Return

The last day hangs off
the month
like a loose tooth.

      Before long, I will drift into another
      room. All firsts are pale.

Winter returns thicker this year,
sighing into leaves

            —endings atrophy.

Yesterday, the rain followed me home.
Or I imagined it,
prone to believing that I am the prey of every
glance in my direction.

Everything I love I devour. Memories, even photographs.
Pockets worn thin.
I tell time by counting,
            recounting what I collect.

                  Prune pit.
                  Note scrawled on tissue paper.
                  Baby tooth.

In this city,

beginnings trickle down the gutter,
fight for space—

            the lives I may live in this body.

Karen Zhao is a high school senior from California. They edit for Cathartic Lit and Farside Review.

When My Therapist Asks Me to Write a Poem about Breathing

She’s kidding, I think, like the men
who tell me to relax must be joking,
since the command to calm down, just breathe
is never helpful. It’s obvious to her
when panic starts; even a person asleep
beside me could feel a change in air pressure
and wake knowing something’s up.
I want to breathe for her.
I want to show that I can be compliant.
I want to breathe—slowly, deeply—like normal,
but I can’t. Maybe telling a woman to breathe
is like telling a man to cum. It stops
the natural flow of things, cues a kind
of stage fright. Most people are more afraid
of public speaking than being eaten by a shark.
When I try having sex in the Gulf of Mexico,
I freeze with fear. I don’t mind planes though.
Some folks say if God meant for us to fly,
he’d have given us wings. And if he meant for us
to swim in the sea, he’d have given us gills.
But we drive around town and God didn’t give
anyone a set of wheels. Just legs,
which my therapist tells me to uncross. And feet,
which I’m to plant flat on the floor.
When she asks how I feel, I don’t want to lie.
I want to please her, so she thinks
she’s a good therapist, her methods work.
I tell her the bees beneath my skin have settled.
She smiles. I smile. The office hums.

Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she’s busy sweating and swatting bugs. Her work has been published in The Lascaux Review, Rattle, and many other journals. Marissa’s debut poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, was released by Mercer University Press in 2021. Box Office Gospel was published by Mercer in April 2023. You can follow Marissa on Twitter and Instagram at _MarissaGlover_.

Rolling Home

They flew from Ireland for my brother’s wedding. Hugh packed his wool pants, three pairs of long underwear, three bottles of Jameson’s. Teresa, Granny’s sister, was wee beside him, red-cheeked, gray-haired. We had to lean in to decipher her bubbling brogue. Married late, they shared a kind of winking love that came after they’d learned to live without. Hugh, 70, fit from rowing out to his lobster pots, sang a trembling tenor we’d beg for. I need a little of the birdseed first, he’d say. We’d rush out to make hot toddies with Jameson’s, hot water, sugar and lemon, and sway as he sang, Rolling home, rolling home, rolling home across the sea.

By the time we visited Ireland, Hugh had passed. His lobster boat sat on blocks in the yard. Aunt Teresa still bubbled, pausing only at the mention of his name. She drove us to all the ruins, crossing herself furiously at the passing graveyards. At night when we thanked her, said, See you tomorrow, she’d say, God willin’.

Eight years later she joined him. Rolling home to dear old Ireland. Sometimes love leaves an imprint time can’t wash away. Rolling home so fair to thee.

This is a reprint of work originally published in Still Love.

Jack Powers is the author of two poetry collections: Everybody’s Vaguely Familiar (2018) and Still Love (2023). His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Salamander, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. He won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. Visit his website: http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry.

Botswana in the Time of Plato

Our own creation myth
a theory, the values of the present
sketched onto the canvas of what was,
and like all myth, with both true
wisdom and imbecilic aspiration
in equal measure.

Ineffable as [                  ],
indeed, those ones,
or else all of it, the word,
our embryonic start
so free of learning
’s contemporary mandate –
geology, cubic meterage, the flag,
how to remove a penny from a pond.

Instead, we are transumed by
the truly dangerous, the pursuit
of the disinteresting.
Knowledge by undesign.
            Finally, then, we’re distracted
into a sense of our own cause,
something either in us or around,
guiding such arbitrary decisions
staggered unto life:

The adult human psyche. Let’s hope
for a breezier day in the zeitgeist,
            With each, the names of the planets
seem less
and less
absurd.

Max Alletzhauser is a South African-born Anglo-American poet and translator currently living in Stockholm. He attended the George Washington University (BA) and later studied at Uppsala University in Sweden, where he wrote his Master’s thesis on John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Earlier this year, he collaborated with Johannesburg artist Sam Kentridge on an illustrated book of poems, The Veil, a private-press limited edition. He is currently working with UK visual artist Nick Ralph on a series of picture poems, and is translating the poetry of Anders Olsson into English. Read more at https://maxalletzhauser.com.

The Water’s Enrapture

I was born like this, with a mind
of fracturing gray sea water

that pulls fishermen by their weak
lines into an eclipsed
silence. Away from the light,

the city’s violin. They echo me
to the fog and to the moon

curved like an iron anchor
while the night washes and the tide
washes and washes over us.

Charlotte Lucas is a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy majoring in creative writing. She is the recipient of the Virginia B. Ball scholarship and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Thinning Limbs

Given the choice, I’d choose you.
But this is not how we live,
as branches spinning in the untouched

sky. We are puddles, reflecting

Heaven, and Heaven is a staircase
to our own air. On soggy earth,

sinking through shoes. I’ve been given
this life and it hurts,
it hurts as its infinite images of you

curved on a solid trunk, filled
with wool clothes. Whose only demons

are moths. My mud is who holds me,

with warmth built for my own skin. Hell
is this fracture, two bodies, our
thirsty limbs crossing faintly above us.

