Category: AP40

Bunny Morris

wound citation

      I.       before i touch the hole in your temple
call me the ex-flower. a contemporary mantis.
try 2      dial up my angel numbers or try 2       touch
my metaphysical hole. my philosophical wound.  divine
, divine what isn’t   

there.      you find me here dreaming on Rhododendron Ave.
life is a boring sonnet full of no no no.
kind of catholic, my hole      my mandible
no more re-wounding. I’ll confess too:

I remember nothing                  
I remember nothing of yr hands.                 (or whatever else you confessed)
only a starscaped room w/ no moon.
there is nothing new.
I open and shoot                  where

where                    and where                            and where

      II.       while I touch the hole in your temple
you open & shoot.
if I could turn in to the sun             I would             son-shine       
                                                                I would             only wish
             to turn in side out again.

strange inside shine                                   like an unfaithful magical girl
adaptation                                        all I can do is be faithful     
                                                to
                                      live           live
                                                to

very tired, spending all my time deciding nothing
but 2 spit real gnarly or 2 swallow real gnarly, unfaithful

human gut tells me things like yours before formaldehyde:                           love, love
so tight, so swollen, so stretching. I don’t believe                                sobriety. the false prophet
                                   even more than I didn’t believe                                in you, love, love
              I am made of genetic guilt. I don’t believe                                  I am still alive

  III.       after I touch the hole in your temple
everyone keeps asking about the klonopin, but I’m Madoka Magica. I gather up my prescribed benzos, wands, lesbians, & drive 20 hours south. road hypnosis invites me to wrap my mouth around your inevitable end. no! I stuff gauze up every potential hole. the sun rises, I can see where you meant to shoot. I transform into the wall. transform into the gun. into your mouth. your sadness. it’s mine.

 

Bunny / Teddy Morris is a tired fetishist and an MFA candidate in poetry at LSU. He has served as both a visual art and a poetry editor for New Delta Review and as an experimental/hybrid works editor with Miracle Monocle in his hometown of Louisville, KY. Its work revolves around the disintegrating boundaries between suffering and the erotic, sexy cyborgs after disease & disability, and being trans or whatever. His recent work can be found in The Spectacle, Death Rattle Literary, and Bayou Magazine. Check out his other work & collabs & say hi esp if ur a weirdo @ https://bunnymorris.wixsite.com/poetry.

 

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Pamela K. Santos

Hey Siri, Define: An·i·me Gen·e·sis Req·ui·em

You retcon the canon of your father’s
     Adultery with Schrodinger’s cat eyes :
Blue blinks once for truth, Red unceasingly
     Flickers :          「Lying …」          in your next Shonen Jump
Life you wouldn’t have this hassle : deadass
     Tago-ng-tago before your hero’s
J. Campbell Over-Powered arc drops : You、
     Hallowed First of Tres Marias、 curse yourself
Alone the Strongest : your ultraviolet
     Loneliness rends space so none may ever
Touch your infinity : rōnin reverse
     Blade slashing no belly save yours : 「Lying …」         
Your love language :          Ganbarre Ganbarre!
     Katsusa!          Bukkorosu!          Believe it!         
Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! ∞

You brat、 know love only from insides of
     A blood-black palayok ; kamagong sticks
Like fans abaniko-striking temples
     Of all shadow opps ; Queens Yellow Paged shields
Absorbing One Inch Punches & absence :
     Your fanfic has more fighting spirit than
A body like yours can contain :          死ね! [ Die! ] 、
     Is what you wish to say to your villains :
Your Father-Emperor of Iron Sand
     Warring states to bury your insolence、
Your ice-veined Mother whose frost ingit pinch-
     Pricked your upper arm meat & cancerous
Beauty found no rival in your face :           Die [ Sige, mamatay ka na ]

     A thousand suicides : their command you
                         Refuse。

                                               

Note: Debt of gratitude to adult authority figures in Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia, Naruto, Rurouni Kenshin, and Saga.

Balikbayan Noir Prelude

They Drive By the Claws of Night in the Naked City : Jaguar packs under Karnal
Moonlight : You Only Live Once — they croon to The Balikbayan : Stray Dogs drag Bodies
Bodies Bodies underfoot : asong pinoy tales wagging from the wrong end : make for
Pretty Little Liars — It’s good times, yeah— Joyridin in Cars with burgis Boys babe :
On one of those Brutal Scorpio Nights The Third Man leads The Balikbayan with
Mga Batang X through a Dark Passage : Bomba Queens Burlesk Kings Midnight Dancers
Tukso Sa Mundo Kundiman ng Lahi sing Maging Akin Ka Lamang : kind
                     of Is It A Sin To Worship You? like real love

                                               
Note: Capitalized language borrowed from Philippine film titles and film noir.  

