Erin Lynn Marsh
The immortal jellyfish can transform

itself from an adult into a baby over and over
again—though only as an emergency measure.

Its cells are completely altered: muscle cells become
nerve cells, sperm, an egg. I draw two columns in my notebook—

the first is a list of body parts, while the second lists
types of emergencies: heart attack, broken bones,

house fire, falling through lake ice, a dead relative, etc.
I match items from each list using a Sharpie, mapping

my escape from this faulty body. A fall down the stairs
gets me a new hip; nearly drowning in the Atlantic

guarantees me a healthy heart. As a teenager, I would cut
my arms with a wood-handled knife and expect

to be transformed. Now I know it takes a commitment
to serious bodily harm—a willingness

to endure bone-aching pain.

Erin Lynn Marsh is the author of the poetry collection Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives and works in Bemidji, MN.

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Christine Poreba
Their Piece

Not
a conversation
but
an act.

She said:
her body
with the memory
of flight.

He said:
No no no no
no.
Ridiculous.

The back and forth
of bodies
like two halves
of a house

two teams
tugging
at the rope.
Meanwhile,

mockery
and cheers.
A chorus
from the rows.

Meanwhile,
a house. One
on an unremembered
street. One

she’d wanted
built
with two
front doors.

Another body
is weeping
among the torn voices
on a second story.

Christine Poreba is the author of Rough Knowledge (Anhinga Press, 2016), winner of the Philip Levine Prize from California State University, Fresno. Her poems have appeared in Subtropics, The Southern Review, The Sun Magazine, and other journals, as well as in a number of anthologies. A native New Yorker, she now lives in Tallahassee, Florida with her husband and son.

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J.P. White
So Far As It Depends On You

It also depends on the naked, shipwrecked Filipino
standing beside the road covering her sex with a bar of soap,
waiting for the hot afternoon rain,
for who knows what chain of gullets put her there
and when they will return for more.
It depends upon the implacable rooster one step ahead
of the landslide and machete,
holding witness as the swollen tongue of the volcano
cuts to the sea stretched in darkness.
It depends upon the dancer swiveling outside the pawn shop
of cheap guitars and guns,
his body, part cobra, part mongoose,
And given to the eternal standoff at the end of the world.
It depends upon the blue-eyed enemy, the hummingbird feather,
The bleached coral city and the lighthouse with the broken neck.
It depends upon the one lost photograph
torn from the palace that reveals
who did the thing no one could imagine was possible.
What I’m trying to offer is this:
I’m worried about you and you are worried about me.
No matter which animal bares its teeth,
It depends on whether you and I will carry a shining leaf
to the center of the earth after the last tree is gone.

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden, (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis.

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Juheon Rhee
Cleaning Out My Childhood

behind the pecan closet
tattered with out-of-place stickers
was an alcove
the ripped dusty curtains
hiding the magical place
small and compacted
full of dust
our apartment’s unknown
lost and found
small trinkets
like useless keychains and rubber bands
to those essential items
that were searched for ages
only to be bought again
a broken bb gun
and keys
to those rip-off diaries that never worked
and full of korean books
로마인 이야기
a book about a roman man who fell in love with a Japanese woman
which I could not read then
and now I can not find anymore
from the little window on the left
staring at our neighbors house
i could often see
a lady, Mrs. Jang
with graying hair
and a bent strained back
leaving at seven in the morning, kimchi and banchan wrapped
in cloth covered with phone numbers of 참례 church
to come back twelve hours after with it the same cloth
but empty
a perpetual cycle it seemed
but one day
Mrs. Jang was no longer up at 7am
and my parents packed their bags and cleaned the alcove
broke me off from such
ferris wheel
booked a plane
to the Philippines

Juheon (Julie) Rhee is a 13-year-old student and at International School Manila. During her free time, she enjoys reading Agatha Christie novels and hanging out with her friends. Her work has appeared in K’in Literary Journal and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.

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Marjorie Moorhead
Colored Birds Bouquet

—a Coexistence Triolet.

Birds come to the feeder, colored like a luscious bouquet of flowers.
Awareness that we share this planet making me so buoyantly happy.
Their feather-petals yellow, blue, the red of sky in evening hours.
Birds at the feeder blossoming like a luscious bouquet of flowers.
These sweet little creatures’ presence wielding incredible powers
to elicit empathy, wonder, fascination; emotions strong as nectar is sappy.
Multicolored birds visit our feeder like a luscious, gift bouquet of flowers.
Awareness of our precious synchrony making me fly-away-happy!

Marjorie Moorhead is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in HIV Here & Now, Rising Phoenix Review, and Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Porter House Review, and other journals, as well as in several anthologies. Moorhead writes from the NH/VT border.

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Katie Hartsock
On His Beauty

His hair smells like a meadow nobody owns

His seed-sized fingernails, so sharp
Already, leave scratch marks on my chest
Spelling out the name he had before
I delivered him into time

His eyes predict every color of the future except theirs

I have seen the shadow of a sparrow fly
Over his head asleep in the afternoon
So I have seen the world

I nurse him through the night and at dawn
I eat potato chips

Katie Hartsock is the author of Bed of Impatiens (Able Muse Press, 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Ohioana Award in poetry. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Ecotone, Exchanges, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, and The Wallace Stevens Journal, among others. She holds a MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University. She is an assistant professor of English at Oakland University in Michigan.

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Yuan Changming
Trade Deficit: Chinese Exported into English

John does not deserve that award.
You can you up, no can no BB!

Joe was stopped by the police near the school zone.
No zuo no die.

Jill spent fifty thousand on a pair of shoes.
Her father is a tuhao from Beijing.

