SOME ADDITIONAL LINES FOR FORTUNE COOKIES

—after Frank O’Hara

By Cecil Morris

Money will find you soon; it won’t be enough.
Wishes can be horses, but only if you feed and water them.
You will enjoy the best nap soon, a dream nap, a sleep deep and dream-free and restful as blue paint.

THE FRIEND THAT I NEED TO CALL, BUT NEVER DO

By Joseph Martini

Remember when
we watched The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre in that weird little
coffee house on 124th Street.
I nearly shat my
head out when the fat guy put
that screaming lady on that
meat hook.

SHOWER/SACRED SPACE

By Sara Sage
a.     the shower is the purest place / that you conceptualize as a / young child/ you bathe with / a cousin, lather each others’ / hair with walmart soap, smear / shaving cream into letters / across the walls, force special / bath-only barbies to play / scuba divers/ your grandfather considerately pats you down with costco towels

b.     you nearly shatter your left / arm at ten / the doctors surround / your meager bones to your bicep

SEANCE IN A GRAD SCHOOL APARTMENT

By Lauren Michelle Finkle

I buy an old television, / the kind with an ass that takes up three square feet, / the kind with a face that goes gray in confusion when I power it on.

DAYS AND NIGHTS AT TACO BELL

By Adrienne Pilon

For a little while, Taco Bell was the locus of my brother’s pain / and possibly joy, in the way summer jobs can be / when you are a teenager, and you work in fast food, / and days turn hot and meaningless, ruled by clocks.

HOW TO RUIN EVERYTHING

By Jessica Era Martin

First, you'll need to study this handout on emotions. / Second, you'll bombard your intimates with new vocabulary. / Next, teach a stubborn six year old how to tie his shoelaces (bunny ear, bunny ear, wrap? Loop, / swoop and pull?) / After that, cut all the sleeves off your shirts and use them as rags (that way your heart will / become clean). / Next, relive your traumas during coitus.

THUNDER ROAD VISITATIONS

By Christian Aldana

on the corner of 45th & telegraph / there is a jack in the box i’d go to / after family rehab meetings / for my older brother. sometimes it’d be us, / sometimes it’d be a group. each equally / filthy in it’s conjecture & each led / to what could barely be called sleep.

ODE: RED TWILIGHT

By Ron Tobey

ask how the phenomenon is / in flared nostrils quiver / tender tongues curious / ears focus flicker / seven scent glands a sensory world / legs front and rear interdigital glands secrete / forty-six volatile compounds / 5040 combinations of scents / create the interactive deer herd / members sign individuality / signal presence sex health rutting / sprayed on tree trunks droppings / pressed from foot pads onto autumn mast / farm fields rained grass / mixed with urine and fecal aromas / humans are unknowable in this world / are noise and void and thuds without echo / are shock of thunder out of stormless sky

APPARENTLY, MY LIMIT IS TWO OUT OF THREE

By Vivian Stone

Filling bowl, pipe and pint after / emptying bowl after pipe after pint, / I see through my glasses toward the horror / and vices lit and beheld within and / without anxious bowels. Grass burns, / mixed with dogshit and toxic runoff / demanding still more poison to cool / burnt vocal cords charred by coughs and cries for help.

GOODBYE RODNEY

By John B. Oldenborg

Month of beginner seahorse / kisses somewhere in retrograde / There are motorcycles chasing me everywhere / Check that rear view: / Each and all periphery into sewer-light Shadowfigures / mouthing in a Bowery corner 6.99 / GOATMILK / CAPPUCHINOS RAPIDLY PERISHING / HORSES MAY BETRAY THE END OF TIME

MENTALLY I AM EATING GROCERY STORE SUSHI IN AN EMPTY SPIRIT HALLOWEEN PARKING LOT

By Katy Haas

i mastered the skill of being alone / while someone still slept in bed beside me. / i'm so dang good at it / so why does it feel like the back of my throat has become a ghost, / has become excavated, / a void echoing endlessly each time i inhale / or see your face on my phone screen? i fall asleep with your name on my mind every night / in an attempt to make you notice me vibrating / in the next city over, / a ball of sad and sexy energy.

