by Momo Manalang
—for my mother
by Pam Sinicrope
by Sheila Dong
by Kara Knickerbocker
by Ariel Machell
There are no snapdragons to pinch, only sheets
of moss strung up on low-hanging branches
by the river where rocks shine red like meat.
The sun slivers through the veiny gaps, bringing heat,
and yellow lupine blankets the water’s edge in patches,
but there are no snapdragons to pinch, only sheets
folded twice on the bank for sitting, nice and neat,
where we’ve come this afternoon to eat our lunches
by the river where rocks shine red like meat.
The place has changed but smells just as sweet.
Pollen floats down to rest in our lashes,
though there are no snapdragons to pinch, only sheets
and ribbons of plump blackberries, which secrete
a juice that glistens like blood and splashes
by the river where rocks shine red like meat.
We remembered snapdragons, last time we came to eat.
They’d open their mouths when we’d squeeze at their latches,
but there are no snapdragons here to pinch, only sheets
of roaring river where rocks shine red like meat.
____________________________________________________________________
Ariel Machell is a poet from California. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon in 2021. Her work has been published in Gravel, Verdad, Landlocked, and Up the Staircase Quarterly.
by Sarah Dickenson Snyder
Rise before the sun,
help it over the horizon,
sit in a silent room,
walk on the rain,
sliver the day
into breaths,
& swallow
desire.
____________________________________________________________________
Sarah Dickenson Snyder lives in Vermont, carves in stone, & rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera (2019) with another book forthcoming in 2023. Recent work is in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. sarahdickensonsnyder.com
by Jeri Theriault
by Traci Brimhall
by Olivia Torres
by Jen Schalliol Huang
Appearances deceive. You’d like to think
I sprouted, fresh with dew, unfurled, grew
toward the sun to pink my baby cheeks.
As if I was a thing of grace. As if
I didn’t bite. As if I’d never striped
malnutrition into my enamel
and raised the gumline sharpening my maw.
I teethed on paper ‘til I started fires
in my own dry-boned mouth and then exhaled
flames just like a dragon. Like a myth. But
real. Touch me. I’m not scaled, nor a
figment. I have loved myself to softness,
cauterized and kissed closed every wound
with my own tiger’s tongue. In forgiveness.
Invoking blessings. I am plush with them.
______________________________________________________________________
Jen Schalliol Huang is a disabled poet living pondside in Massachusetts. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her chapbook, Means of Access, was printed through the Kenyon Review. She reads for [PANK] and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her work has been featured in Cincinnati Review, Flock, RHINO, The Shore, Sou’wester, Shenandoah, and others. Twitter: @jenschalliol.
by Diamond Forde
“hoes said they wish a bitch would, & I’m a genie” -Megan Thee Stallion
ain’t got much ass but I’ma grip it
make him catch it with his hips
two of us ridin’ to the music I puppet
through my dips real hot girl shit
liquored & liking the magic I cast
when I throw it back fat & nasty
bought a floor length mirror just to catch myself
in its glances this heft this happiness
Megan you mother an era of girls
taught them to be savage
& scholar to admire their long pink
tongues—loud girls large girls
you knew before it happened
that men stay tryna make us dance
but we twerkin’ for our damn selves
musty bullet-proof unrepentantly hot
______________________________________________________________________
Diamond Forde is the author of Mother Body, with Saturnalia Books. She is a Callalloo and Tin House Fellow whose work has appeared in Obsidian, Frontier Poetry, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and more. She currently lives in Asheville, NC with her partner and their dog.
by Jill Kitchen
what if you are your own secret affair
the warm breath you turn to in the ticking
dark of a sleepless night the liquid glow of skin
you take into the shower in the afternoon
pj harvey's rock and roll strum her low
full-throated whisper pulsing against tile
what if you are the one who finds your own shape
attractive struck by the moonglow from within
who sees your own silhouette undressed and
takes in everything that this body has been through
all the ways it has grown into this knowing
wise against the silt edge of the world
wind-brushed and beaten by sun
eyes crackle-creased by laughter
the buttered pear of mothering, this near mane reaching
toward earth, these guitar curves of hips
you have become the one you wear red lipstick for
buy the black lace edged underwear for
dance the flamenco for, pulling imaginary apples
from low tangled branches over and over
with a trill of long, piano-loving fingers
you have become the one you write sonnets for
the one you sing for with your widest-sky voice
against these soft outer walls of snow
fragile with the still broken spring
you are become this woman that you built
from treebark and the hidden stones of other countries
from salamander sheen and desert crossings
from the way each different language feels on your tongue
in the just waking tremble of your mouth
in the oracle of your heart muscle, once struck silent
you are become this woman you burned for fought for
drove across the continent in the middle of the night for
this green-eyed woman mirrored back
who summons her city within
you are still writing this woman song
______________________________________________________________________
Jill Kitchen's work appears in FERAL, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, West Trestle Review, and is forthcoming from HAD. She has a B.A. in Romance languages from Colorado College and has studied creative writing at UCLA, Columbia University, The Poetry Project in New York City, and with Hollowdeck Press in Boulder. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path while searching for great horned owls. Twitter: @jillkitchen.
by Melissa Studdard
And my body is a collection of rivers
that think they are bones. I love my blood
the way I love pink cherry soda, the way
I would nibble on my own earlobes
and call it good breeding. According
to Eduardo Galeano, the church says
the body is a sin; science says it’s
a machine, and advertising has tried
to make it into a business, but the body
says, I am a fiesta. That’s why both
my elbows think they are wishbones
and all my knuckles have decided
to be opals, increasingly iridescent
with every change of angle. That’s why
every glass of pinot grigio I drink
is a toast to the diamonds in your and my
and Maya Angelou’s thighs. Big, small,
and all the in-betweens are perfect
to me. Even when what I see in the mirror
makes me want to cry, I remember the glory
of the aqueducts that would deliver
those waters from the vast countryside
of my insecurity out to the glamourous
cities of my cheeks, and suddenly my body
is an event to be marked by festivities,
the best year yet of an award-winning
vineyard, a half-century-long firework
display, a pilgrimage, a parade.
