The city was New York.
The time was 2:51 am.
One could not see the sun.
The season was spring.
The temperature was 58°F.
It was not raining.

Prelude

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    Cover

    Issue

    4

      Wayne Koestenbaum
    • Porous Incunabulum I Found in the Washroom

      as if Silly Putty were an accomplishment

    • Apology for Dadaism

      serrated edges to lick while the failure wafers pile up inside your wish

    • Cubism’s Just Deserts

      mother observing rat

      father observing mother observing rat

    • The Pontification Factory and Its Siblings

      excavate a new toilet if you must verify


    • Amanda Smeltz
    • These Squatting Girls in Black Spandex

      Easter at the megachurch. My favorite silk banner is hung.
      It’s shimmery pink with a purple silhouette of a dying man.

    • Then This Crazy Pony Put His Nose Into My Hands

      The line break is mostly vanity: wearing cologne at the airport.


    • Matthew Moore
    • Inter-Services Intelligence

      Improvised explosive devices play out a song,
      Inspired by the means of production, to come with me.

    • Marina

      Orthogonal to

      The zoned and the asylums


    • Giulia Bencivenga
    • Did I Know Then The Sun On My Face

      Every child wants to drive down the dirt road to the canyon alone, just to prove a point.

    • The Birth of Mother

      Carved by water Playing w the denouement
      of language

    • Closed Circuit

      It's true what you said this morning when the fog was low that roses


    • Samuel Amadon
    • Breathing Days

      I stop my walk as if watching a fire
      Slowly cease.

    • March Time

      Everyone has a sweatshirt.


    • Cassidy McFadzean
    • Germ

      One hooked barb

      caught on the nape

    • Animal Fancy

      Sprouted lentils I could not keep from wilting

      Poppies dropping petals from the desk


    • Adam Strauss
    • Torque

      Sight will withstand seen, scene fit for
      Myth, no, its allegory, story in
      Search of catalyzing enzyme;


    • Merna Dyer Skinner
    • The Bullet Guys and Me

      I kept them what-if-ing   perhaps-ing 
                       one indefensible angle after another


    • John Michael Colón
    • It Rains in a Dying World

      I attend the panels of elderly Marxist professors
      to shout denunciations at emptying rooms 
      the past, hard to believe, once existed 

    • The End of Politics

      Merrily the crowds will graze their way.
      We’ve arrived at something like the end of a principle.


    • Douglas Piccinnini
    • Kintsugi Feeling

      We change, studying what we remember
      ​feeling the punishment of dreams.


    • Emily Bludworth de Barrios
    • excerpt from THE PELVIC BONE

      At bedtime, I wrap the strands of my thoughts around a hug and release them into the night


    • Jon Lemay
    • Watching you die

      My brother dove into the water
      to save me, and I wish
      I had waded into traffic for you.


    • Nora Claire Miller
    • chapter 25

      anyway, like I told Kate on the phone,
      there isn’t any real way to get anger
      to count these days.

    • chapter 44

      what drinks from a straw comes back to me as gold.


    • Lukas Moe
    • from "Geary Street Poems"

      This is the ocean suite of lust
      Easy now, the ash in your eye


    • Mina Khan
    • we turn serpent because

      skin like barracks


    • Larry Thacker
    • Oblivion.

      Night equates to sleeping for many.
      Nothing can be wrong with sleeping.


    • John Poch
    • The Sweeping in Her Arms

      Meanwhile the lapping waves bank
      the clarity of coins on her clean sweeps.


    • Stephen Ira
    • Man In Bad Suit Leaving Pulpit

      All your answers are the perfect ones,
      but I’m not cured.


    • Emily Liebowitz
    • Goodbye 3

      they all began unremarkably, 
      with previous things presumed finished 


    • Adam J. Maynard
    • Pale Green Poem

      Dollar signs under fluttering eyelids

    • Pink Poem

      The bellicose grapefruit smokes
      A cigarette in the slowly light


    • Christopher Bakka
    • Metempsychosis

      for dizygotic oboists who foist netlabs & gastropubs 
      on dandified cutpurses while romancing anabaptists 


    • Rose Hunter
    • Just like This with Cash Money

      looky-loo looking in windows you see the shiniest 
      of things, or looking at people as windows (open)


    • Lucinda Watson
    • The Great Blue Heron

      The heron knows me like no other
      and he returns just when the night seems too long.


