POSTS

Destroy me June Jordan I need it

Don’t let the violence stay inside your body

I often open around this time,
enough hurt pulsing behind my ears

how aquatic of me
to invite you to my body

I could ask the Ocean how much money it would cost to
gun down intruders–

KP Kaszubowski (she/her) is a poet, filmmaker, playwright, and writing instructor. Her debut poetry collection somnieeee was published in 2019 by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, and her debut feature film Ringolevio premiered in 2020 at Dances With Films in Los Angeles. Her previous poetry has been published (as Kristin Peterson) by pitymilk press, Great Lakes Review, dancing girl press, Juked, Flag + Void, ICHNOS, and elsewhere. She is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Eastern Washington University where she teaches rhetoric, composition, and creative writing courses and is pursuing a graduate certificate in Disability Studies.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

adumbrate

8  24  2019 
on a lightless night elijah
mcclain 23-year-old black 
masseur and violinist 

who plays for sheltered animals
listens to music hums walks home
from a store after buying tea 
anemic he wears an open- 

faced ski mask for warmth 911
brown caller thinks he looks weird  
suspicious 140 
pounds 5-foot-6 night in white 

aurora colorado black 
innocence guitarist walking 
sketchy unarmed not accused
of any crime denver blue line

where domestic terror foments
three achromatic officers
tackle elijah to ground 
chokehold him down in that special 

suite of white hell reserved for black 
men my name’s elijah mcclain
i can’t breathe please stop—they do not 
three depigmented law men 

two of whom are former u s a
marines randy roedema and 
nathan woodyard plus one jason 
rosenblatt cuff black elijah’s

hands behind his back i was just 
going home i’m an introvert 
i’m just different i have no gun 
i don’t do that stuff i don’t do 

any fighting i don’t kill flies 
i don’t eat meat forgive me he
vomits gasps for air i‘m sorry 
i wasn’t trying to do that 

i can’t breathe correctly 
this night sans light hushed white hot fascist
winds whirl alt right blood rushes swirls
blanched paramedic jeremy 

cooper takes lieutenant peter
cichuniec’s order injects 
slender elijah mcclain with
500 mg ketamine 

post heavy sedative dose
on his vomit elijah chokes 
heart attacks declared brain dead
pray tell how the hell did all three

body cams fall off during 
the arrest our best supremacists
three more on duty officers 
erica marrero jaron

jones and kyle dittrich arrive 
at the scene where elijah was stopped
they pose for selfies smile laugh joke 
they reenact the same chokehold 

used on elijah by righteous
sworn officers of law jason 
rosenblatt even sends ha-ha texts
mocks black elijah’s death 

blue passionfruit

in mirrors mama looks back at 
me i’m older than she was when 
she died in february my
head shaved for months years i wear black 

my soul in freefall through foothills
tall sahara roses fry in
triple digit may june heat i
wrestle pen to paper to purge

for black elijah mcclain whom
three white colorado cops and
two white paramedics slayed
cold ketamine injected

under a headlight moon indicted
for the death they mocked 
my stomach churns a sea tide turns 
far right far white storms forewarning

civil war looms smoking gun grey 
sky red mars black sun rising white
supremacy seeks to suppress 
the vote semi-welcoming war-

driven afghans as white border
boys beat back expel black haitians 
catastrophe-driven they’ve walked
apocalyptic miles dreamed post-

apocalyptic nightmares a
white idaho woman confessed
no masks were worn at her baby 
shower she caught covid gave 

birth on a ventilator they cut 
the baby out amid vaccine
hesitancy hoarding unhoused 
neighbors can’t quarantine friends need 

healthcare chemo nurses drag ass
to therapists we’re unhinged i 
leave food money notes blue kisses 
ruby orchids at their doors black

rickia young today received
two million dollars after she 
was pulled from her car and beaten
by lawless white lawmen sans love

in philadelphia though our
cars are dented swiped swastikaed
keyed we don’t call boise p d 
our olivia lone bear found 

drowned among thousands of amber
black girls gone missing i deep-seed
lily lotus amaryllis
visions of equal justice rise

i see mama’s eyes unflinching 
our voices ring i’m older than
she was in my late september
garden mama looks back at me 

Risë Kevalshar Collins is a writer living in Boise. She studies creative writing at Boise State University where she has served on the editorial staff of Idaho Review. Risë earned an MSW at University of Houston. She holds a BFA in Drama from Carnegie-Mellon University. Her poetry appears in ANMLY, The Indianapolis Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Minnesota Review. Her creative nonfiction appears in Michigan Quarterly Review and is forthcoming in Texas Review. Rise’s fiction appears in The North American Review. You may read and/or listen to Risë read her poetry online in Tupelo Quarterly (“Decrescent Moon” and “Threnody”) and The Indianapolis Review (“Passion Flowers” and “Pauli”).

