(Don’t) Talk to Me

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Featuring:

Angela Acosta

Anthony Acri

Laszlo Aranyi

Sukeerthi Bachu

Tinamarie Cox

James Diaz

Hugh Findlay

Gloria Glau

Emily Goldsmith

finch greene

Avery Gregurich 

Triston H.B.

Tyler Hein

CE Hoffman

Paul Hostovsky

ira

Erin Jamieson

Bethan Keogh

BEE LB

Sai Liuko

Leah Mueller

Charlotte Amelia Poe

Pascale Potvin

Nicholas Ravnikar

Angel Rosen

Beatriz Seelaender

Alexander Sharov/Dmitriy Galkovskiy

Dean Shinner

Dominika Simkova

stina

Sofia Tantono

Wes Viola

Angela Acosta

Three Minutes

 

[1 minute]

 

Are you really there?

 

[2 minutes]

 

I shouldn’t still be listening.

 

[3 minutes]

 

This is ridiculous, do I really miss your voice this much?

 

I missed your call and I’m left with a three-minute voice mail. I held onto it for a long time, ready to savor the sounds of your voice. It’s been over a year since I’ve heard it in person. I love the gentle lilt of you saying my name, an accent I can’t place. It’s unfortunate that I’ve never been good at describing voices, not even your voice. You are but a few words and an emoji response to my thread of Facebook messages.

 

I’m giving you my voice,

be good to her.

 

She speaks to you in Spanish, and I know you aren’t going to understand any of it. I even make a comment at the end about how I’m sure you’ll tell me how good my accent is and how impressed you are that I speak fluently. Yes, I am your Chicana unicorn. Obviously, this message for me more than it is for you. I don’t advise you translate it because it’s not very kind even if I profess my love for you and our friendship. I’ve been translating myself during this whole friendship. I’m the odd one and you are surprisingly, unavoidably normal. A pleasant statistic.

 

Has it been three minutes yet?
When does the voice mail box fill up

with messages from grandparents,

birthday wishes, telemarketers,

and the doctor getting back with those test results?

 

I’ve been talking around in circles, got myself all

tied up as if I were on a rotary phone with a short cord

or hovering by the kitchen waiting for a call.


I wish you would listen, I will you will permit me

but one criticism in an otherwise lovely friendship.

 

Those other poems, the ones where I wrote about

the trips we took together and the day at the pool,

those were true too, in a way.

Only you can piece together the facts and fiction.

Sai Liuko

Sukeerthi Bachu

A Bad Analogy for Mimicry  

 

 As if I could hold you now and

 that would be all that you are

 

An inhale?

 

Anything that lets me

into your body

 

Biblical fucking phrasing

 

Praise be to the Lord

 

Amen

 

[you’re sorry]

 

I’m sorry

 

You’re not

 

[his hands clamp around your neck]

 

You’re not

 

[a litany]

 

Leave Leave Leave

Leave Leave

 

Have mercy

 

[hold still]

 

If only you could be

a saint enough to

 

[but I can’t]

 

Please

 

[his hands twist through the skin of your neck]

 

[something breaks]

[something bleeds]

 [you taste something]

 

[share]

 

Take it.

I can’t

[swab your finger through it and suck]

Do you have to do this?            

[you have to do this]

[your finger is splintering on your tongue]

 Look

 

[pretty]

 [his eyes are on you]

 

I am

 [you spit blood on his face]

Sorry

[your neck and his hands clot into each other]

I’m not hurting you

 You’re not

 [you’re not]

 

I can’t                                                                                                                                                                     You can’t

 

I could never

Stop

 

These hands do

not belong to me

[you are a vessel]

Listen to me

[say it]

[say it]

I won’t

 

[say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it]

[say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it] [say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it]

[say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it][say it]

 

Not on your life

My hands would

sooner

[seize] [cease]

Stina

 

Tinamarie Cox

Left with Spare Change

 

They say to fear silence, but

I would prefer to live quietly using

an exponential formula which

increases our distance with time because

you wouldn’t like the things that

are left for me to say. 

Pascale Potvin

BEE LB

POEM FOR THE READER

after Alex Dimitrov

 

the sun heard me complain & left. which, like, yeah

 me too. but still. i was enjoying you! i just miss

the snow. i mean i miss the glint. i mean i miss the world

 being buried under the seasonally appropriate precipitation. or whatever. well, the geese are sitting on the frozen lake & it looks like they’re on glass. my love asked, they’re still here? & for a moment, i forgot about migration & the untimely signal its lack sends, said, of course they are they live here. reader, when i said a moment, i mean it was a week ago &

 i only just realized yesterday. well, & so what if they don’t want to go south? today it got to 69 in my apartment & the sun nearly blinded me & now it's gone & i’m once again reminded what it’s like to rush through the best thing to the next best thing

 that may never come. i mean tomorrow, when the sun rises,

 it’ll stay a little longer. today it's 2pm & the lake is strewn with trash brought by wind & held by ice. & what to do for it? reader, one winter

 i put on rubber gloves & collected it until my whole body was chapped & still,

 there was more. reader, do you think time will ever be anything but sieve? reader,

do you think new year will offer anything better? reader, i know we’ve never met eyes

but do you think i should give myself bangs just over the hols? i’ve been thinking about it

&  keep talking myself out of it. the worms in my brain are telling me i talked the sun out of staying

&  though i know this is not possibly true, it feels true. reader, can you tell me

the truth? are you counting down the days as i do? the hours, the minutes, the very second?

reader, i’m fraying at the edges & have so many split ends i don’t know what to do with myself.

 last year i split the cost of a pine & held a saw in my hand to trim the top. & this was after measuring

 twice. oh reader, this year is cold & bare & sun has gone & what’s there to do for it?

energy bill will be low without lights this year, but at what cost? i still haven’t read midwinter’s day. i’d like to start the year with a kiss but i won’t hold my breath. reader, tell me, are you holding your breath? are you clutching to this year like a lifeline

or a noose? reader, i’m sorry to be so blunt. it’s just i can see the frozen garbage in my peripheral & it makes me want to jump. i mean i’m only on the second foor, & i’ve never broken a bone, but this year, for me, feels nearly inescapable. i lose count of the days but i’m halfway through

the ‘30’s in my list of winter movies to watch. i mean that isn’t quite the same as escape, except in the way that it is. reader, tell me, where you are can you see

 snow? can you remember being a child & flushing your cheeks with chill? can you remember

mittens with a string between them? reader, my mother still puts up her hand when pointing to where we live, but i’ve no idea how to mark on the map of a mitt where it is i’m meant to be.

reader, don’t begrudge me the weak metaphor, it’s 2pm & i’m ready for the day to end. reader, i wonder, will you stay with me through the end of today or this year or even just this poem?

what will it take to continue living?

 

what is it you’ll inherit? what is it your hands long to hold?

what is your tongue holding back? what would it take

for you to let it spill forth? what are you desperate

 to grasp? how much do you need to feel loved?

 

how much love do you need to feel whole? how many pieces

have you allowed yourself to split into in your search for

whatever it is you’re looking for? what is it you’re looking for?

have you given it a name? could you if you wanted to?

 

when will you stop? how far will you go? what age

would you say your heart is? what is your biggest regret?

what is your smallest, most shameful fear? what is the truth

 

you will never speak? when was the last time you screamed? where does fear home

within your body? how far will your stomach sink after answering that question?

 

what is the hardest question to ask? why are some sounds harder to shape than others?

