Duplex (I sit very still when I wish not to be seen)

Isabelle Hutchinson

I sit very still when I wish not to be seen.
Existence is a chore, sometimes.

Sometimes, when existence is a chore,
I make believe I’m someone else,

I’ll make believe until this disguise wears thin.
But I can’t pull the gossamer over your eyes.

I should have known about gossamer in eye sockets,
and how gentleness turns jagged, how silk burns sometimes

What happened to your gentleness, jagged flame?
You don’t have to tell me. I won’t speak to you.

You won’t speak to me, and so no telling ever happens.
We could paint rooms with all the words unspoken.

And the paint and the words drip unspoken.
Watch me sit very still when I wish not to be seen.

1

Strewn

Callie Miller

There are purple feathers scattered about the floor, intertwining,
Tangling the carpet fibers, and I trample them on my way
To the sink to wash, refresh.
The dishes are piling up in the sink—
On my nightstands — on the small coffee table.
I forgot to wash my face three nights in a row, and I’m on my
Last roll of toilet paper, last box of tissues.

My eyes beg me for a new prescription and I have six missed calls
From my doctor. The ground beef, black beans, and chopped tomatoes
Become putrid in the refrigerator as my roommates neglect my shelf.
It’s two steps to the garbage and I’m stuck picking the feathers out of my socks—
Out of my slip-on dresses—out of the shower drain.

There are spoonfuls of soil in my bathtub
And an unopened bottle of aromatherapy bubble soap
Meant for people who enjoy warm baths.
I’ve been thinking of how my bags of dirt become moldy
Before use every month and the smell of white, fuzzy earth
Lingers through my bedroom for two days.
I will let it air out for a week.

I know that when I plug my ears it sounds like an earthquake,
Maybe the rumble of an underground train.
I also know that filling my ears with water
Sounds like a hearty windstorm
Or how I’d assume drowning sounds—
I think the candle I lit last night has drowned itself,
And last week’s fruit flies will dive-bomb the wax
Before crusting over.

Nothing quite sounds like sleeping
But my mouth will hang open
In bed tonight
On an empty stomach,
Thinking I have avoided the feathers.

2

Buscarle la Quinta Pata al Gato

Armando Allan

(a Latin American figure of speech which translates literally to “looking for the cat’s fifth leg”. The “fifth leg” is a sinister emblem, as such the phrase can be used as a warning, or to describe paranoia: e.g. “you’re looking for the cat’s fifth leg and may find it”, or “you’re looking for the cat’s fifth leg when cats only have four”.)

1) Stoke Newington, Aged 3 and Mute.

You speak to me on a busy street, speak
in figures that come out blurred and naked.
I greet them, disarmed and empty-handed
bar something hollow—
remember, mum?:
the smell of wet tar
as you shift from foot to foot.

You speak in my mother tongue, reaffirm
that it is yours and far
from being mine —

Yours: when you say “amor”,
and won’t elaborate,
so that he becomes a shaded word
who sits alone in his own corner
and fumbles around with something hidden.

You say it through split strands of matted black hair.
You say it / I open my hand

and deliver a blow in anticipation.

You say it and it is quickly gone
into the cold. The wind is sapping our heat—
remember mum,

you’re not wearing a coat.
Remember that the cars wash out the sounds
of our most important words
in a city like this one.

Remember that the wind listens, hears it all /
remember you do not. Mother
tell me I don’t
yet know the edge of my tongue,
tell me that “a child can’t really love”.

2) Somerset, Aged 20.

Then the sun stumbled into my mouth
again and again and again,
and the lamp-light in my studio flat was still
and angled straight down,
unlike the family home, where everything was tilted
in dad’s direction—even my open hand,
which was a response to his.

I walked around naked
and drank in the mornings till my mouth was full of sun.
I walked around naked until my flat began to reek of my father.

The light came straight down over my head
that night I called:

“Suicide” was a word you could not say,
so you talked about “love”;
a few times you switched to Spanish,
“Suicido”, which forgoes the plosive
at the end of the last syllable.

I said “I am sorry”,
and you said “guilt is the mark of a good man”/

You stepped forward: “Son, there are many, and you are just one”,
You stepped back: “most men can’t really love”.

3

JAN 8 // TEMPERATURE

Cassandra Traina

It’s all land.
There is desert in every direction, any way you wander.
There is a saturated word: wander.
The world can feel claustrophobic, but not so much as the vast celestial space.

I have a hard time sleeping on my back.
It makes me feel restless and finished.
Bury me on my left side.
I’ll be more comfortable.

My mother always told me, “you have to let your vagina breathe when you sleep.”
My cunt has its own respiratory system—
it’s its own pulse, too.
I am just a respiratory system and a face.

When you look at me head-on, I am really beautiful.
I hate to think what the back of my face looks like.
Someone sitting behind me on the train must have watched me eat that croissant
and slurp back the black tea from the dining car.

4

When Darkness Falls

Sergio Ortiz

He gets to my house
with a missing teardrop earring
and a face full of questions.

