Jessica Dawson
Trading Trumpets for Guns

A gun swells in the palms
of a child like a bee sting

that weighs the fright against
trigger-happy boredom.

The child’s fingers are swollen
with a clumsy curiosity,

and the cool of the steel numbs
the worries of future bullets.

The streets are war for children,
and they fear running out

of lead. Their fingerprints leave
blood stains on their parents’ hearts

who were forced to leave blood
stains on their parent’s hearts

and it continues into generations
past and future, until finally

the pop sounds of shots fired
distort themselves into the brass

infernal blasts of a trumpet,
the original weapon of war

and power. Inside every child
is the sheet music against death.

In their palms, the trumpet sounds
like a battle cry for the future.

—Submitted on 08/30/2020

Jessica Dawson‘s poems have appeared in Cantilevers, as well as in the anthology From the Ashes (Animal Heart Press, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Originally from central Florida, Dawson lives in Chicago, where she is a rape crisis counselor. 

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Dante Fuoco
To Men Who Bike, No Mask Adorned

In Prospect Park thou bikes, no mask adorned.
Thy wheels expensive, yes, although, my dear,
Not more than life, not more than mine—you’re gone!
A racing man. Oh, yes. A fuckboi clear.
Imagine babies (thou is one). So cute
until they shit—yet diapers curb the mess.
To call your mouth a hole is true, though mute
you heave on hills. So get your ass a dress.
Dear fuckboi, listen: Mask4Mask is life.
Though air tastes nice I feel it pulse with dread.
Dear, fuckboi—no! What do thou make of strife?
What fuckboi stops? What fuckboi counts the dead?
I sense thou’ll cheer at seven, mouth askew.
At night I’ll dream of herding little ewe.

—Submitted on 09/06/2020

Dante Fuoco‘s work appears in KGB Bar Lit and Saints+Sinners 2018. He holds a BA from Swarthmore College. A Pittsburgh native, Fuoco now lives in Brooklyn, where he is a restorative justice coordinator in the NYC public schools, and coaches an LGBTQIA+ adult swim team. 

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Jessica Dawson
Practicing Person-First Language

I have been learning how to describe people by what they have
versus what they are,
like: “Jacob lives with paralysis” instead of “Jacob is paralyzed.”

It’s the “is blank” that weighs the person down, like two freshly immobile legs attached
to the waist of a healthy, young, black male.

In person-first language, Jacob has a disability. In person-first language, you’d say:
Jacob is living while black.
Jacob has been another victim of police brutality.
Jacob’s children will live with seeing their father shot in the back, multiple times.

When using person-first language, remember:
Jacob and his children are not the condition in which they are forced to live.

—Submitted on 08/30/2020

Jessica Dawson‘s poems have appeared in Cantilevers, as well as in the anthology From the Ashes (Animal Heart Press, 2019), edited by Amanda McLeod and Mela Blust. Originally from central Florida, Dawson lives in Chicago, where she is a rape crisis counselor. 

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Vic Nogay
Synth

in the far then, when this life got hard, or
felt wrong,
i used to dream about the lives i’d left
and what they could have been if i’d stayed.
a fantasy of color, burning in imagination
backlit
by a falsehood of realism in gray.

in the near then, i’m grown,
responsible.
i can pick apart the bodies of my burning loves
and their conflicts,
rearrange their limbs until
they fit
better, and use my burnt black fingers to draw a map
to a place i have never been.

both far then and near then
held a
space for self-silence—
an other-reliance—
but now
as the world booms in dissonant synths,
as the colors bloom,
backlit black, neon new,

i see all of me. i hear none of you.

—Submitted on 09/03/2020

Vic Nogay‘s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Daily Drunk, 433, Anti-Heroin Chic, Versification, and other journals. She grew up in Ohio and attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio. She is an agent at Columbus Humane, an animal protection organization in Columbus, Ohio. Twitter @vicnogay. 

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Michael McKeown Bondhus
Neoliberalism

Fuck the Police Emergency Action, Brooklyn, 2019

Blocking traffic
I’m reminded
how little I know—not
the endemic ignorance
of whiteness, but
the stupidity of a boy
incapable of grasping
the various things I’ll understand
when I’m older (which is now)—my TIAA-CREF,
our home mortgage rate,
adding deductions on returns, accounting
for deductibles when paying
for the pills I need to take. I know nothing
of how life works.

Suddenly, I can’t define racism or neoliberalism,
much less explain what they have to do with me being here
in the middle of Flatbush Ave
while you stand on every
sidewalk and tell me about the time I was 12 and called you
a racist
(because you are)
and your laugh then was the bark and snarl
of a dog guarding a glass house
as you told me all the awful things
you knew about black people,
an entire race in conspiracy against you
and me (not all
of them like that,
but you know,
most)
and then there were the facts (someone told you),
and then the things you saw yourself
(like the time you drove
in downtown Bridgeport
on your way back from Van Halen),
and at 12 years old I had no answers
to any of this, no answers to your love for me,

your little moron,

who “someday will get it,”
but I still don’t

or maybe I do

and that’s why I’m here
in skin that fits
better than it should, constantly
checking
myself.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

Michael McKeown Bondhus (formerly Charlie) is an Irish-American writer. He’s the author of Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from the Publishing Triangle. His work has appeared in Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College (New Jersey—unceded Lenape land). More at: charliebondhus.com.

