GASTROPODA

It’s been many years since I’ve asked the idea of god to work for me. Like when I observed a finch drink from a teacup the other day in the neighbor’s backyard. A teacup left outside all winter on a table, forgotten, unnoticed, except by the chirping, suburban finch who, descending from a nearby poplar to perch on its weathered rim, tips her head up and down to reach the little splash of recent rainwater on the bottom, tasting, for a moment, the cold swee

A hot summer day, my head a wet melon. As I sip cranberry juice on ice Theodore Roethke opens the screen door and sits beside me. For someone who has been dead for decades, he’s as articulate as ever. I ask him how his poems are coming along. He says a few are almost in bloom. I have some of my own that have buds— sometimes they blacken and die. I offer him juice. He says he’d prefer a drink. Oddly, I can offer none as I haven’t gotten to the liquor store yet. He p

We run like racehorses: press ourselves tight to the rail, push against the stream of traffic, blow strong and heavy. A check on the rein to keep us steady. On the turn I slip, lose a hindleg to the thin gleam of ice which surfaces the mud. Slow down! My heart thuds, last night’s dream working itself loose like a shoe: a wild horse in my house, a biter, untamed and uncouth. May Grier is from and lives in London, UK. She has had poetry published in Ink Sweat and Tears and The

Our lives packed into storage boxes, the heat wave lasting all week and into next, moths feasting opportunistically on my sweaters like lye burning through the valleys of a topographical map, the drip drip drip of it eating into carpet fibers, my tongue unable to find a home in my mouth, you’re gonna get caught eventually, but maybe that’s kinda the point—it's nice to know someone’s watching over you, even if it’s just the loss prevention guy at Target. Hana Damon-Tollenaere

Microorganisms bathed in an array of stars twinkling gas warming my body as if I too am a constellation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ranch If ranch dressing were a place, it would be the opposite of a place— it wouldn’t be a farm, or a ranch even, but a warm home on a warm day, when the heat outside is cleaner, more forgiving than the sticky inside where forever a cool breeze is less artificial than air con

Pied and light-footed, known by its two shades. White among corvids, dark among doves. Nesting in a ribcage of mud and twigs. Never...

Suffer with me. However fast we Run we will never Reach the sea. Suffer with me. This is a strange Place, a hard Place full of Sadness...

It slides down like regret, coated in the aftertaste of another sleepless night, and I wonder if pain is just another way to measure...

When My Dentist Tells Me I Might Lose a Tooth I think Finally—this is the perspective I’ve been looking for . Not the tall guy with the...

Beckoning in silver bark that defies the spring snow, She shows me tender unfurling catkin cascading from her skin, preparing for seed, ...

cabbage, tomato, and rice topped with orange cheese; tongue burnt in a bite. Terri Gower is an English as an Additional Language Teacher...

yeah, tracy. as if it’s a place. the poem doesn’t have a soul. any blood. plasmid, scion of slugs. not the religious or lyrical heart....

the tree line is an old eyebrow behind a faceless snow. a truck swerves to miss someone fallen, shovel flung in the air. the flakes try...

Holiday Socks Sitting alone again, in my apartment, my reflection in the turned-off television. The red tips of my holiday socks (raptors...

An outlaw, a swindling hero, I was also just a woman. Born with all the privilege a girl could have, I looked up at the evening sky for a...

Why don’t you tell us so tell us so we know where you come from so we know how to talk to you so we know what you do for a living so do...

after Hanif Abdurraqib God, I can no longer tell the difference between divine intervention and wishful thinking. Perhaps that’s proof of...

Move through your grief as if through water. Clench and kick and tread through its density, feel the salt wash over you, sometimes a...

Faces chalk white and bone, we sit behind the casket, the sorrow in the room enough to cradle our bodies the same way the marble sky...

You’re asking to check my pulse by peeling back my skin and ribs and feeling for the beat yourself; you’re asking for two-in-the-morning...