By Riley Anspaugh

photo by William Santos on Pexels

The word “albeit”
has been in my mouth all day,
rolling on my tongue
like a Gobstopper. The sun
is warm, albeit slowly self-destructing.
Hummingbirds are beautiful,
albeit too fast to see. I’m in love
with this girl, albeit
she never looks at me.
I’m stuck using albeit
in all my sentences,
albeit I don’t believe
I’m using it correctly.
I mean, when is the last
time you ate a good meal
off a dangling chandelier?

By Sera Gamble

photo by Huie Dinwiddie on Pexels

I.

he makes a fist.

my world splits:

the truth / the thing

   that makes it stop.

lying is easy

as slipping

into a silk coat.

but we become

what we practice.

who was he before

his father?

By Tamas Dobozy

photo by Karl Griffiths on Pexel

Your locket terrified me as a child. You were an 
old lady then. It swung back and forth as you
bent, pouring tea, knocking against your
breastbone below where your dress, always red,
parted at the neck. I kept asking you to open it,
and you did, out of tiredness. Open it again,
please. Open it again. I had no actual desire to
see the photograph inside. There was nothing
special about it,

By Nikki Ummel

photo by Wicdhemein One on Pexels

You are Orion and I am pulled close,
to lick the salt from your ears.
WWOZ whispers morning news
as my fingertips chase freckles,
play connect-the-dots, search
your kitchen-scars for constellations
as the sun rises.

I like the feel of you.
Here, in the damp darkness
of your shithole apartment,
the handprints of others
on the wall, above your bed.

I’m not the first hostess
you’ve hunted—there is
a bottle of Wet Head,

 By Brent Schaeffer 

art curtesy of The University of Chicago on Unsplash

When we got off the train in Paris it was late.
Gare Du Nord looked like a Monet: black
and gray with strokes of gloss. We were lost.
Athena and I slipped into backpacker backpacks and set out
across the city. I had to piss. Like ugly Americans
we stopped at McDonald’s, my ankles killing me,
… We were broke. We took another train north,
hoping it’d be cheaper than Paris. It was.
We got a room for a week—fucked and ate kebabs
from a taco truck thing—just like L.A.—
but colder and somehow romantic.