    • Bradley Trumpfheller
    • April, April

      who could confess us living, garden-spire, your bright


    • John James
    • Vigils: After Rimbaud

      Lightning returns to the building's tree.


    • H.R. Webster
    • Velvet Touch

      Every morning is another lesson in the violence of a haphazard metaphor.


    • Logan Fry
    • Employ

      called home and brings
      its phantom gusto, its blunting limbs 

    • Continuity

      Stage glass has potential not 
      because it is made
      to break but because


    • Paige Menton
    • Begin today

      what if I weave
      dying ash twigs into my 
      longleaf


    • Hassan Melehy
    • Clockwork

      Vestiges of the heat of Roman embers along the Danube.


    • Jennifer MacKenzie
    • Ancestry.com

      War comes to peel away the gold braid covering 
      the princely cousins.

    • The vomit emoji

      The dewiness of the grasses slaps my shoe-tops 
      dressed in an undersea forest, girls enjoy their floaty skirts 


    • Paige Quiñones
    • North Carolina's Famous Wild Horses Emerge from Hurricane Florence Unscathed

      Storms in the Gulf & Atlantic flex their fingers 
      ​against our throats. 


    • Brendan White
    • There's Another Lament I Won't Get Into

      If I knew another more useful than you
      I would definitely rather live with him.

    • I Can Remember Becoming Deeply Concerned

      The goal isn’t to shut down the party and take
      All the fun out of the risk spectrum.


    • Satya Dash
    • Biopsy

      You could stand naked in front of a mirror 
      all day and still not see yourself 


    • Sandra Simonds
    • Bildungsroman

      Made macaroni and cheese.
      Commuted.
      Amassed nothing.


    • Andrew J. Smyth
    • al dente

      hypo     backward     typo

    • appliqué

      fluke ineluctable


    • Patricia Hartland
    • from LINGUABRASIONS

      smorgasbord maw


    • Christopher Spaide
    • Like Clockwork (after Andy Warhol)

      that attracts mystics, mistakes, and doesn’t skip the skeptic. Tock.


    • Maja Lukic
    • The New Year

      Some flashes in the distance⎯
      what are they?


    • Madison McCartha
    • from FREAKOPHONE WORLD

      as a chromaflock of hazmat-
      suits


    • Ellen Boyette
    • [In this one the derision is milk staggered with soil and I am in question as intelligentsia bewildered in dust and frayed velour]

      Longing in this case being impertinent to the garment, I took out my breast and said in truth I was hoping for coral to crush into sugar.

    • [In this one lasik eye surgery is considered as well as lingerie but ultimately the decision is futile and I am corrupted by a number of needles]

      In this one the flautist takes three showers daily. 

    • [In this one the young men say the translucent mask is an instrument of ecstasy but my pleasure source is arbitrary]

      The townspeople must acquire a stenographer’s perfect circle to gyrate spirits in the century’s sock hop.


    • Adam J. Gellings
    • Untitled (The Largest Room in the Salon)

      It’s a lot of small dots,
      up close.


    • Alice Hall
    • WHAT'S A NORMAL WAY TO DIE ON A MOUNTAIN

      my body           is  not  visible


    • Emily Wallis Hughes
    • from Day

      pressed by Carmelite nuns

    • from Day

      the limpets have left


    • Michael Larson
    • Hudson at the Museum

      The old days when the stream impressed itself
      Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.


    • Vanessa Saunders
    • My Fake Mom

      Fibers of his polo-shirt sliding against the black leather of his Camry.


    • Jakob Maier
    • To the Heart on a Sunday

      you always say "Come out!" or
      "Go inside!" as if peace is to be found

    • Panic King

      ones that drive me deeper inside
      the rented house of myself, protected
      by years of shiny white paint.