 

where does the urge to avoid begin? should that question have been asked

in past tense? where did the urge to avoid begin?

 

what is a beginning if not the start of an end?

do all trails lead somewhere? are we getting close

to reaching the end? are you rushing or holding back?

 

are you excited or afraid? does the end feel like a sudden jolt

or a slow release of what you’ve been holding?

 

do you know where you’re headed? did you notice where you’ve been? if i asked you

to name your biggest fear, would you? if i allowed you to make it abstract,

would that make it easier? are you looking for ease? do you invite hardship?

 

do you test your endurance? are you willing to put in the work? do you know

what you’re working towards? do you want to know

 where you’ll end? do you even remember where you began?

 

what was your first desire? did it go unanswered? did your small hands grasp

 whatever it was you wanted? do you know how to hold on? do you know when to let go?


can you name for me the difference? how big is the space between? have you made a decision yet?

 

what is it like to lose what you thought you needed? do you know the difference between need

and want? or do you just think you do? is self awareness a gift or a plague? would you trade

 a curious mind for wings? what is the best thing you’ve been given? how would you determine

what best means? what is the worst thing you’ve held onto? why have you kept it all this time?

 

when will you let it go? will you let it go? what would it take for you to put it down?

 

are you tiring of this interrogation? can you imagine a decade of it? two?

three? would you tap out before the third round? would you blame me if i did? does it matter

to you that i can’t hear your answers? what is it you’d say if you knew no one would know?

 

who is it you long to share that with? why won’t you? what stops you from giving

yourself permission to make the wrong decision? is it better to not trust or to live in constant fear

that your trust will be betrayed? have you figured out yet there are no right

or wrong answers? have you realized there are no answers

 

at all? are you pushing the bounds of these realizations? where is it you want to land?

 

how long can you keep your eyes open? how soon will you let them close? what are your plans for after

the end? do you dream of a new beginning? do you know how to rest? does eternity ofer you hope

or hesitation? how big is the space between them? how much do you hold

 

yourself back? when is the right time to move on? will you let yourself

say goodbye when it’s time to go? will you remember

to turn the light of behind you? don’t forget to lock the door.

Nicholas Ravnikar

Twinkle

Their dance’s stillness said as much as the stars whose sad eyes they got lost in.

Firefighter

When he sees a house, any house, all at once he wants not to remember.

Winter Hunt

Sadness tumbled down and down and down and laid its full weight on the riverbank until every animal he wanted to kill stood shoulder to shoulder against the cold design.

Vision Test

“I had my first haircut when I was so young I didn’t wear glasses,” she said. “And my dark eyes hadn’t yet learned to look.”

Beatriz Seeleander

Cul-de-Sac Diss Track

 

 

your mind is a cul-de-sac

part of a gated community

where a small-town murder may occur in a crime novel

which is this summer’s hottest beach read according to your own mom

your mind is a cul-de-sac

that ends in a wall of generic graffiti

of misspelt cookie-cutter statements

which you’ve thought of all by yourself

and that makes it even sadder to think about

your mind is a cul-de-sac

 

perhaps I should not be an author: people-watching to me is torture

listening is even worse: I love to watch fictional characters

 

if every poet has an emotion they write from, mine is anger –

not quite anger, irritation: a perpetual state of annoyance

at everything I overhear –

so easily catalogued in the social pyramid

assigned an archetype with predictable daddy issues

dressed like a personality quiz result

some desperately crouching and twisting for the box

others fitting into it as naturally as air

but every time my headphones are out

the rotten smell makes an appearance

their minds are a cul-de-sac, overpopulated at that

 

if every poet has an emotion they write from, mine is conceit –

not quite, though, because then I wouldn’t be bothered

it’s frustration: at the barren landscape

I have to colour all by myself

with all these inconsequential daydreams

because real people’s minds are cul-de-sacs

decorated with mass-produced art

and when that happens in a novel we say the writing is flat

 

my mind is not a street nor road nor highway

no, my mind is the project for a non-existent railway

no funds could be found, it was

thus left to gather its dust and disdain for the tangible

 

it’s my heart that’s a cul-de-sac

which ends on a wall of aggressive impulses

the graffiti oddly specific in a non-universal way

but at least I can spell

 

if every poet has an emotion they write from, mine is narcissism –

but is narcissism an emotion? or a consequence of monotony?

does a narcissist need be admired? or is narcissus his own company?

is he really ever lonely? narcissus is self-sufficient:

he knows outwards is inwards

he can dive into his mind whenever he wants

and other people are jealous because their minds have no roads

they’re just the one cul-de-sac, claustrophobia street,

bored card-board cut-outs of trees casting no shadow

narcissus’ mind is a river

whose mouth drinks in ideas

but water is not wet because it is that which wets

whose mouth spits out ideas

but the mind still thirsts for ideas

and what should quench the thirst of water itself

for more water but a river

spilling and spelling it out when it swells

when you’re older, you’ll understand

 

Why people’s spirits may leave their bodies at any point in life

Why they insist on being incoherent to themselves and others,

disrupting the pact between us to act according to their worldview

so as not to blur that of their relations.

That time was invented by humans to make sense of history

but people who imagine themselves worthy may try to cross

the limits of Reason.  (and succeed.  though losing themselves in the process.)

That history is merely reflecting the present

(it’s all just a story, a riveting bedtime story)

That writers don’t know shit about human nature,

and novels are much more complex than what you actually get

(so it’s all right that the real world isn’t your type)

That archetypes were once curious infants,

(oblivious to their own metanarratives and diagnoses)

That we are all imaginary, and the more we focus on that

the more conventionally absurd the characters we play, cartoonlike, inside the box

That finished manuscripts when left unattended might revert into first drafts

That you should fight your impulse to colour black-and-white pictures

That most people are bad at world-building yet proficient at making the desired edits

That shock value is capitalism disguised as a philosophical stance

That meritocracy is just a nice utopic fallacy

(unless they let your ghost stick around for the credits)

That our stories are not, but should be, programmed to automatically save

 

But that’s not what you wanted to tell me now, is it?

You were going to tell me there are

Things I cannot see from here

But that you can see from the grave.

finch greene

asking for what you need is so embarrassing

 

imagine being tired

down to the ends of your hair

 

imagine sharing a bed with rest, not touching, for years

 

i have always been the baby rhesus, starved

and terrified, clinging

to anything soft enough to trick me

into loving it

 

i am an inconvenient, anxious thing to be consoled

 

every kind of holding starts to feel mechanical

at some point, doesn’t it?