Charlotte Lucas is a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy majoring in creative writing. She is the recipient of the Virginia B. Ball scholarship and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Hollow Shells

how many times can you poke
a turtle with a stick
until you realize it’s gone?
because here I am
standing ankle-deep in a pond
of attempts and apologies
picking moss
and unread texts
off a branch
when it hits me—
it’s just a shell
filled only with forgotten birthdays
and missed plans
and gnats
that’s been decaying this whole time,
waterlogged
hopeless.
and I am the only one
with wet socks.
and you are dry
inside
making turtle soup.

Julianna Riccioli, 19, is a sophomore English major at The University of Texas. She fills her heart with plants, music, and too many carbonated drinks.

Theophany

I saw God swimming in Sandfork Creek,
despite the cold, the wind. and the rain,
roistering in the life of things.

He hollered at me to dive in
smiling through his curls,
but I declined,
asking him to call again in July.
He grinned and laughed,
“I don’t know if again I’ll be by.”

Jarrod Ingles grew up in eastern Kentucky and now lives in New England, where he spends as much time as he can hiking, camping, or skiing. He is a first-generation college student who completed undergrad close to home in Kentucky, a PhD in English at the University of Rochester, and a law degree at UC Berkeley. He now lives in Portland, Maine, where he works in environmental law.

Hotel Petr, Prague 2012

I smoked a Gauloise
in the courtyard
before breakfast,
the smoke was stone blue
as it curled up above
my head, a boastful breeze
blowing my hair in front
of my face. At the buffet
we ate thick oatmeal
and babka like my grandmother
made, we climbed the curved
staircase back to our suite
to relax before catching the Metro
to Wenceslas Square,
the travel brochures and maps
on the desk back in place,
the bed made flawlessly
and the spruce blue roofs
on the next block ablaze
with the whispers of the sun.
I uttered an unobtrusive spasiba
to the chambermaid
as we passed each other
in the hallway and she
responded with a run
of Czech words that I didn’t
understand though the sounds
were familiar. My grandmother,
who immigrated from Eastern
Europe, struggled with the English
language. You become accustomed
to things, and they become life,
like native languages and books
you’ve loved and rainy days,
and sometimes you treasure them
because they fit like a glass slipper,
as if the gods had chosen them
on your behalf.

Margaret McGowan is the author of Ancestors and Other Poems (2021). She has been employed as an Adjunct Professor of English and as a newspaper reporter. Margaret was a finalist in the 2022 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest and received an honorable mention in the HVWG Poetry Contest 2019. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Qu, Hobart, The Raw Art Review, and New Authors Journal.

Open Book

You revealed
the untold story
of your secret
compartment containing
the hush of silent prayer
where you speak to
nobody that is there
about everyone that
is near and dear
and I felt privileged
to be one of those who
within you pose
no imminent threat
but for whom you fear
things that have not
happened yet
might take place
and steal us away
from being close
enough for you to taste
and yet, knowing you
means that extraneous
extracurricular magic
will never
ever go to waste

Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and popular contemporary poet. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview, and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan was commissioned by Absolut Vodka to make a painting titled Absolut Jenson for the brand’s national ad campaign. His Absolut paintings are in the collection of the Spiritmuseum, the museum of spirits in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ivan’s painting of the “Marlboro Man” was collected by the Philip Morris corporation. Ivan was commissioned to paint the final portrait of the late Malcolm Forbes. Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Ivan’s poetry is widely published (with over 1,000 poems published in the US, the UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. A book of Ivan’s poetry was recently published by Hen House Press, titled Media Child and Other Poems, which can be acquired on Amazon. Two novels by Ivan entitled Marketing Mia and Erotic Rights have been published in hardcover. His website is: https://www.ivanjenson.com.

Ivan’s new bestselling thriller novels, The Murderess, and his top 4 Amazon UK and US bestselling novel, The Widow, are both now available on Amazon. A new collection of Ivan’s finest poetry called Mundane Miracles has been released worldwide.

Present Tense

I am shredded
like ripped jeans
over a skinned knee
I am cornered
like someone who
has had some sense
slapped into them
and I am grappling
with issues
like someone crying
minus the tissues
so I look a mess
like a child who fell
in the mud wearing
their Sunday’s best
and yet I am determined
as someone about to make
the wrong decision
like a surgeon
almost making
the wrong incision
and then I am righted
and blind-sighted
by a sudden blessing
like the moon
in the evening
watching
the sun undressing
or a priest listening
at last
to God
confessing

Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and popular contemporary poet. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview, and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan was commissioned by Absolut Vodka to make a painting titled Absolut Jenson for the brand’s national ad campaign. His Absolut paintings are in the collection of the Spiritmuseum, the museum of spirits in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ivan’s painting of the “Marlboro Man” was collected by the Philip Morris corporation. Ivan was commissioned to paint the final portrait of the late Malcolm Forbes. Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Ivan’s poetry is widely published (with over 1,000 poems published in the US, the UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. A book of Ivan’s poetry was recently published by Hen House Press, titled Media Child and Other Poems, which can be acquired on Amazon. Two novels by Ivan entitled Marketing Mia and Erotic Rights have been published in hardcover. His website is: https://www.ivanjenson.com.