Jack’s bitcoin has risen by more than 1500 % this year.
Wow, the digital gold is so gelivable!

Jeff feels full of niubility and brags too much.
That only reflects his shability.

Jennifer enjoys playing zhuangbility.
She is nobody but a sexretary.

Jenny was lost among people mountain people sea.
I don’t blame her in such a gunvernment celebration.

Yuan Changming is the author of the poetry collection Chansons of a Chinaman (Leaf Garden Press, 2009), and the critical monograph Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010). His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Literary Review of Canada, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Taj Mahal Review, The Threepenny Review, Two Thirds North, and many other journals, as well as in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009 (Tightrope Books, 2009), edited by A. F. Moritz and Molly Peacock, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2012 (Tightrope Books, 2012), edited by Carmine Starnino and Molly Peacock. Born and raised in Songzi, China, Yuan holds a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, and lives in Vancouver, BC, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. 

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Erin Lynn Marsh
There were many surgeries

before she turned twelve years old.
She was shown photos of herself as a baby

with both hips in traction and the body
cast that followed. That little girl was propped

up like a doll in the blue and yellow chair,
her bottom half bound in white plaster,

appearing to passersby as an unfinished plaything.
There were openings in that pale shell

for elimination—her humanity made real
by the smell of the cast after a few months.

She could not see or touch her private places, but
others could. She was a paper doll and someone

took a pair of black-handled scissors and lopped
off her bottom half. When the woman she became

imagines pleasure, it ends at her belly button.
From the waist down she knows she is plastic—

pale and dull to all touch. Sometimes she remembers
that other women feel what’s between their legs

is equal to love and tries to find a man.
Later, she will look at herself in the bathroom mirror,

hung high enough for her to avoid her torn-up
hips and legs—see her version of complete.

Erin Lynn Marsh is the author of the poetry collection Disability Isn’t Sexy (Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Sugar House Review, Paper Darts, Emrys Journal, and the anthology Hers: Poets Speak (while we still can), Vol. 2 (Beatlick Press and Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications, 2017), edited by Jules Nyquist. She lives and works in Bemidji, MN. 

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Mary Ann Honaker
Severe Thunderstorm Watch

I’m in the sunroom waiting for the severe thunderstorm.
South & west of us it’s already hit: a man was lying on his couch
then found himself suddenly on his hands & knees

in the yard, his house a heap of planks behind him.
The tornado had tumbled the whole neighborhood away,
like dry leaves picked up and heaved by wind.

We’ve lost one of the tall pines that line the backyard
already this year, trees planted for privacy in a neat row.
There’s a gap like a tear in a clean shirt.

For months road crews worked on debeautifying
the roadways, hacking down every leafy thing beneath
or near a power line. Of course it must be done,

it’s simple math: less trees near lines as the storms
sweep & intensify means less time restoring power
after the next big storm. The hurried crews

didn’t bother with clean up, leaving the sawn
limbs and mangled trees in a smashed tangle,
then moving on. As the weeks advance, the leaves

of the felled trees brown and lisp in the wind.
On all the hills lie trunk after trunk of the dead
who didn’t stand through the last storm.

Their headstones are the circular clods of earth
yanked up with their roots when they tumbled,
fanned out behind them like a peacock’s tail.

*

We all know what it is, what it’s called.
We know it’s come and will worsen, worsen.
Still, all we know is the economics of land:

on a walk with my dad it was all he could speak of.
This land is cleared and flat but you can’t
get sewer in there, it’s worthless. This one’s

nothing but a steep cleft, water issues
all along the bottom. They want a lot
for this but it’s only good for grazing cattle.

I put a bid in for that lot, it goes
way back, but I bid too low, too late.
Clear the land for a tip top rate.

*

If you drive out of the towns, out of sight-line,
you’ll find them blasting the mountains faceless.
It’s already upon us, there’s nothing to do

but pile the trees and watch them burn.
Scrape and scrape the tender flesh of the hills
until we’ve scraped free every nickel we can earn.

*

The wind advisory is in effect. Bring in
your lawn chairs, your trendy little flags.
There’s a chance of hail, so park your car

under an awning, in a garage. It’s coming,
and nothing we can do will stop it now.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.

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J.P. White
Besides This, You Know What Time It is

—Romans 13:11

Besides this, it’s that time when I fear
the most prized corner of my monologue will never calve
and drop into a colossal sea of unknowing,
so I can begin again the impossible dialogue with the world.
It’s the time when someone I love is about to arrive
and someone else is making ready to leave.
You can see this clutch and freeze in the jawbones
Of people in queue at stores not yet open for business,
How they are puzzled by their wish
for a day that had started elsewhere.
And David, inside his vast chemo brain,
When Lynda told him he was dying, said,
Fuck. Really? So soon?
How else to say this?
Some ruminant blend of delight and dread sits with me
In my 3 a.m. kitchen like an army on the edge of an invasion
and the reluctant Yes that hovers over all things
has yet to break bread with my insistent No.
It’s the time when the innumerable orchestras are still lit
In the tall grass, when the moon
is a bent teaspoon in a whiskey lip,
and there’s nothing you can say
to yourself you haven’t told yourself before,
but despite the tear of additions and subtractions,
you wait up with the night, then you wait with the morning.

J.P. White is the author of the poetry collections The Sleeper at the Party (Defined Providence Press, 2001), The Salt Hour (The University of Illinois Press, 2001), The Pomegranate Tree Speaks from the Dictator’s Garden, (Holy Cow Press, 1988), and In Pursuit of Wings (Panache Books, 1978). His essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals and anthologies. He holds a BA from New College (1973), an MA from Colorado State University (1977), and an MFA from Vermont College (1990). He lives on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis. 

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