 

it doesn’t really take much to become

a You in one of my poems

 

two days before my period starts

i try to remember the last time

somebody told me they loved me

 

it doesn’t really take long for comfortable

silences to start feeling like oceans

 

sometimes i say i wish kermit the frog was my therapist

instead of saying i love you

 

imagine breaking yourself off in pieces, your body bloody

bait, tossed into a disinterested sea

 

imagine vomiting marrow

or sacrificing your teeth to salt

 

sometimes i say can we go to the aquarium

instead of saying i love you

 

if we stare at the same things together,

and we stare long enough, it’ll be just like talking

 

sometimes i say i miss you

instead of saying i love you

 

i miss you,

 

and i miss you.

after…

 

i will invent a word that means

“you could imagine yourself

into a hundred different men

and i would love you still”

i will mistake every sound

for wedding bells—

except for your voice

i will invent a word that means

“every sound from your mouth

is a clear marble

i carry in my pocket”

the space between our eye lines

will hang, burnt, in midair

i will say something to no one

about your kind of blue

i will try to swallow my own face

i will start to count the men

who can still be fuckable

while wearing a sweater vest

and stop at your name

there will always be people on sidewalks

trying to out-shout my heart

there will always be pieces

of my younger self

to pull down from the rafters

there will always be

the red light on the water

on the drive home

James Diaz

Ira

Salt Hearted

 

And I must maintain this lie, teary

eyed in the soft shearing by your morning

lips of my face. The season for wading

through blood shot in the veins of bleary

eyed mortal beasts has arrived,

bringing with it a promise of lack

luster men with limbs seeking to track

love and strong tongued wived

men strutting about in their sacred

looking boots, all plucky and wrong

eyed, their voices throes hits among

the thoughts running through naked

in my head, my eyes, spilling over

the horizon of my own lips deadly,

so unlike the pyramidal passion

with which they beat the ashen

guards of my restraint, avidly

sighing all theatrical, only to pour

out more withered than any core

of love bred within the old confines

of my iron heart, full with rusting brine.

CE Hoffman

I Can’t Afford to Make Expensive Mistakes

i know you can’t hear me

drowned out by that

stand-in-the-rain-fuck-it-feeling ie

fuck my glasses/just-washed hair; fuck the neighbours/their yappy dogs; fuck the glass i want to

feed them (the neighbours, not the dogs.) fuck all the alcoholics I love so hard I bleed, fuck

alcoholism because I know you’re doing better, babe. fuck these failures, concerns, worries,

because maybe you’ll be the engagement that sticks.

fuck all of it im going to blast my FUCKIT playlist because i finally have the house to myself for

five minutes and may get to see mcr AND fob (FINALLY!) before the apocalypse hits even

though my credit card limit won’t withstand the weight of the ticket and will break under the

strain of the plane that may leave me and my luggage stranded for days because shit’s so turned

around

we have to learn to walk upside-down

and the world may finally hear me.

Bethan Keogh

The gap 

Sometimes I long for days where saying I love you was an easy mistake,

a little slip of I love you too, in reply,

as I got on a bus. 

 

Not a debate with myself about whether I should feel how I feel, 

not a hesitation to take his hand

or to lean in a little closer as I kiss his cheek, 

no questions posed about getting closer as we wait for a cab,

shivering in the rain with a safe distance between us. 

 

Oh, how I longed to lean in,

to touch his face,

to linger,

for the night to never end,

to close the gap. 

The one that makes me feel like I’m holding my breath when he’s across the room, 

just to hold his hand, 

feel his fingers laced in mine, 

kiss him with all of the abandon I lost with age. 

The Conversation

I wrote that conversation out to see if there was anything I’d missed, 

something I could have said just better,

or worded, 

at least a little bit,

differently. 

but even though I’m not perfect,

I couldn’t find a thing.

The only answer I’d possibly change 

was when I finally tried

and your answer didn’t change. 

Sofia Tantono

“HOUSE” IS AN UNUSUALLY FLEXIBLE WORD IN INDONESIAN

In class we were asked

to write a poem about

the meaning of “home”

and in that moment I froze

like a homeless man if you told him

to define fine dining

or an Afghan asked

about the meaning of peace

 

What is home to me

after three different geographic regions?

Well, what is the sanctity of marriage

to a divorcee on wife number six?

What is home to me,

someone whose friend

joked that my family and I

were like migratory birds?

 

Maybe it’s easier to tell you

what I don’t think of

when I fiddle with the word “home”

like it’s Play-Doh.

I don’t think of

four walls and a tiled roof

garden gnomes, maybe a water feature

crisp lawns to keep the HOA happy

all behind a white picket fence,

the mythical dwelling of Mr and Mrs So-and-So

and their two kids and a dog

(I say “mythical” because let’s admit it:

who’s been able to afford a life like this

since 2008?)

 

Neither do I think of

a big open structure,

theoretically belonging to

Mum and Dad and Big Brother and Little Sister

and Grandma and Grandpa

but, practically speaking,

is really also the extended property of

Aunty and Uncle and Cousins Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7

and Great Grandma and Great Grandpa,

with porches and rooms for guests

that multiply endlessly like

Jesus’s five loaves and two fish

except in this parable the crowd eats the fish

with rice as they sit around on a mat

and forgo the dining table,

that sacred altar of familial life

of the people that once colonised them

 

Home in my head

(if my mind can even conjure up something like that)

looks more like a greenhouse whose interior

is sliced up into different rooms:

people can see through my life like with an Indonesian home

but it’s also as insular and cut-off as a Western home.

Best of both worlds?

Worst of both worlds.

 

I guess a similarity

between the two are a degree

of openness between its members

and a sense of rootedness, of permanence,

of continuation.

Maybe one day I’ll have this

in my house on 27 Mind’s Eye Street

where we finish up our rendang

before deciding what to play on board game night

in a home that has both an army of guest bedrooms

and comfortably-defined borders

Anthony Acri

Erin Jamieson

  

Translation

 

making me blind

penciled in shadowed

  caricatures--is this what

  you wanted?

 

You drive home

drink from a carton

of spoiled milk

call me or ignore my calls

  and I sit alone

  trying to dissolve your voice


 

 

You painted on my lips

 

a lullaby or song

long ago

 

parched lips

midnight you find me

 

holding our old photos

the tacky mug you bought

as a last-minute present

 

we do not speak of those old songs

but stare instead at the edges

CALL THE NEIGHBORS

 

Call the neighbors, I’ve found it – !
  here, beneath the ivy & the brambles of invasive
blackberries, the thing we’ve all been dreading.

Look, step back! I’ve got it by the scruff,
  holding out & away from the soft flesh of
my body, the rubber of the expensive rainboots I’d
like to keep & wouldn’t you hate to see them
 ruined?

  It was in the pine box somebody had nailed –
don’t hiss at me like that – that somebody
had nailed shut, then they’d clapped duct tape
over it, & added a prayer for safety.

Alright, it seems bad – & yes, I know what
we use pine boxes for, but this one was so
small, so full to bursting, it didn’t seem like a
grave

  & anyway, I’m going to leash it until it
behaves, crawls under my bed like any old thing,
and
            whispers to me, keening, in the morning:

A secret gives up if it’s chained long enough,
  enough iron & I won’t need to force it to speak.

Dean Shinner

Dominika Šimková

Angel Rosen

At Capacity

 

My mother never told me that

I’d spend my life filling spaces

for people who did not ask me

to fill them

and that I would never fit quite right

into anything, not as myself.

She also didn’t tell me 

that she doesn’t know a thing about spaces,

she just comes and goes without assessment

or apology.

 

My birth certificate reads

five pounds, six ounces, et cetera

and as small as I was, I wondered why

I was so different from her,

and why I kept walking out of doors

that locked behind me.

She never had questions.

I never had answers.

 

I took notes about the places I fit:

the plus size section, in front of a tv or computer screen,

the honor roll, the lunch line,

and no matter where I went, I was followed by

an ampersand and plus sign.

I realized more of these spaces when I started to take up

less space.  At sixteen, I starved myself

until I could fit into one-size-fits-all

including my pants, friends, and storyline.

Once I was thin, I started put myself in places

with no announcement. I’d just show up

without an invitation. I thought

since I was smaller, the least they could do is include me.

But I still didn’t fit unless I left myself at the door.

