Ashely Adams

“The Atlantic Hurricane Season: 2005”

We’ve run out of names for this fang and      eye.                                              Alpha
No more letters here to string into                                                                       Beta
logarithmic weeping,                                                               Gamma                    spittle, swell, and curse on roof.                                                       Delta  
Curl back, maelstrom tongue,                          dredge                               Epsilon
up the words in the unmarked grave to call your disaster.                                  Zeta

Ashely Adams

Ashely Adams is a swamp-adjacent queer writer. Please ask her about the weather.

Twitter: @goosegloriosa

Sophia Pupo

THREE POEMS

them IV

: I am on the bus & thinking about a travel poem I have to write. Rani says that all poetry has at least a bit of loss in it & I don’t think they’re wrong //

: a poem is an archive of lost things & I am angry about it. // At the gay event tonight everyone was so fucking happy & I was just bored // I am burned out from gay happiness

: the truth is I am losing faith in words: they are light & airy & I am in need of something heavier & more acidic. I am bitter & pissed off all the time & guess what I’m not

: fucking happy about it. I am tired that my memory is an archive of lost things & bad sex / tired of memory like a poem // when I was little I was told I could grow up to be

: anyone I wanted—well I wanted to be a lesbian / so it feels like God fucked me
right at the start with that one. Rani tells me there’s still time for a transformation

: but a lot of me doesn’t buy it. I look in the mirror & don’t see much more than a sad / sad / hairy man with bags under his eyes // sometimes I feel I’m making it all up

: as I go along. I feel invisible / or maybe more like I am wearing a man-mask
I can’t take off my face. What’s that saying I keep misremembering?

: If a fag falls down in a forest / & no one is around to see them in drag /
                        were they ever really queer / at all?

them vi

: I’m at another reading in the cramped library of the Betsy Hotel / right off Ocean Drive / it is impossibly hot outside / half-naked people in flip flops and coming to and from the beach //

: Freesia and Jade drove me here / because I can’t drive. / I’m not sure what we talked about in the car / but on the way back it was crossword puzzles. The poet reading is Steve Kronen.

: When he finished we all sat down to talk. It / was a small reading. Maybe less than ten people in a little room. Lately I have been party to many small readings / and they are the best kind.

: We got Freesia to read something / just a little something / now that it was all over / so she leans against the counter and reads a poem off her phone

// and the room is not a room anymore / it is a listener—

                        and the books, they are listening,

            and the shelves / and the light slanting
                  through the blinds, and the walls,             they too
                                                                          catch their breath

Mall of the Americas

I remember at the mall being children /
        running around the carpeted sitting areas
and the wonder of the food court
the something / off-putting about mall santa
and going into shops browsing trinkets
waiting for my mother
                   // playing negotiator

with her in front of the toy store
the politics / of playing with cousins
of hide and seek where we were not
               supposed to
the nervous vendors protecting their kiosks
           // we would hide
in the stores we knew we’d be shooed
      away from
we were the rowdy screaming children

     I remember wondering
what was Victoria’s secret / fascinated by the
dresses in the windows // the poster women
larger than life the lacy bras and the
           poses I knew I was
embarrassed to imitate in public

these were the bodies
                  I dreamed for myself / in the dreams
           I did not tell myself I had
// those mannequins in high heels after school

                How
could I have known this too was an institution /
     the people draped in the pretty things
in a maze of the potentially mine
            // a language of
thin bodies and pale skin and soft fabrics and
me / learning what a body is and who it belongs to
learning what to value
what to covet / what to wish
                               was my own

Sophia Pupo

Sophia is a transfemme nb poet locked in perpetual conflict with her stubble. She is pictured here with Luna, the cat she babysits. She is allergic to cats.

Twitter: @sophieontheweb

Aura Martin

Three POems

Held Together with Yellow Tape

She was an elementary school teacher who would let people yell at her. So we meet again in the shop that has clay tiles, chalkboard menus, and chess games. My old oboe teacher with the nickel-plated keys. Cracks in wood.
She likes stories with happy endings, this blonde woman who was my adopted aunt. Lessons in the house where books lined the walls and were stacked in the bathroom. She enjoys the occasional murder mystery. Crooked trees and poisoned green bean casseroles. Her preacher husband learned Icelandic from children’s books.
She handed me a book about drugs, journalism, and sex. If you’re going into music, men in that business might try to teach you lessons that aren’t about music.
I am doing well these days, though it is a winter of papercut knuckles. My new life of rolled-up papers and inky fingers. Like that busted piano in the corner of this shop. Doesn’t matter how out of tune the piano is or how many keys are missing. I’ll make music out of it.
I’ve made friends who have knitted mittens, green coats, mustard gloves, and blue scarves. A whole new wardrobe my last year of undergrad.
And you’ll lose them all. I don't remember what I said after that.

New Life Form

Filling up at the gas station, arms folded as I watch the gauge. Exhale, keep one foot on earth. A voice calls my name. A grinning head peeks from behind the corner. Baseball cap and acne scars. Last time I saw him, he served me coffee. His hand lingered on my mug. Inhale cigarette smoke and car exhaust.
You were a regular, I wanted to know your name. It was so pretty.
I bite my tongue. He quit the coffee shop and is going to be a trucker. Is my pump still going?
Hey, would you like to hang out sometime? Sure, I said without thinking. I want your number now. I give it to him, then drive away. He texts already. My hands tighten the wheel.
I don’t want to date him. Waiting to hear the phone ding. Is that his car? The dented blue one with the foggy windows? Is he a stalker, rapist, murderer? In which order will he proceed? A hand on my shoulder, not least his silhouette.
Go someplace public. You have to start dating. Mom, I can’t. There is no hope for you. He knows my name.
Has he taken advantage of shattered windows? Bitch. Slut. I’m going to find you. A single letter seeks someone to complete him. I imagine him battering the facade. Is this how my story ends?
I am not a sentence fragment. I am infinitely other than you.

