to Slidell, the drydocked are safely dead. Opaline city,
by Carol Alexander Less plumage. Fewer pirate eyepatches skulking around the bins. Pink retracts to notional seed, leaving a carapace of columbine the brown of dead cigars. Turkey oaks extrude ungainly acorns, splayed feet knotted by precipitate gusts of wind. Spackled squirrels with autoimmune disease, dock-tailed, slow. Less water from the decommissioned drinking fountains save
by John Franklin Dandridge Our grandfather told us he was a superhero when we asked about the backwards question mark tattooed over his heart. And we believed him, even though people portrayed him as a villain. John Franklin DandridgeJohn Franklin Dandridge received his M.F.A. in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. His chapbook, Further Down Rd.,