Where I’m From
by Jean Gallagher
Every day the hardlight calls me armored
figure dry land but what about
that bit of ocean inner ear the sea-
salt scaffolding the tiny swing band at the heart
of the commotion making waves of everything.
Delta
by Jean Gallagher
Stream A keeps running into B which keeps
running. Did you hear my rivermouth shouting
where I kept keep turning into something else.
SlaM
by Jean Gallagher
When I slammed down the trees grew
through me except they always had. No
hem just some rough selvage sewn to
all the other buzzing brightnesses that body
I’d learned at some point to call everything else.
What Interruption
by Jean Gallagher
When I say goldrush what I mean is how
the gold rushes into itself how the arrow
that broke me was me how it is ongoing.
The Dwelling
by Lorraine Schein
Snow flickers past the kitchen table,
drifts up the stairs.
The mirror deepens,
splashes.
Voices are coming from my soup.
My spoon is a doll’s head.
My napkin, bloodstained.
Where is the door out,
the black door?
Hidden by dream.
Science Friction
by Lorraine Schein
I was thrown into this whirled.
Born in a storm, during a house.
Later, I found out I was adapted.
But who were my real apparents?
I flew on a moon to the asterisks to find out,
and met my true love in the anomaly,
who told me my sex, and where I could find my real blather.
She was living in the bottom of a teacup, on another planchette.
She was mad to see me.
Ordinary Omens
by Lily Beaumont
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” a local said,
like we were in the first act of some cheesy horror movie,
but I’d read enough to know anomalies
are most dangerous when they’re cliché,
so I considered the hundreds of beached jellyfish—
a funeral spray of cabbageheads, their parasol flounces
primly folded now in death. Rocked by the waves,
the ocean that once swelled and shaped them,
they nudged the city’s sandy shoulders meaningfully,
and it was all a little on the nose, I thought, but no:
Google reassured me that these mass-die offs are nothing
extraordinary, and I was chastened, left to imagine
drifting down the highway, keeping time with horror-
movie man, who’s in the next car over. He smiles,
lazy, back at me, like he knows we’re all sea
monsters an inch above our hearts, relying
on the midnight flow of salt water to spread
our bones like sails into apocalypse.
Predetermination
by Matt Schroeder
some mornings you
struggle to get out of bed
others you wake with holes
in your hands & a puncture
wound in your side spilling
laughter
the almighty
lowercase has filed your
papers under predetermined
& it’s time to be glad
you’re going
any complaints
will be met with swift force
acid reflux in the middle of
the night
a twinge in
the back while trying to stay
healthy
you can only see the
holes when they catch light
a certain way
you only notice
the leaking laughter because it
wheezes out your side as you
attempt joy
lowercase almighty
has been keeping tabs & it’s time
to settle
crack your head terracotta
memorize every word
in the entire good book
once the boulder has reached
the top of the hill
the only thing there is to do
is to watch it roll back down
you’re the boulder
& back down is forever
learn to bask
in the permanent slight
to become the master
of this misfortune
The Skiff
by Laura Shovan
A bridge rose out of fog
like a green heron
that would not
share the river.
I did not see it
until it crossed over,
unwelcome in its nearness.
There was no time
to paddle the boat
in a different direction.
The moment
I had taken to the water
was the moment
I slid into the river’s
outstretched palm.