The Homme Fatale in The Balikbayan Noir Multiverse

It was already too late when she turned around. Sheets funeral shrouding
     their hormonal bodies. So-called slumber on the banig mat on the floor.
Filipinos back home will sleep anywhere, five in one bed, horizontal at
     kuya feet, who cares.

Too late when she woke to the weight of his more muscular arm over
      her waist, when she breathed shallow, when she only heard his breathing
on her neck and no other snores in the bed above, when realization sunk
      in her belly button and bare kneecaps and armhairs and tonsils, when
the chasm opened, all too late even with eyes closed they ampersand-
      curved into each other, all too quiet until other people’s comfort recedes
far far far from the only reality that existed in that daybreak hour.

     She was the one to move first. She knew she would. Every answer to
What Would Ate Do? governed The Balikbayan’s decisions in this trip.
     She wasn’t bad. The Balikbayan wanted to know herself better, taking
detours into such unknowns as what would follow after she turned
     around to face him. Eyes (still) closed.

               How did she forget the pastel flowered sheet covered
their heads. There had to be a few minutes of waiting, holding
          breaths in to let the other make the first move. Noses first. No
               longer kids to repel and laugh away awkwardness. No excuses
                    left to utter. Lining up mouths. That had to take some seconds.
Slow seconds in every pressing, every entrance, lick becomes
               licks becomes underliptasting becomes cut green mango slick slippery
          becomes shooting guard palms on goosebumped skin dipped at her ribs
               like a valley at her shorts’ elastic becomes his erection against
her thigh

               Breathing becomes too loud.

               When they stop, he breaks the silence.
               Ang sarap mo pala. Grin reaches his ears. 

                                             They leave after breakfast.

                                   Alone in the car he asks if she
wants to go to a motel. No answer. He says it’s not
                                             like i forgot who you are.
               Alone in his room where there are no locks
they risk they writhe as if ennui and youth
     puppeteered their parts. They know and they don’t think.

Some mornings he pulls her SO-EN flower-embroidered pastel panties
     to the side, enters her in whatever way they have time before footsteps
in the hall cause them to untangle, before maid hands turn doorknobs,
     before almusal announced. There is always more time to be alone.

Rattan bed almost broke when she was on top.
     Ceiling to floor wardrobe with deep shelves
serendipitously high enough for him to stand against,
     for him to lift her on, for her to blend into
his folded polos and jerseys, her bottoms off, 
     for her to lean back, for him to lean into her, into
          her, in, to, her, intoherintoher, i, n , t , o, h, e, r,

                                                                                    They never seem to finish.

Some nights they drive to the city, dance in clubs
     where nobody really dances, where nobody knows
who they are to each other. Some nights they hide from
     family in dark corners, grind against a wall as he
taunts her for showing so much skin in public where
     he has to keep her safe. Sometimes in the pools the lagoons
on the road against his motorbike one time in the cave.    

               When she goes home, none of this
               will cross the customs line. All of it
               stays when it’s time for her to go.

The Underage Balikbayan Never Walks Alone in the Probinsyang Twilight

You and your kind never drink alone in the province : Adults pushing San Mig Lites
Into your open hands after mano po’s second breakfasts meriendas : Cans 
Erupt gush overpoured in stereo you and your cousin’s Lasallian bros
Chug out on the balcony in full view overlooking the kalye : Your family’s
Not rich like those bros are not famous pero over there by the gate : a kuya
You’d never known perched in-stool gun in-pants : Presume from here on that you at lahat
Sila present are not American legal drinking—Easy Ka Lang Padre
Your other kuya’s barangay kap’tan : They try to speak English to you not with
You : Only the sosyal one matangos yung may pera-pera enough to split
Live between the Makati Hills and the West Coast spoke the most casually assured
With that pointlessly idiomatic language : Tells you that The Filipino
Dreams most about the 3 A’s :          3. To be an Athlete —           2. To be an Artista —
                   1. To be in Amerika —

