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Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE on my grandmother’s sofa while foraging for words rare as a Ghost orchid I thought wait: let words find each other alert as a Rottweiler at watch on the front balcony and, the first word is ¾ it could be a phrase caught and the second [word] oh, a game show! come third word heart like what? then what? we used to watch TV in the basement it had a…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE Ghazal, with Rabble-Rousing Leftist Minke Whales Twenty yards out minke whales whisper in the sound and we eavesdrop, camping mugs of cowboy coffee in hand. I heard orcas train their calves to attack billionaires’ yachts. We’re disconnected, tough and free, no phones in hand, so we can’t confirm this beautiful new fact: we imagine a movement…
pulling vines from the silver extension ladder. some are tiny-leaved and brown some still thick and prickly with blackberries in pudges and the ladder goes up. it's heavy and my son and i navigate it never too sure about which way might set a rung lock fail so trying to hold fingers carefully while managing the weight using short cut branches from the avocado tree i sweep, sweep away remnants of…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE carpenter ants slide in & out of the baseboard climb the erect stretch of paneling soldiers sisters to the sexless fully clothed i grin like a basement gremlin with a flashlight watch how i miss being tossed like an ant on its back roughened into a straight man’s faggot legs outstretched cheeks jackhammered & pried open empress of wood carpenter…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE I imagine her pacing the hall, at times pausing before the halo of an open door, one I cannot follow her through. A lifetime ago when she took my hand, and I followed her into the twilit yard, my hair still damp and fragrant with Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, my Wonder Woman nightgown swishing my ankles, how the cool earth cushioned my feet, grass…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE The poem begins with figures of speech or figures of fun, a fig newton, a figment imagination flares on mind’s old screen. We find comfort in naming, cataloging, pinning butterflies to walls that our own mind designs, an habitual track to follow. My work is the translator’s, to move one sense into another’s realm, to navigate mists of borderland…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Keep in touch When summer ends I took the Bus it smelled Of bone and Birth the first Day you left Me I was Drinking desire so Long like memory Like teeth Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD , The Citron Review , and X-R-A-Y , among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE The other of the other is the sky and its sphere of longing. Kolaptō grew in reverse, roamed dung-billed instead of bildungsromaned, raised in a house with all its mirrors pointed inward to reflect only their dark walls. At the funeral, he birthed his father through the vaginal coffin. "Look at this baby," he cooed and crowned him with a garland…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE “I’m writing to you all the time” —Franz Wright you may be moved to discover on a train to stockholm you hadn’t planned on— the other one having burst into flames the station before you boarded in malmö— you actually quite enjoy a thing you'd previously dismissed, for instance the poetry of a dead drunk austrian, yourself, black tea with…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Bats become girlfriends (their fluttering sleeves) You know those two playing stickball in the alley – me & Mary in the twilight saying little Lisa Fishman is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently One Big Time (Wave Books, 2025). Her debut novel, Write Back Now! , was recently released by 1366 Books, an imprint for experimental…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE waxed floor dim gym quarter moon sweaty palms love-starved school dance sneaker screeches small town shortest month junior year string eyebrows mom’s lipstick calgon body mist holey socks nokia photos hairspray lungs 160-character texts mousse curls spaghetti-strapped electro-pop home team chants teacher scowls fluorescent tubes washroom swigs…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE At the water’s edge—as at the edge of ruin, the sorrow of laundromats, of so much noise, newsprint and smoke dispelled by the wind— the sand was not what they said, but alive and fresh, a wish made flesh. Other, other where have you gone? Now you smell like salt, like something hidden and curled at sea. You, on the road: dim yellow, like…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE Help! I know going Don’t what’s on. A dog keeps barking in my Head & the movements of His tails say all things are Within reach without cases Oh My god Does your husband know about Penmanship? Oh My god Three decades scratching out in pleasing Ink. I thought to part with pennies For the sake of smiles and silly things What Do you mean this Pen…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE AR-SA I still recall the last time I spoke to an alien, or perhaps merely imagined it to be so. It happened immediately after the first drops of blood—later known as menstruation—appeared. I curled up in a corner, watching the wall where it walked in transparent attire, playing cards next to a widow spider. I don't know if it was truly a widow, but…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE I will leave when mountains walk And mountain giant obliterates me I will leave though first I will be A thousand invisible creatures Vole and wasp and a little bramble Who keep praying Let me never fucking leave And I will burn every angel Who comes for me Until all my robes Are the robes of dead angels I will leave when I have been crushed By…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE Boasting a box capacity of almost 33 cubic feet, and 17 miles to a gallon, the Chevrolet El Camino combined the rugged durability of a pickup with a sedan’s sleek, suburban profile. 3-Speed automatic, CID V8 engine, and with 400 horses under the hood this baby could definitely fuck. It was the perfect vehicle for anyone who couldn’t make a…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE One bean grew down instead of up. Perhaps I planted it wrong. For weeks, nothing. Then the soil moulded over with white fuzz indistinguishable from perlite. I almost threw it away, but the child said hang on and finally some odd, gnarly tooth-like roots anchored themselves upward into air. Soon enough they understood and latched back downward…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA JA X-NONE after John Thompson TELEPATHY WITH GOD reads a sticker on the metro Thank God I’m an atheist reads another. Drumheller, Red Earth, Medicine Hat, the Walmart parking lot: roads breathing fever. John, you wrote not the destruction of form, not the praise of the private hallucination. passion, passive, and pathology grafted from the same root: to be…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE this whole day I didn’t think of her, had work to do fed the cats, ate an apple played with the seeds on my tongue I crunched the bitterness and it echoed through the hall as if I had punched a hole through the middle or thrown the flesh against the wall. you seemed afraid of me then. like I might spit a seed at you or peel your skin and bite…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE I think there should be flowers and my arms should end in petals the right mix of forget-me-nots and kink fingers to swarm my rosy skin, peachy ass. Roots embedded into cotton sheets. A charming biography of a boy who lost track of his body somewhere in the aughts. My stomach is where I hid the lotuses, where they pull me to my core. My fingers…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE On any given afternoon I could burn Through the afternoon Totality is as lightless as it should be I resented losing my claim to the sidewalk I wandered around and repeated Colourless in my head I flashed Partial gold plate I remembered myself flatter All one tone Or beside something and facing away from it And yet some people are moved to such…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE Early light comes through the blinds unreplaced by the blackout shades we said but didn't buy we said we'd never have the dog in bed but here he is a sighing curl. I reach my arm over him to rub my lover's arm an arm that holds my lover's phone a phone filled with bad news. We said we'd say no phones in bed but here's the arm I rub he and the…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE Red bird in a dark wood, a silhouette— you, the tree— your red the only colour in the green. Susan Robertson grew up outside Washington, D.C. but has made her home in Canada for years. Her poems have appeared in journals in Canada and the United States including Prairie Fire, the Offing, Grain, HAD, The Ex-Puritan, and The Fiddlehead. Her…
Dana Teen Lomax's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, published and anthologized internationally, recognized as among the Guerrilla Girls’ favorite books, and received awards from Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the California Arts Council, the Marin Arts Council, and others. She collaborates with artists from all over the…
Normal 0 false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE How are you doing, humans? Did you know that litmus is made from lichens? We all gather in a coffee shop and pretend to work, alone together in our procrastination. Rage is all the rage. While traversing a zebra crossing, I’m nearly hit by a car, on purpose, by a hetero family with two kids in the backseat. The father rolls down his window and…