Ivan’s new bestselling thriller novels, The Murderess, and his top 4 Amazon UK and US bestselling novel, The Widow, are both now available on Amazon. A new collection of Ivan’s finest poetry called Mundane Miracles has been released worldwide.

holt

could I even repeat this story if I wanted to?

tell you what happened to me and grieve at the same

time, say I recognize my own face in a mirror, say

it soon will be summer, say we’ll still be by each

other’s side, say I don’t have to say it, but maybe I can

be heard anyway. we’ll carry on meeting in this space,

I’ll point out the paths I know and if you ask why I’ll

shrug. does the forest remember? does it mourn, too?

or is she now gone, and we can finally celebrate that I

am back, I am always returning to myself these days,

not wanting to be fully here, would rather be in bed with

the fan blowing gently into the street. It’s always this twist

between what happened and what’s happening. what is

happening? you might ask. I need to be carried home, I’d

say, and you’d oblige, knowing my legs hurt after we run,

and soon we would forget, my history twisting into a sun.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Temperate

We get lost on the way home but if I’m honest
I was never paying attention to the directions
scrawled on the back of my hand, I’m watching

your hair turn bright auburn to peach as patches
of sunlight appear in the trees, I never told you I
used to get lost in this forest as a kid, later a teenager,

hiding from everyone in a decaying box which hangs
beneath railroad tracks, below is oil-slick rainbow
river water, jagged stones and jade fish who remember

my name, there is a bridge not too far off, it appeared
to me once in a dream. Surviving (back then) was never
the goal. It was always, can I tolerate my body for

another day, can they stop hurting me for long enough
to let me live the rest of my life, can I be led somewhere
other than the pasture for my so-called repentance, they

have ruined the green for me with their pale, scarred hands.
These days, I read poetry in the morning, I drink two coffees
before going to work, I think I may have saved my life but

it’s unclear if I’m serene, yet. And the memories of what
happened are stamped in my journals. I hear the breeze
blowing through my window and wonder if I’ll ever love

that forest again. I know if I told you you’d take me in your
arms, and we’d talk about gods and birds and what we might eat
for breakfast the next day. Or maybe I’ve always been unable to

look life in the face unless it’s coated in blisters, butterfly wings,
slips of paper, warning-sign-yellow markers. I’m thinking about
speaking to you, maybe we can discuss by the oak trees, I’ll be

numb, and you’ll be out of breath from May’s tricky heats. Instead,
we reach the end of the trail. There is a silly frog perched on a stone
near my foot, and it looks at me like I don’t anything, and god,
that’s true.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Phantom Heart

I don’t recognize myself at dawn when, half-awake, I am
wearing my wish coat, I want you to protect me, you’re
sitting at the breakfast table and I was never one for ghost
stories but maybe phantom and love mean the same thing,
and I’m not protected, was never the best at holding you in
the January months, and now there are wilting trees against
the house, and now their leaves break when I say so, and now
the house reveals its true form, and now you are here to haunt
me, not back because you were never there before, no matter,
I’ll sit at the table with you, I’ll hold your cold hand in my cold
hand, I’ll hold my umbrella space for you as we walk, half-
invisible and half-blue-cheeked, through the pine nettles.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

We go barhopping after a double

after the restaurant closes down, we linger in dimly lit
bathrooms, applying blue-green makeup like wings,
candy-coated necklaces, fake diamond rings, we swap
dirty no-slip sneakers for heels and boots, the street-rain
ebbs into gutters and my heart is turning salty as the sea.
Fact is, I’ll never be able to tell you how I feel, which is to say
getting stoned and eating spicy potato soft tacos is a swift
harmony in which my heart feels hardworking and true,
I haven’t come out to everyone I know and yet you’re here
joking we should have worked in a Taco Bell kitchen instead
knife-washing up to our elbows, you don’t know I love fast
labor, used to work at a Wendy’s and did whip-its, though
magic never felt as real as the times we met in the hot window
nervous before the rush, our tongues stained with Baja blast,
obsessively I peeled skin from my cuticles, my breath hurts,
please pack my too-swollen lungs away in the walk-in freezer,
quell the flickering-out of my feelings by tearing me apart.
Rather than ruining my life, I follow you to the next bar, slick
streets and soft jelly earrings, your neck has a lock tattoo, you’re
talking with the bouncer like you’re best friends, I adore your ease
under spotlights and a confetti machine attached to the ceiling,
violins and vegetables line the walls and I want to swallow shots
want to become a viper who is no longer girl-turned-abyss-turned
xylotomy, all I do is look too closely at wounds and your lips, bet
zeus is jealous of the lightning and laughter held behind my teeth.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

When we break up, I am no longer a mermaid

Each night I head to the forest to hang the stars, I remember you always loved red poison monster flowers and the leafy confetti tossed upon our house after a storm. You loved coffee mugs printed with bugs and those days we believed we were good enough; we were frosted webs and yolky

lake jelly, not even vampire bats could tear us apart, yet I came home one smooth-moon evening to find you were gone, in the place of a note you left lake water I remember once you said she came to you in dreams, gauzy-winged and tongue-pierced, I know I’m your disappointment, lost

half my magic when I crawled out of the lake but if you recall it was your clever, argument about solutions and beer-bottle concussions that led me to leaving in the first place, you took down a fawn for me and swapped my tail for legs I am a projection of your unending hunger, I am taking the arrows with purple-clover centers and soon no one will hold your jaws in their hands, does she even know how to clean fangs, perhaps I’ll wear

your faux-fur blazer, I’ll take her feather crown and become a glitter-and-clover infused darling, heart hurts to know you never took the fur to the cleaners I made it for you with threads from froth-lined riverbanks, you told me you only felt powerful with the pleasure that comes with sacrifice and offerings, I bet she doesn’t know you have halogen fillings, I heard

you two never sleep, I guess it was just another fairytale, a halcyon wrapping pleasure and pain around my fists like boxers’ gloves, but I’m sea-dear-girl now, it’s going to take a lot more than your fire-claw-bite to chew me up. In the center of the field, I see her, I raise my arrows from the Gods and aim for her heart, she bursts into party streamers music notes, plush hearts hopping across the yard, did you really fall in love with an enchanted toy, but before I get the chance to ask, you’re at my throat

pulling me into the underworld, have they not called off the punishment yet? So here we are, creatures among creatures, old gods and lava sobs, there is gem powder in my hair, and I’m permanently dehydrated but at least we’re together.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Musculus

