Shannon Lippert
Insomniac Season

There are weights dug into your skin.
But you are used to them now, though every once in a while
they catch
on something in the room, something on the news,
what’s wrong with a little less meat on your bones? You wonder.
There’s a time for such worries; there’s a period where wakefulness
is a little like sleeping
without the respite. Someone standing in your corners—
By that, I mean, of course, the corners of your eyes.

Tastes like a pound of wadded up fabric
and have you ever heard of spring so hot
or wait, is it,
November—without all the holidays,
just attrition beside the carcasses
And through it all you find yourself yawning.
This uncertain, dreamlike occasion
with all the music you can hear, just underwater
so the songs come out all twisted up and vague
and did you hear what he said today, did you see—oh.

How could you with all the sleep stuck in your eyes?
It could never be washed away, not with a million sunsets.
Today is like walking through thunder, for a second it’s paralyzing, chaotic, and afterwards
it’s kind of lonely without it, kind of strange
to think of this raw energy as a companion. But you can feel it in your bones forever:
Exhausting.
Like a car without proper ventilation,
the wheels spinning on, through nothing, brick on the gas
while everything slowly turns airless
and that’s when you try to breathe.

Shannon Lippert is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in episode 55 of the Glittership podcast, and has been published in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.

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Doug Van Hooser
inflammation red and bruise blue

I want to get in your face
words on my fingertip
jab your chest
where your heart carries on
its lonesome task
your ears waxy
with opinion
myopic eyes
can’t see tomorrow
belief a flood
your tongue paddles whitewater rapids
over the rocks of common sense
always at the door a wolf
everything is a dark cave
rabid bats never question themselves

Doug Van Hooser‘s poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Split Rock Review, Manhattanville Review, and Poetry Quarterly, among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Crack the Spine, and Light and Dark. Doug is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions and Chicago Dramatists Theatre.

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Alise Versella
In Defense of My Existence

Philomela was raped
And before she could bring
A kingdom to his knees
King Tereus cut out her tongue

They wish they could sever a tongue from this hellish mouth

The gods turned her into a nightingale
Like somehow flight would save her

Not like every time young girls first learn to fly
Learn the broad range of their wings and the length of their shadow
Only to have those great wings bound
Oh how
I’ve had enough of someone pinning my wings down

In nature the only sound
Of the nightingale
Comes from the mouth of the male
The gods did Philomela no favor

You must learn as a woman to become your own savior

Philomela’s sister served King Tereus his own son
On a platter
Penance for the wrong he’d done

We will serve you your future sons on a platter with our blood
For we deserve a future better than the seeds you’ve sown
And I will not sink silently into the mud
I will not go quietly
You won’t drown out this voice in a flood
Every time a hawk screams or a crow
Or a banshee on your war fields
Know
Every splitting fiber in the marrow of your bones
Was felt by a woman first
You will no longer bury our severed tongues in the dirt

Philomela will not be reduced to myth
She will stand testament
To history
Until a new story
Takes precedence

Alise Versella is Pushcart nominated for her work with Women’s Spiritual Poetry. Kirkus has called her…”[A] boundlessly energetic and promising technician [who] crafts a unique blend of the symbolist and the confessional; a talented, promising newcomer.” She is a contributing writer for Rebelle Society and has been featured on online journals such as Elephant, Entropy, and Ultraviolettribe</em. She resides as coffee enthusiast and dessert queen, performing at various local cafes and libraries along the Jersey Shore.

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Sarah Caulfield
Service with a Smile

He comes by every afternoon on the dot. The clock turns three and he steps through the door.
He’s slow. We have his order ready by the time he makes it to the counter, but we listen to what
He says anyway. The electronic till beeps. Cash jingles. Exact change. Every time,
I wonder who else he has to talk to, as each day I watch him eat alone
Out of the corner of my eyes. Nearby, I clean tables. Wipe up salt. We never speak.
It’s been, what, five years? More?
I still can’t hear the sound of deep-fat fryers without imagining him —
The quiet of his silhouette, as though cut out of paper and pasted down. Years pass, and
Here I am, trying to write with the idea that no one is listening, even though
I still want them to be listening. I ache for regard. Ambition’s a bitch.
Words melt to putty in my mouth, pinned by my jawbone.
I am waiting to suit someone else. They’re just words.
Can I take your order, sir? I spit them up sour. We are all in the gutter.
I doze. Drowse. Repeat. Wait for morning.
I have fifteen minutes for break. In the car park, I turn my face up to the sky.
And I breathe. Take shape. Let fly.

Sarah Caulfield is the author of Spine (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her work has appeared in Lavender Review, Voicemail Poems, The Griffin, and The Mays (XXIV). She has lived in the UK, Poland and Germany, and currently lives in Japan.

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Amanda Forrester
patriarchal residue

I suffer from historical hysteria
sponsored by men who explored
and discovered
the wandering uterus
which means I need an orgasm

to control my outbursts
my vagina is a sheath for a sword
my clitoris should be hidden from view
with this, I can’t be trusted
this is why I need to be controlled
I am dirty with residue

sew me up stitch code so I am clean
and faithful
remove my uterus and implant it in
my husband, I can’t be trusted to carry
remove my breasts with their milk glands
I can’t be trusted to feed

remove my ovaries and their unborn half babies
give them to the rich for implantation
remove my soul for sacrifice to god
of the first world

give me the death
I need to have

Amanda Forrester’s creative work has appeared in the Sandhill Review. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Tampa and lives in Dade City, Florida.