—“No wolves have ever managed to reach the islands and breed” — In the Philippines twelve
Million strays the Filipino street dog aspins askals their own breed : Walang wolves
Except for the soap opera Lobos : no rules of the road but always carry
Barya folded behind your lisensya in your wallet on the driver’s visor
Pag may pulis stopover : no aircon in doorless jeeps and Higit Sa Lahat
No Love in the Club pare : Bituing Walang Ningning live on stage lights fleshed Gods
For cash or Private Show you stare they don’t care you wash you Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Macho
                      Dancer Till We Meet Again…

                                               
Notes: Capitalized language borrowed from Philippine film titles.
Quote from Quora answer by Selwyn Clyde M. Alojipan to “Why are wolves rare in the Philippines?”

 

Pamela K. Santos is a Pinayorker writer-artist practicing popculturomancy across disciplines and genre. She dedicates her multilingual work-at-play to bekis, lolas, and dalagas everywhere. Pamela co-founded Portland’s Winter Poetry Festival and has received support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Oregon Literary Fellowship, and Caldera Arts, among others. Her poetry appears in Cultural Daily, ANMLY, Snail Trail Press, and elsewhere.

 

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Svetlana Litvinchuk

If music is the sound between

I.                             If music is the sound between
                                                                           the notes,
                                              then the knot is the closeness between the strands.

             The knot is not of the string.
When the ends can be found and the center can be freed
you might find that it is not there at all. The knot does not exist.

What magic trick is this?

The simple knot is a string’s final perfect form.
Physicists have studied at length
               how all knots, if separate from one another, remain
                                                          separate
               unless placed in proximity into the same drawer.        
                             Then they form one knot again.

Leave any of us alone in the dark
& we, too, will twist into knots.

II.
It was my father who taught me music is the sound between the notes. What, then— of the staccato of water while wading with fishing rods into the stream? Of early mornings filled with birdsong?
                                                                         Of the minds of women who laugh between sorrows?

What of the hush that lies between family secrets housed in boxes, stacked away
that our loved ones will one day sort for us    
only to find them
                                                                        full of knots?

It was on my own that I learned that a knot is the kinship between the strands. Find the ends & begin the unraveling. Begin to free the heart of it & find the knot no longer exists,
                                                                                                                                      find your hands
                                                                                                                                      suddenly empty.

III.
Yes. I think it must have been my father who taught me the sound between notes was something called music. About the vast spaces between a scolding & a screaming match. About the fear trembling like a cymbal
                                              between shirts hanging in a closet hiding a hiding child.
                                              Of the fear that ripples between hands covering the ears.       

IV.
I really think it might have been my father who taught me how time is the invisible structure that holds our happenings. How events can be rearranged or swapped out like pairs of shoes. How you can exchange lies for truth & fill gaps with them like insulation, the way birds stuff paper into nests to keep out the draft. Piece for piece, forming the same life again & again
                                                                                                    & find all roads leading to the same grave,
                                                                                                    find that the obituary always reads the same.

I may have learned on my own, but probably with some help, that a knot is the constraint between the strands. Find the edges & push, don’t pull— that causes tightening. The goal is to loosen; to unravel gently to free the heart of it from its own tight-fisted grasp; to find it no longer there.

The knot does not exist.

                                              Find it is only air.

                                              One day, after you disappeared, I walked around plucking the sky.

                                                                         Beautiful silence,
                                                                         everywhere I searched.

V.
My father taught me that if you smash the notes like dishes heaved at the wall, it’s one way to make a point mid argument.

That there isn’t any music between the shatterings—
                                              only pieces of something that a nostalgic likes to call a childhood.

                                                                         In the same way that we form deep bonds
                                                                         with ordinary things, in our minds made special
                                                                         by virtue of being ours

                                                                         & nothing more romantic than that.

That may be all he taught me of music :         

the silence

                                              when he tried to teach me to play guitar / the tambourine / drums / to sing.

When I asked if I could see the sheet music, he replied that he didn’t know how to read music, that he could simply hear it,
                                                                         couldn’t I hear it?

For years, I strained my ear listening for the music between family secrets,
muffled where the notes are merely mumbled whispers stuffed in pockets, stowed away,
packed in boxes, then stacked in shadow towers in basements.

VI.
I learned that breakthroughs are lubricated by flood damage.

                                              I think I learned this from my mother’s tears
                                              catalyzed by a broken sump pump that caused the deluge
                                              that floated things to the surface.

