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2alex gallo-brown [I AM NoT AN ArTIsT]

1bob schofield [DArKIsH NIGHT]

jack nachmanovitch [DoPE FIsH sWIM ABoVE ME]

5kimmy walters [LIEs, PArT 2]

mike w. archibald [DENNIs]

8paul christian [TrEE PoEM]

9kristie shoemaker [AN UNEDITED ACCoUNT oF WHErE I AM rIGHT NoW IN TErMs oF LIFE, LIBErTY, AND THE PUrsUIT oF ‘HUMAN’]

10nathan keele springer [YoUr BEDrooM]

11chris holdaway [ALBANY]

12emmie rae [IF I HAD THIrTY ArMs I WoULD UsE THEM ALL To HUG YoU]

13emmie rae [I AM AN ANT oN THE FLoor oF YoUr BEDrooM]

15ashley obscura [AsHEs To AsHEs LUX To LUX]

18johnny fuentes [CoMPoNENTs]

19kelly mcnerny [oNE BIG LAND MAss]

christian patterson [soUTHEAsT GrIND] 20

g = back to contributorsNEXT

16liza st. james [THE oTHEr PArTs]

liza st. james [AN IDEA] 17

21kate gervais [I WroTE A PoEM ABoUT U LoL]

kimmy walters [LIEs, PArT 1] 4

arctic fox [sAFETY TIPs For TIME TrAVELING (NosTALGIA):]

7

14ashley obscura [AsCENDING oN sTArLIGHT]

1

one time I dreamed I was part-Batman, part-zipper, floating over a city of liars. I flashed my toothpick fangs at strangers. I beat my purple wings. Turned out I was the biggest liar of them all. And life was good. I kept moving, my head down. No one ever saw my face. one night my zipper caught on the edge of a crescent moon. I felt some unpleasant truth spill out of me. Even at that height I could hear it, that truth, plopping sad and wet against the concrete, the roofs of cars, the domes of a hundred grim umbrellas. I had never felt so vulnerable, so alone. so certain I was going to die right then in the middle of space, just a hovering closet of senseless human mayonnaise.

Time is finite, says the artist.But I am not an artist.I want to birth things liveand unwieldy, frail and in needof my protection.To attune my days to order and control,become master of my moods.suppose that I have been scared.Let’s say that I want to agree.This would have been years ago now,when we still lived in New York—great city, sure, but for children,catharsis? The body wantswhat the heart fails to provide.The heart fails to providewhat the mind once rejected.The mind once rejectedwhat the body sings in its sleep.I am not an artist, like you,only a fragile decider of days.

2bob schofield [DArKIsH NIGHT] alex gallo-brown [I AM NoT AN ArTIsT]

sometimes parts of mybody like my thigh

shake for a fewseconds like I like it

feels like itis blood struggling to pass

I wonderif the fact I never

move and eatonce a day if thatand put into my

only stomach onlyyellow and brown foods

has led tobloody little marbles

in my veinsis clotting characteristic

of lovedying isn’t like leaving

it’s coming backand I am excitedno matter what

the universe is beautifuland I can write this sentence

3

in 2012 I got paid minimum wage

to stand in the back of a gamestop and

break hearts all day long

so they got more preorders of mass effect 3

I love my own voice

I plan on dying of cancer

and making arrangements such that,

when an autopsy is performed,

my body is completely filled with sugar packets

I understand how sugar

packets are manufactured

4kimmy walters [LIEs, PArT 1] jack nachmanovitch [DoPE FIsH sWIM ABoVE ME]

5kimmy walters [LIEs, PArT 2]

humans have a black box in their throats

like airplanes have in the cockpit

and people who love you listen to yours

over and over after you die

I went to church every sunday as a child

so I know this

one night the malfunctioning streetlight

outside my bedroom window

will threaten me in morse code

I learned that in church

too

I do something different every day

and I am almost never afraid

6

“surprisesLike two rival south CarolinasLike the “our Generation’Clutching to our organic terry cloth shirts That motor-coach was my marriage,I met Bee there the sweetest woman surprises soaked in patchouli oil though surprises like her hands

at craft like her smile behind the wheel of a car surprises like finding the oceanwhen you finally reach the crest of a dune surprises like her headfitting perfectly in my neck and shoulder surprises young brother her younger brotherand his small family that we moved in with and the fights like flat tires every night There is a bitter flavor when spoiled romance falls through thin floorboards of a house in the Central Valley nothing insulated in the fleeting noise of her crying at night surprises of adjusting to life apart and in prison and out of prison

fingers stained with years of smoking breath stained with years of liquor and yelling

Despite the heatDespite never knowing what to expectall I wanted was a simple cover of a home to come back to keys so hard to master when society wants you to unlock doors and move forward carrying dead son’s birth certificate in my coat pocket for 20 years

Are you really surprised I left in the middle of the nightfor the road?”

mike w. archibald [DENNIs]

7

A song that originates in the jungle, where people first learned to party—that to be in company is to be in love— Move on. A feeling that electric heat is safer than the beach, where people are partying now—having forgotten how not everything means you’re alone. Tougher than asphalt is the sand blustered inside us on the oceanfront. When we try to get into each other we get all tore up. Move on.

