Christine Hamm
Waterbabies

As we empty bottles
of Nyquil together to fall

out of this world of smoke
and bruises, the music of the spheres

plays in your backyard pool.
We sit holding hands under the burning

pastel surface, watching the cuts
on our arms turn the water orange.

You want to take what is owed you
out of my flesh with your childproof

scissors. Then you try them on my hair,
and I can’t blame you. Life lines erased

by too much chlorine. Poolside, piles
of silk slips and safety glass are pillows:

woken by the stinking tongue of your dog,
his heart stitched to our slow celebration.

Christine Hamm is the author of Echo Park (Blazevox, 2011) and A is for Absence (New Orleans Review, 2014), among other collections. Her poems have appeared in Orbis, Nat Brut, BODY, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. Holding a doctorate in American Poetics, Christine is an editor for Ping*Pong Press and teaches English at Pace University in New York City.

Archita Mittra
Ant Soup

EDITOR’S NOTE: To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we have included it as a PDF that will open in a separate tab when you click on the title below:

Archita Mittra, Ant Soup

Archita Mittra loves to tell stories with words and images, and has a fondness for the vintage, the imaginary and the fantastical. A first year student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she is also pursuing a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She has won several writing contests and her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Quail Bell Magazine, eFiction India, Life In 10 Minutes, Teenage Wasteland Review and Tuck Magazine, among others.

This poem appeared in eFiction India and the Zaira Journal.

Morgan Downie
Two Poems

exsanguinate

it slicks the floor
dark as coffee
dense as tar
the dulled red
of dimmed fire
the stilled stink
of blood unnatural
he is bathed in it
an unrippled vessel
in its glaze
hair darkened
eye sockets pooled
with his body’s
rejected iron
somewhere a nurse
is crying

we thicken the air
with hypochlorite
slake the floor
with bloodied mops
send the man
cleansed
to his rest
his ears filled
with our rough jokes
and the assurance
that at least
it was quick
and not the worst
death
any of us
had seen

at the end

it’s so nice
to have a man here
and in that one sentence
you tell me

of all those nights
when you were
who you were
before

and of all
that i could be
if only i was
with you

away from
your monitored
and failing
heart

that spendthrift
organ you shared
without a care
with so many

i take
your hand
in my hands
and we pretend

that you
are still healthy
and i
am still human

Morgan Downie is a visual artist who also writes short stories and poetry. He is a keen collaborationist and cross disciplinary practitioner and this underpins many of the themes of translocation in his practice. His published work includes stone and sea and distances, a Romanian- English photopoetry collection. He works in healthcare.

Lesléa Newman
Looking at Her

Yes, I was looking at her
Yes, I knew her very well
Yes, I had lived inside of her
Yes, I had lived outside of her
Yes, she had fed me and clothed me
Yes, she had rocked me and soothed me
Yes, I had brought her much pleasure
Yes, I had brought her much pain
Yes, we had fought with great fury
Yes, we had kissed and made up
Yes, I had moved far away from her
Yes, I remained very close to her
Yes, that day I was looking at her
Yes, she was stiff and unmoving
Yes, she was dressed in a shroud
Yes, her two lips stitched together
Yes, her two eyelids sewn shut
Yes, I bent over her casket
Yes, I applied her pink lipstick
Yes, I brushed blush on her cheekbones
Yes, the farewell the departure
Yes, the silence the longing
Yes, I was with and without her
Yes, I was looking at her

Lesléa Newman is the author of 70 books for readers of all ages including the children’s classic, Heather Has Two Mommies, the short story collection, A Letter to Harvey Milk, and the novel-in-verse, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard. Her newest poetry collection is I Carry My Mother (Headmistress Press, 2015). Lesléa’s awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. From 2008 to 2010 Lesléa served as the poet laureate of Northampton, Mass. She teaches at Spalding University’s low-residency MFA in Writing program.

“Looking at Her” copyright © 2015 by Lesléa Newman from I Carry My Mother (Headmistress Press, Sequim, WA). Used by permission of the author.

Pauletta Hansel
April
For Joe

It’s not about what’s new and green,
the underbelly of leaves,
each with its own signature of touch—
this one rough as winter’s skin,
this one the rubber of scar.

It’s not the dandelions, impossibly
yellow as a child’s drawing
of a hundred suns, nor the bird
that darts now from the bushes,
the low hum of wings against
his small missile of body.

Still, there is something of spring
that holds a small piece of your death,
breaking as easily in my hand as bark
from a fallen limb.

Maybe it’s about what does not come
back alive. The rose bush brittle brown,
with thorns that snap like small bones,

the storm-torn ground beneath the pear still red
and open as a wound that refuses to heal.