A broken pipe.

A faucet left on, overflowing the bathtub.

A heavy rain that washed the backyard into our home
through a tiny solitary window.

   It could have been anything

                      that made soup of too small clothing
                                                     of shoe boxes of photographs
                                                     of evidence of family life

   constructed of the people we once were.
   of the images we hold onto / outgrow /
   wince at the sight of / would rather not face /
   remember with pride

by virtue of having been them; of them having been us—       nothing more.

Maybe it makes sense when he says, I don’t want you to see me like this.

Maybe we all want to be remembered as someone we tried so hard to be / only managed for mere moments, sandwiched between years of not-our-proudest-moments, that in between the waiting to become, tied itself together to form the knot that we call identity.

VII.
It isn’t wrong to want to remember my mother’s voice & simply let that be enough. To hold on

to that long-ago sound
amid the music-less silence with no attempt to reconstruct your memories
in a present where you clear out your father’s belongings. All that useful space to be reclaimed.

Somewhere in the breaths between the grief
a child untangles the desperate fiction healing over the gaps in memories

    she sits in an empty room reconstructed from a closet,
    composing something.

Remember those songs your mother sang whose words you never paid much attention to, then found later they had formed the synapses of your psyche anyway— how they were the foundational beliefs between the independent thoughts?

Perhaps I don’t give her enough credit—

it’s true, my mother also taught me
things.                                                     

VIII.
It was my mother who taught me how to present my body to the male gaze. The yoga of how to breathe while sucking it in,
                                                                      those softer parts.

                                                                      How to make the bones stick out artfully.

How red can glisten like gold in the bright light of the stage. How bruises can be maquillage. How to remain soft despite pretending you’re not just doing what you’re taught again and again long after the encore.
                                                             How smiles are a performance we call womanly arts.

When she got up on stage the visions of thinness became the hiding between the reflections of the dancing spotlight on her teeth. Eyes closed, mouth agape, crooning into the microphone like kissing a tender lover, were all a form of both hiding & allowing of men’s eyelashes to strike her face, which my father hardly noticed, did not protect her from.  

IX.
It was sometime around then that I learned that delusion is the denial of the existence of the hands that grip the wrists leaving purple marks.

When I asked my mother about this, years later, she said
                                                                                                                      children misremember things.

Then why did I keep listening for the music as the sound between the thuds? Searching for acceptance to be the thing between the broken strings of disappointment left behind to be inherited like the family instrument & waiting

for the forgiveness to be the gift from the many steps trekked between childhood & the future & kept finding that knots continue forming
where they previously weren’t,
                                                          if you left the memories unattended;

that wounds can continue hurting
long after they’ve healed

to find that scar tissue is a form of binding,     like a knot.

To find that your fingers must remain busy untying / unwinding / unsnarling / unperling / resolving / undoing it all with such impeccable devotion to maintain this spaciousness between the gossamer strands of lace of the life you don’t realize you’re weaving.             

You cannot place the untangled knot into the same drawer with the rest

& shut it                                                 & simply walk away.

 

Svetlana Litvinchuk graduated from University of New Mexico. She is the author of a chapbook, Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024) and a forthcoming full-length poetry collection (spring 2026). Nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net, her poetry appears in swamp pink, About Place, Flyway, Apple Valley Review, Sky Island Journal, Arkana, and elsewhere. She is the Associate Editor and Reviews Editor with ONLY POEMS and is serving as an Editor for Rockvale Review in 2025. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now tends her garden in Missouri. Find her on Instagram @s.litvinchuk or at www.svetlanalitvinchuk.com.

 

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Isobel Burke

home equity loan.

break the glass,
tell me not to worry about the pieces.
when i kneel to pick them up with bare hands
pick me up and bind them.
put me in the car and tell me world news,
tell me about my great grandmother:
“she was a teacher when women were nothing
more than the bones to build a home on top of.”
i’ve been awake for thirty-one hours
and still can’t sleep.
every time i try, i trip over pain
that i know i put away already;
pack the difficult things into boxes,
seal with caution tape
and pile on top of the boxes
where i packed the good things, and the things
that were just alright.
they’re sitting in the corner of your apartment,
taking up space.
you could put a nice coffee table there.