APERTURE: CREATIONISM

 By Emelia Kamadulski

Daily the internet depicts a dog conceptualizing time [afternoon after morning morning /

now afternoon later night           then night]

At noon, the neighbor brags of the impermeability of their triple-paned window and smokes under the / frame of the opened garage door, / the cat, scratched behind the ear is a crumbling / bunch of tobacco

FORECLOSURE

By John Leonard

i.

Where are they now? / Iron tumbleweeds. / Emerald city slums. / Castles of mud being / raptured into the sky. /

And when the sun comes out, / you say it’s best not to look at it.

ii.

A child on my block fell off his bike / and skinned his knee. He threw dirt / when I tried to help him up and laid / there until his tears were reimagined / as strength.

FINAL THOUGHTS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

By Brendan Walsh

because we are collapsing i’ve run / out of things to talk about. you’d think / it would be the other way around,

but here i am, tummy-ached and rotten- / toothed with all this devastation; / all i got’s a dumb guffaw and sigh,

this we-tried-our-best-well-not-really, / this kiss-me or fuck-me or slap-me / stupid just make meaning from my body.

THE MULE DEER

By Isaac George Lauritsen

Yesterday, I witnessed a mule deer separate into its major / components: mule and deer. They sprinted gently into trees.  

I thought fencing and of fencing. Though long ago / I’d acknowledged thinking to be a spontaneous sport,

I made sense of a mule deer splitting and concluded fencing / a situation in which I expected blood but did not perceive.

These words I intend not for me to appear a braggart: / I am a careerist bread maker. Left with little time to sympathize

 with mules, I invent devices for ease. I pedal wheat-grinding / contraptions rendered from bad bicycles. In my free time,

 I miss my wife. Often alone with my fanatical hair / and the transferable qualities of wagons, my remedy for

POEM AS A MISSING PERSON’S POSTER

By Natalia A. Pagán

MISSING: former self / SomeWhat astute//sw charismatic//sw creative

have you seen her? she lost her way somewhere / in rural Oregon

be advised:: she scares easily

PHILOSOPHERS (OK YOU LOST ME)

By Sam Risebrow

Are people good? / And is God good, too? / Would people be good gods? / What does God mean, to you? / Would you do God good?

THE AVERAGE PERSON THINKS YOU ARE THE AVERAGE PERSON

 By Micaela Walley

no smile like summer  / no belly peach fuzz / not even an arm longer than another

THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO QUACK QUACK QUACK

By Jonathan Focht

- lately things feel backward backward / like all I’ve got are pipe dreams, / aluminum evidence, a worms-eye view. / these days there’s a haze that blurs / the springboks and the venting. /and the reasons I had for living. / in the mirror all I see is a butte; / dumb cupboards in the kitchen. / I drink hot blood, eat plumcots / and keratin, dream of horrible bear bears.

THE SEED REVIEW

By Dan Mallette

Illumination Zinnia Seed Review, Zone 6A, Indianapolis, IN, August 17th, 2020

Right under highway 65 by the children’s museum, I noticed a tent city expanding like mold. I’m ashamed to say now that I complained to the police. At the red light by work.

I felt like I could touch the nylon fabric. I bought these seeds as an act of silent forgiveness. I bought them for a woman who lives in the orange tent by the barricade. I snipped more than a dozen of these vivacious double blooms and brought them to the tents in a 1-gallon mason jar.

SERVICE

why / do I come here / ? / registers vacant / dining deprived / no soul to conspire

even / the kitchens /sound empty

just take it. /no one will know / but me / my conscience. /the cameras

somewhere else / will take longer / I think

WHAT WHEN WHERE WHICH

By Giles Goodland

What two ways is a cluster of nerve cells like a telegraph station     what points of style and metre is the poem imitative of     what respects does T in his poetry seem word-driven    what kind of angel was there to kill in the house    what is sense in general, or the general voluntary sense, or the general involuntary sense   

LOGGING ON

By Lucia Gallipoli 

Would I be more hot or less hot / if I breathed like my laptop / when I was stressed, too? / How do I erase my working knowledge / of who isn’t following me back? / Why does every person on Tinder / say they “like adventures” / when they won’t even / venture to walk you to the train? / Who decided email was an acceptable / form of communication?

