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spring thinking about eunuchs which may be absurd since I never had what they lost but still. also railroad tracks, unused for years also the pattern spilled birdseed makes on the porch floor: a means of divination, surely, if I could read it, and punctuation. did you know they didn't used to have it? but somehow managed. a tooth is sort of shaped like a wooden clothespin, the kind without a spring. now I've done it. It is dead ugly winter and I want spring so badly it's a sickness like a missing body part. possibly how a eunuch feels. This Is For All For all of everything that is not in books, nor on the internet, all the wild truth only to be found under our shoe soles on pavements or in the desert, sand underneath bare feet on a beach, washing out the way it does all around the foot so leaving a little hill right under the center of the sole and you can't help but wiggle a little then to make it go flat. Or in the woods, where you really have to spend some time paying attention in a way you never could learn to do in any school unless you are ignoring the teacher with great commitment so that the air stops being so shy and begins to whisper to you directly. For all of this, I offer thanks. For you, you truths, you body of being here. We have ignored you for far too long. Please stay with us, we need you desperately, stay like the trees do and the rocks. How sad we have become without you. Kyla Houbolt (she, her), born and raised in North Carolina, currently occupies Catawba territory in Gastonia, NC. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn's Fool and Tuned were published in 2020. More about them on her website, https://www.kylahoubolt.com/. Her individually published pieces online can be found on her Linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.

CW: violence My uncle was a terrible man. It's a statement I won't take back. He has seen and been through some things, you know. Any effort I would take to paint Tiberius Theoda Rex as a nice guy would be a lie. His name elicits fear, actions too, but I favored him, and hung out with him as often as I could. He exuded this kind of morbid charm and had a booming bluesman voice even when it whispered. I couldn't help but copy him, including his masculinity, for it epitomized the necessary strength, toughness, and smarts it took to survive being black in Chicago. So what's so bad about him? First of all, Tiberius was a leatherneck and survivor of the Korean War. I mean, ground combat had really affected him. I, myself, couldn't fathom shooting, bayoneting, and hand-fighting another man to the death. But he did, he had to. To know the next day wasn't a given required something other than faith, it required luck. It was under those bloody conditions that he learned, up close, a whole lot about native-style wrestling and martial arts. Both methods nearly killed him. Now, he used them on his fellow Chicagoans. Perhaps being built like a silverback helped. His entire body moved angrily. Even his manner of walking, almost predatory, to warn all to be careful when around him. Although a man of average height, those broad shoulders and long arms of his were abnormally strong. And as a stout man, he was surprisingly light on his feet and could spring into action real fast. Such speed was likely a byproduct of being an amateur boxer before Uncle Sam drafted and sent him overseas to dodge bullets and death. If all of that didn't intimidate, his face surely would. It was obsidian color and square-shaped, beneath a salt and pepper buzz cut, that had a pair of malevolent hazel eyes that shined. But he hid them purposely behind shades, especially indoors, knowing full well they made people uneasy. His fierce eyes forced a lot of lookaways. Sometimes his stare was detectable through those dark sunglasses. So let's just say, Tiberius had a serious look that burned hot without trying. Still though, having such an ominous presence drew attention. So Tiberius did all kinds of tough guy work. Nightclub door man, bouncer, and bodyguard. Nothing nine to five and mostly short term. At some point he saved up to buy this cool-looking, navy blue, four door, International pickup truck, with a matching enclosed trailer in tow. It fit him and his personality. Having such a ride enabled him to earn lots of money. You see, Tiberius began excelling at his true vocation of being a freelance Gorilla. That trailer of his rarely went empty. He would load it up with the dispossessions of Chicagoans unable to repay their debts, but it was also used for supplementing his income. Tiberius fenced goods and robbed affluent homes, warehouses, truck hijackings, and railcars. Occasionally, he would collect debts for this Italian loan shark in Chicago Heights. I remember going with him to this used car dealership on the Southside. The owner owed a substantial sum, but was slow in making payments, claiming low sales; moreover, he chose to insult Tiberius. Believing stupidily if the Italians had been really serious they wouldn't've sent a Nigger. My uncle let him speak his mind and just listened, shockingly kept his cool, then we left, went and returned before closing time with a borrowed car hauler. Upon entering, the owner misjudged Tiberius until the lethality began. My uncle punched him with such force it broke his jaw and knocked him cold. He turned out his pockets and his place, then proceeded to stand over him, placed his size thirteen on his wrist, and blew off a finger to wake him up. Tiberius hauled that screaming idiot to the repair shop. There, the