 

Isobel Burke is a Canadian poet born and raised on Vancouver Island. She was shortlisted for the 2024 Bridport Prize for Poetry and her poetry collection, inheritance, won the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival poetry contest in 2023. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including PRISM International, Pinhole Poetry, and Anti-Heroin Chic.

 

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Troels Heiredal

mirror

imagine looking at yourself in the mirror
right after a hot shower
that’s how social interaction feels to me
as if experienced through a layer of otherness

now   imagine that when you run your hand over it
           to clear the mirror
           the mirrored images looks back a you puzzled
           as if you just did something completely alien

 and    most of the time it’s really subtle                                              I grow distant      and
 and   you likely don’t fully notice it                                                   I can’t explain it      and
 just   think I’m a little awkward                                                            I don’t want to     but
  but   fun,                                                                I don’t understand what’s missing      for
  but   then you get to know me                                      I feel like I’m still the same      but
 and   I’m really amazing                                                                                       I’m not      and
  the   ways I speak and think about the word                                   I’m often quiet      but
  it’s   so far from anything you’ve ever met                  I’ve been that often before     but
  I’m   so unique                                                                                                 I’m distant     but 
 and   then it’s been a year                                                               that’s nothing new     and
 and   it’s not going away                                                                       then I pull away     and
 and   it’s like I see the world differently                                              can’t explain it     and
 and   it’s not so cute anymore                                                                     it breaks up     and
 and   there seems to be very real life concepts                                                                  and
that   I don’t really get                                                                  I meet someone new      and
    or   don’t want to talk about                                                             it’s really subtle     and
    or   know to talk about                                  most likely you don’t really notice it     but
    or   the uniqueness has turned to oddness over time it wasn’t until I met you     who
 and   then the fighting starts                                                                    could see me  
 and   I’m really stubborn                                                    through the foggy mirror  
 and   can see it from your perspective              knew I needed to see myself first  
 and   it’s great                                                                             helped me understand  
 but   so                                                                                                how an Autistic life  
           something is missing                                                             can look so similar  
 and   the fighting continues                                                  while being so different  
 and   it gets worse                                                      it’s not like we’ve figured it out  
 and   it breaks up                                                              we’ve just found a squeegee  
                                                                                      to try and better clear the mirror  

Troels Steenholdt Heiredal (b. 1984, he/him/they) is an Autistic / neuroqueer artist and architect examining the differences between explaining and exploring disability. He grew up in Toftlund, Denmark, and currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in PLAT Journal 13, Star 82 Review, Ranger Magazine, Taipei Poetry Collective, arq: Architectural Research Quarterly, Vallum Magazine, Frazzled Lit, Wishbone, and Otherwise Magazine. www.troelsheiredal.com | @t.heiredal on IG

 

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Mai-Linh Hong

Third Country Resettlement

“From its inception / writing was always a preparation. / For loss.” —Dao Strom

then find                     your one                    last 
live                               self                              hiding 
shelter                         its body                     in your palm                          

hold it                          closer than                a passport
carry it                        dearer than               permission

next                             draw                            a line 
beyond rubble          river or hills               beyond even 
night                           then cross it              (your horizon)
whisper                      run                                 til you fly

this is                          how we will                belong 
to a place                    an idea                        if we can

only after                    will there be              time                
to call / recall             ones                             left / lost 

&   l e t    t h e i r    n a m e s    w i l d    m a r c h    a c r o s s    y o u r    t o n g u e

if there is                    such a                          when 
that is                          where                          we shall live

Airport

Light falls upon the path before us, a gray-white lattice. In my mind, the scene rattles as in movies just before the spaceship lands. A man shields his eyes with an arm and a woman aims her pupilless orbs. In reality, your eyes shut. You refuse to see beyond our feet. You gather our bags from tarmac. One with a broken handle, you tuck into the crook of your left arm and press against your side. You hook the other over your right shoulder and, tilting against the weight, take my hand. We walk lop-sided towards the airplane, me a half-step behind. I am little. So little I do not recognize myself. The mother inside me draws a curtain to guard us from the light.

•     •     •     •     •     •     •         •     •     •     •     •  

Some people claim to lose time in situations such as this. I think it is only that we cannot drink time, so it evaporates. It is said the brain declines the senses. Sight and sound, taste and smell, all become spirits and fly. The brain is busy pumping the machine, airing the heart. The brain is too busy to herd wayward neurons. I imagine my brain cells as children at a party, wild, unwieldy. Marbles, clattering noisily away. An open jar of sauce flung across the counter, impossible to re-collect. Moments count themselves like rosary and seem to disappear. Which were real? Which only metaphor? Years later, I find a bead, lint-covered, in the corner of a pocket. I stare, then pop it in my mouth and swallow.