EYES GREEN AS JOLLY RANCHERS

By Griffin Epstein

we sneak into your parents’ room, couples’ retreat brochure on the bedside table, illustrated Kama Sutra in the dresser drawer. on their expanse of cotton sheets, we hold hands, your fingers skim my thigh. we watch a made for TV movie, a man and his newborn wait for rescue in a frozen cave, their toes turning gray. the baby is hungry, the man has to feed her from his own flat chest. you tuck a tag back into my t-shirt, brush my impossible hair.

DR SEUSS & DR SCHRODINGER

By Harps Mclean

they started a veterinary practice / --mostly cats / delusions of grandeur primarily / some spay & neutering mixed in / at the end of the month

cuz no one / can live day to day on absurdity / & the ridiculousness of words / i know-- i've tried

MOOD DISORDER QUESTIONNAIRE (WHICH I ANSWERED YES TO ALL)

By Alex Dang

Has there ever been a period of time when you were not your usual self and…

● you felt so good you started vibrating at the pitch of a hummingbird and the people around you saw instead a beehive solely made of light and combustion?

SHOOTING STARS & JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME

By Shawn Berman

it all happened so quickly: i was chilling on my balcony sipping a milwaukee ice when a big bright light flashed across the sky. immediately i knew what i had to do and i prayed to the astrological deity dudes for a lil bit of luck. i said:

dear giant star god bros--it’s me again. shawn. i know this might be asking for a lot but i’ve been really good this year; if you can find it in your shiny hearts to bless me with a love like bennifer’s, i will be forever grateful. it would mean the world to me to have someone who encourages my dunkin’ addiction; to have someone feed me munchkins in between iced coffee sips while driving on i-95; who lights me another marb red when mine is flaming out. for once i would love to be loved for me and my man-child hygeine, my scratchy beard, my i got outta bed for this target graphic t attitude. is that too much to ask for?

LOVE LETTER TO ALASKA THUNDERFUCK

By Hannah Kludy

i saw you on tv turned

the volume high until i breathed

in the sound through my ears

the pixels lined your cheekbones

in perfect contours i wanted

to rub my thumb over your bright

blue lips without ruining you

i once saw you in a club you broke

your stiletto and kept dancing

SEVENTY-SEVEN PERCENT

By Clara MacIlravie Cañas

You’re a little bit uglier when you sleep—

jaw wide open, snoring from your throat.

You have girl hands, & it’s true,

our hands are the same size.

You once told me you like how my

Morning breath smells like deli meat.

ODE TO NAIL CLIPPING DAY

By A. Jay Dubberly  

a day for things left too long—

for oil changes! for alphabetization!

for masturbation! bill paying! & shower-singing!

for getting a book from the shelf like an old friend

FORMICA COUNTER CULTURE

 By Aaron Tyler Hand

xSiameseGunx: fueled by

the offbeat crackle of

dial-up internet

KnitASilhouette: we got high

THE FEAR OF BLANK FACES

KG Newman 

I’m relying on sweepstakes

to bring me back my happiness

and the panic from future mismemories

to get this addiction under control.

NOT IT IS KNOT IT

By Elizabeth Wadsworth Ellis

Knot differs from the “Not it!” we screamed as children in the game of Hide-and-Go-Seek. Knots are a puzzle, a perplexity. / As 4 year old, with the family dog leaning into my side in the pasture, I cried when I could not knot the lace to tie the shoe. A knot in a shoe lace or a draw string requires an undo; / Drawn tight can break a finger nail. We tie a knot with string, ropes, ribbon, cords, and loops, or loosen tangled strangled hairs. Knots ball up like kitty-barf and the snarl in Doggie’s tail.

8 TRIPS TO THE BIG Y/TRACTOR SUPPLY MINI MART MALL WITH THE WALGREENS THAT USED TO BE A RITE-AID

By Jerica Taylor

1. They were out of our normal chicken feed. In some kind of fog, I bought what I thought was a competing brand and instead was poultry scratch. There was even a turkey on the bag, right there on the front.

FAKE FIREBALL ISLAND & REAL PIT BBQ

By Robert Bartusch

She’s not quite quiet / It’s a chemical imbalance, / A volatile mixture / All shook up inside. / It’s dangerous for anyone / Who tries to get close. / It’s a difficult thing / To really understand. / She’ll be doing laps around you, / Make you feel like an old fool. / Now I know I’ve got a new one. / She says she wants to cook for me, / Hope there’s nothing up her sleeve.

