1
by Sofiya Hupalo

The Panamanian fucks the Roman.

The Romanians are pragmatists, but who cares?

“Déjà vu is only a chemical reaction in the brain,” they say, but we ignore them.

2
by Lukas Gohl

I live for moments when the human cacophony chokes

Air turns vivid, gripping your lungs

And time feels frozen and infinite

All that remains are the dulcet tones of the earth

Singing out to me as I finish this cigarette

3
The Davenport by Hannah Schnobrich

emerald city candy dishes

me what i already gave away every thursday night. that

butternut squash is its own bowl just plays present and on snow fall nights

i can’t really think straight about most things.

i plant like yoda.

three leaves,

no hair.

4
by Deniz Rudin

The sun is revealed, in close-up, to be a sizzling-gold disk of salted butter, wavy lines of heat wafting up from it, and it melts down the sky leaving a greasy trail, landing on the beach, which is in turn revealed to be a pancake. The cartoon monster licks its lips and distends its jaw, eating the pancakes in three gigantic saliva-spewing bites. Having nothing left to stand on, the monster falls and falls and falls into darkness, and lands hard. A light clicks on, and the monster finds itself in a prison cell.

“What the fuck,” Chuck says to no one, slouching into the couch, eyes red from not blinking.

5
by Sage Dahlen

I want to be near beauty. But not the beauty you want or create. The beauty that exists against your will. Crooked teeth. Stutters. Broken tree branches. Foam on the river. Snow in April. A disappointed voice. Dark eye circles.

6
By Rachel Keranen
Sometimes

I like to sit on the other side of the room

to remember the feeling

of wanting you

but not having you.

7
By Mark Koerner

I wonder when the one

from my dreams will come

to dance across

this peppermint glazed stage

and split my skull in two

with a bullet.

we’ll be buried in

brick and smoke

and steam and some

kind of pink or orange

neon will be sifting through

two out of the three

8
Sneeze by Grace Kelley

My old roommate once told me,

a sneeze is one-eighth of an orgasm.

And what, I inquired, happens

if the two occur simultaneously?

I have yet to solve that mystery.

But I keep pepper on my bedside table

9
Green Means Go by Rhael Laramy

The streetlights of summer, green from apprehension
flash orange and yellow at the fall.

Halting the ants upon their bark, forcing the copulating lark
To wait.

Until the birthing of the spring.
When all within the exposed branches
can once move again throughout the green
Streetlights of the forest,

Capitulate of the unseen.

10
Tea by Eric Brew
Billow quickly or willowy stirring for a moment to travel from sense. Redounded—escalating life and ends. Reading too much for no pattern. Only maelstrom like my mind late at night, operating in stream.

11
Stir Fry by Ross Hernandez
My grandma doesn’t like Chinese rice

But I’ve seen her eat stir fry.

All this and much more after

We said a prayer for those about to travel

And she waved with both hands

Standing in the window

With her curlers in

And everything.