As I got older, I once again grew spacious,

No longer thin, no longer

fitting into skinny jeans or as the lead

in a romantic comedy.

After years of failing to shrink,

I enter a room and say to everyone

including my mother,

 

I have fit here all along. She will say she already told me that.

I walk in and out of rooms full of people

like I love and lose people full of rooms

I walk in and out of empty rooms

like I love and lose empty people,

and in each of them I offer the same

amount of space, I no longer ask their owners

“How much of me do you want?”

And since I learned to stop asking

if it’s okay to take up space,

all further requests to edit me have been declined.

I will be written into your story as big or not at all.

 

I stopped shaving off my edges and started to sharpen

them instead. The same pressure that once forced me

to be thinner and more quiet now quickly meets my edge and bursts.

You can only know me at my full capacity.

I’m glad we both fit in here,

I have to say, it’s really nice to meet you.

The Blue Cow

 

I was eight years old the first time I wrote a poem about being fat.

It was quite possibly my first real poem.

The poem was about an unlovable blue cow I had

made up in my head. She had stripes instead of spots.

The poem was about how big her laugh was.

I didn’t know at the time that everything

was going to be about size.

It was just a cow. It was just a story.

She was imaginary and so very blue.

I didn’t know that I was abundant for a third grader,

scribbling my largeness into the sides of my math homework.

The cow in the story didn’t have friends.

 

At fifteen, I wrote another poem about being fat.

This time it was intentional

because a boy told me that he couldn’t love me

because I am fat. I then skipped breakfast,

lunch and dinner for the next ten months

until I finally earned a kiss from him.

The blue cow was seventeen when a boy thought she

was acceptable for the first time.

 

Eventually, I realized every poem was about my size.

Every time I opened my mouth to rhyme a line

or milk a metaphor, it was an apology.

I brought my “sorry”s with me, at least several dozen a day,

and it didn’t matter if other people thought I was small,

I was still bigger than anyone lovable.

I thought if I wrote enough poems about my fatness,

that my legs would deflate and my belly would flatten and

I’d would be Girl: easily managed, desirable,

a lifetime subscription of being wanted.

 

When I was eight years old and noting nonsense

about a blue cow whose laughter never ended,

 

I thought I was telling a happy story.  It was just a blue cow.

She was just laughing.

 

When I was twenty-three, I discovered

another kind of size.  I wrote a poem:

this time about being autistic.

I wrote autistic next to fat

in my little blue notebook, and for once,

embraced my adjectives.

My size couldn’t stop me from running

the moment I thought I had a chance

to escape other people’s expectations.

 

At first I was just fat and I hated that,

I tried to change it but fat comes back.

Then, I was actually autistic, I had an alien brain

and no more apologies for anything.

 

The third grader’s passionate blue cow,

not only is she blue 

not only was she striped,

her laugh scared people away.

The blueness was my fatness

and the stripes were my brain

and my laugh was exactly my laugh.

It was sometimes the way I laughed

and other times it was what I was laughing about,

peers gawking at my

alien joy.

 

I am twenty-eight now

and I am writing a poem about being fat

and about being 

autistic and you can believe what you want

about how I distribute my bigness

and when I should laugh,

but whether I am blue,

or spotted, or loud or hungry or

the complete and total opposite

 

of any person you could ever want to know,

every poem will be as big as me.

I am true to size:

I am a laughing blue cow,

but I am not imaginary,

I am not one size fits all,

and I am no longer sorry. 

Charlotte Amelia Poe

your catholic guilt is really ruining the party

“Fuck it,” Teddy says, a filthy chuckle escaping his throat. “I said I don’t believe in god and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t believe in me, so we’ll call it even. And he gives me this look, like I’ve kicked his puppy, and I’m like, what, did I say something wrong, because I thought this was a hook up, right, not some existential crisis meeting, and he gives me these big eyes and says ‘my mom was Catholic’. Like, fuck me, or rather, he didn’t fuck me, because apparently, that was a deal breaker for him.” Teddy takes a drag off his cigarette and flicks the ash vaguely in the direction of the ashtray even as Wren rolls her eyes.

“Slut,” she murmurs, not taking her eyes off the television, something suitably mindless that they can both talk shit about as Teddy recounts his misadventures. He fiddles with one of his rings, the skull with fake gemstone eyes, and stretches his fingers out before groaning.

“It’s all so fucking meaningless, anyway. You can call me a slut all prim and proper like you didn’t come home in last night’s dress, Wren.” He points an accusing finger. “What did you get up to?”

“Not fucking any Catholics, that’s for sure,” she says, and takes a sip of wine. “And the difference between us is that I don’t kiss and tell. Whereas you, Teddy Miller, seem to have a near insatiable urge to spill your guts at every opportunity.”

“Insatiable. Somebody’s been using her word of the day calendar,” Teddy grumbles, and she flips him off. “Oh, very ladylike. I, my lady, am a wordsmith, and therefore, I must tell my stories. And that unfortunately does rather mean spilling my guts at every opportunity, as you so elegantly put it. But I hide it well, don’t I? The lyrics aren’t that obvious.”

“They’re fucking obvious to anyone you’ve ever obviously fucked,” she says, and nudges his knee with her socked foot. He grabs at it and presses his thumb into the soft pad near her big toe, just to make her squirm. “Cut it out, dick. I’m just saying, you’re not as subtle as you think you are, Miller.”

“Me? Subtle? Come on now, baby, I can be subtle.” Teddy gestures to himself with his spare hand, other hand curling loosely around her ankle, rubbing abstract patterns there. “What isn’t subtle about me?”

“Jesus Christ, where do I even start?” She says, and takes another sip of wine. She tips the wine glass towards the television, where two overly bronzed women are having a very overly dramatic argument about something overly unimportant. “You’re as subtle as they are.”

“Wow, who hurt you?” Teddy says, and puts his hand to his heart, faux wounded. He shakes out his hair. “But my aesthetic is so much better. I have class, Wren, something they so obviously lack.”

She rolls her eyes. Her mouth is sweetly red tinted, and he remembers the shy cheerleader who’d first approached him in high school and how different she’d been then. How it’d taken a chance encounter and then several more for them to realise that they could not only be something less than enemies, but actually something that actually came pretty close to soul mates. Platonic, of course. On account of the raging homosexuality in the room.

“I have more class than you do, Miller,” she says, and grins widely, all teeth. “And I know I’m a tacky bitch. So good luck with that.”

“But you’re my tacky bitch and I love you for it,” Teddy says.

“You should write Hallmark cards,” she replies primly.

“Maybe I will,” he says. “Wine me?”

“You can’t get drunk on a Wednesday night.”

“You’re getting drunk on a Wednesday night,” he points out.

“I have self-control, something you lack, or are we forgetting New Year’s so soon?” Wren asks innocently.

Teddy gasps.

“We promised not to discuss that!”

“Oh, oops,” she says, not sounding apologetic at all. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t drink.”

Teddy picks up his abandoned cigarette and takes one last puff, releasing the smoke into the air away from her.

“I hate when you’re right. You’re such a terrible influence on me. All these good decisions and life choices. I’m going to bed then.”

“It’s eleven.”

“Yeah, I’m being mature. Some of us have to work for a living.”

“You work nights, dickweed. I’m the one who has to get up tomorrow.” Wren shoves his ribs with her foot.

“And we all respect you for it very much, you capitalist icon, you. But now, to sleep, perchance to dream, and so on and so forth.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Shutting the fuck up.” Teddy stands and salutes her, before rolling out his shoulders. “Love you babe.”