Past the adult tongue—past the thesaurus into the desire to tell someone how you feel—that you sound like a child is not an issue.

8arctic fox [sAFETY TIPs For TIME TrAVELING (NosTALGIA):]

paul christian [TrEE PoEM]

today because I love you I stared at a tree and the tree was great it was beautiful green like your eyes which are pretty and also beautiful too, like like trees very green pretty green real green super green really like tree green trees are green I love you and by the tree there was a stream and the stream was blue and it was also beautiful and and pretty but not like your eyes because your eyes are green like the tree which is green like also your eyes I like your eyes you have nice eyes and the sun was in the tree too and it hits the leaves and they say nothing because they are leaves they don’t even have eyes

9 10nathan keele springer [YoUr BEDrooM]

when i opened the window in your forehead you were crying and the purpose in your eyelid drifted to the center and for one perfect moment i saw the world illuminated and the light of god on your shoulder so condescending as if it were a sunflower centered in a field of shattered glass as your iris shrouded over with the happiest clouds

kristie shoemaker [AN UNEDITED ACCoUNT oF WHErE I AM rIGHT NoW IN TErMs oF LIFE, LIBErTY, AND THE PUrsUIT oF ‘HUMAN’] i’ve been thinking a lot about dead people that i’ve known and that i haven’t knowni was at a party recently and sat quietly in a chair reading about paul walker dying and i cried quietly into a bag of pretzelspeople ate out of the bag later, i didn’t tell anyonemy tears are salty and the idea of people consuming them was empowering to me in that moment of feeling very smalli feel happy and stable sometimes when i take things to force the resulti feel like ‘normal’ people probably do every day when they get out of bed and kiss their loved ones good morningbut i also feel an intense anger that honestly scares mei will cry so much that my eyes are consistently swolleni was asked recently if i had been punched in the face because my dark circles were so badi don’t sleep much, sometimes i wish someone would punch me in the facei will also text people things that will probably make them not like me anymorethere is a slight ringing in my right ear that if i focus on for too long makes me feel dizzyi’m just kind of letting it exist right now in the hopes that it will get bored of me and go awayit’s pretty loud tonighti spend a lot of time hiding trying to purge my system of all the bad i seem to have let build up over the course of my entire existence and probably my existence before thati spend a lot of time hiding in the bathroomi’m in a strange place between having complete control over myself and being completely out of controli don’t like to sleep because i don’t like to dream about people and places and things that i try to avoid consciously thinking abouti still think about them thoughbut i am getting bettermaybebecause at least i’m not fooling myself anymoreyou can’t really help yourself if you don’t know what the problem isand on my to do list for tomorrow, the first thing to cross off is ‘wake up’at least my eyes are open now

11 12emmie rae [IF I HAD THIrTY ArMs I WoULD UsE THEM ALL To HUG YoU]

chris holdaway [ALBANY]

no one can see you through the fog drawing pictures on the windows with your fingers

pictures that reappear each morning pictures that reappear a little weaker every day

during the act of repressing distinct memories you watch a wedding party pose for photographs outside a gucci store

when you tried to learn kung fu and started kissing insteadwhen you said “but i’m so happy alone with you”

you count five pigeons, as if trying sleep.

everyone is touching each othertouching fingers inside bowls of foodall these things that make you docile and slovenly

you are just sitting here

when they say “popcorn is for employees only” you look at them placing the pieces one by one into your mouth

you are the tube feet of a starfishyou are run by a superior hydraulic system you are an opportunistic feeder and predator

slowly you look up through the fog to watch people write love poems in windows

you feel like a tourist on an elephant in Thailand, where the elephant is reaching over a cliff for a banana and you know it is impossible, but somehow you are so close to death.

We are waiting for photographs somewhere Creation isn’t done yet. Fine lines of red brick mortar Build up the look of an aged face, and ground to become clay Before brown grass & daisies In the wake of construction halted. somehow we manage to do it Worse than everywhere else: first story cinder blocks Left out in the blitz; village greens mown with violence. The dried pool – beyond how Hadrian left the long fountains of his villa – Not reflecting the sky—just the fever Burning gently through tussock and dragonflies.