It could be the white-winged moth
flitting alone from leaf to loosening bud.

The one persistent cardinal
calling for a mate.

Soon there’ll be a cacophony of color,
voices, everywhere life
creating more. But now

it’s April that shows us
what’s survived
and what has not,

one against the other.

Pauletta Hansel’s poems and prose have been featured in journals including Kudzu, Appalachian Journal, Appalachian Heritage and Still: The Journal, and on The Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. She is author of five poetry collections, most recently Tangle (Dos Madres Press, 2015.) Pauletta is co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Recently named Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate, Pauletta leads writing workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond.

The poem appeared in Tangle and Still: The Journal.

Anthony Johnson
ALL ALONE

Sitting alone in my own little world, I watch as life passes by.
I have no energy, no fight left in me to join in.
I dream that I am part of the laughter, of the fun but I cannot partake.
Where is my happiness? Where is my joy?
I want to smile. I want to dance. I want to be free.
It seems that my reasons for happiness are no longer there.
Have I given up on them or did they give up on me?
I cannot forgive myself for forgetting my art or prose.
I will not forgive my lackadaisical attitude towards life.
It is my own fault that I am sitting alone, alone in my own little world.
ALL ALONE

Anthony Johnson writes: “I am a 21 year survivor of HIV. I went through a very dark period in my life dealing with physical and emotional health issues. The only tether and voice I had was my poetry. Usually my poetry is kept to myself but over the last few years I have become an advocate for the HIV positive community and share my experiences and past freely.” Hailing from Flint, Michigan, Anthony lives in Fort Lauderdale where he is a prevention case manager at Broward House.

Meghan Privitello
The Birth of Love

If you are always red-lit, who will see that your body is one giant flaw? In the light, you are promiscuous, god-like. In the light, no one can harm you, wavelength that resists touch. Your husband arranges you on the bed like a shirt he’s trying to fold — straightened arms, smoothed body. You are a project, a chore, a mess that needs to be cleaned-up. What more is there to sadness but an open window that lets the ocean in? In the echo you hear a boat trying to sink. If your love was a boat, it would be called Where Do We Go From Here? The body expands like a country. The body collapses like a country. There are riches buried under the fear of never being remembered — cakes and metal and dreams of Mars. The problem with being alive is clean mirrors, the way they turn you into cellophane that screams when you put your mouth to it. When you put your mouth to me, I try to ignore god standing in the corner of the room. He blabs with the ocean about where not to touch me. Everywhere. She is a landmine. She only wants to take you apart.

Meghan Privitello is the author of A New Language for Falling Out of Love (YesYes Books, 2015) and the forthcoming chapbook Notes on the End of the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Guernica, Boston Review, Best New Poets, Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation, and elsewhere. Meghan is the recipient of a NJ State Council of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.

This poem appeared in The Pinch.

Karen Paul Holmes
Fruitful Hearts

Like grapes

Like pumpkins

Like peaches

Like pears

Like pomegranates

Like vines

Like fruit trees

Karen Paul Holmes is the author of Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Lascaux Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and the Southern Poetry Anthology Vol 5: Georgia (Texas Review Press). To support fellow writers, Holmes originated and hosts a critique group in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This poem appeared in Wild Goose Poetry Review.

Laurie Kolp
Becoming Mannequin

Delivery hinged upon me and I failed.
Had I known the end, I might have
strategized, or perhaps been more attentive

but my basic needs became weighted down
by selfish desire, my instinct-thrust inhibitions
became slurred like an unarmed victim of

something that might have been good
something that might have transformed into love
something that might have kept my spirit

from escaping singed womb and becoming
emotionless, still, motionless, nil, numb
as naked mannequin.

Laurie Kolp, author of Upon the Blue Couch (Winter Goose Publishing, 2014) and Hello, It’s Your Mother (Finishing Line Press, 2015), serves as president of Texas Gulf Coast Writers and treasurer for the local chapter of the Poetry Society of Texas. Laurie’s work has appeared in Gargoyle, Yellow Chair Review, Prelude, Scissors & Spackle, Found Poetry Review, and other journals. She lives in Southeast Texas with her husband, three children, and two dogs.

This poem is not previously published.

Wes Jamison
I Imagine That

EDITOR’S NOTE: To preserve the complex formatting of this poem, we have included it as a PDF that will open in a separate tab when you click on the title below:

Wes Jamison, I Imagine That

Wes Jamison’s work appears in 1913, The Boiler Journal, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Gertrude Press, Gone Lawn, and Wilde Magazine. “The Secret Garden” (South Loop Review) was selected as a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2013. His chapbook, and Melancholia, is forthcoming from Essay Press, selected and introduced by Julie Carr.

This poem is not previously published.