“Love you too, asshole,” she replies.

“Never fuck a Catholic!” He calls as he makes his way to the bathroom.

He doesn’t see her roll her eyes, but he doesn’t have to. He smiles. All in all, not a bad day, not a bad night. Fuckin’ Catholics, though.

Paul Hostovsky

The Air Between

 

“Could we maybe

not talk for a bit?”

you said because

you weren’t feeling well

and I was trying

to make you feel better

by taking you out for coffee

and doing most of the talking,

going on and on about

coffee here versus

coffee there, and this

and that–anything, really,

that I could think of

to talk about outside of

your illness, which was

in your body and in

the air between us.

“Yes. Of course. Sorry,” I said.

And you said, “Thank you.”

 

Poem in Sign Language

 

What does it mean

that the thumb of this poem

drags its pink nail

down over the closed

mouth of this poem?

Is it in pain?

Can it not speak?

Is this prosodic

or phonemic,

this raised eyebrow

like a circumflex over

the I of this poem?

So far it only

questions itself.

It has a certain

manual dexterity,

but who can understand it?

Its face and its hands,

its tilted head,

its movement and invention,

its eye gaze (beautiful!),

the whole of its body

says it has passion,

but how will it persuade

with no voice?

Postmortem in the Third Year

if it must be something, let it at least be tetanus i got from a fence back home, one i’ve made so

many times before i rush and catch something exposed. i’ll be in a hurry to find, wiping off the

wet rust with the edge of my shirt only to learn later that the barb had made it through. some careless time later set me up in the living room in a terra cotta iron lung a size too big to siphon

in a drip-line of mango nectar cut with gas station champagne. finding no relief, in

desperation and after first climbing a mountain made of medical referrals, they will finally put

me in that primetime machine available only to paid actors and venture capitalists. finding a deer

tick latched on to my heart, it’ll be swollen as a silver tear or a coin or some invaluable heirloom

in another’s jewelry box. so don’t say i didn’t call it now or call you from the drive home

and not talk much without reason. that something will have been lodged for some time. by the

looks of it then, it’s in there now. here, take these thrift store tweezers.

try not to leave the head.

Avery Gregurich

Leah Mueller

To the Sword-Swallowing Woman in Uranus, Missouri

Let me start out by saying that I’ve never once tried to swallow a sword. I’ve performed fellatio on many occasions, so I know a bit about muscle relaxation. But I haven’t put anything remotely sharp down my throat. Your talent is far beyond what I could ever hope to pull off.

I’m sure you get tired of standing behind a counter all day. Rowdy families pile out of their minivans and mill around the gift shop. Tittering loudly, they scoop up coffee mugs that read, “Uranus Gas and Lube.” Teenagers pose for selfies, wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with the words, “Straight Outta Uranus.”

After they return home, the tourists will have no use for these items. Mom and Dad will pull into their driveways in Boise, Idaho, Portland, Maine, or Tupelo, Mississippi, glad to finally have a chance to relax on their recliners with a few stiff martinis. They’ll shove the mugs and clothing into the backs of cabinets and drawers. No one wants to enter Safeway while sporting a sweatshirt that proclaims, “The Best Fudge Comes From Uranus.”

Like everyone else, I stumbled upon your workplace as I was tooling down Route 66, searching for roadside adventure. Who can resist an establishment with a two-headed turtle? Not me.

Ignoring the signs for funnel cakes and brewpub experiences, I headed straight for the sideshow museum. Once inside, I felt disoriented. I spent too much time staring at the exhibit about Robert Wadlow, the tallest man in the world. As a geeky kid, reading “The Guinness Book of World Records”, I developed a crush-like fascination with Wadlow. The poor man suffered from a condition that caused hyperplasia of his pituitary gland. I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded rough.

Museum photos showed Wadlow, dressed in crisp, specially made suits, smiling as he stood beside people of normal height. He didn’t quit growing until he reached 8’11. One day, he just stopped stretching upward. It must have been a relief to not be any taller than he was the previous month. 

Wadlow managed to appear happy in the photographs. Like he’d achieved a state of zen bliss, even if he had to gaze at the tops of people’s heads all day long. After an unsatisfying stint in the circus, he became a shoe salesman. Free shoes for life. No matter what, he made the best of everything.

I confess that I was absorbed in the exhibits and didn’t see you at first. I strolled amongst the mummies, mermaids, and alligator men, trying to find meaning in the chaos. The place was weird, but it beat the hell out of the Cadillac Ranch. I wondered whether I should break down and buy some fudge. Or at least a couple of postcards. Decisions, decisions.

You gestured towards me from your place behind the counter. A plump, heavily tattooed woman in a tiger print sundress. Instantly, I fell in love. You fixed me with a petulant expression. “Leaving already? Would you like to stay a while longer and watch me swallow a sword?”

Who could say no to such a request? I followed you to a tiny platform in the back room. The audience area was devoid of chairs, so I stood on the linoleum floor while you prepared backstage for your act. Apparently, you’d planned a solo show, something just for me. My heart pounded with exhilaration.

A minute later, you charged onto the stage and began to gyrate. Your heavy hips and ample thighs jiggled with a rhythm that only you could hear. I gazed at you, enthralled. You stared at the space behind my head, but I didn’t mind. It wasn’t every day that I got to see a sword swallower in Uranus.

When the suspense became unbearable, you pulled a sword from behind the curtains. Your body was stock-still as you opened your lips wide. You held the sword aloft, then plunged its long blade deep inside your mouth.

The whole process took only a couple of seconds. You extracted the sword and placed it on a table behind you. Then you shrugged. “Well, that’s it.” Your tone sounded brisk, matter-of fact. “Would you like me to do it again?”

“No, really, that’s okay. Once is enough. Thank you so much.” I’d paid six bucks admission, so I’d more than gotten my money’s worth. I didn’t want you swallowing swords all afternoon on my account. The pay scale in Uranus probably isn’t high, even for someone with such a rare skill.

Feeling dazed, I staggered towards the door. I felt certain I would never see you again. You’d probably already forgotten about my existence, but I couldn’t blame you. I was just another aimless tourist with too much money to spend on nothing.

The parking lot seemed unnaturally bright. One hour before closing, most of the cars had already left. They’d found the freeway and made a beeline towards MacDonald’s, Long John Silver’s, and Cracker Barrel. In the distance, I could see the silhouettes of Uranus’s outbuildings, with their comical signs: The Moonicorn Creamery and Funnel Cakery. The Uranus Axehole. Chicken Bones Party Bar and Grill.

None of these options appealed to me. If I left soon, perhaps I’d find Route 66 without too much trouble. The last thing I wanted was to go in circles and end up stuck in Uranus. I had gotten lost on the route more than once.

You probably take 66 all the time. At the end of each day, you pack away your sword, punch the clock, and head home. I hope you live in a place that’s as exotic as you are, and not just some lonely trailer beside a field.

Unmarked highways are difficult to navigate, especially at night. No wonder most people take the interstate. Freeways are a hell of a lot faster. Normal folks plan their route and their destination, but they miss everything in the process. I guess that’s why I never cared much for normal folks.

Triston H.B.

Left Out

 

 

I just wanted — you…

Really? Did you — time for that?

 

 

I guess I just wasn’t — enough, maybe?

Maybe? Like you aren’t — already?

 

 I tried my best to — you…

Well, you should have — then!

