Category: poetry

Jazz De Nero

When they moved to the island
they hoped it would fix them

Jennifer Chiu

There is no way to stop this—no way to halt this deterioration
but you keep trying anyway, every mouthful gushing with sugar.

Jennifer Conlon

T believes it is a girl, not a snake
like N, headless too but still swimming

Jerry Flores

Abuelo why did all my aunts leave

your home and never come back?

Jessica Hudgins

She mispronounced “zinnia,” which is how he
might have spoken of her: using a name, but failing to
name the thing.

Jessica Lynn Suchon

Of course I knew his body was kerosene—
the god’s heated tongue, his heavenly palms

John Mark Brown

I still do not know what love is
unless it’s stronger arms holding me

Jordan Jace

We love each other in whatever form that takes, as we face more slowly the march of time.

Kaitlyn San Miguel

Jumping, my father explains, patiently, lovingly—
Does not give the water time to realize

Kaiya Gordon

When they text I want to
see you IRL, text––I want
us out of IRL;

Kaja Rae Lucas

I imagined
            Derrida sitting alone,

Kasia Juno

I sold all my books for a rock
of butter and a glass of almond milk

Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

They bring out the elephants. Hundreds of dancers. There are fireworks, trumpets, swords and
mouths to swallow them.

KB

Damn, I love this city.
If you lay on the wood and rusted rail where southside
and the burbs meet long enough you hear church ladies humming

Keith J. Castillo

what were we suppose to do
in a world that never expected us to survive

Kathryn Hargett

Geoffrey, sometimes I think I wear my sadness like caul fat.

Katie Mertz

here I am under this sky
dancing and he doesn’t see

Katy Chrisler

I cannot take what isn’t a gift. Socket, Stiff dance, misdeed, a half intelligible embrace.

Katy Kim

Grandmother peels my arm from elbow hook to pointer
dead skin is a sweet fruit worm—

Kerrie McNair

We have a deal, you and me.
We talked for 29 seconds
because that’s all we needed.

Kimberly Kotel

Listen. I’ll be better. I stuffed it into every pocket of your clothing I could find.

Laura Spencer

I can tell that he’s disappointed, and I want to make it better. But we’re all disappointed. And our parents don’t know who we are anymore.

Kirsten Abel

You tell me all the good leaked out of you a long time ago. 
So I shouldn’t expect much.

Lauren Page

Her non-stick pan steaming like
the hot-side of an iron

Lavinia Liang

they came here to run away / not to see this / but the street dogs keep barking / and the land is still far

Layne Ransom

I want a life where I feel strange and intimate
with the border between the real and unreal

Linette Reeman

i was born in one gender and died
another. yes, this is my own death
certificate.

Linor Goralik

The pale one is still scanning
the unthinkably blue thing

Leon Barros

at the behest of some
tiktok witches
i get two candles

Leslie Shipman

You are not embarrassed by beauty
You illuminate the arc’s limitations

Levi Todd

These Cinderellas
know they only have until 2am
to fight, to kiss, to cry.

Madeleine Mori

Ghosts are like our otherselves in the multiverses grown 
             from every choice we didn’t select

Madelin A. Medina

M’ija,she said to me softly,

I will show you that the thickness
and pigment aren’t really much.

Lydia Havens

i just needed to feel like i could put on one of your albums, and maybe between tracks, you
would say something back.

m/ryan murphy

Begging a body void of pronouns to step outside today.

Maitreyi Ray

my grandmother asks mama if they get the same diseases as we do,
do their bones break, do they feel, do they bleed, do they die, too?

Mariah Bosch

Driving home, I want to hit the bird
walking in the road, miss and say sorry

Marney Rathbun

That sweet meat. That sweating man. Look
at him do the thing he does not want to fail at. Praise him for it.

Mars

story goes—my father was once hit by a car
while on his way to visit a girl on the Westside
of Detroit.

Matt Mitchell

a pair of lips holding a curious mouth skids around the stretch mark beside my right breast & stops.

Marie Hoy-Kenny

I call you Ella from your very beginning
but conjure only gauzy wings

Maurisa Thompson

little boy pushes waves in front of him, pretending

little tsunamis.

Max Cohen

outside everyone’s

losing their body heat

Max Cohen

your hair feels like drowning birds
which sounds
romantic.

Melanie Ho

I told father and things came flowing out of our red front door
my laundry, my clothes, my shoes, my toothbrush

Michelle Betters

If the sun were always that sun at the park
I wouldn’t have lost the photo of us.

Mike Crossley

I am a fan of your soul.
I would pay to see your soul table shower.

Moira J

With all of the bloom and beauty, a speck of death remains—

Molly Zhu

I cried because I swore I was dying.

Monica Lewis

prozac, first lover, i opened my brain, my body, my hope to you, i spread my legs

Monica Rico

I will die on Sunday afternoon in Saginaw
following a plate of my mother’s
enchiladas, fried chicken, and rice.

Nadia Choudhury

Love is that moment she holds the key to her own spine—

the key that could disassemble her—

Nathan Chu

An AMAB NB meets an AFAB NB in class

and grows to resent their poetry

Nofel

“La ilaha illa Allah,” (No god but God)
I stuttered

Nic Koller

Rocks dragged across a stonewall
Was that all that it was?

Parisa Thepmankorn

Yes, love, peeling mangoes from the floor. Yes, this,
my finger, inside myself.

Oak Morse

At fifteen, I am greater
than what the eye can see.

Olatunde Osinaike

I should start by saying I’m frightfully aware of how easy it is to catch a body these days

Ollie Kim Dupuy

all wrath and no god. The kind of look that has no heroes,
only martyrs and the things they die for.

Owen Lucas

The indistinct weltering of a choir.
We are dreaming, even now.

Piera Varela

dear villains, dear scapegoats, dear kicked-head
buck-shot enemies of trashcan suburbia

Priyanka Yap

Of jocks and theatre geeks, the cut distinction
so sharp I bled my fingers tracing lined boxes.

Rae Paris

See how the White people live, she’d say. Watch how they do.

RebeccaLynn

soon as you hear your homeboy sipped
on me once last fall

Rachel Kang

Rageful as I am I know
The dark cut of a whisper

Robert Montero

DNA 1s s0ftware, 1hat’s wha1 the techno10gists lik0 t0 say

Rita Mookerjee

When I was 13 some whitebitch told me I would be
pretty if I                                                         just tried to be a little softer