Julianne Neely

“CONTRITION”

It was an act. The dawn…

of overripe fruit. We trusted…

the sky to stay flourishing…

We trusted the dirt not to turn…

into sand beneath our feet. A…

body of prayer, we burned…

our tongues without noticing…

our mothers found us out…

The physical joining of bodies…

a miracle, a curse. This wedding…

We are from this world…

…it will cost me so much to open

…and I am hungry. I am cued up

…and I want the poem to move as if

…it is young and self-serving and

…my cunt wants the pastoral to die

…and my cunt wants this to accrue

 …until the whole world is covered

…and we could never pay what we owe

…and when it happens come look where

…I will die gut severed open between

…the winter trees.

Julianne Neely

received her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Fellowship for Poetry. She is currently a Poetics PhD candidate and an English Department Fellow at the University at Buffalo.

Twitter: @juleneely

Ernst Toller (translation by Mathilda Cullen)

“A Prisoner Reaches a Hand toward Death”

First you hear the cry of that poor creature.
Then curses rumble through frightened halls,
Sirens sing the alarm-song, and
The deathwatch ticks in every cell.

What drove you, friend, to reach a hand toward Death?
The whimpers of the whipped? The swallowed pangs of hunger?
The years gnawing at our body like rats to a corpse?
The restless footsteps that slink into our heads?

Were you driven by the mute mockery of grief-ridden walls,
That push on our chest like a nightmare?
We do not know. We only know that human hands

Harm one another. That no bridge straddles
The rivers I and You. That we lose the way
In the dark of this house. That we are cold.

Ernst Toller

(1893 - 1939) was a Jewish anarchist, poet, and playwright. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlinand was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power.

Best Bud! member Mathilda Cullen (@mathildork) has translated Toller’s Poems Of The Inprisioned (Gedichte der Gefangenen), which can be purchased here.

Maitreyi Ray

"Surface Tension"

i want to be alive for
one hundred and sixty-nine years

 i want to be prostrate before the bluest sea

 my god is alive in me

 my blue is                                my god is

 the ocean wore a long dress

 lengths                        love                 lisped

 cum on my hands                   and i held your cock

 the loveliest cock

 little dream      i have in which

  i stroke you before the world

 just me and you          quenching

 the world                                 sunken

 deep niche      of a crater                   hairlined with moss      

 interstitial                     fungi               

 making finger              poems                         out of our pleasure

 for so many years                   i was                (i was)

 massaging out runes

 alone and you                                     made with me

 some untold meaning

 in this one: fruit softening

 in the crisper

 in this one: inches of me becoming

 bubble
then

farther                                                                                   away

Maitreyi Ray

is a writer and fishmonger living in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Twitter: @itsteensy

Amy Marvin

"Fragment 141"

O ye altogether wretched false
wickies, drunk on salt and oil
filth after clearing the forest
like shingles peeled off a new

name, dancing as a two-bit Willem
Dafoe to cobble a semblance of
meaning. There is no semblance
of meaning. There is no sign-post

lighthouse to carry you away,
only the vengeance of gulls
and your imminent departure into
seafoam. You shouldn’t have

done that. You should have
complimented the meal. You
should have minded your siren
duties, withheld hands from beans.

Amy Marvin

is bundled up and sitting in a cold hallway. She is both looking forward to and dreading warmer days.

Twitter: @amyrmarv

Ahimaz Ponrasa

"thus spoke black matter"

(one)

the jet-black crows
alight on a red washing line
caw caw & caw to me:

would you deny that
the ghost-white jesus
framed & hung
downstairs is rather
an embodiment
of aryan jesus

or deny the fact that
the brown buddha
in your bookshelf—

while one isn't befuddled
as much by the ramas
& krishnas as

they're fascist
caste-hindus anyway
by their very design

the fact that
even the buddha
in your dusty
bookshelf—

would you
deny the fact that
the buddha aryanized
long ago by the brown aryans
is now assigned

& doomed
to oversee
genocides.

(two)

by the by
the body of your god
is the temple
of what

and to begin with
have we ever
been truly saved
by our gods

yet isn't this the era
under your feet
gods cry out indeed
to be saved.

(three)

 your gods have
too much human within
& much less
of nature

but in this universe
everything is
created by
an uncreated
desiring-creation.

 will you embrace
a purposeless
self-created
creation

or will you all
go on & on to wreak
havoc in the name
of nothing

& tell me
aren't we all made of
waves of joy & dust
of certainty
& certain gravity
of uncertainty.

Ahimaz Ponrasa

has been published recently with Glass, Elephants Never, Burning House Press, Marlskarx, Big Echo: Critical SF, Paint Bucket, Speculative 66, formercactus, Dream Pop Press and MoonPark Review. He lives in the Union of India.

Twitter: @ahimaaz