2017 Features

2017

Reflect Self, Koi Pond

Aged teen clanks stick against steel fence, / forcing ice to abandon important posts.

Santa Fe Funeral

Huevos rancheros for breakfast, / the colors red, white and yolk

Jess Burnquist,

East as in Love and What I Couldn’t Say

It was easy to feel like the goddess of water in the desert / When you swam in my belly

ways in which I feel cavernous

you insist I can’t crush with the weight / of my worship, but that rocket-smooth thrust: / just moves, babe.

I lived in an unfamiliar city, / Far away from my mother.

You Guys, I Took Up Smoking Again

I took up nail polish / In Millennial Pink. I started mixing Sangria / With Coca-Cola.

Jonas Kyle-Sidell,

Ketchup bottles the bebop / muse. This door / I’m walking through / is physical.

Sarah Louise Garrido,

Revealing what’s been waited for, / the sun announces itself.

Ununtrium (Uut)

In the morning the sound of streets goes with the cars. / Tip of the dream phenomenon.

Steve Caratzas,

YOU’LL ALWAYS BE MY PRECIOUS SON

She said on the day of his / execution. Can you imagine?

Now imagine a clean delineation, / to deliver some things / just by pulling them around.

Shadab Z. Hashmi,

Qasida of the One who Assumed the Posture of the Slave

Beloved, where was I to look / but in the mixed beads / of ablution and sweat

Emily Kendal Frey,

OBSERVATION SHOULD BE THE BASIS OF EXPRESSION

You stood there / The words sort of rushing / At that person / You used to love

Targhee National Forest

I am with other pilgrims near the corn chips.

Anne Barngrover,

The summer after the tornado / my family lived / in the Residence Inn, and we had to get away.

Michael Apinyakul,

The desert climbs East / into the watermelon mountains, / Offering its cactus flowers to boulders

Shannon Barber,

When Mama says / Fists up / We ready to swing

Polyphemus, Sable Island

Ignorance! Ignorance! Ignorance lit! Vitric / twist of sun! O / the plastic brain!

White Privilege

I masturbated in a synagogue. I ate kangaroo meat. I filled the bottom of a tent with vomit.

47 Poems: A Poem

Wrapt in gentle tulle chiffon / silk and linen / cup my balls in lukewarm saline

MEMOIR/COMPOSITION WITH FISH

There as an abstract silver quality not belonging / to any frenzy or food

Absolutely necessary is to join always more things. / And further because I think the wind.

Raquel Salas Rivera,

moon / swallower of magnifying glasses / scalpel of light

Shannon D. Bushnell,

I’ve Been Looking for Jobs in Antarctica

Memories are like stars / Admire the sky as a whale

Wendy Chin-Tanner,

I keep saying it out loud, your name / meaning April, meaning Spring.

Heather Derr-Smith,

The waves wash me up in an imaginary bikini. / I put my fingers in your mouth, / and you push me under.

I’m so black that I make Micheal Blackson / not seem so / Black, son

Rebecca Hazelton,

the glass pinecones / reflect your cold climate character

Stefanie LeJeunesse,

Stand at the sink shelling pistachios / contemplating how well the Xanax is / working.

We are thirsty and we wish for rain

We speak towards proper weather. / Towards knowing the horizon as well as / our heft, our hips.

The president is shooting holes / Through my bedsheet. Why are / you laughing?

you had / a little headache from / the light dinner / of boiled flowers

A red wherever / sunlight has fallen

Kevin Sampsell,

Money Is Murder

I once heard / of a teenager / who threw / a fifty-cent piece / off a highway overpass

Emily Kendal Frey,

WE TURN OUR ATTENTION TO THE DARKNESS OF INFINITE SPACE

My feelings for you have yellowed / Turkey sandwich, ham sandwich

Dena Rash Guzman,

this is scatterbrain / a theory of a war-torn mind

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