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Shannon Lippert
Sugar and Snails

if you’re wondering what boys are made of
take yours to the river, the one surrounded by tall grass
give him a steady diet of tadpoles, and
make him recite The Declaration of Independence over
and over, until he gets it right

ask him what it is like to remember fairy tales
there’s a dragon for each one of his limbs, a princess
locked in every cell, and when his bones grow too big for him
tearing his skin to pieces, ask him if he remembers who he was
as he turns into something new

you will get a better sense of him
when you hear his voice break
stumbling around puberty, not for the last time
so you must catch him before his playfulness
is deserted, before he learns how to smoke

maybe even earlier. it is important to figure out
his chemical composition, how much bile
does he need to swallow before he’ll become too swollen,
too much a self-made man with a heart gone sour and
replaced by an empty notebook in his chest

have him swallow salt water, just enough
to sicken him, but not too much. sing to him
for as long as you can, long past the time when your breath
runs out. anything to inspire dreams
just try to prolong this symphony, just try—

Shannon is a poet, playwright, and performing artist. Her poetry was featured in episode 55 of the Glittership podcast, and has been published in The Practical Handbook of Bee Culture.
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Quintin Collins
Traffic Stop Blues

Blue lights swarm the car
as we drive home.
Blue lights stop the car
as we drive home.
We pull off to the shoulder,
unaware what we’ve done wrong.

Flashlights demand our hands
where officers can see.
Officers request our hands
where they can see.
One cop talks up the driver,
the other talks to me.

They point to a tail light,
a hole no bigger than a nickel.
They say the tail light
has a hole much bigger than a nickel.
They ask us for ID,
hands cradling their pistols.

They interrogate about guns in the car,
drugs, and past felonies.
They ask if anything’s in the car,
whether they have reason to worry.
They ask where we’re from, where we’re going,
and where we should be.

They talk to us like we’re boys
with their shields and their guns.
They think we’re just boys,
flash their shields, flash their guns.
They don’t want us to resist
their questions, even laugh to make it fun.

The cops give a warning,
keep their guns at their sides.
They let us off with a warning:
their guns at their sides.
We say, “thank you, officers,”
because tonight we don’t want to die.

Quintin Collins has works that have appeared or are forthcoming in Threshold, Glass Mountain, Eclectica, Transition, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Solstice MFA program, Quintin is a managing editor at a digital marketing agency, where he publishes writing craft blogs. If Quintin were to have one extravagance, it would be a personal sommelier to give him wine pairings for books.

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Jory Mickelson
Trixter

I don’t need a magic
to tell me how fucked & fractured

this world is, nothing
can wrap it into wholeness.

Why is it a crime to
change shape? Why police

a body that won’t
hold still? I have been sand

for men who raked
their hands along my every

side, been water parted &
pushed through. Been for them

fire too, lit them
quick & been lit, pyre we used

to climb the air, breath
exultant ladder. I’ve been

stone, broke them
and didn’t break, refused to be

plowed from the earth.
I could be something gentle,

wind maybe or grass, dew
to meet a hand extended to see

what might actually be
there: this queer, changeable

body, my trixter shape.
Give a man the sun & they’ll

walk away as you sift
into ash. Ask for water

& they’ll say your anger
keeps you in the dark.

Jory Mickelson is queer writer whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, Vinyl Poetry, The Collagist, The Los Angeles Review, and other journals in the United States, Canada, and the UK. Jory is the recipient of an Academy of American Poet’s Prize and a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry. The author of three chapbooks, Jory’s most recent is Self-Portrait with Men in Cars, published in 2018.

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Margo Davis
Tracking the Fall, 2018

Dusk, finally, the wind traveling
the rich emerald Quebec Country Club
to the patio where we cocktail. Someone
toasts CNN coverage of overfed Pres Harrump,
whose mention sullies the tablecloth,

sours our drinks. A few defend
order choices before their real argument
chokeholds four flammable companions.
This ugly American pleads the Fifth, tracking instead
the shimmer elusive tree line horizon

so natural I fall speechless, breathe in
deeply. Newsfeed quotes volley and soar
off-course as I trace fleeting bilious clouds.
Why is that elephant stomping a donkey? Any donkey
knows to bite, kick, bray. I can’t block out

covert operations repeated here-and-now
from a private email chain shared by only
ten thou. Each strikes out on a complex course
that intersect the same platitudes. Where’s our waitress?
More wine, scotch, gin. Our malcontent

lectures every potted plant while chewing
half-raw steak. The others look down as he
bludgeons his tenderloin and half-flirty talks
with a waitress hanging in for a steep tip. A golden sun
sinks. The skyline turns the deepest

red without drawing blood.

Margo‘s more recent poems have appeared in The Fourth River, Ekphrastic Review, Misfit, and Light, and the Houston Chronicle (Fall). Recent anthology publications include Enchantment of the Ordinary (December), Of Burgers and Ballrooms, Untameable City, numerous Texas Poetry Calendars, and Echoes of the Cordillera. A Pushcart nominee awash in Republican mindsets, Margo thrives on closely observing film, photos, and natural settings. She’s known for eavesdropping.

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