Sweaty Summer Bodies

By Ann McGriffin Each unmistakable odor unique to us all…what we ate for dinner the night before,garden onions, freshly butchered beef, strong sweet tea,an absent morning shower,it all oozes from our pores.Whispering our private novelit mingles together beside the Linton pool. Happy to escape from Mother’s gaze.Dirty words create an imagined worldof grown-ups with cigarettes

insecurities

By Leslie MacGillivray My inability to drown out the overwhelming authority of my inner voice has enabled it to have a choke hold around my words for most of my life.  I thought it simply must be a character trait of being a woman it certainly has been a necessity for being seen as a good daughter. A protection against those

70th Birthday

By Bonnie Maurer Wave after wavewe leap crashing surf,let our bodies flap and flailand swallow the sea—allbut swallowed by the sea—studentsto frothing power. At 70, 10 or 21,we can know our lessons well, tossedsideways like the moon snail.You and I sit together, my love, and watch the ocean. May the percussionof wind and water never cease.

dissonance

CW: mental illness By Jazmine M. Lampley The bed creaks as she tosses and turns. The pillows, though supposed to be fluffy and comforting, leave her head as if she is laying on bricks. Her own body is something she can’t rest in, skin prickling and crawling though nothing is there. She bats away the

Bicycle

By Katherine Mansfield It’s still there, where I left it, leaning / against the green wall, greens growing in and around it. I haven’t / put foot to pedal since you left here, since I left the bike / alone here, like me without you. / Would you call it a stationary bike since it’s

In Response to Myself in the Garden While Dwelling in Grief

CW: If you’re Christian, the poem is heretical. By Keira Perkins I am the god of small things.I am the god of slugs,And spiders,And bees.I rescue those that creep in the dirt from steel bladesI lift those that scuttle from deep and impassable watersAnd those that pierce my skin and draw my blood, live.They live.I

Unsafe

TW: PTSD related to anti-black racism By Kerry Jo Bell I feel unsafeIsn’t that every black woman’s woeEvery time she opens the doorAnd enters this mediocre white mans worldThey deserve to be in a cageYet they roam the streetsIn their white sheetsDisguises as police uniforms Black. Woman. AngryThe holy trinityMakes me scaryBecause I embrace all

the flamed mermaid

By Michelle Rochniak the flaky bones of ocean monsters’ preysift through the currents to my doorstep.the firewood of the merpeople village burns:opal-toned marrow ash. they said fire girls can’t have scaly tails;when i flap my flukes at the sun,their cerulean turns scarlet. it’s funny how scorpio soundslike a fire sign. i collect the bonesto earn

What is the Body but an Instrument?

*CW: mentions of self-harm and death By T.C. Anderson How long would it take to scratch my skin until I began to feel bone,to pluck the tendons like guitar strings andhear my body’s sweet melodies?For what is the body but an instrument of destruction and chaos,a tool to inflict its misery on the worldwith hope

Dig

TW: Mention of blood By Kelli Lage I dig out parts of you I don’t need any more / parts made up of your eye color and flint they mixed with / and the day your lip was bloodied by demons of your own making / still you hunt for glory in my dreamland /