 

Mai-Linh Hong is a Vietnamese American refugee poet and literary scholar based in California’s Central Valley. Her poetry is forthcoming or published in Copper Nickel, The Minnesota Review, Wildness, They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Writers, and elsewhere. Essays appear in Amerasia, Verge, The Account, and other journals and edited volumes. She is coauthor and coeditor of The Auntie Sewing Squad Guide to Mask Making, Radical Care, and Racial Justice (University of California Press, 2021). In 2025, she is a Tin House Scholar and Susanna Colloredo Fellow in Environmental Writing at the Vermont Studio Center.

 

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samodH Porawagamage

Midnight Marching for Palestine in Lubbock, Texas

October 2023

Lankans say holy beings get down from trees
at midnight and roam looking for souls to save.
Something got into our heads during that early
Halloween party. Maybe the weed synchronized with
mindless drinking and hours of nonsense:
somebody’s ex’s breakup, the new assistant prof,
my curried cashews, digging up the soil
to determine the cause for my peace lily’s demise.
Then flashed the random memory
of a road trip. Motorcycles. Che Guevara.
Bob Marley and reggae and how nobody
gives a fuck about reggae
in West Texas. Jehan was about to ping
an Uber home. Maybe he did.

Why was Sameer making out
with my doorknob? I didn’t even know
we were playing truth or dare.
Still no takers into our wild cheers
of “make-out, make-out,” who mixed
Ceasefire Now! Maybe Amir, maybe
his teenage girlfriend who wasn’t even
supposed to be drinking. In no time,

Kavin was banging the door demanding
a ceasefire! Tanisha lit up a scented Walmart
candle to make it a vigil. Few had the presence
of mind to grab their shoes, but the moon nodded
as we marched through the street. A stray dog joined.
A midnight skater stopped by and asked
if we’re all right. I gave him a hug.

As we hobbled past a fenced yard,
somebody switched on the lights
and rushed out with a rifle
primed in his hands. I froze
and pictured my brain splatter
on the sidewalk like graffiti.
He screamed and screamed.
But the others drowned out his voice
and marched on without noticing.

When the dark cavities of our eyes
finally seemed to lock, he lowered
the gun and nodded in their direction.
“Heck, don’t see why the great state
of Texas can’t form our own country,” he said.

 

Perfect British English – Waiting Room Edition

As part of my IELTS exam, I am here
to converse in perfect British English
with an Oxbridge-certified examiner,
waiting thirty minutes past
my scheduled interview time.
The well-travelled macho dude
who went in before me stumbles
back from the testing arena
pulling his hair. He’s lost
both muscle and color, his steely face
a messed-up toilet bowl.

The girl after me is mumbling something
paganist under a spell of demonic
possession. I eavesdrop hard and finally
make out two versions from intonation:
interrogator and tortured prisoner.
A useful tactic for the CIA to adopt…

The magazine on the coffee table advertises
English courses of all sorts from kindergarten
to the top executive, and I hope they’d expand
the catalogue for the centenarian in his deathbed
as a final blessing. A TV screen plays
countless testimony of the saved. This eclectic
mix of black, brown, and yellow faces
can’t be more blessed to learn from
our perennial white masters. Light shines
on them from above. God’s back in His
civilizing mission, but this time making us
pay out of our pockets.

Yet it bothers me not to see a single
portrait of Her Majesty, the Queen.
Or her governors of Ceylon, so that
I could recall their names we immortalized
in school, fearing the teacher’s cane
would come down like thunder
to darken our brown skin more.
As soon as my unworthy eyes
behold her grace, I vow to bow
my loyal commonwealth head!

A young local to usher me in as if
let alone that twenty feet, I’d lose
my bearings. A white dame as expected
with her name on a golden plaque
greets me: “Good Afternoon!
I’m Mrs. Jacqueline White.”
The clock behind her shows 11.35.
I waver between afternoon and morning.
After all, the English are light years
ahead of us, so I mutter an apology
for not setting my watch to their time.
“Excuse me, Some-Wood, please speak loudly,”
she instructs for my own good.
Both my hands go unto my hair.