owner was bound, stuffed, and thrown into a car trunk, and then the car was lifted skyward. I was so afraid and had never been so close to such carefree violence, but my fears soon subsided. My uncle's smokey voice did it; he ordered that I get all the car keys so he could pick and choose five sedans to load up and deliver. Moreover, I was told I should pocket all the cash on hand and think of it as a usury fee. After that event, I should’ve ran. But I didn't. Just the opposite, I orbited the danger whenever I could, like light meeting at the event horizon. Sure, some collections weren't as brutal as others. Simple intimidation sufficed. Either way, the debt was paid. The ones I hated most involved women. Tiberius never hit or raped them, but threatened it. He would give an ultimatum. Go broke or get housebroken. Give up everything and be indebted to him, or get hogtied to the bed, to be sold and left there naked for any dick to visit. Quite often, all it took was the removal of his shades and picking up the telephone. Man, I was so glad when broke was chosen more often over being housebroken. Otherwise, I would walk out when he subdued the brave. Neither a misogynist, nor a womanizer, Tiberius was simply cutthroat. It lessened a bit after a late night of raiding some boxcars left on Wood Street, near Jewel Food Store, and Hermitage Park. Instead of finding high-end apparel or electronics, he found alcohol. Pallets of imported Asian Rice Wine. I considered the take worthless, but not him. He had a buyer in mind, so I help load up as many boxes as his enclosed trailer could hold, and then drove it all to Chinatown the following day. There we entered Tong's Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant. Tiberius met the owner to offer his entire load at a price. And that's when he saw this fine-looking Vietnamese waitress, his future wife, and mother of his children, Ngo Thi Phang -- a woman of almost thirty. She had an innocent oval face, butter skin tone, a pear-shaped, shoulder length haircut and she was much shorter than him. However, there was a slight problem. When he inquired about her, he soon learned that she belonged to the Chinatown Merchant Association. Ngo had been recently smuggled into the States under the pretense of becoming a bride, but instead became enslaved, and her labor hadn't been fully exploited yet to offset that cost. Right then and there, without forethought, my uncle offered a trade. Ngo for all the rice wine and a one-time favor. Mr. Tong laughed at first, then surrendered, following serious negotiations, but it came with a caveat, that his business partners must agree to it. I hadn't seen Tiberius for almost a week when the doorbell rang. On my front porch stood them both, dressed in black silk. From head to toe, my uncle personified a fancy Grim Reaper. While Ngo contrasted him with her sexy traditional Asian dress. She hung on his arm, aglow, jocund, speaking Korean, and looking directly into those bright eyes of his. They came to say hello and goodbye. Tiberius and Ngo were moving to Skokie, Illinois where he had a triplex brownstone. He hadn't done anything with it. Now he had a reason. As a parting gift, I was given a large carry out bag along with a private number and magic word. They both soon departed. I watched him escort, open the passenger door, help her climb up and into the seat, before shutting it. He was in love, her too, no doubt about it. I thought it a miracle. To think, that man right there had it in him and acted as my role model and guidepost. I would miss him. Even after he had softened a bit, which wasn't much. Because, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't toss aside that cold and ruthless nature of his. Ngo accepted him as so; and, like myself, she was drawn to it. It had its benefits. In spite of it all, the pain he inflicted, and newfound love, I figured I would hold onto all of what I learned from him just the same. I retreated into my basement bedroom. As soon as I sat down, I reached for my food and pulled out two large egg rolls, a takeout box of shrimp lo mein, chopsticks, fortune cookies, and at the bottom was four money knots wrapped in napkins. Twenty-three thousand I counted while I ate and watched television. The nine o'clock news began broadcasting another homicide: the murder of a black man. In this case, he fit the description of a criminal responsible for a rash of fast food robberies, including the Tong's Noodle Kitchen on the Southside near 69th and Western. His body had been discovered in K-Town. Found in a dumpster, his black belt bow-tied around his neck, twice shot, ribs and skull fractured. The police labeled it as gang related. Good thing not much attention was given to the greasy food receipt that had fallen out of his mouth. For it blended in with the rest of the trash. Korean calligraphy was written on it, which translated: one favor, paid. I didn't follow Tiberius Rex around that day, so I missed it, and probably for the best. Even so, I could visualize how it likely went down. And like I said, he was one terrifying man. It's a statement I won't take back. Wayne McCray was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1965, and grew up in Chicago until 1984. He attended Southern University A and M College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He currently lives in Itta Bena, Mississippi, enjoying country life. His writings have appeared in Afro Literary Magazine, The Bookends Review, Chitro Magazine, The Ocotillo Review, Ogma Magazine, Pigeon Review, The Rush Magazine, and Wingless Dreamer.