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James Diaz
Online Wars of The Twisted Heart

“the world’s not falling apart, because of me.”
—Dar Williams

I know something about it
what you’re going through
how the world takes you for granted
your kin your kind
wearing you down down down
I know something about wanting to just give it all back
every single thing that was never yours
all their shit and hollerin’
and god almighty it’s some kinda war in there
basement hauntings at least three generations old
mounting the stairs to dingy star light lounges filled with dreams deferred
and you can settle into love for reasons having to do with what you never got
but it will not last
it will not feed you
or come when you originally called
out in the cradle
shooting up and only hearing a muffled sound;
your folks
if they could have, maybe they would have
but there’s no machine for that
there’s just this pen and paper
and the nights getting longer as you get older
and learn to do half a bit better but by no means
do you have it all down
so yeah, I know something about it
what you’re going through
maybe you logged on tonight
and all you see is a bunch of screaming in your timeline
and you don’t know exactly why at first
but you feel like you’re crying out in the dark for a ship that never arrived
and you wanna reach out and touch the heart of the problem
but it’s just as big and immovable as it was to you then
listen, give it back, it’s not yours
we’re all survivors of this intergenerational transmission of trauma
all doing half a bit better but by no means
do we have it down
and so it’s bringing you down, I get it
but just step outside and take in those stars for a minute
above your head, even though an alive thing can feel all the way dead
it is most definitely alive
you are right where you need to be
and ok and on time
and belonging and true
and this, this is your world too.
Welcome home.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals.

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James Diaz
This Life We’ve Lived

But imagine this feather bed
and how I have strayed into the light
like a derailed train
in the autumn’s mix of amber
softly blowing up someone’s kicked about dreams
I have lived this life
you might say
to no one in particular
late at night
by the railroad tracks
where you have waited for years
just to belong
to something tangible and stronger than you are
right now
the dogs are baying at the moon
twice removed
from all you may have done
or failed to do
before this moment
and if love is just the noise between one season
brushed against another, if it’s something you’ve never really known
or owned or been held up in
like light from the farthest side of the world
is it not worth it anyway?
a train that never comes
the waiting, the hurting
the healing howling climbing
up up up
too far in this thing to ever come back down
I have lived this life.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals.

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James Diaz
Not So Tough After All

I walk back inside
broken hand

skin fractal / lightning rattle
smallest stove / biggest bond of bone

starling staggering up
sketching out all the debris in me

chalk lines on pavement
filling in as a prayer—for tonight

you can’t afford to know too much about these things
where they come from

a streak of golden—a so-long kinda song
in scar light

and so I twist myself into a bird
under a burning bed

the moon is / half-way home
better than no home at all

it’s always uphill
ankle broke—broke—and fucked…

once I knew a thing
sometimes, I still do, I guess

each year gets a little longer
and somehow, despite experience, harder to bear

that’s how it is
you think you have forever

but you don’t
only it felt that way once

and here you are
broken bird twisted

stagger bruise light
blurred up along the interstate

when I’m gone—
tell em I left happy

and forgiven
and in love

with everything
that ever happened to me.

—Submitted on 08/29/2020

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope, Thimble Lit Mag, BlogNostics, Poetry Breakfast, and other journals. 

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Zack Hoffman
On Your Left

there is an indentation
on the left side cushion
beige couch ass print
and a target on my back
stay home or die old man

40 inches of Samsung with a sound bar
pictures and voices filling me so I don’t listen to myself
watch nothing and everything bouncing from the screen
Steven King says, “You have to give up the glass tit”
but it’s the only tit I’ve got
alone consulting depression

a chained-up basement bicycle
becomes a reclamation project
recycles me
moves me outside
where children chalk the streets
trees filter oxygen while dogs bark
wind blows the target off my back
an hour of redemption

—Submitted on 08/25/2020

Zack Hoffman lives in Seattle. His poetry has appeared in the Licton Springs Review, the art and literary journal of North Seattle College.

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Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink
College Bound

As I press the tape along the skirtboard
Running the length of your new room
I walk the
Timeline I followed through
To your eighteenth birthday.

Covid-driven into the creation
Of an old-fashioned album: A safely
Immobile
Unadulterated travel
Into your life, from birth to online
Graduation, honours based on
Algorithms. What of it?
You reined in to success.

And there’s been time to digest.
Meeting you in stages along the sixty-six
Thousand pics on our cloud, sifting
Through the ages, sorting
Restoring, year by year,
The fluid order of things.
A monumental summer this
Labour of love.

In doing so,
My senses like razors cut into
Shots of long ago: Here a park on a
Vancouver afternoon, you rolling over uncle’s
Back before the ice cream treat,
Screams of children by the water, mottled
Green, the frisbee lying at the ready.

All this rushed at me in waves this
Re-journeying with you to
Beloved worlds, albeit through
The workings of
My own narrowed lens.

And now here you stand with your
Childhood in a book, complete with penned-in
Comments
Lest you forget.

You’ll now be walking the tightrope
Balancing
Accumulated jacketed visions against
Your own prisms of
Revelation.

Ah, when I recall freedoms of student life, my
Heart leaps
For you.
Explore, assert your views, point your phone
In all directions, correct the light.
But you are not the type for self-styling.
Your modesty on Instagram
Speaks volumes.

And that masking tape I’m pressing, the coat of
Paint which follows to
Brighten the shabby space
Transformed,
That Picasso still life
Meant to enliven your mealtimes,
Each of us holding on to a wing
Of yours, wishing it might
Tremble just a little.

Well, there’s nothing more for us to do
But drive on back.

Leave our front door key
In the familiar hiding place,
For whenever you decide on a
Surprise to what’s no
Longer your residence

Yet a shelter all the same, to draw
Respite from, before returning to
Another round
Of studied independence.

—Submitted on 08/24/2020

Carmelina Fernandes-Kock am Brink is of German-Indian background, grew up in Canada, and teaches English in Toulouse, France.

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