  

Or maybe I should just go now.

You can’t do that, what about me?

 

It’s my choice now.

is this a good title?

 

to help, to love, to see, to escape?

make, have any, think I had

 

quick, thorough, good

late overbearing awful

 

avoid, appease, be there for

tried harder, left your job, left your friends spent more on me, stopped being happy

 

I need to look out for myself

How will I feel free without controlling you?

 

I’m free now.

Tyler Hein

The Gospel of St. Anthony

Normal and absurd are defined against what’s familiar, so I didn’t question stumbling upon you when I was out trying to catch frogs near a swamp behind the Quick Mart.

I found you lying at the base of a poplar, covered in its skin. A beautiful clue sifted from ash. A black box salvaged from some disaster I found fascinating despite my better judgement. Your pages were shopworn. Ink ran from your face, lightly staining my hands. You were faded, wet and cold. When I looked around, I was alone among trees so thick they nearly swallowed the shine of summer. So… who hid you?

Was it the person I first pictured? Someone scared of shadows, with thinning hair that would kill for a widow’s peak, who would dart his eyes down and up the hard mud trails as he pinched your spine, spindle fingers drumming off-beat along his zipper in a clumsy battle cry for a war he already surrendered? Or was it left by someone like me: a too quickly aging boy, too busy starving for extra space and fresher air to stop himself from finding one’s man trashy to be another man’s pleasure.

Whoever it was who left you, he was my hero when I was ten. And you? You were my bible.

I stored you below my mattress until the night when the house stood still, and the streets were empty with their creepy suburban calm. Only then would I flick through your dogeared wisdom and invite your gospel to imprint on my psyche and the back of my retinas.

I smuggled you to sleepovers - sacred text rolled and stuffed in the waistband of my jeans - where my friends and I took turns pretending we had a clue how to praise you properly. Our effort to honour you, stilted and exploratory, full of boasts and wishes, were ultimately fruitless. Before long, we were staying up late on Friday nights watching Showcase, chasing each second-long glimpse of exposed flesh, learning compromised Spanish from a show called Latin Lover.

It was then I figured you had shown me enough. I knew I needed to spread your teachings further than my bedroom and the cold basement of Graham’s house. After all, while your gift opened the way, it is the act of giving which ushers a person into the presence of great.

That is why, acting as your apostle, I removed bare bodies from your margins with delicate hands and safety scissors, careful not to harm a single airbrushed hair, and buried the pieces in elementary school playground sand before the morning procession of busses. During recess, I sat on the decline where the eighth graders played Red-Ass and beamed with pride as even younger children discovered shreds of your blessing.

To the porn I found in the woods, I still have so many questions. Where did I fall in the search for perversion under the surface? Was I the cause or the effect, the before or the after?

Laszlo Aranyi

Dmitriy Galkovskiy trans. Alexander Sharov

Yuletide Fable #1

A certain classical rodent distinguished by keen inquisitiveness was once ferreting around in the winery, collapsed into the amphora and precipitately choked to death on wine. On the ensuing day the amphora was expedited to the quayside where it was loaded onto a vessel. Thunderbolts fulminated into the vessel during a tempest, conflagration erupted and the argosy sank midway en route from Jaffa to Piraeus. In 3694 the amphora with mummified crystallized ullage was surfaced and a fossilized rat was hewn out from it. The architectonics of the specimen’s volatile memory was successfully dumped through algebraic mapping, and by proxy of the 16-dimensional mainframe, emulating lower mammalian sensorial susceptibility, relevant footage sequence was visualized. It transpired that the rat which so (in) felicitously floundered into the amphora, six hours heretofore had been in attendance during interrogation of Christ by Pontius Pilate.

In 5118 a retro-electronic archaeological mission fortuitously lucked upon clandestine findings on that matter. Regretfully, the then retrieved informational chip of the iconic grid NN-4 was almost utterly vandalized, and, in the ultimate reckoning, the system yielded a swath of the spreadsheet of contents, disparate fragments of the dialogue and two video snapshots (from amongst the total of two millions). A sessile gentleman robed in Roman vice-regal vestments was seen on the former, the least corrupted frame. The optics is extraordinarily bungled: worm’s-eye and lateral-side views. A hulking Romanesque-sandaled foot is visible, a disproportionately dwarfish head with a comparatively hypertrophied mandible, a forearm with a sigil ring rests on the knee. Opposite stands Christ – an approximately quadragenarian, swarthy-complexioned Semite, luxuriously gowned, aquiline hooked nose, wispy beard, bloated cheeks. The focalization of the snapshot (chromatic splotch) is the sigil ring, ostentatiously flamboyant one, supposedly, the artifact riveting the gnawer’s alertness this particular second. The latter snapshot is severely blurred. Pilate is scarcely discernible thereon. Christ is expostulating on something, gesticulating with his hand straightly at the rat. A hexapod (conjecturally, Blatta orientalis) is zigzagging across the foreground. The semantic cynosure of the snapshot is not prioritized. Evidently, the instant of shifting attention from the insect on the background is videoed. Ostensibly, the rat lusted to ingurgitate the Blattoptera but was diverted by an exclamation.

Extant gleanings from the conversation were exportable solely into plain textual file format. Consequently, fidelity of disambiguation between who had apostrophized whom could not have been validated. The duologue was held in Latin bureaucratese of the 1st century AD, and respective sayings were, with a certain degree of tentativeness, rendered into icon-based Vision English. Altogether, nineteen nuggets were unscrambled:

1. Now then, we shall be sorting out the question in terms of funding.
2. Let us conventionalize thus.
3. It is opined that thy folks ought to be disposed of.
4. Where is your acolyteship?
5. Thou wilt become shorter by the head.
6. Where is the baksheesh?
7. Now, we shall be resolving the question of talents’ casting.
8. Hands will be struck upon (*).
9. To vilipend and denigrate.
10. To tweak the issue.
11. Incentivizing and streamlining the modus operandi.
12. To provincialize it to the Collegium? The Sun is surer to prostrate down onto the Earth!
13. In a wrongful light.
14. When the time is ripe, we shall moot this suggestion likewise.
15. From the rightful perspective, delight of my eyes.
16. A clerkly drudge.
17. The neck of the grubby bourgeois rat must be wrung off.
18. The sycophant must be hung on a rope’s end moistened in asinine urine.

The last nineteenth piece was identified as positively attributable to Christ:

19. I beseech thee not to intimidate me anymore. Altogether, I am clueless as to what Your August Lordship is speaking about. I shall resurrect and persist everlastingly. My father, Lord, my God hath behested thus!

(*) Hereunder is obfuscated whether figuratively or in the truest sense of the word.

Hugh Findlay

Here to tell you

 

Hello its me your light was on

when I drove by

interesting that we both

are awake I don’t know

why

I stopped maybe

something inside missed you

I’m sure you are

happy now your house is in

fine order you probably fear

what I might do to it and

you never were one to
take chances

 

We are not having a friendly

discussion because we are not friends

just estranged, funny

how it often works out that way

Bitterness

yet there is no real reason

for it do you want to

know about my life I suppose

not it implies caring

 

What was it that made me stop

Its been long enough for

wounds to heal long

enough for new ones to fester we

were tight enough for the
impression

to still feel

 

Such a speech I am

whispering

and your shrug

is so disarming
next time I drive by

Ill drive by 

Emily Goldsmith

GIVE ME SILENCE

 

Fill my coffee to the brim.