Cumming and Leaving Copenhagen, Denmark You will remember my tapping on your hip when in the produce aisle at the grocery store I cannot pronounce and laugh at the field cucumbers. You will wander through the kid’s aisle—can’t believe what we sell our kids. Nerf guns, water guns. I will be leaving in the morning so we make it good. Six weeks worth in one shot. Yes, that’s what it was: a shot. In the back of my throat, my chest. My hand on your hip. You will not see me in six weeks, no, it will be 16 months and I will not be in your bed, no, I will be cleaning up the shrapnel still. And you will be forking your potatoes. Jessie Peitsch is a writer from Vancouver, British Columbia. 9am-5pm she writes emails. 5pm-9am she writes stories. Her poetry has been published in Canadian literary magazines, including Contemporary Verse 2, and she is currently working on her first young adult novel.

Boy Clouds of Xquic If she stays too long in the sea, she will see all her son’s bedroom wash by, shaking the trees. She heard he waited for hours outside of the record store, his jacket stained with biscuits and gravy and all the words from “The Streets of Laredo.” She used to sing that song off-key, and a ceramic rooster in their windowsill clanging in the dust told her to shut the fuck up. The dust in the sea folds over his jacket, ballooning over the kelp and burning. I Forget You She gave her sister broken strawberries as a gift. When her sister ate them, the seeds collapsed in her throat. When her sister had eaten all the strawberries, she tried to find the field where she had picked them, but she couldn't, and she wandered from home, eating the fog. Saturns When her balloon got caught in the milpa, she couldn't sleep for a whole week. She didn't know the dirt loved her, and when the balloon lost its air, it fell into the soil and made a new planet, and when the corn asked her to name it, she was too tired to answer.

Wasted, like a gesture of sympathy I lay starboard, at odds with the waves Which rock me gently As well as shake and Threaten my vessel Which is set off course again and again How am I to tell! Which pulling and pushing Is tearing me apart! And which is placing me Back together The changing tides form me Deaf to my prayers, my pleadings And my outright defiance I am battered and beaten I gasp for air between the violent waves And sometimes survive long enough To land on strange shores And it is luck, Not prayer Or hope Or my intervention That allows me time to catch my breath To feel the sun warm my bones And dry me out And luck again that casts my desperate view Upon some beautiful thing That is only here for a little while

Selection From Loan Words Selection From An Open Letter to Gabriele Falloppio Holding the men- iscus at eye level, you feel the sleep slough off. Hair is, and what is not?, what re-fuses to be?, ecifically all salivaried, all not here with us, bag it for me, material and each material forgets the needle. Selection From Salves Ineffectual as kicks and snares may seem or sound to the blind-wound aspect, I suspect a black king oyster blooms in her yard for the silver fish crowding the garland pretence is called alethic chaos is pronounced cows selah as a shield to those sustaining me. Selection From Gematria Blinds Calque, from calcare, umami from the silk roads, a murmur of crows, hella starlings, a mess of teeth, syncopation, in some gestural thought, only incomplete in letters, you, scattering her ashes over Yapeitso, sandals left as amber is left. Selection From Latent Roots with no Preconceived Object The net rises damp, weighted with What treasures, steam cleaves smoke, Smoke cleaves steam upon the world— Apical tissue efflux in controlled fire Chartreuse fractals fractal in form From broccoli stalk to stalk the webworm— Stephen Guy Mallett was born and raised. His wife has many questions about the deep sea. His poems appear in various corners of the internet, and his limbs appear in various corners of the forest floor.

