Brad Davis from a photograph by Dawoud Abu The guitar’s warm wood resonates with each tentative pluck and strum. The child’s shoulders slump forward, eyes trained on the teacher’s fingers— the wall behind them pocked with what looks like bullet holes. This is Gaza City, and the two of them are translating their sadness—the heavy prayer of thin, disappearing bodies— into what gunfire will never drown out. Photograph: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters

N.S. Solonche The acupuncturist asked me to fill out my medical history. I listed all the usual conditions, the same ones I always list -- osteoarthritis, high cholesterol, sciatica, deviated septum. Then it asked about something I had never seen before -- Excessive dreaming. What’s this? I said. What is it? she said. Excessive dreaming, I said. Oh, that means if you dream too much, she said. Well, I’m a poet, I said. Oh, then answer Yes , you suffer from excessive

Marty Newman Orangutans remember the confusion of languages as if it were yesterday, the ruins sinking for centuries. A daddy-long-legs traffics substance the mirror is less but sameness still. At the sight of a U-boat, the octopus (otherwise dour) is overcome by laughter. Held to the sun this lump of coal is crystal: the discord can’t be resolved. Compassionate, in the common tongue the demiurge promises to slay the Faceless One. To lift us from the crowding vermin undre

Susan Shea Is it just me or do you remember seeing your reflection for the first time shocked to see a face that wasn’t the one you were just wearing to share candy canes with your brother on a festive morning did you keep that morphing to yourself is it still too much to understand what happened to the delighted little girl living inside you, movie screen curl perfect smiling, dancing with Bo Jangles ready to burst into song without notice do you carry that moment with you t

M.M. Adjarian Not quite a coat hanger, the boy stands skinny tall in Boy Scout khakis and Converse tennis shoes, hands behind his back, knee bones grinning above his socks. He leads a band of yucca plants, suburban soldiers, spears spine-straight and sharp as quills. My brother is posing, legs apart, halting his front lawn march only for the uncle visiting from France who captured him on film, then wrote the date and my brother’s age in blue curves like tattoos on the

Daniel Thompson My gentle lover with her tongue to the rain. Her mouth carved into the minutes of the day. Her form slinking into evening strings. Her voice, the symphony of the cold woodwinds, A sonata through the cypress below the spheres. She is the revolution of the sumptuous air cycling, In the halo of sun-streams, the glorious revolution. She is firmness, rootedness, and husky depths. She is the moment where tree meets ground. She is the great garden, the ever-unfolding

Leonydes Matis His native language Romanian Garlic breath Which spoke above me I didn’t understand I was told you were wise That God spoke to you You wrote letters of prophecy I write letters of feelings What did you say to me All those years ago When you and her were alone In that apartment With all the other old people We visited you every other day What did you say when You spoke Was it another prophecy Or happy to see your first granddaughter All grown up I

Sean Thomas Dougherty The man in the corner lifts his hands to mop the floor. No one knows his name, but they call “hey you.” He does the labor no one wants. He hums a half-broken song as he wipes the blood from the floor. The song is older than the building, older than the song his mother sang while folding sheets at the motel. His shoulders hear her voice, her labor without a day to rest, her smock stained with light. She smelled of soap and bleach. He watches the nurse c

Craig Constantine I paste on a moustache You rat out your hair. Let’s cosplay! Let’s Vogue! I’m Sonny! You’re Cher! Pile into the pink Caddie, Show a little thighplasty skin, We’re all going to the Madonna Inn. You merchants of clickbait You crypto-fluencers, You armchair zillionaires Who have all the answers. You Christo-Kardashians Clutching pearls at my sin, You’re all going to the Madonna Inn. The first time it’s tragic, The second? A farce. First the posh wedding And

Ethan Mershon i don’t know what it means when a hawk flies over my windshield as i’m driving out of the valley of the shadow of suicide into some blank Eden waiting to be painted. Thanksgiving Day and i am stopping at a fast food restaurant for a burger in a field next to the highway after three months of rehab food and whatever i picked up on the weekly trips to walmart. the Sun is different somehow. more self-assured. or more delusional. somebody at rehab told me i’ve got s