Mutter under my breath

To the gods I don’t believe in:

Extend my deadlines.

 

In class I do not care at all.

Someone is talking.

Someone is always talking

In the elevator,

in the coffee shop,

At the grocery store,

on the radio.

 

Turn off the radio.

Want to drive

the car in silence.

Drive the car in silence,

Roll the windows down.

 

Now, only hear the rough wind,

The car-created sound tunnel.

I would hug white noise,

hold arms wide to feel its imprint.

 

I crave isolation,

The picturesque kind:

Sunsets over fields,

Wrap-around front porches,

Rocking chairs,

Tufted quilts,

Feathery duvets.

 

Tolerable Sounds:

The crinkle of paper

The rustle of fabric

The barking dog

Three particular songs

Wind, again.

Wes Viola

In His Heart

He came shuffling along

between Liverpool Street and Farringdon on the Elizabeth Line.

A portrait of a white Jesus hung around his neck.

He was saying something about barns:

I took out one earphone in a gesture of half-politeness.

Something about a small barn and a big barn.

"A barn is a place for storage", he clarified.

He was clutching some very small envelopes in his hand.

'Small barns,' I supposed.

"The next week, that man built the biggest barn..."

He broke off from his story.

He had reached the far end of the train, and

a passenger there - the very last passenger in his ephemeral congregation -

was quietly advising him that preaching was not allowed.

"Who are you to say?" He demanded.

I didn't hear the response - I had only taken one earphone out,

and they were on the other side -

but I think it might have been something along the lines of,

"It's my day off, but I'm a Customer Experience Officer for Transport for London...",

because the preacher man went from asking,

"How can you say this, when you travel in his heart?

these tunnels are in the earth which belongs to God.

This train belongs to God, and you belong to God" (good line, I thought),

to threatening over his shoulder, "you will lose your job within a year.

You will see." (Worse line. Terrible line.)

He wasn't yet very far back along the train

before he was trying to appeal to the rest of us.

"That guy says I am not allowed to spread the word of God! Hahaha!"

I didn't think he was winning anyone over,

but just then, a bright glowing light

appeared at the far end of the train,

right at the front.

It was on the floor of the train, coming towards us.

I could hardly look at it, but something told me not to look away -

and as it got closer, I realised: it was the head and shoulders of Jesus,

sticking up from the floor of the train.

He was staying still,

the train was moving through him.

As He approached and passed his bewildered disciple,

Jesus said,

"...I don't think you're winning anyone over, mate..."

Gloria Glau

THANK YOU

Trash Wonderland started as a place where I could make fantasy worlds out of whatever others discarded. I felt like my own voice was something I was supposed to throw away. The fact that I now share this glittery grimy world with others, that others are talking, not talking, and making alongside me? That is an unbelievable source of joy for me.

Thank you for jumping into Trash Wonderland. If you want to explore further, please think about snagging a copy of the print edition. The print edition is the looking-glass version of the digital edition. You will find some familiar pieces as well as pieces exclusively available in print. All the artists you see here can be found in the print zine as well. The zine is lovingly-made, hand-stapled, as DIY as it gets. And who doesn’t love getting snail mail in this day and age?

If you have questions or want to pre-order your copy of the print issue, please send an email to kitlascher@gmail.com

If you would like to tip the artists for this digital issue, we would greatly appreciate it! Consider this a virtual street performer’s hat! You can throw a couple dollars via Venmo, tips will be evenly distributed amongst artists.

Contributors

Angela Acosta is a bilingual Latina poet and Ph.D. Candidate in Iberian Studies at The Ohio State University. Her poetry has appeared in Panochazine, Radon Journal, and The Acentos Review. She is author of Summoning Space Travelers (Hiraeth Books, 2023) and Fourth Generation Chicana Unicorn (Dancing Girl Press, 2023).

Anthony Acri is a cartoonist, illustrator and a social critic, in the terms of Croce or Vidal, who lives in the suburbia of Pittsburgh Pa, with his sister and brother and are all that is left of a family of Italians who had coddled and both warned him of the quagmire that he was going to be dealing in and with as a boy.

Laszlo Aranyi (Frater Azmon) poet, anarchist, occultist from Hungary. Earlier books: (szellem)válaszok, A Nap és Holderők egyensúlya . New: Kiterített rókabőr. English poems published: Quail Bell Magazine, Lumin Journal, Moonchild Magazine, Scum Gentry Magazine, Pussy Magic, The Zen Space, Crêpe & Penn, Briars Lit, Acclamation Point, Truly U, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Lots of Light Literary Foundation, Honey Mag, Theta Wave, Re-side, Cape Magazine, Neuro Logical, The Daily Drunk Mag, Unpublishable Zine, Melbourne Culture Corner, Beir Bua Journal, Crown & Pen, Dead Fern Press, Coven Poetry Journal, Journal of Erato, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillover Magazine, Punk Noir, Nymphs Literary Journal, Synchronized Chaos, Impspired Magazine, Fugitives & Futurists, The Dope Fiend Daily, Mausoleum Press, Nine Magazines, Thanks Hun, Downtown Archive, Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal, Our Poetry Archive (OPA), Juniper Literary Magazine, Feral Dove Magazine, Alternate Route, CENTRE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ONTOLOGY, Bullshit Lit Magazine, Misery tourism, Terror House Press, Journal of Expressive Writing, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, WordCity Literary Journal, Wilder Literature Magazine, Roadside Raven Review, Death'sDormantDaughter, Rasputin, Amphora Magazine, Dope Fiend Daily, THIN SLICE ANXIETY, Dark Entries, FLEAS ON THE DOG, Dumpster Fire Press, DON’T SUBMIT!, Horror Sleaze Trash Magazine, Outcast Press, DOGZPLOT Magazine, BLACK STONE / WHITE STONE, Impractical Things Magazine, Medusa's Kitchen, Beatnik Cowboy, LET’S STAB CAESAR!, THE PEACH Magazine, FATHERFATHER Magazine, Gorko Gazette, Jupiter Review, Word For/Word Magazine, Poetry As Promised Lit Mag, Talking about strawberries all of the time, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, BRUISER, PopCULTlitmag, Setu, Dire Need, All Ears (India), Rhodora Magazine, Arc Magazine, ShabdAaweg Review (India), Utsanga (Italy), Postscript Magazine (United Arab Emirates), The International Zine Project (France), Swala Tribe Magazine (Rwanda), The QuillS Journal (Nigeria). Known spiritualist mediums, art and explores the relationship between magic.

The author, Sukeerthi Bachu, has a hard time defining their work. They believe that all their writing is a decaying corpse and is perpetually consumed by the abstraction of god. Any finished work of theirs is highly likely to have been done in a state of a caffeinated high.

Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband and two children. Her poetry and prose have appeared in several publications including Oddball Magazine, Red Weather, Dollar Store Magazine, and Sirens Call. She is also the author of Self-Destruction in Small Doses, a poetry chapbook. Find her online at: tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com.

James Diaz (They/Them) is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) and Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their most recent work can be found in Corporeal lit mag, Wrongdoing mag, Sugar House Review, and Thrush Poetry Journal.

finch greene (they/she) is a poet from the new york city area. they are a cat mom, a virgo, and very, very tired. you can probably find them reading smutty fanfic or painting their nails.

Hugh Findlay’s writing and photography have been published worldwide.  Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 for poetry, he is in the third trimester of life and hopes y’all like his stuff.  Instagram: @hughmanfindlay.  Portfolio: https://hughmanfindlay.wixsite.com/hughfindlay

Gloria Glau is italian and angry. she lives in rome, where she is constantly trying to art more and cry less. 