Sunday Best Golden corn, growing up through the middle of the sea - broken glass, a message in a bottle for sailors and seaweed - I am running through an underwater field of corn in my dream Bare feet, but wearing my Sunday Best Sort of feels like walking on the Moon, but with giant whales and sunken ships My hair dancing wild - baby blue glitter sky up above and the Heavens on my shoulders, I find eternal peace; the sea is like infinity Untitled Inside the funeral home is like Heaven's waiting room; the pleasant dream-like piano music, the freshly vacuumed carpets, the flowers, the absence of any strong scents - making small talk with a man in a nice suit, who is ushering you into the double doors - He smiles with a gentle understanding and nods Everyone just lined up, waiting Pomegranate Miracle swan, flowers speaking in tongues - daylight's halo has sunk beneath the surface Fruit of the dead in my palm, fresh flowers, Earth's suggestion A dream of white trees; what will become of me, living forever, you're never a peasant with a heart made of gold Moon looks so lonely - her reflection in the dark water and tree branches like veins - the Sun always comes up again, always beating like a heart, forever

These little suckers I rhyme too much. Despite my best efforts, words bend over. Touch each other. Hold hands. One syllable slyly slides into another. Bumpy bits sticking. Fricking. Hell. I start out all aim-ful, side glances. Soft almosts. Whispery drones of meaningful bees. On their knees vomiting up. Abomin- ations. Transmogrification. Too much and too loud. No one wants this. By all means, open a vein. But don't be naïve. I started this year saying, I'd be more chill. I lasted all of ten minutes. I thought I might die. The second language washing over me is sunset The second language washing over me is sunset. I am out of sight of land. Undertowed and rip-tided. Amused by diving schools of conjugations. Drift net thready. Talk to me in shallow dolphin-tries. Slick eels and lion manes gleaming. Rough-hewn boats. Push off from port. Tickles now for passage. Everyone's frothing. Dropping sea glass offerings. Mouths beyond imagining. Oh my, my—o'er head eyes. Billionaire wide. Once more the revolution scuppered. Le Moustier's successors construction is done for today, hoarding fence precarious gravel tarps rustle under stoic boulders from the last ice age worker bees hulk buzz-less, barbs-up snow settling in every vinyl crevasse, dropped tool stillness awaits excavation urgent orange stalagmites take the hits a solitary garbage bag half-filled with shite opens and closes its cavernous mouth every gust a lonesome cry—au secours! il va faire bientôt nuit! pas prêt! pas prêt! Welcome to the half life Welcome to the half life. This point of inflection and subtraction. My instability is common knowledge. Now that you all know here are the questions. Discuss. This feels increasingly un-like my garden. Regardless, tomorrow I will pick up the hoe of displeasure, and till the soil of insubstantial posturings. I may still look the same on the outside. Even maintain the identical weight. But inside, my nuclei are shedding. I am a fragment of what I was. At 50%. That's not dust in the air. Soon. And sooner. I will be something else again. Ren Pike grew up in Newfoundland. Through sheer luck, she was born into a family who understood the exceptional value of a library card. When she is not writing, she wrangles technology and data in Calgary, Canada. http://rpike.mm.st/

Love Has Rules And you can’t change ‘em. I told this to Harley again and again. Been this way forever, I’d say. He’d ignore me, but still I tried. I’d sit him in his favorite chair, all fluffed-up pillows and doilies where the fabric quit. I’d say, Harley you gotta start bringing me flowers. Daisies are my favorite. And you can pick ‘em right out back. He’d start shiftin’ his shifty feet, big chunky boots just waitin’ to walk him back to Loretta. Who I knew all about, and the spell she cast on him. With her flingy hair, her hands as quick as bluebirds. Harley once told me that the first rule of love was to obey your heart and that’s what led him to Loretta. Well, I gave him that, but if he also wanted me, he was gonna have to act sorry. And sorry meant flowers. So I’d ask him on those after-Loretta mornings when he had snuck up into the room pretendin’ he’d been sleeping there all night. I’d say Harley, where the hell are my flowers. He’d just grunt and say, they are busy out back, and that they needed time to grow. Right then I’d remind him that the rules of love say that time has no meaning. How it seems too long when you’re not with the one you want. And that’s when he got up to leave me for the very last time. Days later, at his funeral, I strew his casket with daisies. Nice, big plump ones they sent from the store. I squeezed out a tear but no one believed it. Not Loretta, who is still angry about the stabbing, not the policeman in the corner waiting to take me back to jail, and certainly not the newspaper guy, who named me Crazy Daisy and shook his head when I said I was obeyin the rules of love, and when it’s clear that a love thing is over, you are entitled to a little closure.