BOXING DAY, 2020

By Marije Bouduin

Someone here is boring, in lakeside views. As if in foam-like memory, night must fall darker now. It’s always December here, the blue wash of streetlights will enter the room and unfurl

like conversation

while the toddler remains glued to the television screen.

BURNT GREEN

By Carl Boon

My husband slashes / the neighbors’ tires after dark, / then comes home gleaming / with intrigue and achievement.

He muddles through his days, / watching game shows, / the machines in the garage, / the overly-rouged teen

OZ WASN’T SO BAD

By Maureen Mancini Amaturo

Troubles were lemondrops for such a short time. / Regret swirled. / Pig pens bumped farmhands bumped cellar doors bumped barns / and buried her real dream in a haystack that needled her. / Only the crullers were sweet. And Toto.

TOURNIQUET

By Lily Rose Kosmicki

I. Honey Blood and Milk Bone

A phillumenist on a bicycle /peddles boxes of inward light. / He measures divinity and tears dresses. / A bean of a girl peels petals apart / he loves me, he loves me not, / he loves me, he loves me not. / Plucking something pretty to death to figure it out. / Her gaggle cries out to the phillumenist / “Match maker, match maker, make me a match.” / In his irresistible rambunctious perusal of the eyelash cupcake, / he throws her a book of matches.

DECADES AFTER EARTH FAILED TO STAND STILL

By Khaled K.E.M.

The rat is fat from eating chocolate. / The mummy is waiting for a vacant pyramid. / Men give birth to octopuses. / The sun is done nourishing the moon. / The day has been up all night long. / I am out of dreams.

HOUSEHOLD POISONS

By Michelle Brooks

The afternoons are the worst, / the brightness not fading fast / enough when you have gone / nowhere and seen no one. You / linger in the valley of dry bones / when the past threatens to break. /your heart. You scroll the channels / on Sirius, certain there’s something. / better than the Grateful Dead station.

ON FACEBOOK WE FIND

By Shana Ross

the prescience of Einstein / who said (and I quote) / all this / <gestures broadly> / is a joke. / But my friend really did ask / three years ago: / have you done all / that America has asked / of you? What will you / say, when the time comes

THIS IS ALL MARY OLIVER’S FAULT

By Mia Vodanovich

Why do we bury our dead with beautiful things? / I think it’s something to do with why we hunger / For the places in us that ache, tender: / You watch a movie where the dog dies. / You listen to the song that belongs to / The last person who broke your heart.

ONE OF THE BETTER ONES

By DS Maolalai

it's all on youtube; / Patti Smith / playing E-Bow / to the Letter / with Michael Stipe / and the rest of REM. a good performance; / good as Craig Finn / and John Darnielle / or gin with lemons / and expensive tonic. there's something there, complementary / voices, emotion / tangling like bike chains

PREVARICATOR

By DM O'Connor

I’ve been told to be more specific use more story everyone wants a story— / the only thing that holds people together, yet any hero can refuse the quest. / Captain, if the destination is Cape of Never Stop two clicks before Horn of Constant

AwAwwAwAwA

By Stephen Ground

Title: A Rendering of

the Himalayas

THE CAT TREE IS MORE THAN A SCRATCH POST

By Barracuda Guarisco

loud snow perches. /my trying to be chill / in the examination of the resin. /surrounding my relation / to the word and how / not very chill that is / I’m more and more / beside myself

NOT RIGHT

By Jared Pearce

The terrible month, / where your girl left, / is closing, the one / eye left is globbed / in cataracts, the plane / is about to pull / its string and smooth / to the far side.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON OR WEDNESDAY AFTER MIDNIGHT

By K.V.D.

every year more songs make me cry / balled up eyes closed behind the wheel 

this bar cares not about occupancy / or the public health 

and I pretend I don’t feel the same life / is nothing but 

“YA EVER PLAY STRIP BLACKJACK?”

By Whitney Bain

“Hit me”/ “Hit me”/ “...Hit me”

“Shit” / “Strip!”

We were chasing vodka shots with/ lemon juice/ because someone found it in the fridge/ and it was too cold/ we were too/ drunk to get anything else.

