Angel Dominguez

two poems

 

(a fashionable obituary)

Haven’t I died
enough
already?

I guess this
must be
Heaven.

So what
if empire
wants me
dead?

I wish end
upon

Every Empire.

Y’all are

So Fetch,

and Fetch,

Will Never
Happen.

Home for the holidays.

Return to the city screaming at the gentry,
We’ll grow as old as we wanna grow.

Rip that angular prison off the street.
We’ll dream as loud as we wanna dream.

Robbing the city of all cops and their weapons.
We’ll live as long as we wanna live.

Return every house in town cause it’s ours.
We’ll love as strong as we wanna love.

Ripping up the rich because money isn’t real.
We’ll go as hard as we wanna go.

Rob the state of its illusory power.
Liberation is possible together.

 

Aeon Ginsberg

“APPARENTLY SOON”

 

Apparently in ten years

we will reach the point of singularity

within human consciousness.

Apparently this is just the next

best option to being alive.

Can’t wait to wake up

and be able to have the thoughts

of someone willing to kill me

readily available through a neural network.

Can’t wait to plug my brain into the cloud

and recover lost time for other trans that

didn’t get to live long enough to be human.

Can’t wait to be able to revisit concurrent timelines

of someone wanting to live long enough to become themselves

and someone waiting to snuff the life out as soon as they do.

This is a centrist wet dream.

Listening to both sides to get hard.

Snitching on yourself is easy when there’s no hiding. 

Can’t wait to think my location into the world

and die from it. Can’t wait to upload memories

to prove I ever was alive. Long live the cloud,

let it live long enough to echo

back into us. Long live the echo.

Let it reverberate until they can’t argue us out of existence.

What will the truth become when our brains are linked?

Who’s to say that we will believe ourselves anymore

when we speak our identity outward.

I shoot up girl juice now, but will they let me

when it will affect the singularity?

Estrogen echoing through the cloud.

 

Did you know there is only twelve places listed as Famous Echoes?

Apparently in ten years we won’t need them anymore.

Once the water levels rise in applause of planet death

there’s only going to be one echo left, a scream.

Can’t wait for singularity to pull me

out of the proverbial closet before I’m ready.

I thought about getting bottom surgery

before I admitted I wanted it.

Someone else would surely tell me my thoughts

before I could recognize them to be true.

They say that climate change will be irreversible

in less than twelve years too.

What will come first, the death of the planet,

and therefore the death of us all,

or the death of the individual within singularity?

I hope the planet takes us out first,

I can prepare for that.

I can’t prepare for security culture to accelerate

faster than counter measures against it are made.

Genealogy kits sell our DNA to the police

and facial recognition through Apple and Amazon

are used as evidence against us.

Deepfake us into real prison.

Maybe singularity won’t be as frou frou

as speculative science fiction would hope.

Maybe singularity is coming in the form of servitude.

Call your local politician to leave a message.

Then they will have your voice as well. Apparently

there are places on this planet that take

whole minutes for the noise to come back to us.

Apparently we don’t know what’s good for us

until we know that it’s bad first.


 
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Aeon Ginsberg

(they/them) is a writer and performer from Baltimore City, MD. Greyhound (2020), their first full-length collection was the winner of Noemi Press' 2019 Poetry Prize. In addition to writing Aeon is a taurus, a bartender, and a bitch

Twitter: @anotherginsberg

Prince Bush

“EULOGY”

 

I was
Obsessed

And in despair
Like the plastic

In a table-
Top globe.

I worked
Through a cast-

Iron life
With rust

Connecting
The bone

Of my limb—
The doctor

Said I could
Decide to take

The past
Out of me,

But he wouldn’t
Suggest it.

 
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Prince Bush

is a poet in Nashville, TN with poetry in Cincinnati Review, Cotton Xenomorph, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pleiades: Literature in Context, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets Fellow and a nominee for The Pushcart Prize.

Twitter: @princebush

Joseph Rathgeber

YOU THOUGHT IT WAS THIS, BUT IT’S THAT

 

“Wellness” and “mindfulness” are akin to
the alarm-orange Home Depot bucket in the corner
of the classroom:

full of sand, antibacterial soap, and water w/
expiration dates.

Active-shooting situations last an average of five
minutes
,      studies say,        but the lockdown

can last
for hours
while you
wait for
cops

to clear each
corner of the building.           Some people
react to stress            by shitting;     others tighten
          their assholes.

[squatting over a bucket         w/ your peers
watching
]

Meditating in class is like that. Cueing up a guided
meditation w/ flower petals unfolding
psychedelically through strobes and breathing
deliberately and lavender diffusing and artificial
light switched             off        and self-caring.

I don’t need a bucket to shit in.

                               They don’t need secular prayer.

I don’t want to learn how to survive shooters and stress.

Stop        what        makes        living      so         hard.

Things need abolishing. / Then we can talk.

 
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Joseph Rathgeber

is from New Jersey. His novel is Mixedbloods (Fomite, 2019). His story collection is The Abridged Autobiography of Yousef R. and Other Stories (ELJ Publications, 2014). His work of hybrid poetry is MJ (Another New Calligraphy, 2015). He is the recipient of a 2014 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship (Poetry) and a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship (Prose).

Lauren Milici

THREE POEMS

 

BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT

for Henry Zebrowski

This week, the psychic is on vacation.

glow glow glow and then nothing—

as if something came through and killed

all the fireflies.

In the bible, it’s the woman who looks back—

born of man; cunt crafted from ribcage.

It wasn’t always like this.

When the bridge collapsed,

no one blamed God.

It’s better with a gun in your face.

If I knew the truth, I wouldn’t tell you anyway.

MEDITATION ON HEALING

it’s too hard so I stay
in for the night.

good, he says—girls like you
always go missing. don’t

be so small & blonde.

but what if I like being bad

at this? ask where

he hit me and I’ll let you.

MY BOYFRIEND WANTS TO DIE

by steering a yacht   straight

into the eye    of a storm.

He tells me this over coffee

or in bed.     Once, he jumped

in front of a moving car.

Once, he woke up in a field

not far from where Hank Williams

stopped     his     own      heart.

My boyfriend doesn’t believe

in after. There is only now

and then. That’s fine. We hike

to the highest point & hold

each other—initials of old lovers

carved into the rocks beneath

us.    In the stillness, I listen

for the ba-dum-thunk-thunk

of his irregular hearbeat. We live

over there, by the smoke stacks.

He points north, to the river

but I am staring     at his finger,

wanting to put it in my pocket,

keep it safe      from everything.

 
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Lauren Milici

Lauren Milici is a Jersey-born, Florida-raised poet and writer currently based in West Virginia. She is the author of FINAL GIRL from Big Lucks Books. When she isn’t crafting sad poems about sex, she’s either writing or shouting into the void about film, TV, and all things pop culture.

Twitter: @motelsiren