Elisabeth stood within the bounds of the cupola and looked out to sea. The storm was beginning to rage full-tilt now, abusive and wretched, making division between the coast and areas inland such that the coast would have mostly water and frozen rain, or at the very least melting snow in abundance, whereas the mountains and plains would bear a resemblance to a solid white counterpane heaped up over numerous indistinct bodies, their purpose in lying so still to be covered not certain, if not rooted in death itself. She’d wished to go with John, she’d asked repeatedly to be taken along on the small, refitted trawler, but he had protested that as he himself knew very little about sailing, he didn’t wish to take her along too and endanger her life as well. It had been clear to all of them, to him and his five brothers, that they had to get out even if a storm was on the way, even if a trawler wasn’t the ideal vehicle for it, and search for the treasure before the McPherson sisters got to it. Elisabeth, in her heart of hearts, had some sympathy for the sisters, Rosalee and Winnie. They were very close in age, in their forties, and knew what they were about, though little it was they shared the tricks of the trade. They were treasure seekers, and what’s more had made a good living at it for about twenty years, give or take. They’d even gone along with a couple of scientific expeditions to recover gold from sunken Spanish ships out in the broad ocean once upon a time, though now they stuck closer in, even sometimes just taking fishing expeditions out for variety. She admired their strength, since she felt she had so little, and somehow for six men to be out on the ocean doing their best to do two middle-aged women out of what they seemed to have more of a traditional right to didn’t sit comfortably with her. But John had researched the matter, had thought he’d located the general area where the Belle Handsome went down fifty years ago, all hands on deck carrying a shipment of illegally acquired gold bullion from Mexico to Venezuela. Since the remains had drifted or been carried by storms just like today’s and, by his earnest calculation, were now in full international waters, anyone could look. The six brothers were determined that legal or illegal, it was theirs for the taking if they could raise it. Only three of John’s brothers were what you might call seaworthy vessels, though John himself was healthy enough at fifty for two men. His two youngest brothers were sickly and spindly in her eyes, and furthermore John and his eldest brother were not sea-going men. They’d been in other people’s speed boats on rivers and lakes, had even taken a turn at steering, but all in all, Elisabeth considered the whole venture at best a waste of time, and at worst a threat to life and limb. She’d wanted to go with John in good weather, but when it was clear that they were planning to ship in the middle of such a hell broth, she desisted from persuasion, and let John talk her into staying home instead. Elisabeth squinted and peered, finally holding the binoculars up to her eyes, as the spy-glass on the cupola of the small period house she and John had bought was busted right out and they had never repaired it. She saw something bumping furiously up and down on the waves in the distance over to the left, but it didn’t look as large as even the small trawler had on going out. The sleet and snow were making it hard for her to see, but yes, there was something dark on the waves, getting short shrift from the pounding of the sea and the relentless pissing down of precipitation. Heaven wasn’t a word for it when it released such evil torrents of white death. Yes, it was a small raft, or a side of ship waste, and as it drew closer, she saw that there were three indistinct figures clinging to it, anyhow clinging, alive enough to know that they were desperately near to death, but not able to strike a bargain with the elements, instead just riding it out. Should she wait, or go down to the shore? The ocean billowed up once in a huge wave as they drew nearer, and they went under. Finally awakened to the reality of it all, she gasped like a baby just spanked for the first time into awareness, and turned and raced down the steps and out of the house, in her haste leaving the door open behind her. It hardly even mattered who they were, they might be people, still alive. Elisabeth strode as far as she could get into the surf without getting washed away, and after a scene of desolate, empty ocean, the tiny scrap of metal and plastic bobbed up into view again, the three yet holding