But you weren’t at dinner,
at least not at first, and I
found myself unraveling in
that way of mine, recalling
how you always told me not
to get too deep into the research
archives, lavender and violet
pressed between clear glass
discs, you knew I obsessed
over wisteria, tern, and aster
the color of jellyfish during
storms they wash ashore
from the Atlantic and I was
out there again last night
wearing my winter boots
with those duckbills you
hate, I’m sorry, this isn’t
about sand dollars, smooth
junonia, please I won’t beg
you anymore, but what about
lightning whelk and the way
you told me to quit writing
about the moon, but you said
it like you might pronounce
loss or salt, maybe frost,
your lab coat was burnt on
the edges and your heart
used to be a crater, what
about now, dismissing dinner,
foam shore and how did I know
you’d be here for dessert, bearing
salted caramel squares, why
didn’t you bring sweets shaped
like conches, did you know
I’d lose track of their shapes, I
would never admit it but this
isn’t about the intensity of king
tides or the way we keep
sharing mother stories and
even though I’m trying to
empty my lungs you and I
both know I’ll be howling
in the cove, even the lobsters
are sick of me, and our friends
ask how the experiment is
coming along, prompting you
into complimenting me, it’s
the sapphire and silver around
your wrist, killing, it’s this
baby whale jaw you brought
to the table, you hold it up to
your face all I can think is, I can’t
believe I let you in enough to
save my life, maybe later we
can see the great thorn star
migration, I’ll wear those boots
you hate and you can convince me
why I shouldn’t abandon my
heart in the same crates we use
to catch red lobsters.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Apartment Problems

she is trying to sell the original
bones of the house, romanticizing
the mold and the scallop-shelled
hallway, which is no static space. I
walk into dreams between the living
room and the kitchen, the dining
room table is honey, did you forget
to push the ac-unit out great
grandmother’s window again, did
you remember to seal the drawers
from the burglars and the pigeons?
you weren’t here when we picked
apart turkey, spreading maduro over
its surface with our fingers, I used to
ask you to eat with me but you refused
and then you disappeared. I want to
tear down the blankets and knock gold
shells off the walls. you never cared
for the bamboo pot, I found orange
jars under your bed, have you been
sneaking tangerines to the neighbor
again? I am no stranger to loss or non-
love, it’s my fault I thought you’d stay
but we work better on opposite sides
of the city, you like stretch and I prefer
blush. I thought you loved me because
you asked on my Oasis records, you
let a magician in the front door, but you
take and you mistake me for family.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Green Goddess

It’s not about the mushrooms, the halos, pistachio
shoes and a porch reaching out to grab me with both
hands. It’s not even about the confetti, cherry-colored
birds in your backyard trees and your cat hates me but
your house loves hearts, why don’t I have a center?

These days I wake to rain in my living room, where sheets of
frogs are here forever, I’ve never felt safe, we no longer
have dreams to share, it’s about hearts turned inside-out
it’s about how you lied to me, told stories about never-
ending orchards, curled trees that are not fists, you
promised fever dreams, red dough pies, but I’m petty
and I’m gone, someone told me to call you back but these
days I can barely get out of bed, why would I love, lush
coffee makes my lungs jump, God help, it’s me again on the
kitchen floor, I spill asparagus and free tomatoes under a
table, it’s petit filet mignon I tear apart with my hands, rare
veins, petty laughter, and regret, why did you choose the hurt?

Art in the evenings, I sob on the 1 train, lick the subway, we
could have seen the whales together but no, these lives you’ve
knotted! The unsafely of evening! Poetry! and marinara sauce,
I should have marked your kitchen, cleaved my alphabet into
a letter until it admits, finally, freed and without lies, that you
were my hand in burning heart in non-pearl shell, a light
Tuesday, I hate you, pistachio muffins don’t work for breakfast,
please return ready and raw, in no order: my picture,
glove, grease from bacon, your partner’s earrings, abandon me,
me, me in a car in a tunnel, toss me into the sea, don’t leave
without at least explaining why I meant nothing, here I will
burn most of my words away, you will tease the end but we both
know it’s a quiet human, earthworms experiencing a feast but I
hate cherries, yet if you were to pry open my palm and tell me,
pistachio hearted fool, to swallow the green and the pit, told
me to roll receipts into joints, toss hearts into the gone, I’d
yet forget what you did, I’d impress upon the trees to observe
your petty feet, I’d eat from your hand. But today I’ll never trust
my soul again. It’s about the ascent. It’s about how I’ll bite love
on the mouth.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

In the front seat of my car as it rains, my partner is inside the supermarket getting bread

We’re going to eat toast with jam
I keep hoping I won’t be tired anymore

I wake up every day worried you’ve left
in the night

maybe that’s just something I’ve always
wanted to do

to disappear from an entire existence
without leaving so much as a key

beneath the doormat, not even a note
letting someone know to search for me

I think about the time I disappeared
and it was a hazy evening

the rain didn’t stop for days, I wouldn’t
see it, became nauseous looking at the trees

whose shape I won’t even recall here, I hadn’t
relapsed but I’d stopped drinking

the sunset was the color of coral; I felt
free for the first time in years, even though

you and I wouldn’t be free for years
to come, me as a waitress and you

doing what you did best: entertaining
that I would stop being in pain long

enough to save my own life, or both
of our lives, like later would come to pass.