We rub our lingual barbells
to the rhythm of techno pop
like journalists covering
DIFFERENT but EQUAL.

At five in the morning
he speeds out of my bed
and crashes.

We return to the corner
where we do our rounds
for money and pleasure.
At the Underground Tavern

we bitch at each other,
tighten our corsets, and feel
the pain of tucking it in.

5

Priest

Brennan DeFrisco

The first time I solemnized was at recess. The girl with blue eyes
who knows I like her asks if I want to be in her wedding

so, naturally, the sky cracks open, the sopranos overhead arpeggio
every holy note & in the sudden drip of god light, I imagine

holding her hand in front of our whole 4th grade class, watch the
popular boys wish she liked them instead, all her friends

whispering smiles about us, which means there’s an us. My anxiety
demands to unpack the individual terror of a failed first kiss.

My composure speaks for both of us, stutters sure, certain my
double petal bass rhythm can’t be heard, can’t be hurt, certain

this is what playing it cool looks like. She lines up bridesmaids,
hands them paper flowers, pairs them with the boy who

cheats at sports & the boy who paints the playground asphalt
with a palette of my blood & the boy who does nothing

while the rest are laughing. She hands me a book. I don’t understand
until her palms tether the future quarterback or congressman

or both, an alpha equal to her status, embarrassed. She asks me to
start the ceremony & instead, I ask if there’s someone for me

& she responds, I thought you should be the priest because I can’t imagine
anyone loving you like that. As the bridal party laughs in their full

worthiness of a match, I imagine cracked earth, a drought of blood,
sand leaking from atria, playing it cool. I ask if they do—

& fake flowers float weightless in the air, her lips touch his blushing
cheek & suddenly, I decide I don’t want to be in love anymore.

6

Innocent Question

Connor Donovan

Thursday night. I am contemplating
how I should have answered Michael

when he asked how is bipolar a challenge
to a teacher?

I told him it’s not fair for me to blame my students
when my overnight oats taste like wet cement.

Michael dots his “i” with a dollop of caution—
I see his hands shuddering as he writes,

fingers gripping his fat pencil delicate as
linen. Maybe he is suspicious

of symmetry, suspicious of two
halves in a see-saw balance.

7

Cold Copulars

William Doreski

Our friend spilled a thundering pot
of cheese soup that scorched to bone.
That’s why her hand is bandaged.

We worry that infection will douse
her manual vigor, but smiling
off the danger she proceeds.

The day looks sick with ice and sleet.
Predictable, predicted, the mess
smirks on every utile surface.

We sit outdoors under the eaves
and savor village geometry
from a safe if chilly outlook.

The rapture that blinds with snow
has yet to arrive. The winter blue
that soothes with gendered strokes

withholds until Christmas has done
its pagan pageantry in suburbs
discolored by repeated beatings.

Vestigial limbs are flailing
to no avail. Our bandaged friend
drives away in her Chevy truck

with her gaze affixed to asphalt
where evolution publicly stalls.
North or south, magnetic fields

whimper with miniature frights.
We could abandon our shelter
and walk abroad in a shower

but we’d lose our credibility.
Let’s stop reading politics
as weather. No point distorting

vanishing-point perspective
to explain the third-degree burn
waving goodbye in the distance.

8

Boreal

Veronica T. Gomelsky

There’s a light frost that settled in the dermal surface
befriended a seasonal spider, it weaves
cobwebbed ice round my skin
keeping the bud in my mouth, in
a limerick lacework covering my face—
i am in mourning for the brawl of broiling July and
my newly frozen jaw.
Like Icarus,
I am an owner of ligaments
that wish they held together wings—not a coat of arms.
Ignoring time-zones, your call came halfway
ringing off the landline
you ask about my house
and of its visitors
and
to your content;
other than the banging roof and the hyperpyrexia coaxing winds

there's not much that i mention—

I’m wintering
still boreal and frigid in the south.

9

Twice Married

Veronica Hosking

Mom always said,
You’ll live until you’re twice married
Whenever her children fell down
A phrase I found quite peculiar

Mom always said,
You’ll live until you’re twice married
A phrase I found myself repeating
Whenever my children were upset

Mom never said,
You’ll live until you’re twice married
My twin would not pass it down
After her second marriage

Mom always said,
You’ll live until you’re twice married
She hoped we’d all live forever

Never contemplating divorce

10

Return

Natalie Susak

September kills
the bluish air,
fills it with
cicada shrills,
sound of bones shifting,
sound of rising from warm dirt.

The buyers were
a couple from Canada,
two boys and a golden retriever.

Everything charmed them,
the steely sunlight,
the lakeside view,
even my bedroom,
bare as a shelled egg.

We bought boxes, boxes,
scrubbed and swept
until the walls gleamed,
swung shut the door

and left, dust percolating
like the inside of a snow globe.

Years later
I'd imagine you
basked in bits of light
and hollow-eyed
on a hotel sofa, or
that beach in Honolulu
where you went crab-catching
in your own dangerous youth

but now I am rolling home,
inhaling dust from the highway
not far from the red spot
I was born.

