Tongues

Jenny Fothergill

curiosity will keep us
human I touch
you like a foreign word
rolled across my tongue

with caution
humour
anticipation

and the door snaps shut.
a knife slices
through ice and cuts my
langue

ache for words that will not come.
breathe as if trapped under glass
refuse to surface in the honeycomb
of my brain. I am lonely. I beg

you in silence. touch me.
I have a mouth full of metal.

in a room in the capital
men are talking of war
and other
human things

meanwhile the leaves turn
red then turn black and fall
back to the frozen ground

now I stand with a mouth full of stones
and hear the blood beating my heart

I seek silence.
I seek a language I am fluent in.
I seek sounds to break you
open.

at last the cut tongues rot like leaves
turning red then black they have fallen

while the men in rooms in the capitals
are still talking
of war barbed wire
and who is human?

touch me. say nothing.
I spit a mouth full of stones
in to the flooding
river.

1

Clutching

Kirsty Mac Dougall

Open the curtains and squint at the darkness that
subsided like I did when
I tripped over my reflection in the
mirrored water is slowly evaporating from the dog’s
water bowl needs refilling I
see my back tooth probably needs to be
pulled from the sky like orange-striped spaghetti
rays remind me that I forgot half of what you already told me
twice the pink and yellow highlighters strike up
a conversation we had years ago rings in my
ears are tuned out today till I hear our
song-filled heaviness as I feed the cat the emptiness in my
chest is heavy with the regret of knocking the lunchbox out
your hands are in another’s and
mine are clutching at the hot water vapor like a madman trying to make it
stay, please?

2

How to Build Your Own

Amy Nash

Strokkur. Begin with a rift
valley between two tectonic plates.
Make sure your magma is close enough
to the surface of the Earth.

You want hot rocks
that can boil water.
You’re not building a mud pot,
so you’ll need to find a source

of flowing underground water.
Glacier melt works great.
Let it sink into porous lava
as it seeps in all directions.

Now it’s time to introduce your complex
plumbing system of fissures and fractures
to ensure your geyser
erupts, rather than merely spews forth steam

like a fumarole. Remember
to leave enough space
for the water to gather
into a reservoir.

Whatever you do, don’t forget the vent lined with silica. Now step back and watch.

For extra credit, take a photo
from a safe distance at dusk
with your travel companions. Voila!
Your next album cover.

Stay tuned to learn how to build your own
song from leftover drone zither strings, midnight
crackling of the aurora borealis, iceberg shavings,
moss balls, and debris from the lime and violet lights.

3

Broken Haiku

Penehuro Williams

After Cecily Schuler:

My sexuality is:
A. Forbidden
B. Wanting to go
C. Denied

My culture is:
A. Fruit of the tree
B. Home
C. By the sea

My sexuality and culture
Meet at a broken haiku:

Forbidden fruit of
The tree. Wanting to go home.
Denied by the sea.

4

The lost art of keeping secrets

D A Angelo

Swallowing a starling in a public place
must be done with the utmost care
to avoid the librarian gaze of cameras.
Grab the bird with both hands
and quickly shove it inside your mouth,
pretending it's a sub greased with oil
and vinegar. Yum, yum, yum.
Of course, there will be consequences:
Your stomach blaring like a car alarm,
the front door’s new locks frowning
at your keys, your significant other
wearing the face of another lover.

5

Clemenceau’s Hands

Ava Mack

Eczema
comes from ekzein:
ek meaning out
zein meaning boil -
it makes me think of Georges Clemenceau,
The Tiger,
as war in Europe boils out
and over
and how he tries to hold it all together
with his weeping hands.
This stately man of dreams and faults
our lives lived a dense century apart
haunted by this same misery,
this menace,
I pity him for it.
“As for me, my hands are burning,”
he wrote Monet in 1921,
and then, “my shoulder is knackered,”
referring to the bullet he carried
in his chest until his death.
He mentions his eczema first
the bullet second,
I understand it
I know
how he eased his mighty claws from
their gray suede gloves
at the end of a long day of
saving the world.
I know
what it felt like to drown them
in a bowl of scalding water
to cauterize them
with stunning, violent silence.
I know he closed his eyes.
I know
he wondered about washing his hands of this,
about this feeling of giving up
and giving in.

6

The Leaking

Treasa Nealon

The tap
(the one to the right, the one in the kitchen)
had never been fixed,
not in the 15 or so years since they bought the place.
It leaks little rivets of searing liquid
on occasion. The occasion usually being
when they forget to be careful washing the dishes
and scald themselves in surprise
(which is now more often than they liked to admit).
They never got around to calling a plumber
just like they never got around to unpacking
the boxes in the room that was to be hers.
Sometimes, separate, they sit on the floor,
and read the faded careful writing on
the cardboard.
‘teddies’
‘books’
‘baby grows & bibs’
At night they dream of a home
with a tap that works
and a teenager that stomps up the stairs until
they wake up suffocating.