Emily M. Goldsmith (they/them) is a queer Cajun-Creole poet originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They are currently a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Mississippi. Emily received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Kentucky in 2021. They are a managing editor of Giving Room Mag. Their creative work can be found in The Penn Review, Bullsh*t Mag, Fifth Wheel Press, Pile Press, and elsewhere.

finch greene (they/she) is a poet from the new york city area. they are a cat mom, a virgo, and very, very tired. you can probably find them reading smutty fanfic or painting their nails.

Avery Gregurich is a writer living and working in Marengo, Iowa. He was raised next to the Mississippi River, and has never strayed too far from it.

Triston H.B. (he/him/his) is a composer-poet based in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Triston’s work explores introspection and the machinations of the human mind, as well as human interactions with nature from the perspective of the natural world. Triston has been a resident of Nomadic Soundsters, and his work has been featured at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, on the side of Industries of the Blind, and published in the Coraddi.

Tyler Hein is a writer from Edmonton, Alberta. He received an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, which is a decision he financially regrets to this day. He received a 2017 StoryHive television grant and was shortlisted for the 2018 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award. He is working on a debut novel. His work has recently been published in Freefall, Riddle Fence, The Deadlands, and Funicular Magazine. 

CE Hoffman (they/them) was born, gave birth, and tried to die in Edmonton, AB (not necessarily in that order.) A grant winner, recipient of a Silver Honourable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Award, and winner of the 2022 Defunct May Day Chapbook contest with their chapbook NO ACTUAL SIN, they wrote their first novel at eleven years old, and have continued writing ever since. They’ve been published widely online and in print since 2010, and edited Punk Monk Magazine since 2012.

Current releases include their #OwnVoices short story collection SLUTS AND WHORES (Thurston Howl Publications, 2021), BLOOD, BOOZE, AND OTHER THINGS IN NATURE (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), GHOSTS, TROLLS, AND OTHER THINGS ON THE INTERNET (Bottlecap Press, 2022), and NO ACTUAL SIN (May Day Press/Defunct Magazine, 2023.) LOSERS AND FREAKS is forthcoming from Querencia Press. Find their publishing CV at cehoffman.net/publications, follow them on Twitter @CEHoffman2, and listen to their podcast Scribbles & Spills.

Paul Hostovsky makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. His latest book of poems is Mostly (FutureCycle Press, 2021). Visit him at paulhostovsky.com

Ira is just a queer kid trying very hard indeed to be some sort of internet perfect 🍇

Erin Jamieson (she/her) holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. Her writing has been published in over eighty literary magazines, including a Pushcart Prize nomination. She is the author of a poetry collection (Clothesline, NiftyLit, Feb 2023).

Bethan Keogh is a 34-year old technical writer from Wales, living in Paris since 2010. She once stopped to write a love poem in her native Welsh in a bush. She started writing poetry again after a long hiatus and her favourite themes to write about are still love, heartbreak and everything in between. Her Instagram handle is @welshgirlinparis

BEE LB is an array of letters, bound to impulse; a writer creating delicate connections. they have called any number of places home; currently, a single yellow wall in Michigan. they have been published in Revolute Lit, Roanoke Review, and Figure 1, among others. they are the 2022 winner of FOLIO’s Editor’s Prize for Poetry, as well as the Bea Gonzalez Prize for Poetry. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co

Sai Liuko didn't really believe that talking would help but now cannot clam up. She keeps singing to the void, hoping it one day sings back.

Leah Mueller lives in Bisbee, Arizona. She is the author of ten prose and poetry books. Her new book, "The Destruction of Angels" (Anxiety Press) was published in October 2022. Leah's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Citron Review, The Spectacle, Miracle Monocle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She is a 2023 nominee for both Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her flash piece, "Land of Eternal Thirst" appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions.

Charlotte Amelia Poe (they/them) is an autistic nonbinary author from England. Their first book, How To Be Autistic, was published in 2019. Their debut novel, The Language Of Dead Flowers, was published in September 2022.

Pascale Potvin was thrice nominated for the Best of the Net anthology in addition to the Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction, and she was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50. She has further work featured in Juked Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, trampset, and many others. She is Editor-in-Chief of Wrong Publishing and recently wrote & directed a feature film. Find her at pascalepotvin.com.

Nicholas Michael Ravnikar is a language artist living in Southeast Wisconsin. He quit an eight-year career as a college prof to repair bathtubs, among other things. Sober since 2011, he lives with Borderline Personality, Dysthymia-Persistent Depression and ADHD diagnoses. Get free books and check out his art at bio.fm/nicholasmichaelravnikar and learn about how to get involved with his press, Paper::Knives, at www.paperknives.art.

Angel Rosen (she/her) is a poet, lesbian, and friend-enthusiast who writes about mental illness, autism, and the queer experience. She can be found drinking lemonade, watching television, and making lists. Angel's poetry can be discovered at angelrosen.com and friendship is accepted on Twitter. Angel is passionate about Sylvia Plath, the Amanda Palmer community and reading good poems.

Beatriz Seelaender is a Brazilian author from São Paulo. Her fiction has appeared in Cagibi, AZURE, Psychopomp, among many others, and essays can be found at websites such as The Collapsar and Sterling Clack Clack, where she acts as Creative Nonfiction editor. Seelaender has only recently started submitting poetry, but her poems have been published by Press Pause Press and The Graveyard Zine. Her novellas have earned her both the Sandy Run and the Bottom Drawer Prizes. 

Dmitriy Galkovskiy (Author) is a Russian philosopher and man of letters. He matriculated from Moscow State University with a degree in Classical Philosophy. Alexander Sharov (Translator) matriculated from Dnepr National University (Ukraine) with degrees in English and Psychology. He translates contemporary fiction from Russian and Ukrainian into English.

dean shinner is an artist, writer, and creative living and working in washington. he enjoys fantasy, candles, and a good story.

Dominika Šimková is a Berlin-based artist from Slovakia, also known as Parohatá Príšera (which means monster with horns). She likes to draw sad girls surrounded by demons, being surrounded by demons herself, drinking coffee with demons... Basically everything including demons is fine. She also creates clothing for fairies and other magic creatures.

stina was surprised with a visit to ostrichland in october 2021. they produced a series of photographs around the barriers between viewers and ostriches. the inclusion of emus was also surprising.

Sofia Tantono is a writer based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in MASKS, Yuwana Zine, unstamatic and others. Outside of writing, she was the curator for Yuwana Zine's fifth issue and is the fiction editor of Koening Zine. Find her on Instagram @sofias.writing and at sofiatantono.wordpress.com.

Wes Viola is a pen name of Wes White. Wes is an Elder Bard of Glastonbury in England - he now lives in London and works in public libraries. He is also published in Voidspace, Visual Verse, Obsessed With Pipework, Bog, and Eunoia Review; and you can explore these and more via http://linktr.ee/wesviola

Publishing Acknowledgments

  • “Cul-de-Sac Diss Track” by Beatriz Seelaender was previously published by The Evermore Review

  • “To the Sword-Swallowing Woman in Uranus, Missouri” by Leah Mueller was previously published by Brilliant Flash Fiction

  • “Yuletide Fable #1” by Dmitriy Galkovskiy (Author)/ Alexander Sharov (Translator) was previously published by Anomaly