I nurse the kernels
of a mandarin
in one palm,
and raise another,

through sticky fingers
one cloud,
white as a tooth,

and the sun
cracks through,
orange lozenge.

11

wednesday in the allergy shot clinic

Molly Bolton

bee sting arm jabs
sour apple suckers
glitter pink smartphone
waiting room twin girls
kitchen timers like roasting chicken
making sure no one goes into anaphylactic shock
making sure the medicine is on the right side of keeping me alive
shrill pitched cartoons from a quarter sized speaker
undercurrent whir of air purifier
both arms bleeding like bug bites
two pair of swinging rainbow sandals, one flops to the floor
my twins would have been 6 months now
looking less alien and more baby fat
at my annual check-in next week i will state my medical history
as if it happened to someone else
i have nothing to do with ambulance rides and too much blood
nothing to do with tiny quilts tucked into the back of a closet
my office was never ever a nursery and at christmas
i never even once placed cool cabbage leaves in my bra to stop milk coming in
twins with soccer shorts and french braids have nothing to do with me
the mother with tired eyes and silver toenail polish saying
we’re almost done
has nothing to do with me
unicorn forearm stickers
dusty king james
framed print of a farmhouse garden
clacks from a keyboard down the hall

12

A verse on grief

Elizabeth Davis

Winter is here
Grief lingers in the cold
I cling to the colors of fall

You are the wind on my face
Sitting on the shores of Spain
Amongst the pines on our home place
In Lauren’s eyes when she smiles
The buckeyes blooming in spring
A red bird whistling to me
Its song pushing me up the mountain

When the December sun emerges
I know you are never truly gone
What beautiful proof that your love is alive

13

Vigil

Alex M. Frankel

Mourning doves have colonized my balcony
Under a brazen perch
They scatter a mess
All day two characters watch the view
When a third tries to join there’s a scuffle and a flutter
All weekend on the shows in the streets people decried
The ending of women’s rights
I am not a woman so I did not speak out
On Sunday I got up early for Gail’s service
At the clubhouse of the Village Green
Gail had passed on I only found out by chance
A string quartet played waltzes
That sounded too light and simple
Instead of snacking from a spread with the others
I walked across the property
Basic dwellings midcentury utilitarian
Like my elementary school
But a whole district of thriving giant sycamores and olive trees
And maples and wide lawns and meadows
I thought of Gail who disliked chitchat
It’s hard to sit around with others reaching for small stories
Strolling among sycamores I had more of Gail
Then napped three hours and dreamed of her
Like me a poet who wrote mostly for her desk drawer
Like me flighty and neurotic
If you’re eighty-five few will voluntarily come to your memorial
When I woke up I watched my doves
It is illegal to disturb their nests
Without a permit according to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service Migratory Bird Program
Mourning doves were seen in my first poem
I called their abruptly-flying-off complaining wing-sound
“Persnickety” because a friend loved to overuse that word
Persnickety persnickety

14

Selfless

Mallika Chennupaty

One cookie left in the tin,
a lone cloud in Kharagpur’s crystalline sky.
Filled with raisins from Hyderabad and
hair massages,
my mom’s fingers and coconut oil.
Scents of saffron from Kashmir and
afternoons spent clinking coffee
in my mom’s steel cups.
My daughter ate all the others.
She ate in my womb.
She ate from my breast.
She ate from my hand.
Soon, I’d run my hands in her slick curls,
and she would curl into me.
She would ask and I would give
because she was me.
“A good mom gives, she doesn’t take,”
my mom taught me.
I take the cookie.
Raisins burst against my cheeks,
fireworks I didn’t let my daughter light on Diwali.
The scent of saffron slithers into my nose,
her breath before I finger brush her baby teeth.
The rest sits, a diamond in my palm.
Crumbs of jagged crystals pierce my belly.
“A good mom gives, she doesn’t take.”
Echoes of my daughter’s footsteps,
like a gift that you can’t re-gift.
I press her against me.
She’s heavier than I used to be,
because she isn’t me.

15

on the subject of spots

Irene Feleo

freckles will be the death of me.

the first cluster of spots, the original committer of crimes
that I seethed violent jealousy over
belonged to my sister.

a splatter of brown flecks
to the right of her cheek
tipping
her smooth face
an asymmetrical moon
glowing, warm, and freckled.

my sister, my soul.
myself, a spotless slate
of blooming pimples
and acne scars.

and so, what is there to do?

I begin to envy fruit.
mangoes and bananas in particular.

16

Trauma Workshop

Michelle Dennehy

The teachers are on their hands and knees
drawing self-portraits on paper
blu-tacked to the floor;

they are learning how to be better
teachers, spot kids who need
a different approach;

I slide around the gripless surface
of my paper sheet, cling to its iceberg
sides, so they won’t know

I’m the one in the textbook –
knot-mouthed, fluent-fisted, staring
over shoulders because eyes are sinkholes;

a box of oil pastels waits at my elbow
Draw your body. Show where you store the pain.
I start with the smiling face.

17