Eighteen
By Lauren K. AlleyneTonight you are full of small rivers:
your eyes’ salty runoff, the rust-bright
trickle staining your thigh, the unnamable,
Search Results
Certain Seams
By Jill KhouryThe boy across the street points at me and lisps—now I know what they mean in books when they say children lisp. He wears a red and white striped t-shirt, addresses my friend who walks beside me. I ask people to please walk on my left side. It’s the eye that’s not completely dead I say. They always move over.
Oceanside, CA
By Marie-Elizabeth MaliBalancing on crutches in the shallows
near her mother, a girl missing her right lower leg
swings her body and falls, laughing.
I Will Tell Her about Icarus
By Patricia Davisabout his sister how she
wanted
to be light
built night in her ribs
from “Offering”
By Shailja Patelsing history
back onto itself, sing tearing
whole again, sing altered
Chinky
By Franny ChoiHow'd you get so slice?
Razor pinch all flat-like? All puff
& sting? What's your allergy?
Nexus
By Brenda CárdenasThis body always compost--
hair a plot of thin green stems
snowing a shroud of petals,
Cowgirl Filibuster
By Lisa L. MooreWord got out about the bad bill.
College students packed up their bikinis,
went back to Austin to tell those men why
Character Anatomy
By Amaranth BorsukFew things the hand wished language could
do, given up on dialect's downward spiral:
words so readily betray things they're meant
Postmark from the Transition
By Rachel M. Simonthe name altered from parent's choosing
the threshold of a home
white gloves on the windowsill