    • Halley Furlong-Mitchell
    • When you became a wing of me

      I tell our friends the story of how we met, once there was an orange and when they ask 
      for follow up I say nectarine but never anything as vivd as a cheeto, to love you  

      Rachel J. Bennett
    • Coat of Arms

      a row of apple trees stood at the back of our yard
      yielding little fruit


    • Lizzy Golda
    • Ghost

      some emotions more motivating than others
      what can we do


    • Erin Little
    • Whale Poem

      Skip the dull parts, 
      with their beatdown
      iron taste, droopy edges. 


    • Claudia Buckholts
    • Flight of the Owl

      the possessions of the dead that once 
      resonated, vibrant around them.


    • Daisy Bassen
    • What's more

      Open to the chilly air, the possible home
      Of our local raptor;


    • Elizabeth Hughey
    • Laugh Track

      the way my hand
      fell onto your hand
      and made a word 


    • Michael D. Snediker
    • It Is Growing Damp

      And alone it was the abbess alone chosen by lot, 
      a sphinx wandering far from her hive. 

    • Concord & Merrimack

      The graver gaps in our knowledge of quill 
      underlit those habits 

    • The Near Continuum

      The fickle pattern of lovers dissolves in
      shuddering white. Filigree structure 
      centurion, 

    • Two Kinds of Care

      Gladiolus, the trapp rock over there. 


    • Carrie MacLeod
    • thermohaline

      a brine of salt into separate sheath
      & broken break of shed salt sinks to feed a cloistered scientist


    • Paula Harris
    • I am a bad house guest, even though I try to be a good guest by minimising the amount of space I take up

      and I’d never stayed anywhere
      where I hadn’t just been told what to do


    • Elisabeth Reidy Denison
    • After a long illness,

      Emily Bronte, died, at thirty, of hers.


    • Jon Ruseski
    • Obituary

      Consulted the cards

      About demons to choose

    • Echoes

      Remaindered in the sun

      A soft afterglow

      Lighting up


    • Stella Wong
    • where's her beating on this dress?

      the best is when all icons are uniformed
      breathe from your feet


    • David Greenspan
    • Landscape

      and loose, fur
      unspoiled gray.


    • Molly Schaeffer
    • DEREK

      is it just another word for opening?


    • Erik Kennedy
    • Visiting the Waterfall

      (more in the mornings and evenings

      and on holiday weekends),


    • Benjamin Renne
    • Elegy: New Landscapes

      As if one could pour the sun
      through a sieve, and thereby separate the fine
      particles of light from the coarse.

    • Elegy: New Light

      There is a bright hole in the sky
      ​and where once hung a bright star hangs now only bright absence.


    • Koss
    • Slippery Gods, Not Things

      You wouldn’t betray your Gemini or couldn’t.
      And who you might be any minute was the hook.


    • Joseph Johnson
    • To Dissect Lions, You Need Lightning

      No bench prevents two humans, stable
      from distance, from bursting


    • Nikki Wallschlaeger
    • God Walks Out of the Room When You're Thinking About Money

      But like I said, God is still human and has his idiosyncrasies.

    • Soldiers, Poets, Civilians

      Even more is a refined silence
      and extravagant indifference.


    • Dominick Knowles
    • idylls for mall cop

      The cop standing beside us nods, the final mutation
      in a system so enormous that to think of it hurls us


    • Amanda Auerbach
    • Remember, Perceiving

      Seeing for second
      produces knowing


    • Lizzy Golda
    • I Could Be Your Magazine

      I am a language you could learn.
      I am the money you should earn.


    • Micah Bateman
    • The Optometrist

      Now cover your left eye and read the lowest line.


    • Anastasios Karnazes
    • Trade, But Shame

      communed to a pool, the excess is divided
      into separate bottled bodies which can be drunk 


    • Izzy Casey
    • TO: iz (no subject)

      answer me or i cross
      a nun. answer me


    • Pablo Piñero Stillmann
    • Two Nicks

      The twins have taken to quoting Kierkegaard.

    • Tall Grass Blues

      As you can see, I've been learning French, mon amour.