CIRCUS PIZZA

By Adam T. Johnson

big gulps with crushed ice / code red mountain dew addicts / four deep in the back of a gold camry / eight identical k swiss sneakers in a / perfect row along the floorboard / tapping their feet to a lil troy track / a fresh bag of jolly ranchers / and a double pack of kool cigarettes / the old holiday gas station routine / the trunk of the camry stuffed full / with ryan phillippe posters 

<TITLE> THIS IS YOUR CORPOREAL BEING </TITLE>

By H.C. Bending

<p> end </p>

<womb>

<body> <skin> head brain ribs lungs heart hips navel sex fingers ankles toes </skin> </body>

OH HERE, MY DEATH IS APPROACHING

By Lesya Bakun

Oh, here, my death is approaching! / It crawls completely unnoticed, / Kinda like a snake, / Only a rustle and a bell will show you / that death is not static. / "Please pay here!"

I’M ON MY COMPUTER IN A 100-YO HOUSE IN OREM UTAH

By Emily Brown

Joan, a dog, is eating rice and Soy Curls on the floor. / She’s sniffing the floor for rice. / I hear her tiny shh-ing in holes through her licorice nose. /

a blue blob on my screen is my sister saying / Mom will pay for half of lash extensions / if you want to try them because I’m trying them / so if you get the $100 one it would be $50 / or if you get the $80 one it would be $40

The fan makes a sort of shadowy daisy rotating on the wall, / a sunburst that flashes or something, / a teeny bit of what the fan is doing makes

THE TUNNEL OF LOVE

By Jen Frantz

I wanted the world / to stop riding / its bicycle, and / I wanted the world / to deliver one heavy / strawberry, and / when the world / got here, I would / feel validated / by its very presence, / less strange, probably / ready to promise / my life.

LILY PADS

By Kory Vance

I was mad at the government and called it fat / I walked away drunken through chicken fields and strange cities / A small pack of three long-haired dogs followed me for my songs and my rice / And so we had a revolution for freedom and pig bones / And so we followed the pig bones into the landfills / And so we followed the pig bones into the rivers / And so we followed the pig bones into the drinking water

SONNET FOR MY FUTURE WIFE

By Riley Rennhack

Now, measure every angle and explain / again how the trees will eat all of it: / our silly things and, eventually, / us. If I confess this, I’ll start to cry. / You already know nothing is new here. / Just sex and the consequences of sex: / let’s yell about that. I noticed the cows / joined the chorus. I know this for a fact. / They’ve got no respect for authority.

MIDDLES

By Drew Rupard

In the equinoxes of falling asleep I think of fear, and blue static makes lakes of my dreams, and waking I am cut by blinds and know I am alive.

And the old wars were like brackish clashing in old paintings, spilling life into each other’s arms. And they were like sports teams, red and blue.

And leaving Evans, Georgia, where the water tower rose a second moon and we were strangers, a subdivision waited in the west.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

By Kathryn Matheson

I laugh when I cut / onions, tears / streaming down my face. / There is nothing I love more / than for my body to shake.

I have never left an art class / without being covered in paint, / talcum dust, clay. When I get poison ivy / it covers me / collarbone to inner toe.

I say the word puppet / and move my strung up / fingertips / to a rhythm only I can hear, / the twittering, tapping of / hearts breaking. / I cannot bear / to stop.

DADDY

By Eliza Campbell

Still thinking about the Play-Doh set in the basement children's room / of the Seattle Mormon church building where I was ten or eleven / when I uncovered a set of scented Play-Doh(s). One of them was / "Dad Scent!"

HASH CIGARETTES AND HENNESSEY

By Andrew S. Guthrie

Since you didn't answer the phone, ignored my entreaties, / begged off my single-track-mind / I went fishing / on a railroad bridge, backed up / and was squashed / at dusk, / that magic / hallucinogenic / hour. We had just got off of work / and I splurged. A signed first edition / and the freshest plug of hash that ever / was exported up a mule's / ass. / The Hennessey, / though low in the bottle / will still be enough of a burn / to compliment the jungle’s expanse;

THIS IS A MANTRA I CAN’T TELL MY MOTHER

By Rachel Stempel

A good orgasm is a kind bladder pressure. It feels sneaky not to leave a trail but I’ve already let my ex-girlfriend piss on me in the shower & internalized her stepdad’s approval. I’m well-versed in reification. When my own hands feel foreign & I can no longer recognize my left eye, I succeed. This is a mantra I can’t tell my mother. It’s not that she won’t understand but will understand too well. 

