by Jan Edwards Hemming

Her hair is too red
against the crumpled white
sheets. In my mouth
twenty-eight pieces of bone
bleached nearly blue
at the edges
line up like suitors
for her lips.

I reach for her face.

My fingers hold
her scent—sun and salt,
moon and ink—
and it blooms again
between us.
I am exposed pulp,
soft and wet
in the middle
but better to pet.

I pull her to me.
My pupils beg.

by Nathan Erwin

After Nastassja Martin

Last night’s wind is over the mountains now.
The lofty sky’s cast with red. The mountains
are red. The clear brook has become
an aorta, pumping red, giving counsel to the morning’s               rise:
my face is an open gulf,
crawling in wet snow, I can’t hear over                                 my throat
slickened by internal tissue & fluid. My face, a caul,
pledging to the sinews of this life
with                  a rattle-breath symphony.

by mic jones

art by by Rachel Rava

a pronoun can be an emergency
exit a map an experiment
in emancipation like fire
embalming coordinates

let’s make new names what would the world feel
like if gender was understood
the way we understand
a name:
singular
subject to change
sounding different
depending on
through whom
the sound is made

amid mountain ranges
screamed like names
our genders’ echo
sublime as the valley
amplifying bodiless-ness
&

By Savannah Slone

photo by Ivan Babydov on Pexels

we were all born during the slow 


fast shift of all things, oil on 


canvas     no time stamp,


among stained glass and wildlife and 


a sea of velvet earlobes and disco glitter


pageantry     while language swelled 


into watercolor during telomere 


replication and 


extreme weather turned our


nothings into artifacts of survival or 


remembrance and colors disappeared 


underwater,

By LP Patterson

photo by Alev Takil on Pexels

The world has moved on from its earring,  

from its bells, far away silver and gold   

that impose, intractably, this burn  

in sunlight, the hissing sound and mettle.

The world has moved on as a traveler   

that reaches the deepest recesses of its mark.  

Disinherit the world, disinherit the mark

of your crystal knife fashioned in an earring.

By Christopher Citro

photo by Allen on Pexels

Raised by retired parents I have that, why bother
I'll sit picnic tabled and watch the clouds go by.
The battle, that position worked out, I see through it all.
I tear packets, toss the seeds across the open ground.
The sky can do the rest. This boy burying plastic
Chewbaccas between beechnut roots, my boy.
Sit beside me, not too close. Here's how you open
the knife, straighten the short blade, pull the other
to an angle, balance it between your legs and
with a forefinger's soft tip,