And after I left, I hated highways
got sick in an unnamed field, stopped

in a motel that only sold pizzas, fingers
shook as I told my friend I’d disappeared

from my own life—in search of my old
life, still waiting for me in a faded yellow

house by pine, and he was still waiting for me
while quietly you left. I journal flower names

I’ll tell you in poems you’ll never read, pray
to my exes to protect you, not strong

enough on my own to solve the gap
which formed between us when I crossed

city limits, but I imagine you’re just
as I left you, coffee mug between red

lacquered nails, you didn’t wear lipstick
preferring instead bright blue shoes

with flowers I still couldn’t name, faded
copy of The Bell Jar poking out from

one of your bookshelves, did you know
these days I write about bells you can’t

unring, I entertain sending you a letter
or maybe I could coax a ladybug onto

your manuscript, do you see pain
and think of me, do you remember my

favorite beer, does my ghost linger
in the doorway of the bar, or has this

all but vanished, you no longer name
characters after me and I left my key

under the doormat knowing I couldn’t
return to you, but I would, if you asked

gentle enough what happened to me
we could talk about ghosts and Plath

maybe this time you could teach me
how to leave and stay gone, even now

I can’t learn how to forgive my heart
for its twisted shape.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Red Clover Tincture

A wicked burning fire in the center of the table, someone chops
vegetable discs, someone else pours too-old champagne into
waiting glasses, I’m hiding between the refrigerator and the wall,
hoping to keep my heart from snapping between my teeth.

You arrive exhausted from the week, faded sneakers in one
hand and a bottle of red wine in the other, I watch as everyone
hugs you, friends kiss your cheeks, we don’t greet one another,
I can’t figure out if it’s my fault you don’t love when I panic. Maybe

I’m getting ahead of myself; this is the third night I haven’t slept
in the too-blue haunted house off the coast, outside are thickly
enmeshed pine trees, the ground is always sticky with sap, ocean
water creeps across the land and subsumes parts of the garden.

The inside, like the outside, is coated in navy paint. The porch fills
with dancing shadows, everyone compliments the table with its
fiery center. Soon I head outside, eager to pocket hot rocks, I pretend
I don’t see you out of the corner of my eye, tossing your hair back

and laughing at a joke I didn’t hear. The winter air is crisp, pale
blue on every inhalation, even the moon has changed shape and
color, the altar in the living room is filled with cold candles, frost
creeps on the wood with its lacy feat, I wonder if I were to slip

would you be upset for me; would you care if I bled and the party
guests had to go home, which one of us lives here and anyway, what
good is a dinner without you by my side, how do they know to talk
to you without lighting their lungs on fire, perhaps I’m petty, did

you ever think about that, no, you believe I am good. Late night, latest
hour I’ve been twisted awake, I crawl through the halls pretending to be
a cat, a centipede, more like a discarded shoelace of a person, a devil,
I sit cross-legged in front of the fridge and eat what I couldn’t earlier

the problem was I couldn’t look away, you’re too bright even with
all that fire between us, I knocked my teeth with a fork twelve times,
I would have taken my fillings out if you’d asked, eaten embers with
dessert, given up the light inside of me, I’d have stolen the candles

and the statues of women in blue robes, I wish my hands weren’t
always shaking, my body could be a body not always in pain, I wish
for you to wake at the same time as me, we don’t have to use lamps
and I promise I’ll leave the fridge alone; I just want to tell you I’m

falling apart, I want to be honest for once. We can talk on the porch
and watch the sun rise over the New England corridor, you might
not hate me at four in the morning, when even the stones have turned
aqua from night freeze, you would tell me to disregard the owl, unaware

I’ve already hit my knees on the ice out back too many times, I’ve
almost slid into a frozen lake, I’ve stopped myself from death and
I’ll stop myself again, I don’t need you to keep me alive, I just need you
to look at me without all that godforsaken sundew, even your eyes

are like gems, and I curse myself every time we talk, I’m too busy
twisting my personality into someone you’d adore, I’m changing my
heart to match your heartbeat, I wait on you to call me human like
the rest, I guess I’m still thinking about the time I told you I forgot

my own name, and that morning I woke gentle and healthy, I was no
foolish void, I was not a barely emptied storm, nor was I a paring knife
and instead of pretending you didn’t hear you placed your hand on my
hand. Remind me again what it feels like to knowingly be loved by you.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genre Flash Contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, Heart Weeds, is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, Grief Birds, is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

Gulf

The way you looked
into the camera doesn’t fill up
the frame anymore,

as though waves
from my side of the ocean

have pushed you
outside the margins
of the shot

Michael Caylo-Baradi is an alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY). His work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Dodging The Rain, Hobart, The Kenyon Review, The Common, Ink, Sweat & Tears, The Galway Review, London Grip, Third Wednesday Magazine, and PopMatters, among others. Kelsay Books released his debut pamphlet Hotel Pacoima in 2021.