                 IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is a so-called standardized test 
                 of English proficiency for “non-native speakers” of English. It is masterminded and           
                 administered by the unholy trinity of British Council, International Development               
                 Program (IDP), and Cambridge Assessment English. The U.S. equivalent of IELTS is         
                 TOEFL.

 

samodH Porawagamage is the author of becoming sam (Burnside Review Press) and All the Salty Sand in Our Mouths (forthcoming from Airlie Press). His writing focusses on the Sri Lankan Civil War, poverty & underdevelopment, colonial & imperial atrocities, and disproportionate impacts of climate change on rural & marginalized communities. These poems are from his manuscript brown mongrel, which is about a brownie’s tragicomic misadventures around the world while also being a celebration of brownness.

 

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Noemi Veberic Levovnik

Worship: The Gospel Of Pussy

Prologue: Listen.

The Pussy wants you to enter this deep dark tunnel,
Through which you pass           To the Other side
In there                                          You are held completely.

Then She wants                           Your Fire             
Deep, Primordial                         Blazing up houses,                
Swallowing everything              The end                                  
of all things.                                  Complete Destruction            
of what is holding you                Back
and then Love.

Coming from your chest           Powerful                                  Mountain stream                    
River

Such a                                             strong Current                      It takes everything
Your Heart                                     pouring out                            Love                                       
Tearing down                                Walls                                        Flooding
All over.

Breathe in                                      And Out.                                
Close your eyes.                             
Open your mouth.                        

Pussy is a Temple                         with Honey door.             
You lick the door frame,             You bite you eat, Honey
It is made of honeycomb            And halva         
it is made of                                   Baklava
It is a big temple                          Of sweets and nuts
You can just go and                     Eat
And when you close                    Your eyes,
Warm Honey     Is dripping       On your eyelids.
You open                                        Warm honey
Fills your                                        Mouth.                            
That is Pussy                                She will feed you 

Epilogue:
Worship                                         in her. 
Worship                                         her.

 

In Liquid

Liquid is so important to me these days.
The slow flowing of water
The sounds that trickle through my toes.
I observe my body in the bathtub
and desire it intensely.

My softness. I can enjoy looking
and not need to be looked at.

I’m a sea creature,
watching Fran Lebowitz in my bath at midnight.

I feel ecstatic to be part of the same group of people.
The poetic world of the lesbian,
almost mythical creature to me.
I appreciate it all,
but I am especially delighted by the sensation in my mind of a woman so comfortable
in a suit.
Her shirt has shiny cufflinks on it
and they are quite big.

These women with swagger –
In some sort of imaginary mouth,
a transcendent sensual mind space
I enjoy chewing on the gestures, fabrics, and shapes of swagger.

The queer femininity is a fine smoke of a cigarillo
deeply and pleasantly inhaled, or the moment of coming with the dildo inside me,
on top of my lover with a tight touch.
Something ethereal
but still having
a wonderfully palpable texture.
Touch, taste, smell, emotion, feeling? They all combine into one.

The color of this bathwater is a soothing soft golden green,
transparent dress for my nakedness.
I turn around in it. My phone screen is fogging up.

The blue windows and yellow-orange lights,
my big city at night.
Surrounded by millions of people, but the street is empty.
Alone, but not lonely.
Held by the sensations,
filled with my experience,
a rhythm of breath.

The water soaks off layers of my past,
a new skin is emerging.
Can I slide and turn around this white tub with my wet slippery skin?
Soft joy and the hardness of the tub so good against it.
The neverending warmth of the water
enveloping me,
am I inside my own belly?
Pregnant with myself, a grown woman?
Or perhaps still waiting to be born?

My shape delights me and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Bathing in my desire.

When I touch my skin,
pale in the soft light of the LEDs from above the sink,
I am a mermaid in the city
and I only exist
for my very own eyes.

How will I sleep, when I am so hot?

 

Noemi is a queer, interdisciplinary artist from Slovenia, currently based in Berlin. She explores themes of embodiment, sapphic eroticism, LGBTQAI+ identities, and power dynamics. Her work has been showcased at the MSUM (Museum of Contemporary Art, Slovenia), the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, and many others. Noemi’s poetry and performance were published in Nothing Personal?! Essays on Affect, Gender, and Queerness (b_books, 2023) and her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with Black Box in Slovenia. Find more at noemivebericlevovnik.org, subscribe to her Substack at noemika.substack.com/, and explore the ruins of her online shop at noemika.com. You can also follow her current adventures (for now) on Instagram @noemkica.