Aryan Kaganof Together, these poems construct a poetics of broken circuitry . They foreground the instability of language in the digital era, revealing how the human voice becomes both archive and error. Meaning is no longer the goal; instead, the process of breakdown—of losing semantic coherence—becomes the generative site of posthuman creativity. In these untitled poems, syntax behaves like a living system infected by code: self-replicating, mutating, endlessly reorganizin

Sean Thomas Dougherty The foreman says we’re lucky to have light at all. The fuse blew again. We set up by instinct in the dark, by the ghost of a song we once danced to in a bar called Love Don’t Live Here Anymore . My father taught me the dignity of labor: how to find beauty in a drill-press, how light can live in the cracks of calloused hands. He was a quiet man. He never said “I love you,” but he taught me a minor tune about a welder who married his flame through temp jo

Ethan Mershon tw: suicidal ideation the reptile in me isn’t good at math, it cheated its way through algebra, chilled in the high school air conditioning, desperate for some sunlight. whenever i see a knife, i want to stab something. this is America- how much can you carry, young soldier? whenever i see a rainbow i want to believe in something. this is America- if you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps go into debt buying new boots. whenever i see my reflection i get c

Yun Wang Three billion seconds of life each a wave in the ocean pulsing against bonds of gravity. Shattered into foam. Reborn again. Whisper or weep. Roar in laughter. Wait long enough, the ocean comes close. Each jade petal unfurls beyond refusal. Everything that shall be already exists. Three billion possibilities each a note in polyphony. Tides scour tiny caps and empty bottles, tourist artifacts. Sargasso bulbs highlight swept-up sea jungle

Sean Thomas Dougherty The shift begins with the scent of blood. A man arrives with a wound that won’t close. Light flickers in the hallway like a dying bulb. His name is whispered by the nurse who’s forgotten sleep. She’s been here twelve hours, humming a song to keep the ghosts away. There’s always a song. The janitor mops the floor, singing a song his mother taught him after her last blood test. He says she died in this wing. Sleep never comes easy when you’ve seen the ligh

Ken Massicotte In their final days climbing to mass each morning the stone steps worn with prayer the studded oak doors, the nave safety from all disquiet vaulting the cleansing acclamation. Their narrative a medieval tapestry: my mother’s Jesus enfolded, his tortured body in Mary’s lap. My father still a boy with his satchel and cap lacing his hand-me-down skates to race his brothers down the river to the Jesuit school. They courted by rail before t

Daniel P. Stokes I unfold my chair to face the sun, but something’s out of kilter. Before I settle down to pad and pen, I have it twigged. There. That stream of water falling to the sea was yesterday a cliff. Of course. Sunday. No greenhouse irrigation. Sabbaths set aside for leisure and reflection. Like funerals – prayers and early pints, small talk and secrets. His sisters on a mission to prise out who got what; my sister relieved of

Andrew Alexander Mobbs I see them through the window just before sunrise as I’m washing last night’s dishes, three glowing orbs cutting through the slate fog from the far side of the vast, crow-flecked parking lot. The kids are maybe six and four, padded in their hot pink puffy coats with their mother trailing slightly behind, yawning then smiling as she clutches her jacket, succumbs to alertness through their laughter and the lingering dawn chill. They scamper in wide circl

Abigale Tabor It has taken over all of my feeds and poems and I feel such dread over the frailty and conditionality of my own being, and how foolish I must sound saying it, let alone typing it, all the while she surfaced, and in one photo, there is a slight rainbow cast on her open mouth, and sure, it is silly to prescribe happiness to her face, but I know only of human emotions and faces and hers, hers was overjoyed to finally see a light bigger than h

Rich Murphy The security officer loves to spend time with the lemonade maker even after the lemons arrive. Wonder always attracts. The uniformed flashlight carrier works around the clock at a job that costs in years around the plant. When the sour (Adam or Eve) drops from the tree ripe into hands for care, cuddling, and then hugging, a camouflaged memory maps out the work routine and the guard ushers from first wail until the sweetened pucker produce presents to the public.