7

profiled at breakfast

Elliot Boodhan

i want to curl up in a ball of queer and color
because i am queer and have color

i don’t want to be here
with the waitress who says
have you seen the show Dahmer?
you guys look just like the couple
you’re the deaf one— obviously
and he’s the main character

obviously because i’m brown
obviously because he’s white
obviously because we’re gay

i am drained from feeding the waitress
who comes back without our order
says you guys really do look like that couple
it’d be a great halloween idea
only they aren’t characters
this isn’t a costume— my skin
and i am squirming beneath a table
filled with violence instead of omelets

she effectively kills me for the week

8

Chronically Ill Housekeeping

Makena Metz

You live with pain like a fish on a hook
digging into your cheek. Flesh pulling,

blood trickling onto teeth. Aching
for release, you flaps your fins. Gasping

air into desiccated gills. A knife’s blade
slices your sides. Down the hallway,

scales dropping, you put your laundry away -
trailing fishing lines through the house.

9

Please don’t be Angry

Michelle Noel Terrebonne

The way your eyes narrow when I
bubbling pasta on the stove
Hesitate to tell you what’s on my mind,
washing our Fiestaware
Purse your lips when you know
simmering oranges, cinnamon, and cloves
I haven’t been honest
dipping a sachet of Earl Grey
About the immense feelings of failure,
slipping into the bath
Loneliness, and self-preservation that
warming a compress for my eyes
You could have washed away,
wiping away the melting mascara
If I’d only opened the gates
draining the kettle
To my dam of embarrassment.

10

Hell is a bowl of soup

Lilith Santos

“Irasshaimase!”
We cheer as the door swings;
my knife digs deep into sea
weed, rice, ripe avocado,
torched salmon and spicy mayo.
Wipe the knife and rinse your tears.
A scream at the cashier that she can’t
have pork from the ramen restaurant.
Feel free to take a break, when there isn’t a rush.
Stay in the back and chat, but today isn’t that.
The customer doesn’t understand
the screams echoing from the walk-in freezer.
Richard knocks at the door
and notifies me that there’s three more bowls to make.
Chop and slice the salmon into three pieces,
lay your eggs and boil for seven minutes,
let it sit in a shoyu broth for a day. The oil
and grime sticks between my gloves, my hands
cleansed from the soot under the oven, crumbs
and sauce and the guilt that seeps under my skin
after serving two incorrect orders.
Five bento boxes, eighteen
different types of tempura, two pieces
of a California roll, one piece of meat.
I hate making bento boxes. Andy smokes
a pack outside while I grill chicken, beef,
cut sushi, build a bowl of ramen, deep fry
the karaage for too long. It looks like coal.
Flame tickles my forehead, steam burns
my hand, and twelve more orders rise
from the receipt machine.
A pan in my hand, a spatula in the other, a basket
of takoyaki has another minute and twenty seconds
before the second fry batch.
Serve, serve, serve. Soldier on and step
in and out of the back of house, contain
er and caution, don’t spill the crab and avocado.
A glob of rice, flat as spirits, roll the strip
and top it with eel. A customer walks out.
“Arigato gozaimasu!”
We yell at the blank space;
my knife slashes the rice and in
to my flesh. Dump it, wash it,
and the rice at least five times.

11

limerence

Ria Di Peeples

My little freak 
Liked to leave coffee and cum rags on my doorstep
but keep his secrets safe at home

He once heard me tell another man, “Fuck it, I’m dancing” and then I spun in his circles until I died.

I apologize first to my hands and then to my children
All these things I’ve grown inside my skin and none of them are still alive

Yesterday, I changed the porch lights alone. 
the house finally stood still

12

September Children

Raven Lucas Pritchard-Smith

Because it was the most beautiful of all months,
because it was all of our birthdays.
We’d gather.
There was a lot of food,
there was a lot of sorrow.

Everyone made sure
to stay awake
and witness death approach.
And to witness themselves dying,
all the way through.

September was all of our birthdays.
We were the threads
patching time together.
Wilting, golden light everywhere,
the scent of surrender breezing through the weeds.

We formed a chain, then circle.
Clasped hands until we couldn’t feel each other,
until it felt like nothing mattered anymore.

We stayed awake all the way through.

Often, it rained.
Nobody had answers.
Our clothes dried in the breeze.
Movement was strenuous.
Death was moving through us all
like a thread patching lives together.
Fruit began to ripen,
then fall from the trees.

13