SESTINA FOR THE WOMAN I DRANK A BEER WITH AT LAZLO’S SOUTH, LINCOLN, NEBRASKA, 2019

By Tyler Michael Jacobs

A man sidestepped me further than needed / this morning. His feet crushing / the frosted grass hiding its green beneath his weight. / How could he be so careless? There was plenty of side- / walk for the both of us. I was hurt. Sometimes / we forget the consequence of ourselves. / I wonder where I will find myself / one day. I sit next to a woman at the bar who needed / to ask me a question. She began with, Sometimes––

5 HAIKU BY HUGH

By Hugh Findlay

Anti-haiku

The weather is bad / Cherry blossoms smell like crap / And I’m hungover

Off

Internet is down / Conversation seems prudent / What’s your name again?

LUCIEN #1

By Jo O'Lone-Hahn

Revelations are a kind of robbery. / The postcard was a picture of you throwing a chair. / “It was raining outside !& so outside !& inside !& / everything !!! shapeshifted.” / Awhile back we tied white seashells to your hair, making / damn sure crests / of color were on / their way back. / Why be a great artist? I remember you were starting to hate / space in / light loosening

IT’S KINDA SAD WHAT MAKES ME LAUGH

By Raphael Jenkins

While I’m getting stoned, I imagine life / without random objects, like blue, then ask myself impossible questions, e.g.: / Were there no blue, what might we call bluejays? / Would they find themselves wearing a bespoke suit of magenta feathers? / Would bleached cotton clouds litter burnt umber skies over blood orange oceans / Would we have any use for the word?

TOO MANY MOONS

By Travis Stephensis

the stock market doesn’t care / if you live or die, unless / you really do take it with you. / the clouds do not care / if you notice their beauty-- / billows on cerulean, adrift / on the front porch of heaven-- / because they are just water vapor. / the sun burns & burns while / a sister-in-law accuses me of / writing about moons.

THE GLORY OF NOW

By Andrew Najberg

In one eye, a collage of Florida man headlines / Like “Florida Man Arrested for Practicing / Karate on Swans,” and, in the other, an old student / with whom I haven’t spoken for years fearing / a mutual acquaintance to whom I haven’t spoken / for even more years might be a suicide risk. / On the TV, a bad remake of an old bad movie. / In the middle, the screen this poem inhabits.

EDIBLES AT THE DIA

By Jason Salvatore Oliva

Time slows while the head of this people-snake awaits severance / I’m somewhere in the belly / a pile of skin and bones and hair / trudging toward my own decomposition / laptop bag weighing on my shoulder / heavy with books I brought and bought because I’m dangerous after a few beers / Like King Kong, TSA’s got nothing on me / no weapons, liquids, fireworks, aerosol cans, e-cigs,

MANY OF US HAVE DIRTY MOUTHS

By Shane Chergosky

We addicts of the exotic lunch believe in cheap landscapes / and delirious roller-coaster bureaucracies. For us, / the world hosts a medical conspiracy and chooses / melancholy hotels. We’re substandard / but not because we eat too much. / We’re the lunch of misery. / As we lay drunk, passed out beneath tablecloths our arms are being sliced / in the dream of a handsome butcher,

BROOKLYN NIGHT BAZAAR

By Mariam Ahmed

The muggy air hinted at a storm soon as we neared the nondescript warehouse. I hardly remembered the night before - flashes of rain and soft hash chocolate wrapped in golden tinfoil. Nick came up from Chicago to see the band; he stayed with friends in Bushwick. We met up with him after taking the F train to party with the gays. An entire city powered by molly and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. It was day three of a five-day adventure.

I NEED AN EASY FRIEND

By Nellie Papsdorf

I’m looking for large-scale, LIFE COACH LANGUAGE. / A ONE-STOP SHOP miracle drug that will CLEAN ME, / stretch MY SPINE, fix my POSTURE, make me EAT BETTER, / and stop SMOKING. / See, the ADVANTAGE to listlessness is the ABILITY / to see the horizon in ALL DIRECTIONS. EVERYTHING / tastes sweet. I can watch ANYTHING on television. No / porn is TOO WEIRD for me.