 

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MK Kuol

At least one person died, seven were wounded and 14 others abducted in an attack on a passenger bus in South Sudan on Tuesday night (The East African, Garang Malak, 25, Sept. 2024)

at the bus station, i stand at the queue’s tail, a nagging premonition
heavy on my heart’s lap. every now & then, eloquent images, greased
with raw blood, beaming on the screen of my yeasty mind. this premonition,
finger-traced, flowers not only from the distressing fact, along highways,
these days, death waylays wayfarers with gritted teeth & anxious appetite.
this premonition, finger-traced, flowers from the heart-tearing reality
that not once, not twice, not even thrice but times beyond the count of my fingers,
this road has rinsed her mouth with blood of faces i was familiar with.
last night, i had bad-dreamed. but what do i now remember of the dream?
that the road shapeshifted into a giant Kalashnikov & retched bullets
into my lungs? that a purple-eyed ghost had charged toward me &
suck my bones dry of blood with its glassed lips? that i was trampled upon
until my mushed body spilled on the road’s face? i came face to face
with the man holding the manifest. between breaths & heartbeats,
a hushed hunch, that this might be my last journey, lurks as i absent-mindedly
render to the manifest-man my particulars. the manifest-man hands me back
a receipt with my names & nimule, my destination, misspelt nimuli, scrawled atop.
i make way for the next in queue, a middle-aged man eaten out of shape
that the shapes of his bones clearly marked out in his loosely hanging skin.
half an hour later, after taking our seats, the bus gasps, lurches forward
toward a road seducing it to its warm arms. & i, like everyone else aboard,
align with the star of death. a man to my left, with a weary sigh, mutters
something about how bus-fares today could buy at least two buses two years ago.
everyone mutters something in agreement but a pale-faced woman―with eyes still
& stagnant like a dead tilapia’s―upfront, bee-busily tucking herself into the pockets
of her own prayers for reasons best known to her. thereafter, a stout silence swilled
every sound but tyres’ screech & groan engine’s. a fragment off what i once read,
that silence is to death what flash is to thunder―a harbinger, surfaced on the waters
of my silence. i try to speak to dispel that dreadful spell. but my breath-burnt voice―
sucked of its life―unhooks from its groove, its indigo ashes salting my mouth
with the raw taste of self-pity. & in an eye-blink, i find myself, gripped, between
the teeth of last night’s bad dream.  the road shape-shift into a giant Kalashnikov & retch
bullets into my lungs. a purple-eyed ghost charges toward me & suck my bones dry
of blood with its glassed lips. & fleeing feet trample upon me until my mushed body spills
on the road’s face. i try to pray to atem, my mother’s god, to appease Kalashnikov’s rage
& morph bullets into smooth breezes upon kissing my skin. but it was too late. the rage
had long, long recast my body into a red-river caressing the road’s asphalt-pimpled face.

 

MK Kuol is a poet who is South Sudanese, now residing in Juba. His publishing credits include two chapbooks of poetry, Twice the Size of Sun (Poemify Publishers, 2024) and Song Her Thighs Sing (INKspired NG, 2024). His literary awards include the African Authors Honoree Award, Pengician Poetry Chapbook Prize (runner up), Arting Arena chapbook competition (longlist), among others. His work has appeared in Beach Chair Press, Spillwords.com, Ikike Arts, Arting Arena, Pulp Lit, and Port Harcourt Literary Review.

 

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Angela Sim

개꿈

아빠 Appa

Like      a flapping dream
              you are the wind
              I could not polish

Your black hair, cawing
to cigarette smoke—
              the breath
              of paper bodies

In the cloud’s                wet mouth
you are a bony
celebration!                  Before you sleep

you tell me      the word for snow
is “eyes”

 

 

Glossary:

개꿈 (pronounced “gaekkum”) is Korean for “dog dream.” In Korean culture, a “dog dream” is a dream without special meaning or content.

아빠 (pronounced “appa”) is Korean for “dad.”

 

Angela Sim (she/her) is a Korean American writer with work forthcoming or published in Frontier Poetry, ANMLY, Hobart, Scapegoat Review and more. She attends George Mason University and is in her senior year of pursuing a BA degree in English.

 

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