    • Catherine Theis
    • Wildfires

      winds carrying your name
      coupled with mine
      the way you hold light


    • Claire DeVoogd
    • Adelaide

      A glossy car circles
      The path watching us.

    • Marie on Ed Sanders

      Neoclassical austerely
      Wait. Outside Austerlitz


    • Marie La Viña
    • Attrition and Difference

      a leaf playing dead


    • Zoë Ryder White
    • When I Got Drunk in Hyperspace,

      Here is what I wanted to do: hold 
      each willing face in my two hands, touch 
      each set of lips with my thumbs. 


    • Veronica Acosta
    • The Question of Selfishness

      You step out of Ken's jeep
      Into the San Francisco fog, shoving


    • Jeremy Hoevenaar
    • Prowl of Hovering

      Everything baggage, sightly, swamped with generosities, glassed, everything turned


    • Jared Daniel Fagen
    • Can You Be As Urchin

      Can you be the sunrise entrance song of ocean floors.

    • On a Thorn Bed of Neon

      I am all tremble and fray and torpid and molecular seams of a dusk breeze.

    • The Peacock of My Eyelids

      Maybe on the walk home I’ll carry my sandals between the middle and index of my plumage.


    • James Loop
    • The Machine for Destroying Nothing

      Likes to know which train I'm missing


    • Varun Ravindran
    • Schubert's Piano Sonata in B-flat

      Schubert who died November of 1828 chirrups.


    • Geoffrey Olsen
    • little pieces, ash over me

      luminous hill sides lavender quiet bath of intensity


    • Cortney Lamar Charleston
    • Waves

      but for once I don't think to look
      in the mirror and ask if I'm the kind
      of boy destined to be shot down,

    • “I Like My Women Like I Like My Cars,”

      if a tire pops, it'd be like gliding on air—


    • Rachel Abramowitz
    • This Is My Day for Crime

      The attendant heaped snow on a platter and recited a poem
      about spring and great faith and the plum, but


    • Cal Freeman
    • Pinconning

      the varieties of teeth (incisor, eye, and molar)
      and the way those teeth outlast us


    • Aileen Bassis
    • Gift for Apollo

      Loved a girl who became 
      a laurel tree and loved 
      a woman who betrayed him    
      with another.


    • Jeremiah Moriarty
    • Or

      Layered voices, strophe and antistrophe.


    • Jessica Yuan
    • Against the Future

      What will you say
      to the ones you promised 
      forever? You chewed down


    • Michael Larson
    • Hudson at the Museum

      The old days when the stream impressed itself
      Upon him: cold, baptismal, absolute.


    • Maxime Berclaz
    • Between the Trees

      a body formed from a handful of twigs then lost
      the limbless shapes a severing of stumps

    • Meutestraumen

      The blind moon hangs over the pillars
      and the burnt remains
      of the cedars,


    • James Moore
    • The Animals

      Wouldn’t tell us anything at all—
      we milled outside, buzzed
      with an ambient fear.


    • Kelly Hoffer
    • Vision 3

      my mother
      this morning
      pulling back the lashes
      of those eyes,


    • F. Daniel Rzicznek
    • from Leafmold

      White mulberry: I spent the better part of a morning watching it grow.


    • Lea Graham
    • When You’re in Romania and Wish You Were Alone

      Instead, you’re trapped as he smokes and tosses butts outside the airport, 
      no help deciphering the taxi racket, he lounges against a wall as if it’s some bar


    • Michael Juliani
    • When I see a Train, I Want to Take It in My Arms

      You were kicking blankets all over the ground 

    • South Pasadena: Rage Noir

      I always wanted to leave California. 
      To exit the hunt he might be making 
      of downtown diners and fading public parks, well-lit places


    • Elise Houcek
    • What Critics

      There is no trick to the cup,
      Arriving recovered to a shy deal 
      Though already a different photograph. 

    • The Kind of Hope

      A cloth lifts
      A partly landing veteran.
      The storm.


    • Nicolas Visconti
    • I know where but where where?

      ––And I thought of you,
      how there is no future in thought,
      how all thought is remembrance disordered

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