He Didn’t Like My Smiling

Let’s call him Francis. I didn’t know he was French. He arrived early to his interview, the president of the fraternity, to talk about a dead professor and the event soon to be held in his honor.
We had long nights of discussions. I could not make him stop talking. Francis didn’t look away. I almost laughed when he said chemistry. Kept talking and talking, his voice cracking. I didn’t lose hope until I heard. I thought he would make it. He had tears in his eyes.
I couldn’t stop grinning, my lips bunched together. He was more than pretty. His accent, not blowing kisses on an autumn day in Paris. He was somebody who kicked beer cans and spoke of dead fish and motor oil. Somebody right next to me, elbows on the table. He wore a French Quarter baseball cap. The color I don’t remember.
Now here comes the sad part. He had a girlfriend. My stomach fell. Where is the ambient guitar music coming from?
Polaroid pictures strung with bistro lights at the dorm. Off-the-shoulder, bangle bracelets, kiss on the cheek. The sorority bitch? The no-effort-needed bitch? Wears a beanie to look hip but will provide a one-star review if her coffee didn’t have soy milk in it? Is that what it takes to get a rose?
No more questions. Back into the world where sunshine skates on asphalt.

Aura Martin

Aura Martin graduated from Truman State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She is the author of the micro-chapbook “Thumbprint Lizards” (Maverick Duck Press). Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Buddy, Capulet Mag, and Tule Review, among others. In Aura’s free time, she likes to run and take road trips.

Twitter: @instamartin17

J Cope

Two POems

The Centrist’s face pulls apart as 2 halves of a grilled cheese sandwich

One string cheese lip tells me how utterly, terribly
sorry he is that I have been sexually

harassed under his staid and
stentorian watch,

while the other melts into Brett Kavanaugh’s
pink and rubbery maw:

a greased well for the rapist cum
Judge with the exact same fuckin haircut.

“Don’t you understand my awful
predicament?” he cries,

“I, who must constantly weigh
both halves of my face?”

a kitchen in the cobwebs

Fried-eyed and ready for general consumption,
Arachne oozed off the pan and into desire
for a spiral preposition
or a spring equinox sizzling
over, uneasy.

She eyed the yolk running for the hills and followed its raw and sunny
trail to the hospital cafeteria where nurses nursed their clipboards
and asked us to talk about our feelings.

Biting her time, she sipped tea
and admired the two women across
the table, who have been there for as long as anyone can remember
and can only say so much
in their private language of held hands and glances.

J Cope

J is a writer and translator based in Chicago. She is currently working on a full-length manuscript of poems & bedtime stories. She also hosts a monthly community writing workshop/informal dinner party at the PO Box Collective in Rogers Park.

Twitter: @malvu_maldit

Jeremy R Boyd

“go to the store

be in a relationship”

some people                 think
if an idea takes a long time to spread
like years,
it’s still a new idea
I used to make music
years ago
about people    most didn’t know
I had confidence                       I could still do it
                        make a hit
this is my excuse

they’re throwing grape juice
at me in first period
she missed the trash can she says
[no she didn’t]

look up and it’s a work day
kids with no assignment
complain they’ve got friends
with mean parents
            gifts from people unliked
I bring over Japanese candy
and a boxset of Sailor Moon DVD’s
and her parents said
it’s not another beta fish?

I schedule an oil change
on my birthday
set my phone on airplane
            I oversleep the oil change
by an hour, it’s 10 a.m.
                                    time to wait in line
for bagels, I notice
I set high standards
for the type of day I need to have
in order to celebrate      successfully
I look up Depeche Mode tickets
            it’s five hundred and seven
dollars              to see them three                       hours
away in Philadelphia

                        my girlfriend says I sound grumpy

and that she can’t hear me

she’s talking and
            I’m making writing
talking about shoes
to fill, my brother
            wears my socks
when he plays basketball
she says I grind my teeth
                        sleeping on her chest
but doesn’t wake me up
            she thinks I fall asleep in the middle of movies
to be as far away as possible
past the farms head
first into
the mountain air
and by evening
I                       brake downhill two hours East
back to the concrete
gulping at my feet
perhaps when one considers
this excercise of stretching
it’s easier to       understand
the eventual splitting it caused

my girlfriend
            gives me lighters
on Valentine’s — her nude photos
            printed on them
a couple days later
I drop one in the toilet
now      it doesn’t spark

a broken tool
                  -analysis and brisk pace become necessary
today I noticed, everyone
I walk behind
turned around,              saw me
and got out of my way

I was just looking for a hand
cart,      just walking to class
taking the stairs
I feel late but     perhaps I’m not
I note:
                                    really any marketing strategy
                                    is a way of limiting your market
                                    standing out to people
                                    willing to pay

are you up-to-date?
commercial and copyrighted
willing to pay?

I need paper towels and almond milk
I get pizza bagels, donuts & blackberries
            they just leave all that lying around
to pick up & go
but       how can I just leave
they ask for money
            or whatever’s in our pockets
to see whose corruptible
            surprised they don’t say
just give us your phone
and I won’t kill you

hell, what’s more surprising is
            they don’t make us buy another phone
answer another riddle
making the list of demands seem            cut short

Jeremy R Boyd

Jeremy Boyd is a 27 year old poet, substitute teacher & soccer coach. His two chapbooks & an interview series have been published by Ghost City Press.

Twitter: @sp1it