SPARKLEHORSE & REDONDO BEACH

By Glen Armstrong

I still listen to Sparklehorse / and walk around aimlessly / in the park. / The statues cast hilarious shadows / against the old-growth pines. / I would measure the marigold / in hoof-lengths / if I cared enough to measure them.

BETTE MIDLER DISPENSES STRAY ADVICE DURING A GAME OF PLAYGROUND RED ROVER  

By Valerie Nies

Hold tight Bette says prancing behind me and the girl whose hand folds into mine. The game is to prevent the other team’s players from breaking through our fence of six-year-old arms.

PHOTOGRAPH

By Rich Glinnen

Sliced from a loaf of time, / My jean shorts thrive in the glossy waters / Of a preserved shingle / They are eternally in style, / And billow like a jellyfish / Across the confines of this square pond, / Ignited by a sun’s worth of flash.

ROUTINE

By Dave Nielsen

In the morning I pour myself / a plastic cup of A&W root beer. / It’s too early for milk. / Then I go downstairs and try to listen / to the mouse running between / the floorboards. / Every now and then I think / I hear something.

STRIP POKER

By Matthew James Babcock

I: The emergencies we fear most / must be boredom and love. / At shuttle launch and tram stop / some huckster always has cards / handy, like a Yukon miner / with a stashed brandy flask. / It’s always the boys who get naked, / as they did on this school trip— / shucking off sweatshirts / and crinkled boxers

LITTLE DITTY

By Hugh Findlay

I was watching Bugs Bunny, / Sylvester, and Yosemite Sam / when a friend phoned from the coast. / His Navy life was mindless he said, / every day planned, every night damned. / He said he missed the crickets at night / and his voice sounded desperate and drowning.

OCTOBER, BROKEN

By Rena Medow

If not the density of fruitflies in the kitchen, then the fragility of ice fractals / lacing the window. If not the mouse / whispering in the drywall, then the bat circling the attic, / unable to sense the markable midnight breeze. / If not a dream where we are looking at purple wildflowers, . then waking up to the first snow on my tomato plants, some / of them unpicked, still green. The mind then softly considering your grave— touched by the first snow, now / and touched forever.

4AM (SOMEWHERE PAST FLORIDA)  

By Aiden James

sitting in a                   swivel chair / in my flat                    in Tallahassee / my gut turns                and aches / I wonder if                  I’ve been

poisoned                      and if it was the / Raid                            that leaked all / over my hands            every time / I sprayed the               house/

I think they make it that way / I know I’ve been poisoned / its name was Alfred / and not even 2 packs a day / can take it away

SEMBLANCE

By  Steven Ostrowski

“’Paper pennies’,” I say to her, no reason, / “is only a little easier to pronounce / than ‘floating avocado skin’.” / “You love nonsense,” she says, / scrubbing a pan. “What’s that about?” / “Define nonsense.” I make faces / in the glass of the roman-numeraled clock, / say “Did you ever notice I have a tic?” / She dries the pan. “Nonsense,” she says, / “means no sense. None. Hey, / shouldn’t you be working?”

WHAT I THOUGHT

By Nancy Lynée Woo

After Gerald Stern / What I thought was a hundred-dollar bill / on the sidewalk turned out to be a green apple / Jolly Rancher I lost when I was eight; / What I first took to be a row of books / in a dusty library turned out to be / a mustache twitching in a debt / collector’s cubicle; / Indeed, the harmless object / I thought was a glass of white wine / on the deck of a cruise ship / turned out to be barbed wire

BARSTOW, CA

By Andrew Furst

Just north of the Mojave in 1975, / I crossed the California border on route 15 / In a Continental Trailways bus. / It was the summer I learned to play guitar. / The driver tipped off the toll booth attendant / That we had a drunk in the back. / Nearly to Barstow, the bus pulled over to flashing lights. / Someone in a uniform took my grandma’s oranges / And the guy in the back.

