Boundaries

Dariana Guerrero

If I want you to touch me, I’ll let you know. You
will never. Be confused by the sigh of my breath
or the shape my palm makes when it aches for
comfort. In the loneliness emanating from the
blue screen, you think it is sexy for me to know
what your dick looks like. You think it is
necessary for me to know what your dick looks
like. You want me to know that you like Big
Beautiful Women, Big Bodied Women, Bold
Brave Women and then I know I do not want you
to touch me. I am convinced […]

Ann M Lawrence

You left her and she took the bread.
But not just the bread, the chocolate syrup too,
leaving your peanut butter and your ice cream
bare. She left the camera you gave her for a holiday
and the diamonds for the years, but you came home
to find your bed sheet-less. Who did you think
you were kidding when you said
you’d be fine? She took the cat too.
You can still hear his face rubbing
the empty corners of your apartment walls.
You said you’d pawn the diamonds
to get more sheets and bread, but they’re still
sitting on your dresser, […]

Dariana Guerrero

The touch
of experienced hands                       reaching,
collidingwithmyflesh
searching for an answer
buried in a pit.

I thought I would remember my mother and brother
avoiding eye contact like disease was contractible
call the CDC
Hazmat
mi sangre
all the same
it’s the same
flows the same,
can’t change genetics
can’t slice chromosomes
can’t put masking tape on scars.
Papi wouldn’t have cried for me.

Allá y aquí
llorando y pensando.
The island is more
than bachata and subtle rejection.
The trick is to keep calm
in times of danger.
Papi will call.

I only needed
a shot of radiation.
Six days in a hospital bed
country code […]

Julene Tripp Weaver

A picture window.
We who have keys to the inside
have homes, summer houses,
condos with two bathrooms
and private linear blinds to close.

We look out on a courtyard inside a fence,
greenery in a nook secluded from the street,
a place to lie down with a blanket,
to take care of small needs on a weekend
when this professional building lies fallow.

Perfect hide-away from those who belong.
Our writing group enters, we stare through
glass, they stare back, a needle in his hand
suspended against his thigh
where he was privately searching

for a vein. In slow motion, he leans forward
moves her […]

Susana H. Case

Glassware breaks as everyone hugs
everyone, the crowd half-drunk,
whole-drunk—even the nuns drinking pints—
when word gets around
there’s a girl here from New York,

and you’re pulled up from your seat,
handed an empty bottle for a mic,
people cajoling you to sing a New York song,
which you’re ordinarily too tone-deaf to do,
but you’re full of beer, so, you belt out,

“Will you still love me tomorrow,”
because you know the lyrics to the old tunes,
like the others who join in. A guy follows
with, “I left my heart in San Francisco,”
that city, to those in the countryside of […]

David P. Miller

The skinny girl with Little Mermaid
t-shirt teeters her feet on the flats
of a low metal fence. Leaps and lands
on the sidewalk. Yelps because she can’t
grab a narrow branch’s tip, dangling
between the fence and the shut-blind window.
Great-grandmother, monument-solid, watches
as the girl perches, perches, leaps, leaps,
grabs, misses, yelps. Now the mother –
maybe aunt – drags a folding chair
from the side door, undoes the chair,
retreats, reties her apron. This is great-
grandmother’s post, between stoop
and sidewalk, for the next three hours.

Carl Papa Palmer

seasonal migrant worker
unwed mother in Arizona
temporary work visa expires
sent back across the border

unwed mother in Arizona
allows her teen-aged son
sent back across the border
the chance to have a better life

allows her teen-aged son
now after his first eighteen years
the chance to have a better life
by staying and joining the US Army

now after his first eighteen years
he fights to become an American
by staying and joining the US Army
by becoming an American fighting man

he fights to become an American
offers his life for this country
by becoming an American fighting man
becomes an American citizen, posthumously […]

Adrian Slonaker

Loafing beside the basalt bridge
on the border of Here and There,
of my tongue and yours,
I’m mystified by the mosaic
of laddishness lurking in your skin.
With your ash-stained hoodie
and ominous eyebrows,
you could pass for a delinquent except
for your dimples-
droll enough for a baby-food label-
slathered with shards of after-hours neon.
Your gritty enigmas attract,
yet I am too transparent;
sable satin, frilly French ballads and
vocal inflections like sugary chirruping
mark me too easily:
too much of a girl to be a boy
but also too much of a boy to be a girl.
I’m the freakish in-between,
not fathoming why or how […]