Shine

Back home, the sunrise lingers quietly over the sea. Rays of peach and yellow mingle within sandy alleyways, snickering between chalked-up buildings. The hot knots of our streets relax in the warmth and in the doorway of our house Mami stands, skin so bright: bright in the day and bright in the night. She swishes around, tipping and toeing the hallways up and down, tripping above the gravel streets before she heads to Playa Blanca. Mami, walking, her strong arms holding pans, pots, rustic clay bowls, everything brown tan and orange—but her eyes! How they shine! They shine like mine: like emeralds flashing against the waves, always holding in their view the rays of the sun. Mami sets down her pottery and helps her friends hoist mesh bags over their shoulders: bags filled with fruit and vegetables, fresh, fresh, fresh. The women march in a pretty line to the pretty line where sea meets sand. They walk over to the fires. The blazes await them already. Each one to her own little bonfire. Mami sets her pots over the fire and begins to stir: sus brazos-ojos-cabello-el sol, Playa Blanca and the wind and the sand, the sea, and Mami, back home, over there.

Johan Alexander was born in Medellín, Colombia. An Ashley Bryan Fellow from Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in 2021, last year Johan was part of the 2022 Periplus cohort and a Maine Lit Fest Fellow. His words can be found in LatineLit and are forthcoming from Unstamatic, among others. A musician and community organizer, he lives in Portland, Maine.

Virgilio

The days before we moved Mami visited our neighbor old Virgilio. She went over every morning after braiding her hair. Virgilio had many books, but he was going blind: sometimes he couldn’t read. Pobre viejito feo y flaco. Mami brought him chocolate and cheese & she read to Virgilio for an hour: solo una hora no más.

Before we left we ran all around pueblito Barú, chasing our stringy neighbor. Stray dogs running after us: barking, laughing, shouting. Virgilio running in front of us: grunting, laughing, shouting & Mami at her window: singing, singing, singing.

All those abuelos in a line, their backs against the bodega near the cathedral, in the plaza of pueblito Barú. Their voices & the clack of dominos echoing over piles of crumbled plaster at the corners of the plaza. Tiles buried in cement glisten with centuries of gossip. At the end of the row of dominos viejito Virgilio reposed with his book and his chessboard. But nobody played with him. Nobody knew chess.

Now that we’re gone, his wrinkled fingertips, do they still tingle at the advancement of a pawn? Do his elastic earlobes grab the echoes, the barking, the laughing, the shouting? Who recalls the melodies next door? Now that we’re gone, which mother rustles his old pages?

Little abuelito, el pobre viejito, old Virgilio of pueblito Barú.

Johan Alexander was born in Medellín, Colombia. An Ashley Bryan Fellow from Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance in 2021, last year Johan was part of the 2022 Periplus cohort and a Maine Lit Fest Fellow. His words can be found in LatineLit and are forthcoming from Unstamatic, among others. A musician and community organizer, he lives in Portland, Maine.

From The Ashes

The beak is so slick and beautiful you’d forget it’s about to bore into a virgin. Dig right through her for £12.50 a night. Peck her up, munch her hard, inflict the horror of a writer’s preoccupations. They must’ve choreographed it by now. Haven’t you heard them? Up there with thumps, cries, neck pulls, piano like Trent Reznor in a bucket. Rehearsal Room Four. I hear them even when they’re not there, at least twice, three times a week, phantom floorboard storm and a cough for luck. Walking past the doors I hear the play grow unbirthed, the dust of an empty evening moulting from the skirting and sideboards and stage divans, a kind of mushroom light from the street in a strip on my slow body. Yes, you’re there too. I’ve felt you, a lump in my head.

But this beak was worth staying late, so what if I’m hanging around after seven? Who cares? Not Caretaker Mike. He admires my work the only way he can, by getting too close. Remember I let him in? Straight up spoke to him when he puttered by with a mop. Said, Hey Mike, wanna see a monster? He flopped his gloves on the table, stepped right in under this bare light and whistled. The bird’s wings were almost done with a few twigs of wire mesh clawing the crescents and feathers atrophied from glue. I held them up. And someone’s gonna wear that for real? he asked. Oh, Mike, poor Mike, with your feet on the same earth every day. They will live it. Here, I said, and fixed the head on him, screwed it like a bulb. Without the beak, he was too smooth and stark, a black bowling pin on little shoulders, and the eyes weren’t tested so he kind of banged about doing Actor Things, holding a hand to his chest and reaching with the other in a silent aria to the rafters of my prop world. He sweated underneath. I smelled it when he left grinning, sniffed the dark neck, his simple vinegar, thinking even weak men – the grateful ones – are shameless in what they leave me with.

You weren’t there though, and I’d like to talk about that. Even as you steady my fingers on this brush, even as the beak’s seventh coating dries, we’re here, a little less solid than we used to be. Do I have to keep filling you in? Just look at what we’ve made: the tip, the nasal cavities, layered simulacra of grazing and ground-nests. A creature from the earth. Fuck the script: the bird is ours and no wonder people left us to it in the bleak hours. Even when Anwar went to study ravens in squalling curious afterlives (Google and real) he knew enough to dash right back to those plasterboard houses with a coffee sloshing. And I can build a house! A neighbourhood! They know it. Give me the set for a whole parish. I can whip up a doorstep or ivy trellis, gutter mould, roof slate, assuring floor glow, GP’s office railing, the crooks and letterboxes of the human heart. But they said, No, leave her the bird. The star attraction. The bird that will rise rustling from aeons to murder a girl while the village that summoned it splits under the shadow of what it has done. Yeah, give the bird to her. Robert agreed. And now he’s gone. Always knew what I can handle. The crew listened and agreed: two worlds suffocating, sure, that’ll do her. Robert’s gone. Left me the bird. And thanks to us, the costume’s a treat, a week till dress rehearsal – deeper, more organic, a fluttering victory of organza. That’s you, baby. It’s what you help me do, narrow the coatings of oil-dark life, the black basics on a creature we’ve all been waiting for. Just keep coming. Where do you go, though? Where else?
 

