art by Richard Hanus

by Carolyn Oliver

Forsaking every landscape
but this placid plain, their bodies wed

skill to physics. Her skull floats
down, risks the ice as if

she means to kiss his blades.
What kind of love imagines

he could let go of her wrist
he could let go of her
he could let go
he could
he—

This is the easiest death spiral.

That year of brief landscapes
my friends’ pity towed me

to a little house plunked down
by the bay.

art by JJ Cromer

by Stephen Smith

 For Emily

Now it seems further than the past itself,
even outside of time: Barthes and his dictionary,
though we debated if it was his own encyclopedia,
knowing we knew not the answer, the white board
always covered with what seemed the algebra of a life.
We considered it quantum, at best. I failed to get past
Marlon Riggs and his essential question, my legs
each evening folded in a chair on some cold library floor,

art by Helen Hofling

by Becca Klaver

never
in my lucky
& luxurious
erased &
belittled
american life
have I ever
been so relieved
to be uterus-
less

though
who’s to say
it wasn’t
america
her waters
flush with
estrogen
& fertilizer
that fed the
fibroids
that made
the pain
that etherized me
upon the table

who’s to say
the house
america built
didn’t cast
my tissue
a-wandering
in the classic
pioneering
hysterical style

little slivers
of womb
pricking &

art by JJ Cromer

by AJ Bermudez

But of course I want your teeth in my pussy,
who wouldn’t?what idiot would not want
your papillae / nail beds / germ-junked saliva all over their holey-of-holies?
If an altar falls in the woods
and no one hears it,
[you know the rest].
But, Philosapphy 101:
Can’t a thing be ugly and splendid at once?
a riled-up mess of sex / longing / medicine
the way a brain looks on the ground
If not,

image curtesy of the MET Museum Archive

by Sophie Jefferies

I am a selfish girl to tell you the truth.
My blood flows inside my own body and nowhere else.
I am an indulgent gash on my left finger.
I am a Victorian maiden, seeping into the walls.

My blood flows inside my own body and nowhere else.
I am a chess pawn covered in lily pollen.
I am a Victorian maiden, seeping into the walls.
My white nightgown slips sexily off my shoulder.

image curtesy of The MET Museum Archives

by Lydia Downey

There was a perpetual
            residue on our hands.
                        Steamed milk stuck like tar

as my friend and I scrubbed
            down each closing shift
                        and stole our dinners

of half-stale, chipped pastries.
            We gave up trying
                        to leave early

and walked the long path
            to our apartment
                        somewhere

after ten, when only pheasants