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

“TRANS GIRLS LOVE KETAMINE”

The city restricts all instruments
but requires its women undress 
skeletons to study their ulterior wounds. 
Still, with death and the blue circling us,
we’re good. We crush pearls into something 
useful; use our nostrils to mark the violence 
of weather. Assessing risk by intensities
of mandarin, lavender, a horse’s musk—
heat stolen and heat returned to the cheeks.
The city bans sorrow, but girls refuse to stop
publicly grieving and pass winter
rewiring loss into music. Risk preserved
in the snow I suck on while the surgeon
shapes me. Godview: determining the shades
of haze laced through. Dreams only shook 
by the shock of sound exiting my mouth
while the mother of nobody pours salt 
where memory sleeps. The city stills until 
we go outside. We greet the snow with 
silence. Go numb when my sisters 
offer to buy me a handgun.

HUMANOID WANDERS LIMANAKIA BEACH 

Daphne DiFazio is a poet, performer, and graduate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was an OMAI–First Wave scholar. She has won poetry prizes from the Crab Creek Review, Mikrokosmos Journal, and Epiphany Magazine, in addition to various university awards and prizes. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming, in Yemassee, bath magg, Foglifter, and ANMLY, among other publications. For more about her, visit daphnedifazio.com.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Which of course makes me a hypocrite for only falling in love with people unbothered by clothing tags

As a child buying new clothes I had to be told repeatedly to note just the fit and material when asked if I was comfortable, because otherwise (and really, even then) I’d jump to no, I don’t want it, because XL (100% Polyester) was digging into my back, and the security tag into my side, and no amount of exasperated assurances that they can and will be removed would be enough for me. But the truth was that I just didn’t trust my judgment, because what if the dress still sucked even without the tags? Then I’d never hear the end of how it was a complete waste of time and money, and nobody needs that, so it just seemed easier to fixate on the ephemeral scratchiness and say no altogether. I mean for god’s sake, I was 6, and $44.95 could probably buy a house. And I mean for god’s sake, I am 30, and what if I looked past the surface irritants and took a leap and it turned out to be a complete waste of time, honey? 

Twice my mother doesn’t speak her mind

I

I am washing my hands for the fifth time this afternoon. While they announce the loosened restrictions and celebrate The End of Covid, I receive a delivery from a polite courier with his mask hanging below his nose, and now I am washing my hands as if they are stained with blood and faeces, like I am trying to polish my bones. My mother looks like she wants to comment on the handwashing, but all she says is “Remember to drink some water.” I will, right after I almost apply for this “work from home” job that will turn out to require 10% international travel and regular in-person meetings with clients. It’s been two years since I’ve left the house for fun. Sometimes I think about that Friday I cut my lunch short so I could stop by the Kuan Yin temple ten minutes from my office to get my fortune told with sacred oracle lots. Did you know they call it lottery poetry? I didn’t, until I was writing this poem.

II

My face does that thing it does where people can’t tell how old I am, which is a good thing in this case because nobody needs to know I am three from thirty waiting seven hours in the cold to get barrier at a gig. The wind is chilly enough that my hair looks good, but damp enough that running my fingers through will rip strands out. My mother drops off grilled fish from a fancy restaurant down the road and cutlery from the hotel, and comes back again later to hold my spot in line so I can do a toilet run. The person behind me remarks that my sister is nicer than hers would ever be. Some girl on Instagram with a seated ticket/more sense than me asks if I’m the one in the leather jacket. Some guy who looks like he should be backstage with the band joins the queue. A few metres away, some bomb-sniffing dog does its job. The lead singer/love of my life doesn’t reply to my DM, but he does accidentally drool from opening his mouth too wide to catch my favourite note, and nobody but me and two other girls at the front notice his surreptitious glance down at his shirt. I don’t remind him of it when he comes out to meet fans after the show, and he thanks me for following this leg of the tour. My mother says he looks best in our last photograph together. 

Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, Brave Voices Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @poetrybyallison or at allisonthung.com.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Arrival Form

                                   erasure from Government Questionnaire, Ellis Island

            Manifest how 
                      you are.
                      Are you 
                                    at last    placed?

            Name      your country 
                                             as your    destination. 
                                                        Is your passage
                                                                      America n?

                                                          Are you 
                                                                        a yes     or no?

                                                                                     What     America 
                                                                                                    will you     form?

                                                                                                     All is yours. 
                                                                                                                  Color     your eyes.
                                                                                     Do you 
                                                                                                     Identify                     ?

Twenty Miles from Mexico

I am a flag 
        I stand for 
              water, I wave a faucet 
                            with one drop.

                            I am blue 
where nothing but sky is blue. 

              I wear the wind.  I tell people
                            come here, survive! 
  All I have is light, 
              holes of light, 

                            I am 
                            jumbled, un-symboled.
              The desert rips me apart
              I am eaten up by the desert.