Remember Robert’s hands the soft slab of them, their sucked knuckles, how he grabbed you with his mouth on my neck, whispering, Step to me sweet, step like this…and the music was dark. And we danced looking at the tiny couples in other windows to grey rooms. You felt it. A hand on your whole world. The three of us rocking, hot, a body…though we almost fell over a futon in my bastard flat then, no place for a mother was it.
 

Tack of gum under desk and fuck me the teeth marks. Tramp. No reason to spit on the room, confuse dirt with a personality. Fair, like anyone could walk in here and accuse us of rewilding a chic studio: the shivering papers on the shelf under air con; hats, wigs and bald caps wilting like zoo bears; a scatter of pencils as if thoughts and colours are waiting to be picked up anytime. This is the chaos you earn a BA for. A room like is meant to smell of glue and combustion and pizza paste. Don’t ever, ever talk down that trace scent of tube or cracked charcoal, varnish or spooged acrylic. It’s play. We’re playing. We’re serious about it. Just fucking gum, that’s dirty, sneaking spit under my elbows…I bet it was Alice with the sausage hair. She comes in popping and snapping her mouth, wearing that dumpy lime denim, flicking her eyes everywhere, still taking things in – for how long left, what’s an internship these days? Do these girls ever stop looking like they’re counting conversations? – using the gum as her own prop, mmmm, makes her talk different, everything sounds sideways. Yeah love, we’ve all been there. Those games crumble. Go on. Make it to thirty-three. See where casual can’t live. Other plans turn up in envelopes. Old smells rebel. Wine turns mean.

Wait, sorry – Jesus, sorry, I don’t want to brag. Don’t cry about it. Please. I know you’ll never get to know or feel or…What’s wrong with me? Just give me a kick. A tit zap. I wish you could tell me where I mess up more often.

You’d be good with a speech. Recently I’ve imagined you arriving with the bird in Act Two, at the whip of thunder, smoke churning the aisle seats, the part where the priest is going ballistic, screaming, Now riiiiisssseeee and drop your shadow! as the girl twists on the stake in fake rain; my dreams paint you in the crook of a wing, not even pink, pinker, burning; and the shrieks of our heroine should be cutting into you but no they’re sliding right off, you could be on your own, anywhere, kind of saintly like a Sakharov or difficult Brando, and the audience are on their feet, right on their toes. You emerge with a bright lick of sweat but that’s fine, you’ve been underground, the bird’s midnight feathers are cool and shaped for you. Women get up and men follow and they have never seen anything so small with your gravity and fire it reminds them of births they don’t pay to see. The rain hardens. The priest bulges. And the bird prepares for duty but first puts you down, leaves the pit, spread itself to the villagers and their light, to all the Mr Volkswagens in the stalls, inclines this beak, strokes it ever so gentle across your warm belly, looks at the villagers like, So now you must give something to me, you must provide for the child – and I’ll work for the tourist board or whatever’s next for pastoral retribution.

Daft, right? And what if I’m in the audience. What if Robert’s there. He will be stage-side. He may not cope when I pin his eyes open, turn his head to the hijack, to everything he should know about you at last.
 

Oh the lobby was dark, the trapped light of a stairwell, yeah he’s – well not in, must’ve missed him, second apartments, neighbour’s looking at me all wrong, Have you seen him? There’s something we have to – No, no, little luck with that fella always darting out, theatre bloke isn’t he – But when do you reckon he’s back or around much at – Well I see him first half of the week usually, Tuesdays – Right, Tuesdays – Could be, but too many days feel the same here, memory stopped serving long before I noticed – Thanks just…please don’t tell him I was here, I mean, it doesn’t matter, so don’t say, it’s fine, we work together. And the neighbour, crusty heron, smiled down at his keys like I haven’t been the only girl waiting next door, waiting for an hour. Called again. Fingered Robert’s letterbox. Wrote my name on the back of a tram ticket and almost fed it through. Crushed my own name up.
 

So fuck it, he should be there in the mystic salute of your rebirth, what am I, weak? No wonder my mind’s wishing. Three years. Christ that’s fast. Three years of you. New words. Paint the beak, blacken, shade the maxilla. Now we need brush C3 for that under-gape grey. Maybe I’ll go for a walk after. We must have twenty minutes at least. That’s it, enter my bones. Pinch the tip just there, careful, dab and stroke…Just spend a while in me and I promise we’ll pass the rehearsal room yeah, give it a rehearsal of our own, maybe find another room or rest on the street window, listen to tyres hiss and vanish, and voices work hard beyond the pane; watch dirt cling to the brick of the bottle shop despite the broken gutter weeping down its fractured face across the dark glass towards the customers who weave around the stream to a shop with three types of seed bread. They won’t see us. And maybe we’ll stick around, stay ahead of Caretaker Mike’s boots, drifting. Walk the back ends, the passages, the storeroom, lights yellow and sudden like a school’s. We’ll flick them and make Mike believe he’s haunted. Ha! Attention. Men should be so grateful. And if you want, come home. There isn’t much going on really. Mum rang. I should call her back. Liz is depressed about her promotion. Might leave that for tonight and all the realms of giving a shit. We have enough vegetables for the Lotus Grill, sizzling Soy and shaped leaves, a step away from gardening –

Wait, a knock…

Did you hear that too?
 

