Categories
Poetry Issue 15

Mikey Swanberg- “Albemarle”

the white tail deer
that chomp the country out here
have no need to pray
since they were made just right

not so of the spring peepers
of the fisher cat    the 18 wheeler
groaning to town with frozen pizzas
bomb pops     or me     fat as a toad
in July’s hot teeth

I admit I looked across my mother’s fields
toward the neighbor’s house being built
and spit     then honest to god
leaned on a pitchfork

I was using to pitch-fork shit sweet mulch
from the ford to the true temper (R)
barrow sitting at the flatbed’s back

it’s all this country shit
now     gone the suburban pools
and recessed dens of youth

the big bang of my sneaking out
at night through manicured lawns
now the skunk comes by
and a piece of her stays

now we know the sound
a fox makes when her partner dies
that mourning lasts two days

I have not lived off the land
but I have eaten all manner of junk
food with the land under my nails

I got as close as I ever will
to saying with certainty
that there right there
is a slug     and this
right here    is a snail

 


Mikey Swanberg holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and is the author of the chapbook Zen and the art of Bicycle Delivery (Rabbit Catastrophe Press). His poems have appeared in the scores, hot metal bridge, tinderbox, breakwater review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Jane Vance prize for poetry, and lives in Chicago.

Categories
Poetry Issue 15

You Li- “Every Night We Sleep and In The Morning Are Reborn Anew”

Night 2190: a double date in a world peopled with our selves through time

 

We are all four out together at a restaurant-bar
with a view of the kitchen where the chef is kneading,
dusting his hands, folding the loaf until everywhere outside has been inside

It is spring
The trees are blasting pink from their tips
You-2186 is saying to me I was daydreaming about you
We were sitting here and all of a sudden there was a huge explosion
I’m not listening because I’m looking at You-762
and imagining being on all fours,
crawling toward him while tossing my head around,
bouncing my torso between my shoulders and hips like an elastic band
You-762 and You-108 are laughing about something together and
I want to put their hands on each other’s faces

Me-245 walks over
She pours syrup onto the table and spreads it across the surface in several
quick scrapes with a credit card
We all four in sync
cup our hands under the edges so as to catch the driblets
When the band finishes we can clap only once
We laugh

The night blackens fully and
You-108 meanders to the bar where Me-108 sits,
arching so deftly
head just ready to tilt
You-762 disappears, regretfully, beyond
my vision in search of Me-762, under the soft grey sky
and Me-456 walks to You-459 posing on the edge of dance floor

I wait for an explosion to break the night
I look from Me- to Me-
They are a tulip opening fast
Maybe the explosion is laughter
The syrup was gasoline
You spread your body on the floor next to mine
though we cannot be as smooth as the linoleum
We breathe freely below the dust of Ourselves
infinitesimal sparkling wedges driving through the air

 


You Li is a law student and poet who was born in Beijing, grew up in central Illinois and Philadelphia, and lives in New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Nassau Literary Review, Two Cities Review, and Lunch Ticket. She has been awarded a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Categories
Poetry Issue 15

Joumana Altallal- “موؤودة”

 


Joumana Altallal was born in Baghdad to Iraqi and Lebanese parents. She is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia and is currently a first year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Michigan. She is a Writer-in-Residence with Citywide Poets and leads an after-school poetry program for high school students in Metro Detroit. Her work appears in the Virginia Literary Review, Jaffat al Aqlam, and Poets Reading the News, among others.

Categories
Poetry Issue 15

Nefertiti Asanti- “leftovers”

mommy always pregnant full of anger because someone left a dirty dish in the sink or full of ideas like let’s build a fireplace or let’s make apple pie from scratch without peeling the skin off the apples, you know, for the fiber. mommy always pregnant but she ain’t never had another baby after me & always calls herself fat. & i know pregnant ain’t the best word for mommy’s tummy but fat feels false, like a cuss word even though i know mommy likes to cuss. shit i like to cuss too! but never in front of mommy even if she decides to call some random kid who sat on the hood of her car a pussyface nigga in front of me & my best friend, like we not supposed to belly laugh about it. most times mommy don’t realize how funny she really is, like how you expect us to get ready for an ass-whoopin when you start acting out exactly why we gettin beat to begin with. mommy gets into character with the quickness, kinda like how those yt guys like to reenact the civil war only mommy is being me & more like a fuddy-duddy version of me who knows better than to break her good china, sweep it up into the trash & when she come ask about it say uh, i dunno. sometimes if me & my brother laugh hard enough at how mommy plays us, mommy laughs too & decides not to whoop us & instead we just go to bed without dinner which is fine because it was leftovers anyway.

 


Nefertiti Asanti is a writer, cultural worker & occasional performance poet from the Bronx, NY. Nefertiti is a fellow of The Watering Hole (2016, 2017), Lambda Emerging Writer’s Retreat (2018) & a founding fellow of the Anaphora Writing Residency (2018). The Queer Cultural Center commissioned Nefertiti’s writing and performance work-in-progress Black Blood Is… for the 2017 National Queer Arts Festival. Nefertiti has also read poetry for the 2018 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest. Nefertiti’s work can be found at Winter Tangerine, AfroPunk, Foglifter, & elsewhere. Visit Nefertiti at nefertitiasanti.com

Categories
Poetry Issue 15

Benjamin Mast- “baking”

i’m afraid of yeast of the way it grows of the way it’s alive
of the way i hear it in my loaves as they’re left to rise
of the way its smell is sticky semen between fingers
i’m afraid of the starter in the fridge of its unwhiteness
and the way it separates unsupervised like a dressing
or boys and girls at bethany christian’s first dance
i’m afraid of unpredictability of bubbling of chemistry
of first dates and the way they should go of biking at night
with too much cash in my pocket but mostly
of doughs that could have been muffins studded with cranberries
and topped with orange zest their only agent soda
or powder but instead that sit waiting for life so as to rise
out of the oven out of the apartment with only a floury trail
showing the distance they’ve proved so i sit with an aching
loaf between two hands wondering how i could be a father
how anyone could be a father if life is so particular

 


Benjamin Mast grew up in a small Mennonite town in Indiana, but has since been more nomadic, living in Chicago, Seoul, Virginia, and Indianapolis, before recently deciding to move to Seattle. Wherever he goes, he seeks good literature, good food, and good volleyball. His writing has most recently been published in Rhubarb Magazine, The Write Launch, and The Phoenix Literary Journal.