by Alain Goulbourne
(disregarded dusty footsteps
over carpets stained champagne
and dry ruby tête-à-têtes kept unsaid;
sighs left sinking below yellowed yellow linoleum,
seeping through high drunken ceilings,
speaking to someone else’s clean cotton sheets.)
About the author…
Originally from Jamaica, Alain Goulbourne is an Applied Psychology who just finished up her final year as an NYU undergrad. She is also pursuing minors in Creative Writing and German. Drawn to the power […]
by Sara Brielle
There is a border, guarded
by greed. Eyes translucent
like a drained heart, flaking
with soul like rapture.
It’s terror sustains on raw
blood, letting lovers pass,
collecting conformity
like rent, toll money.
Care has an oppressive
rhetoric, housed in
buildings with chipped
paint and smells of bleach.
Fenced in residencies with
cutthroat conventions.
There are laws of love and
a penance for trespass.
It is the border, manned by
practiced, dehydrated fear,
which from the crevices
birthed me.
Precarious and reckless,
I run boundaries like
red lights. Heart threaded
to my shirt sleeve.
Trench where friends become
lovers and mentors, mothers,
the ground […]
by Nicholas Beren
1.
Hauntings take time
you cannot haunt
somewhere
all at once
and if you ever tried
you wouldn’t understand
what it truly means to haunt
like a horse in the jungle
the cool smell of chlorine
the nearness of your dress
2.
Into the realm of the horses
One descends
Into the realm of the underneath
Coarse brown hair
You all know what it’s like
You’ve felt it in dreams
Or seen it in the movies
Oooh, that looks familiar
Your wife says in a
Milwaukee accent
And you just wish
She’d shut the fuck up
While you’re in the
Realm of the horses
Looking so cocksure
And impressive
[…]
(PRINTED VERSION)
by James Bradley
I.
He hands over his dark Obsession to its dark Object—
Swan-girls high on wings cry, tangled white yarn binds their hair
Orange sapphire & lava rock weighed traverse
Dawn’s golden body from elbow to elbow
Sun awash, disappearing, disappeared like
Anomalies purged by the programmer
Gone are the days of free-roaming viruses
Proud mutants’ majesty upon
[call this the southerly view]
Jill Blake
In the House around the corner.
“I just want to know what it feels like”
he said to me, my pants pulled down and my arms held above my head.
(labor day before junior year)
The large cork board to the left.
A poster of Kiss, in full make-up (disguise).
Spinal Tap (the mockumentary),
Farrah in her red bathing suit (buffet of descriptors).
The bed was filled with water.
The walls were brown.
My right hip froze in fear – 32 years later, the hip soldier grips when I grieve.
“I just want to know what it feels like”
Those words, all […]
by Lukpata Lomba Joseph
Strange taste?
You were a knight of the night,
Volleying over the walls of McDonalds.
You never thought you needed
The face of a beast, a behemoth perhaps.
You spoke with the voice
Of the old dragon; screamed your steel
Handle and let it out and
The sun blinked on her.
You could feel a deflation in
Your adrenal region as you
Legged it off McDonalds.
They stood staring like victims
Of Morgan le Fay in the straits of Messina
As you dashed through the streets.
And now, you are back to St. Rita.
There is a chewing movement in the crust.
Tectonic plates […]
by Jill Blake
truth
shifts to trust
with one required
base pair reassignment
trutH;
drop the grand Hoax
shush the lies to self and other
sink back into your primordial slime
reorganize, safely within your self-made cocoon
truSt;
add the ultimate Sacrifice
to give up who you are
emerge with naked wings exposed
trusting-self to know, who is/is not that kind of hungry
trust
Subtype 1 – truST;
seekers are not made for trust
they have a little extra need
they seek Self-Trust
thus, a different species entirely
Subtype 2 – truf;
beware, with this species
there comes a risky mutation.
replaces a base pair, ST
with […]
Samantha Chen
About the author…
Samantha Chen is a first-year student and poet at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She draws upon the tenuous relationship between space and body, extraterrestrials and tenderness, childhood trauma and burning at the stake, to write poetry. Currently, she is an intern at Catamaran Literary Reader and editor at Red Wheelbarrow and Matchbox Magazine. In her free time, she enjoys creating oil paintings, sitting in her bathtub, and […]
by Andrew Zuliani
*Embarrassing early poem, scrambled beyond recognition.
About the author…
Andrew Zuliani is a writer and musician who lives between Vancouver and New York. He is working on a doctoral dissertation on flatness and depthlessness in postwar literature in the department of English and American Literature at NYU. His poetry has been published in The Capilano Review and Lyre, and fiction forthcoming in armarolla.
by Tor Strand
We come from Birdridge,
running Earth’s sharp edges,
jamming our toes, obeying
an unmapped wanting.
The bore tide fills Turn-Again with a wave
of outer ocean, a long white cap from up here.
We surf with our eyes.
Far above the snow on South Suicide
goes blue.
We start climbing after dinner
but it’s Alaska in July—so what matters—
we run loose scree above the treeline,
play and forget, snap twigs
against a hanging sun, building sorrow.
We breathe toward dusk along the Arm,
a lane of light
from ridge to ridge.