______________________________________________________________________
Melissa Studdard is the author of two poetry collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and Dear Selection Committee, and the chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings.Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and has also appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, SWWIM Daily, and New England Review.Her Awards include The Penn ReviewPoetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize from Winning Writers, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and more.
by Micah Marie Johnson
My figure is a constellation
Bright sparks shining when I open
I am the map and the destination
Rippled and soft bellied laughter
I’m a five pointed star ready to be gazed upon
Breasts buoyant and strong
My form takes up space
The expanse holds me all night long
I feel for the void and splatter
Each mark on my body: a galaxy
My freckles are love poems to read
I’m kept in orbit to be worshiped
Rounded edges and subtle rubbing thighs
So I say a prayer in the mirror
Then my body becomes the light
______________________________________________________________________
Known as an upbeat, eclectic, and vibrant writer and artist, Micah Marie Johnson creates for creation sake, but has also appeared in a poetry and short story anthology titled Journey’s End by Two Friends Publishing. Recently Micah has completed their first children's book, Finding The Future, which was a commissioned project to commemorate the opening of the Cybrarium Library in Homestead, Florida.
by Lúcia Leão
that moves on a surface,
someone scratching
with a fingertip the picture
of existence.
Up the stairs, down a ladder,
horizontal, dreaming,
mudding the air with its breathing.
A tunnel of insides no one sees,
but feel, there is a texture
of dance, traits that attempt
the borders.
All my scars are feminine.
______________________________________________________________________
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her poems have been published in SWWIM Every Day, South Florida Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, Chariton Review, and Harvard Review Online, among others. Her work is included in the anthology Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing. Lúcia’s poems in Portuguese have been published in literary magazines in Brazil.
by Michele Kotler
by Lara Payne
The baby imprints
her face to your face
forehead to forehead,
mouth to mouth, blowing raspberries on
any soft part of you.
Embrace fleshiness
thick legs strong.
Carry the four-year-old on your back,
the one-year-old on your hip.
Your arms
surround these children
who press themselves
into your body.
Boundless love,
a great acceptance of you
as you are right now:
disheveled, mussed, tired,
unsung in any circle
but this one.
______________________________________________________________________
Lara Payne lives in Maryland. Once an archeologist, she now teaches writing at the college level, to veterans, and to small children. Her poem “Corn Stand, 10 ears for two dollars” was a winner in the Moving Words Competition and was placed on buses in Arlington, VA. Recent poems have appeared in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Mom Egg Review.
by Mia Leonin
My maker unfastened the branch from heaven’s hinge
And with that branch,
She pried open the three-poisoned god in me
And from that god,
She shook out the three-cornered sack of culpability in me
And from that sack,
She produced a three-pronged compass that unmoored the navigator in me
And from that navigator,
My maker ungendered the tri-phallus, triple-breasted woman in me
And from that woman,
My maker stippled a three-cornered quilt of kindness in me
And that quilt
Comforted the three-chimed loneliness in me
And that loneliness
Tuned the three-tongued oratorio in me
And the oratorio
Reverberated in the beak of the three-trilled bird
Who reached me just in time to tell you that
In the garden’s conjugations of war, envy, and greed,
You are beauty
And the infinitive of beauty is
to be.
______________________________________________________________________
Mia Leonin is the author of four poetry collections: Fable of the Pack-Saddle Child (BkMk Press), Braid, Unraveling the Bed, and Chance Born (Anhinga Press), and a memoir, Havana and Other Missing Fathers (University of Arizona Press). Leonin has published poetry and creative nonfiction in New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, Indiana Review, Witness, North American Review, and others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
by Cindy Veach
You make me think of pewter, sticky on the inside
thrift shop pitchers—all those years of accumulated
gunk that no sponge or bottle brush can reach.
You make me think of heavy sow-belly skies,
100% humidity—the weighty weight of it all.
Grey, you are the antithesis of bougainvillea,
cheery saccharine packets, gyrating disco
balls. You are a stinking hot breeze
rifling the old neighborhood. You are wilting
breasts, senile angiomas, vaginitis, osteoporosis.
Oh little bitty grey moth plastered to the grey door frame
who thought yourself invisible—I see you
and raise you three parts 506 to one part 505
to equal parts peroxide.
______________________________________________________________________
Cindy Veach’s most recent book is Her Kind (CavanKerry Press, 2021). She is also the author of Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a ‘Must Read’ by The Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the chapbook, Innocents (Nixes Mate). Her poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, The Journal, Salamander, and SWWIM Every Day, among others. She is the recipient of the Philip Booth Poetry Prize and the Samuel Allen Washington Prize. Cindy is co-poetry editor of MER. See www.cindyveach.com.
by Mary Block