A young woman drinks drinks      drinks.  
                                                     An American boy
                            shoots slurred, Stay the fuck out 
                            of my country

                            Where I fly 
doesn’t feel like anyone’s 
                                      country.

Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry and the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. Her poems have recently appeared in Saranac Review, Poet Lore, and Sugar House Review. She is an advocate for the homeless in her hometown, Boston.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Cyborg attending mermaid festival without inserting a breathing language

yes, my bones raced 
the ocean tides to a mermaid 
festival. yes, i activated 
the swimming tools; 
sniffing autocorrected 
to sinking. 
instruction: shutdown 
to deactivate lungs.
then, wake up to gills 
under your ribs. 
prosthetist, you inserted 
suffocating button 
instead of surfing. 
scientist, i crashed 
when the ocean hosted 
a bloodbath. the truth is: 
my eyes water the sky
whenever i restart. 
it’s the third night
the moon is drowning 
in my mouth.
& you’re floating in your bones.
gravity hasn’t found you yet.
beloved bion, you need
help to shut down.

Zaynab Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian poet, digital artist and photographer from Bobi. She is a member of Hilltop Creative Art Abuja, and a Medical Laboratory Science student of Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto. Her poems are published and forthcoming in Kalahari Review, Isele Review, Asterlit, Paddler Press, Olney Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Lunaris Review, Rigorous Magazine, Olit Magazine, TST Review, and elsewhere. She tweets @ZainabBobi.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Readings in Translation

Pet Sitting

I was mostly in the room reading in the afternoons. She would bark when the floor tremors as trucks pass by the four-lane Main Street outside. I would sit in the kitchen to calm her down. I needed to rest my eyes anyway. I took a shower, when I came out, she was chewing her leash and the rubber mat within her reach. The first time we went out, she was quick. Around 3 P.M., I think I need some sun as well. I bought a chair outside first, went back to for my laptop and Shelby. I sat and tied her leash on my armrest. She was walking around the small stony yard, making do.

I was writing an experimental story in response to a call for submissions for anthology of political speculative fiction. This is my first serious effort to write again. I felt I needed to insert being in Canada somehow. That’s just what writers do. The story is made up of book reviews and ends at the preface. About dictators being resurrected, history being repeated, and places in the world being found. Shelby eventually stared at me while I type, her face leaning on my right arm. This was what I was missing.

They arrived Sunday evening a bit after dinner. Exhausted, but with tourist glows on their faces. They asked if me and Shelby are now best friends. I wouldn’t take it that far. Everyone said goodbye to get ready for Monday. They asked me to try the cheese bagels they bought. I got twenty-five bucks for my services, which I genuinely refused. No this is how we do it, they insisted. The next day, I went to a bookstore in Westdale to buy a used copy of Fredric Jameson’s book on science fiction. 

 

Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Ani, Katitikan, Loch Raven Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, Dx Machina, and elsewhere. Recently his poems are included in the collections Sobbing in Seafood City (Sampaguita Press, 2022) and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He can be found on Instagram at @jacob_laneria, and on Twitter at @JLaneria. He lives near Iloilo City.

 

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO

Ballet Slippers

On Eid in Tucson, I paint my turmeric-stained fingernails pink, so I can meet my friends. Under a bottle brush tree with the flow of the wind, people, a landscaper tinkering with a cactus behind my station on a concrete bench, the city debris sticks to my nails and fossilizes as I blow on the wet paint. Preserves the day, the city, the low air quality warning, the carbon from the towers of the largest employer in the city that makes missiles, missiles that are probably in my country right now, my other country, my actual country. And maybe pollen from mesquite flowers and Japanese privet and the long orange flowers that hummingbirds love. Maybe a hummingbird’s spit. So I walk down the square of shops glittering in the sun— there I am in the coffee shop’s dark windows, breasts rounded by a Victoria’s Secret bra, face under a hat that keeps my skin beige, not my subcontinental farming ancestors’ dark, and with this face and these hands, these fossils at the ends of my fingers, I feed my friends. The last little Cinnabon Delight we split four ways, lick its creamy filling off my pinky, eat the pollen, the missile dust. “You’re dressed like a lesbian’s upscale apartment,” my friends tell me, and I wanted to match the desert, but even this is funny, how I didn’t even have to try. Like how I’m afraid of skin cancer, but even this will make my mother happy, my mother who wants from me, the colorist brand of respectability. Like mosquitoes in amber, the empire lives in my nails, dulls the lacquer of layers of Ballet Slippers— the Queen of England’s favorite nail polish.  

Dure Ahmed is an immigrant Muslim writer from Pakistan. Currently an MFA student at the University of Arizona, they have work appearing, or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, and The Lumiere Review. Follow her on Twitter @dure_ahmed.

 BACK TO ISSUE

 BACK TO FOLIO