Like that tap on the door on The Day, as I lay bedbound in ruins, half-awake, wishing for cramps, for a remnant of the life I’d prayed for – shy tap, Bad time? And there was no time in that bed or the ward unless you counted the flowers, the petals browning in the sun’s glaucoma. He found me and replaced them. Watered them. Asked for time. Perched bedside with a mutter, stroked my leg, let the kiss on my wrist say enough, before he said, I’ll pay for anything you need, just don’t hate me, we can’t do this.
 

Got to swivel just keep the brush in my hand, in ours.

Another.

Hello, what’s up?

Door opens like tomb rock…

Hi, sorry, you okay in here? Alice with the sausage hair, apology curled on her lips, headfirst, rest of her slips through. She says, Think I left my bag this morning.

Oh right, right, the hamper thing. I’ve seen it. A headless rainbow armadillo. Back chair.

She rushes off the door, letting it slam, edges around the table and a box of oils. Her jumper is so frayed, wool spooling off the arms, worse than balls, ratty pigtails like a farming accident. It’ll snag if she’s not careful. Could mention the desk gum too. But she’s thought ahead and left her mouth free.

How’s the bird person coming?

Too big for a deadline, in all honesty.

Ah-hah.

Shading bouts on the scleral ring, the arch of the neck, doozy you might say…And I show her. Alice leans over the table.

Would you shit yourself if this came into your yard?

Try not to, she says.

Nice.

It’ll look mad on the poster.

She returns my smile, hangs in a few seconds of loose air, then resumes her journey to the back of the room. Where were we?

There, she coos, finding the strap and pulling the bag up, rooting for signs of invasion. Okay, no brush then. Not while she’s here.

Need to be careful with that thing. Somebody might think it’s a prototype, some new dream coat.

She says, Yeah, probably why I lose it so much.

Wherever you go next, maybe, there’ll be legit pegs, not nails in the wall.

She looks up from the innards.

Wherever I go, sure.

Eyes of a kicked animal. A shade in them, greyer. She stuffs the bag and zips. We should be polite. Let’s say: What does that look like to you?

What?

What’s next.

Oh, well, there’s what my dad calls the Real World. Which I think means aprons.

Christ. And hairnets. Fight with tooth and chisel.

That’s the plan.

You’ve been to the Real World, I say, and it’s here, it’s wherever you feel good. It’ll follow you out the door somewhere that takes people out of theirs. People pay for us, don’t they? They bear their crap for any evening we can throw together. That’s real. And that sounds about right, but she’s left me suddenly, there, staring at the bobby pin board. This girl…A day ago, she was yammering about pumpkin spice and pressing pictures into my palm, videos of Centaur Joe Rogan. And now she’s like this. Sort of tighter. Half-gone. She straightens the strap and clings to it.

Rob’s back next week, isn’t he?

Yeah, believe so.

Sweet, I…It’ll be good to sit down.

He’ll be here on your last day. Wouldn’t miss that. Final words and some digs at the Arts Council.

Nothing else?

Well, depends. Could ask you back for another production. Don’t bet on it. More newbies down the road, same itch, all ready to run over bodies.

Probably meet years later behind a coffee machine won’t we.

At least you’ll smell great.

And we’ll swap notes and talk about the locks in here, she says, and her lips squirm.

Okay, let’s say. Are you actually alright?

And she nods without meaning to, takes a breath that shudders out of her.

Alice, you’re good at this. At being here.

Is that why he chose me?

Don’t be daft – of course.

I don’t think that’s true, I…

Then she’s crying in a wet blurt, a tumble, are you seeing this, she’s hugging herself. God c’mon, say to her. C’mere a sec.

Sorry, she manages, falling into the seat by ours, I never meant to…Ohhh for fucksake.

That hair of hers, so thick and arranged, feels like dead tails. Shoulder shapeless. Wool scribbles my cheek.

We say, What’s wrong.

She wipes her face. Leaks more. Says, I can’t, I can’t.

You can’t what?

Do – this – alone.

Can’t leave us?

A horrid, dismissive, choking laugh. He’ll leave me, she’s saying. Pulling at herself. He won’t do what he says.

What do you mean…

And then the clearest eyes. Stare. Hold her. Scene blurs, beak grazes elbow.

She says, Something happened.

No no no no no.

She says, I was stupid.

(But you’re special, she can’t.)

His wife doesn’t know. And now – now it hurts.

She touches her belly without thinking or maybe thinking just enough for me. How far is she? I feel sick. Low. Jesus. The girl’s face pleads for me. But you are meant to be the only one like this. In the night you become more than a shadow. Corners stretch into feet, that bulb there a bald fist, legs dangling from calathea. You’re just mine. What will it be like for her, clawing for his time in the distance, a mangled version of you speaking maybe in her but sick, bloody, unformed. Unnamed. He’s done it again. Bastard. Made what he can’t handle, slipped a bad hand south, another to her lips. And where are you going? Oh God don’t. Not now. Please. I was full of you. Her tears are burning. I was full of you once. I glowed.

Joshua Potts is a 30-year-old copywriter and sometime journalist. He lives in Manchester, UK. As a member of the Underline Writing Group, he’s found a way to make Sundays holy again. He enjoys walks anywhere but the beach unless there’s a margarita. Bands, boxing and bright colours keep him occupied while he waits to be invited to George Saunders’ BBQ. He’s also been published in Orton and Bandit Fiction.