on. They were nearer to her now, and she called to them, not even knowing what she said, perhaps “Halloo, halloo!” to let them know if they could but paddle a little, she with even her small strength might be able to help retrieve them. The rest was phantasmagoric, but when they drew nearly abreast and she pulled as well as she could to drag them towards shore, avoiding the jagged edges of the non-wooden fragment they floated on, she saw it was John and the two sisters. The three women struggled and managed to pull themselves towards where the pale sand lay covered with white. At the last minute, John’s left wrist, tied to something under the slab of material, started to tug the other way, into the water, nearly rolling him off. Elisabeth, using all her might, grabbed at it and unwound it from his arm; it was a wet sack, with something very dense and heavy in it. Elisabeth looked at her husband’s face, as pale as she had ever seen it, his hair stringing wild as seaweed over his face and collar. Her eyes happened to meet Winnie’s eyes, which rested on the bag. With a sudden intuition of what was in it, she grabbed it, waded backwards towards the shore, and slung the one bar of gold they’d managed to retrieve angrily and full force against the wind and the ocean’s depredations. John’s eyes were closed; he was alive, but so barely that he had not only not missed the bag, but he hadn’t seen her throw it. Catching Winnie’s eye again, and then Rosalee’s, she gestured freely towards the bounty of the shoreline, where the bag had hit a huge boulder and fallen, harmlessly wedged into a crack in the breakwater. “Are you sure?” asked Winnie, as the two women helped her pull the wrecked fragment with John still half-conscious on it onto the soft and treacherous safety of land. “You saved him, didn’t you? Could I do less for him, for you?” she answered furiously, knowing that if John had sought some form of dry-land treasure, done something more productive with his time than going into an ocean and coming out without his brothers, that she too might’ve had money to burn. “That we did,” confirmed Rosalee, pinching her nostrils to with her finger and thumb, and blowing snot and effluvia out, then stooping to rinse her hand in the tide. “Well, then, we’ll retrieve that and be on our way. Unless you need help getting him inside, that is.” Elisabeth gave a firm shake to her head, turning now to the near-corpse of her husband. He was bleary-eyed and reminded her of a dead jellyfish that had washed up on shore, his arms and legs like tentacles extended outward in different directions, his clothes forming wet panels between them. The two sisters were up the beach and gone with their booty before John really stirred. It was then that he saw Elisabeth looking down at him, showed some kind of cognizance, gave a quick glance all around him, then glared up at her, a strange surmise in his eyes. “Did you see anything tied to my arm? A sort of bag? Quick, before it sinks and gets away again. It’s got a gold bar in it.” “No, there was nothing. Just a heavy iron weight, tied to a rope, that had gotten wrapped around your arm and was weighing you down. No gold.” “But I know I had gold! One bar, at least.” “You must have imagined it. You’re lucky to have survived. Your brothers don’t appear to have been so lucky.” “No?” he said, as if indifferent. But the next minute, or perhaps after several minutes, or maybe in the hours after they returned to their small house, their lonely kitchen, their cold fireplace in the front room, where they had to sit with the chill because neither of them felt up to building up the flames, with the electricity off and the storm still endlessly roaring around them in their small shell, he felt something more. And Elisabeth watched him as he put his head in his arms and wept, her own eyes dry from her exhausted strength, as much as she had ever expended at one time for any human being other than herself. Victoria Leigh Bennett. (she/her). Born WV. Lives in Greater Boston area. B.A., Cornell University, M.A. & Ph.D., University of Toronto. Degrees: English & Theater. Since 2012, website creative-shadows.com, articles/reviews mostly on literature. August 2021, "Poems from the Northeast," 334 pp. September 2021, @winningwriters.com. January 2022, @press_roi, x 2. January 2022, @cultofclio. Has written 8 novels & 1 collection short stories, all in search of publisher. Current WIPs, 9th novel, new fiction, CNFs, poetry. Regularly on Twitter @vicklbennett, occasionally on Facebook Victoria Leigh Bennett. Victoria is a member of the disabled community.

