J. C. Jordan

a grieving fortune teller who reads death in every palm my mother says, to make me ache, you’ll never come home again

I know that I’ve been careless in my truancy I’ve been wayward, hoping to drift, Odysseus’ least successful protégé, but when I left I didn’t mean to leave forever

take back your stinging accusations— I have not been unfaithful to my mountains or my southern dirt; no other land has laid its grasping hands on me

I still dream of hazy summer like a fever, your lilting tongues, and some goddamn peace and quiet; even …

Seth Brady Tucker

He picks scabs, won’t answer questions; he’s still in a cave in a jungle, swamp water seeping up into the musky leather of boots, like a wasp sting, the soft tissue under the scab a pudding, skinned, oozing thin as red Kool-Aid. ?                        His mother, class valedictorian, then unwed teen, ?                        then prostitute, then dead. His father, wealthy son, happy, happy, happy, a whole other …

Terese Svoboda

?                        The Ark Tablet, written 1000 years before Genesis, remembers it  2 x 2 unclean/clean pairs, with ?            noisiness or wickedness the cause of exit,

the houseboat’s interior bituminized ?                                        with the blackest tar, Babylonian creosote …

Nina Charap

I hollowed out my skull and let you swim about Let you piss and laugh and dance Let you fill me up with every disgusting thing inside you Inside me Inside you To think that I loved and loved and loved you I cradled my skull in my hands Hunched over it like a mother Humming lullabies To the cracked and worn remains Pieced back together The finished vessel Unfit to be filled Like swiss cheese Like the syphilitic skeletons you took me to You held my hand and you said look Look what that disease can do …

Gerry LaFemina

My first guitar was a Japanese Les Paul wannabe with a warped neck I’m certain was manufactured in Staten Island, in Paul Majewski’s basement,

circa 1982. We knew the best ones were built in the States, Gibsons & Fenders we couldn’t afford. The best amps were British Hiwatts or Marshalls,

hand wired, tubes glowing like party lights, those parties we never attended. We were poor children of poor parents. Our heroes made do, made music from distortion—

Wayne Kramer, James Williamson, Ron Asheton, names so ordinary they might have been written under a …

Ojo Taiye

i look into your eyes each morning and find

me—sifting

through all the syllables of love

brimming with words i can say

and cannot spell

half-illiterate in my mother

tongue                  half-silent in         my         purchased         f———luency

at the age of five i watched my mother fold her breath

into birds         until they found

home

in a stranger’s arms

and yes

what of all the green blessings

in my mouth—the shadows

that keep me company

when my …