THIS IS A NUMBERED POEM WITH AN EXTRAORDINARILY LONG TITLE, ABOUT THINGS THAT ARE PLAIN

By Jon Cribb

1. This is a banana. / This banana is not special. / Its peel is yellow. / If you eat it, it tastes like a / banana

2. This is a can. / This can does not contain whoop ass. / Its contents are Spaghetti-Os. / If it’s opened, you will see / Spaghetti-Os.

3. This is a big ass door. / This door is made of wood. / Its wood is probably maple or some shit. / If you eat it, you are fucking / idiot.

DEBT

By Beaumont Sugar

When I was a kid my cousins said maraschino cherries cause cancer, but I’d still stand in my underwear between the fridge and its door, upending the jar.  The artificially candy-red syrup ran down my body.  It made stripes which combined with the shining refrigerator light to transform me into a sticky raccoon, sickening myself on the entire family’s servings of the cherries and nectar.

THE WORLD DOESN’T NEED ANOTHER TIM ALLEN SITCOM

By Matthew DeMarco

The world doesn’t need another Vaseline-coated peephole pointed at the inner workings of sports equipment retail, power tools, supermodels, grunting, and avuncular advice about weatherproofing. 

6TH GRADE

By Svetlana Sterlin

in 6th grade my teacher was / always smoking like an afterthought / at morning tea and big lunch always / there hovering beyond the rotting fence / watching us with one eye.

BORN CYANIDE

By Mac Chandler

i was born the year of the DVR ask me what happened on february sixth two thousand and sixteen then crack my jaw backwards into an open bowl use my incisors

HEARTSTROKE ELEGY

By Nick Minges

Everything just turns to soup in this Sacramento heat. / I raise an important finger only to watch it slide back / down. “What did you say, honey?” I say, thinking we’re finally / getting somewhere.

QUARANTINE ESCAPES

By Kelly Mullins

We have no idea / How bad it really is out there / Insulated in this Dutch beach town / As the wind whips round the bricks / Or could it be the waves / The water is right there / Anyway / It’s 2:24

CACTUS WINE

By Madison Blask

I will show up with a cactus and wine. / They will both be for you. / The cactus will be in a tiny ceramic pot and the wine will be in a glass bottle. / We will talk about 2016 and what our hair looked like when we were 20.

MAPLE

By Tyler Michael Jacobs

It was not the exposed roots that bothered me / but what I could not bring / myself to say. And what I could not fashion / for you: A space in me. / An understanding / of all moments I lifted you toward the sky.

SELF-PORTRAIT

By Justin Lacour

I have this pet theory that the beginning and ending of decades is actually subjective. For example, I believe the nineties began when Twin Peaks premiered and ended the first time somebody stockpiled food for Y2K.

PORTRAIT OF MY DAD AS CHICK-FIL-A

By JoAnna Brooker

more weekly than church— / park in manicured car, sweet tea / chicken nugget baby plastic / playground. asphalt stuck to / my knees like gum, scrape off sharp / notch. wave at 5 strangers each / visit, your name, their greeting.

FOR SPORT

By Ellianie Vega

my claws protract as I reach my nails into / a turquoise aquarium, gently batting back / and forth at men on my phone like a cat / playing with prey for sport. / for a fleeting moment, I may graze their / flesh, but most of all I am drunk on the / sound of my fingers gliding through

WASTE OF $12 DOLLARS

By Ken Kakareka

Bukowski used to be my hero / until I paid $12 dollars / to watch a documentary called / You Never Had It: / An Evening with Bukowski – / I felt bad for Bukowski. / Linda looked at him disgustedly

SEVENTEEN SIDE EFFECTS THAT THE LUNESTA® INSERT DOESN’T MENTION

By Yvonne Amey

Every poem you write will be a bird poem. / You will sign up for a $500 Ironman, though you don't swim, bike, or run. / You will wake your husband at 0330 to ask him, what's for dinner tonight?

WINTER DIALOGUES

By Anna Idelevich

Above the city of little yellow lights / I’m standing like a boombox on the windowsill, I’m quite rough. / Snow falls, thawed patches, sometimes drizzling. / Against this background the shadows of passers-by, people.

all this love-talk about the moon

By John M. Davis

what, then, are all the wolves howling about?/ smell of moon-mold and green cheese, / two harbingers of decay and sickness? / a deadly shard of a broken star? / the moon hangs in heaven like the damned,