Gaffes Will Be The Glory To err is human, to something is divine. I could Google it. But I have a problem with the whole setup. Pit human against divine, it’s obvious: humans lose every time. But where it goes from there—I’ve had enough. The planet would be better without us. Machines can do everything better than humans. Humans are only special in how much we suck. What happened? Why do so many of us hate us enough to believe the world would be better human free? Is being human not enough to console us in our relentless flaws? To err is human? More like to self-loathe is human. Can I plead for healing without accusations of centering humanness, species ranking and whatever else? It’s no wonder we are marching dead on into division, destruction, dystopia. Do we really see no flaws in our plot to mechanize all the things? It’s a plan humans came up with, after all. But mistakes are not gnats to be blotted out. They keep it real. They mean we’re not machines. They give us so many chances to forgive ourselves. To try again. For a species not so contorted with distress, that would be balm. And You Are Free You are not on the runway to the alien faux-oasis architected by dispassionate forces that see the humanity of humanity as the final obstacle. But show your smile to the stranger, offer your hand to a human dying alone, round your arms around one you love, squeeze and you are free. You are not reducible to anything monetizable, you are not shedding data like dandruff. Get close to your fellow humans and you are free. Breathe with no barriers and you are free. It is not (yet) as they say: you are free. When We Have To Calculate Age Age is to object like river is to rock. Age is to time like face is to clock. Age is to goal like rubber is to road. Age is to knowledge like bow is to bowed. Age is to child like penny is to wish. Age is to adult like water is to fish. Age is to habit like lightning is to sand. Age is to perception like marching is to band. Age is to number like raindrop is to ocean. Age is to wisdom like gravity is to motion. Age is to pain like hurt is to rage. Age is to history like age is to age. Age is to dreams like burglar is to theft. Age is to dreams like weaver is to weft. Age is impossible to the very new like age is impossible to all it’s happening to. The Great Glass Party We all want to be surrounded by ravishing. But we are alive in the magic of this world, which is whenever the castle, however the hill. It is time to celebrate that everything is connected. Everything that is still here, everything that is not, whatever the marring, whichever the color, matter matters matter. Life used to be the kind of uncertain that made the alive curious. Paint is real, trees are real, lies are real, singing is real, assault is real, love is real, cats are real, the truth is real, rain is real, bombs are real, hope is, too. Everything was always glass. Time Never Tells The flame from the lavender candle I light for my evening prayers reflects on my window pane in the exact spot where the bare tree is and I get dizzy with awe? horror? panic? at this Moses moment (I get a Moses moment?), which reminds me of the time, a week after I fled thirteen hundred miles from my home state, when a fat-ass fog rolled in and I could see three inches in front of me and I thought it was the rapture and I had been left behind. We don’t have fog where I’m from. Also, I’ve been left out my whole life. Back to my burning-bush moment: I had been praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying for a spouse, for good friends, for life purpose, for answers,--a life I could remain present for and then everything stopped--paused, they said--and I was told I had to do what my anxiety but not my soul wanted to do (stay the fuck home and away from everyone) and, for the last half hour, I’ve stared out my window at the tree that never bears leaves and is not actually semi on fire searching for the mute button--Zoom is different every login, right?-- so the construction at the elementary school where all the neighbor kids would be in the Time Before would stop triggering the tinnitus I got from coming up to fast from a wreck dive with my dad in Mexico yesterday, or, no, it was last year or, Jesus, it wasn’t even last decade but the decade before that, when things were definitely not perfect but I was still as-only-the-young-can-be certain that, one day, they would be. Megan Wildhood is a neurodiverse writer from Colorado who believes that freedom of expression is necessary for a society that is not only safe but flourishing. She helps her readers feel seen in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017) as well as Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun and, increasingly, less captured media outlets. You can learn more at meganwildhood.com.

I watched you digging in the doorway piling sod at the rim of the hole until it sat like a small hill in the space between our bedroom and the corridor you turned and spoke across the distance but the pit swallowed your voice we hollowed the earth like this nightly at each of our thresholds bolstering our membranes with liquor and dressing our lips with mourning gowns so many hours spent kneeling beside it tossing our futures in like offerings (Grave, you swallowed them like spit) so bleak we were in your presence and indifference that we failed to see the blooming our gifts had made: the pungent green rising from the depths of our composted hopes. Had we only known the spectacular flame a billion burning dreams can be, or take into account the afterwards: a spring rain mixing with ash and turning to ink.