TRANSFIGURATION / KOI
CLETUS CROW
i miss my
old fourteenth floor
apartment
no one could see
that high up
OMAHA
JACOB PATRICK BROOKS
I fork the $60 over and chainsmoke in the dark. A bus rumbles into the parking lot, yellow LED letters spell “OMAHA” across the front. The headlights are bright, blinding me as the bus whips around into the boarding area out back. I cut through the station. The man that sold me the ticket is asleep at his computer, I can hear him snoring from 20 feet away.
LIKE SEPTEMBER.
I’M SO AMERICAN
LIZZIE SCHEADER
HAVING SEX FOR DINNER
WHILE BETWEEN
CHECKS.
WE LEAVE
SMELLING LIKE
EACH OTHER,
AS THE OUTSIDE
WORLD
BEGINS TO SMELL
LIKE SEPTEMBER.
MXYZPTLK + PANOPTICON
UZODINMA OKEHI
Following this same guy. Traipsing, loping walk, his two-hundred dollar hiking boots, bobbing, knit cap, bouncy 7am mushroom coffee motor, ruddered by his still-wet, silly little ponytail . . .
THERE WILL SOON COME A DAY
AMALIA MAIRET
Summer is ending and everyone is gone, for good this time. Like every year, I’ve been trying to write about leaving. For months it’s been bubbling away to no avail. In May, I made excuses. I’m in the moment still, haven’t left yet.
AT THE LOCAL POOL I AM
MAX SCHWARTZ
pepper sprayed with sunscreen
on top of a swim shirt,
knowing more facts than a six year old
should about youth melanoma
and other various skin cancers
spouted from an anxious, pale,
jewish mother
POEMS FROM JESUSLAND
MAXWELL NORMAN
resonance.
resonance x doyalike
resonance x genesis x not allowed
resonance (slowed + reverb)
resonance.
SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING
CASPER KELLY
I ruined a funeral
On the Family Guy role play server
Facebook memorial
Pages go on and on
ZUIDBROEK
KAT MULLIGAN
He was crucified on the Lenin statue in Zuidbroek.
I rushed from Amsterdam when the news declared it, cold as anemia, and left his body to sag on thousands of VCRs. I packed nothing but a gum wrapper in my haste, and when I arrived in Zuidbroek, there he faithfully was—stretched across Volodya’s saluting arm, his palms good for nothing but nails.
THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ME
JACK LUDKEY
There was a cowboy that lived in New York City. He was what Latinos called a bad hombre. He had a six-shooter that always, always shot every shot. If he didn’t hit his target, he would always hit something. For a normal bueno person, this heightened risk of hitting an innocent woman or child would make this weapon unconscionable. But this was a bad, bad hombre.
TONIGHT WE WON’T EVER DIE
JON LEON
We were at a dance party
It was like a beach party
Sometime around the time
You were single and raging
Before performing gave you a stroke
APOCALYPSING
M. ELIZABETH SCOTT / JACK SCHAAF
In Apocalypsing, M. Elizabeth Scott’s visions hum with heat: the organic heat of the flame flower’s sleep, the biological heat of bacterial growth, the liberating heat of apocalyptic flame. Her poems bask in the heat of the luminous and dread the silent dark.
TWIN GOSSIP
GWEN AUBE
i am flanked by eerily handsome twins
running the new mile end reading series.
one probes me for my lore
--o yea so i’m from windsor,
it’s like south ontario, across from detroit.
i say this every time, centering my proximity
to america—back home this is embarrassing,
but here it plays off with intrigue.
FINGER GUNS
PETER HOPE
Sunlight felt sterile. And it was never quiet, but somehow an odd hush spread through eerie hallways. I’d notice these things while working at a mental hospital. My car sitting idle outside, waiting for me, was a source of reprieve. On break, I’d glide my feet through grass, and bugs would be chirping and buzzing around me.
THE HEART PLEDGES LIKE A CANON / FLOWERS GROW IN THE GUARD TOWER
SAM PINK
A trick you can do is
reverse negatives
by just not continuing them.
You can tie things off like that
it’s hard to explain.
Balance scales instantly.
GOOD LOOKIN’ RIVERBOAT
JACOB SEFERIAN
In the hallways of this pseudo-luxury national chain, the carpet’s swooping pan-European patterns stand still long enough to consider the difference between hotel and motel, and whether it’s as serious a distinction as boat and ship. Then I see the Riverboat, his scalp glistening under chandeliers made of plexiglass.
FATCATMANIA
ALICE MADDOCK
A year ago he died and became very dead and I’ve never once used the phrase passed away, saying passed away fast three times sounds like an Italian fast food chain, I recently stumbled into a Dolly Parton tribute concert that happened to take place in a church and so there was a little less Dolly a little more priest saying, When you explain grief to children, you sometimes say that it’s stripy, and that it’s easy to get stuck on one of the dark stripes, every priest’s special interest being death, but then, eventually, you move along to a lighter stripe, and then back to a dark stripe, and so on, the past year was just that, an overweight stripy cat…
SLOWCORE
AQEEL PARVEZ
sorry there's nothing to write home about / I still fear strangers, the passing faces like mute clock / with age grow more withdrawn / without
LILLY
CHARLIE ZACKS
I put down our dog today. Took her behind the house and held her face in the water bucket.
You, in your sundress on the lawn. The center of the quad. That college was made for you, baby. I watched from afar. We didn’t meet on the lawn. We met at Gary’s. Under the Christmas lights in his backyard. He inherited that house I think. Syracuse looked so good on you, baby. Everything was so new. I guess that’s what it’s like being 18. I only remember you. Everyone was smoking cigs but you. The red and green lights flickered in your eyes. Maybe it was the beer haze, but I remember you smiling at the sky, turning your head, and smiling at me. You, me, the sky. That’s where it started. And it was just like that. Like remembering a dream.
HAPPYFUNLAND
MAXWELL NORMAN
The GameStop at the Poughkeepsie Galleria does not seem to me like the birthplace of any revolution, but I’ve been wrong before. So I drove to the Galleria with my friend Naomi so she could go to Target and I could loiter around one of America’s finest gaming institutions, taking notes and photos, trying to understand how thousands of people have invested their hopes and their money into a GameStop-led collapse. It was the first day above 30 degrees Fahrenheit in fucking forever and I could have been going for a walk or frolicking with my pals, so of course I wasn’t gonna do that, I was gonna go do ethnographic research at a slowly dying mall.