a when is [human] only when still/âaliveâ to the naked eye. Our
menaceâs specter-rose rise-rises poetic, enveloped by sweet-
tooth/teethed fiends of possibility, non-noxious toxicity.
Ayesha Chatterjee | SEPTEMBER
You said you asked how much
the ox-eyes cost and that I answered
midnight.
Rachel Aviva Burns | FIRST FLIGHT
Sheâ
aroused by crispening airâ
takes off, a sudden blossoming
of white wings, long feathers.
The egret flies slow.
Ungainly, lopsided.
Flaps above
the yellow grass-tips.
Kit Roffey | VESSEL
Sometimes it takes two hands wrapped around to pour
if the vessel is full, if the liquid is at the lip.
Sometimes a curve forms from my wrist to forearm to rest
against thick glass or the raised ridges of spotted ceramic pulling
tendons to match the melting morphing slopes of my organs.
Evan J | ON A HILL NEAR STAIG
In the car lot,
I used a fob to lock
the only carâs door
as an old man
walked down from the hills
with an old dog
slowly trotting behind
stopping to smell every post
of the old wood fence
that kept the sheep
near the old ring fort…
Scott Cecchin | from HOUSE
The house flowers
in light. Be-
low that,
dirt. Deeper,
a glacier. And deepest:
fire.
George Elliott Clarke | from WAR CANTICLES
Niceties?
We spurn bandages, medicines.
Lee rallies, bids us see Virginia as precious,
ourselves as audacious,
oblivious to high, Deep South percentages
of the deep-sixed…
A Conversation With Frankie Barnet | Interview by Rosie Long Decter
Frankie Barnet is a Montreal-based writer. Her debut graphic novel, Kim: A Novel Idea, is an auto-fictional blend of real-world pain and celebrity fantasy that tells the story of a grad student trying to make sense of an online world and her own stubborn sadness. Protagonist Frankie spends her days scrolling Kardashian Instagrams, reading about sexual violence on social media, trying to help her boyfriend process the loss of his father, and talking to her vicious but infinitely wise cat Catman.
I Wish I Could be Peter Falk by Paul Zits | Review by Bill Neumire
Invoking Willem Dafoe, Neil Armstrong, Ryan Gosling, Shia Labouf, Nicolas Cage, and Peter Falk while also tapping into American Psycho, GQ, Vanity Fair, and InstagramâPaul Zits, author of the previous collections Exhibit, Massacre Street, and Leap-Secondsâcreates an ironic speaker who marauds the earth searching only its âInstagrammabilityâ…