I just wanted to paint houses,—think carefully About the right reed to wet my mouth with Climbing from water like for the first time. Heat carries a wasp Away and this year I am still in love. . . .bending to pick a flower; —bending through tiles & plaster blown across the hill.

13 14ashley obscura [AsCENDING oN sTArLIGHT]

I will snap your tiny fingers into pieces while quietly threatening you

I will bake the pieces into beads

My cat will wear them on a string around her neck

she will look so pretty

I am a lost tourist I am a goddamn homemade haircut

I am 98% ammonia

Hey I heard there’s a new dairy free ice cream in the supermarket maybe should we check it out together

Feel me up in the freezerEat the vapour from my mouth

emmie rae [I AM AN ANT oN THE FLoor oF YoUr BEDrooM]

15 16

he keeps a jar of teeth above the doorwayand when i ask he says it’s customary not to want to be separated from parts of yourselfand i can’t help but ask on behalf of (bequarter of, besixth) the parts of me that need to know about the other parts, the parts unseenbut when i askthe still here parts of himjust cannot saya whole lot of good these teeth are doing

liza st. james [THE oTHEr PArTs] ashley obscura [AsHEs To AsHEs LUX To LUX]

17 johnny fuentes [CoMPoNENTs]

Full shot - our galaxy spins, and every component within it spins and orbits in their respective paths through space. Everything is silent. our sun is indistinguishable from the other stars.

Close up - The sun, now distinguishable, beams through a window and reflects off a woman’s blonde hair. she spits into her hand, and then touches herself to a live streaming video of herself touching herself. This creates an infinite masturbation feedback loop. she screams “oh fuck! oh God!”. The shot gradually zooms into her vagina. The volume gradually increases as well, until soft, wet sounds turn into the sounds of tidal waves crashing.

Full shot - A cloud of electrons orbit around the nucleus of an atom at quick, but constant, speeds. Everything is once again silent.

Close up - on a courtyard in a prison, an Ms-13 gang member named Jesus thinks he is Jesus, because he is, in fact, Jesus. During this epiphany he is stabbed and screams “oh fuck! oh God!”. After he dies, he will be reborn again as Jesus. The shot gradually zooms into his knife wound until you can see blood cells traveling through vessels. The volume gradually increases as well, until the faint murmur of his heart beat sounds like a steady sequence of car crashes, and then everything is silent again.

18

they were to be commemorative treesbut we ran out of spaceand so stopped planting and so are planning something far lessspace-taking to planthere

liza st. james [AN IDEA]

19 christian patterson [soUTHEAsT GrIND]

the moona lonely glow-in-the-dark marblein the world’s bucket of murky sea water.

A 24-hour coffee shop is in the bucket,on an empty 12-lane boulevard -the ridge of the bucket - across from a 24-hour subway and a 24-hour ampm -both are outside the bucket, and also empty.

The coffee shop is filled with gently andnot gently used furniture.Every seat sat in, every eye stares at screens. The lights, and smoke outside further murk the sea water.

It was Halloween, at the intersection least likely to see kids trick-or-treat, oradults longing to be young enoughto trick-or-treat again. Those people don’t know yet –adults cling to the glow-in-the-dark marble.

People who don’t know how to pretend,the lonely glow-in-the-dark marblecan leave the bucket, came here.

20

The sex act, they say, has been outsourced.You cannot smell me anymore.

A girl on the bus wears a t-shirtwith a tree on it.It reads: last chance.

You look at the map and see how perfectly Africa and south Americaonce fit together.

The large puzzle breaks apart.Birth control throws the fox off his scent.

There are human tracks in the cement from before it dried.

Buy flowers closedso you can watch them bloom.

The honeybees are confused, as are the blossoms.If they open, they smell neutral.

We too, are breaking off, falling into the sea.A slab of land floating farther and fartheraway from where we started.

The foghorns were there to let us know where land was.The corroded lighthouses.

We both live on the ocean now,but they are different oceans.As if there were different oceans.

kelly mcnerny [oNE BIG LAND MAss]

21

editor in charge//matthew sherlingcover art//djuno tomsni

layout editor//jason schenheit

kate gervais [I WroTE A PoEM ABoUT U LoL]

I am seeing you too much for seeing you just twice. A boy like you is good for january, like how some boys are good lovers and you miss them when they go. Like how faces you love can still look good in the dark. In the dark, I still see your face and you are like the glitch of my brain and you are perfect six seconds at a time, and sometimes even less, sometimes ten if you are wearing glasses because you know I like them. If we meet again, I will kiss you in front of a lot of people. I will kiss you in my snapchat story.