Contents:

Phoenix Fruit

 by Samuel Fishman

I found my enlightenment
in the summer of 2011, when
(through exposure)
I discovered that a cherry’s body is just like my own.

“May I pluck this?” I asked,
and the shaking branches dropped their answer at my feet.

Maritime

 by Amanda Birkner

even when your tongue
is the only muscle in you I love

even when the grease in your
hair sticks to me for a week

even when your mouth is
ripe on mine

even when your pioneer hands
take the shape of my hips

you are not the tired voice i
want to hear in the morning

you are not the wound on my
thigh i tell stories about

you are not a shield from the
rain and you stay dry

you are an old wooden ship all your own

L——

 by Delia Pless

I put my head on your shoulder
and in the mirror we have one head.

From one angle the shelves
look dangerously close to falling.

The state of things in life
is that the days have sharp corners.
I go to work
with a hand in my pocket.
I look at myself
and the constant worry
is that the good reasons not to worry
are impossible to understand,
that the phone will always catch me by surprise
despite the beautiful weather.

The world has a center
and lakes as clear as glass.

In a window across the road
a screensaver of a line
changing color and direction
shines into the darkness.

The way you sit at the table
is like a sign, it says continue forever.

Saint Anthony (the keeper of lost things)

 by Mollyhall Seeley

Saint Anthony mostly goes by El Capitán. I call him patroncito because it drives him crazy (he’s a terrible racist). Usually he won’t see me because he says that I don’t lose things, I ignore them. But even he has to admit I need his services after the smell of steam and mouthwash makes me suddenly start weeping. My hair is still wet and I’m wearing only a towel (Saint Anthony is a bit of a pervert). He asks if my grandmother baked pies, and I say no, so he asks if I knew anyone that died in a sauna, and I say no, and he says right, that’s it, I give up, I’ll just give you something else if you’ll stop calling me at four in the morning because you can’t remember what you’ve dreamt. Okay, patroncito. Saint Anthony shuffles through his briefcase and pulls out Anastasia’s diadem but I refuse because I’m not convinced she won’t someday rise again and need it. You’re a pain in my ass, says Saint Anthony, and suddenly I remember Norm Jacobs standing as close to me as anyone has ever stood, skin emanating sweaty heat in cold February, saying Yo, Bunny, you minty fresh (now he’s dating a fifteen-year-old). Saint Anthony raises his eyebrows and asks incredulously, a boy that called you Bunny made you cry? And I say yeah, that’s just it, patroncito, he’s the only one that ever has.

The Prospect of Fuk

 by Jenna Snyder

         brush

hands   as if

    the air between

  forgets itself

               get up

      bend one way

         and spill over

Water for Twelve Years

  by Sara Montijo

The rain will begin soon,
each drop a memory

I should have. Water for twelve years

of washing his face from mine,
his big toe from mine, his steep

canyon eyes from mine. A child like this is not alone
but left rubbing their skin

like a stranger’s and hoping
the rain will end soon.

Coyote

  by William Savinar

The truth of the situation is
it’s there
soft-boiled
in your stomach.
Baby don’t need to walk yet.
Baby just need to crawl.
The yellow-eyed coyote you can’t see during this night
chained to its own umbilical cord
would sure like to get at it.
But you just walk along passing him
touching the ground for sand
knowing you’re close to water now.
And you get there and
float at first
gracefully.

Your swollen stomach is facing the moon.
Your eyes look up to see their own mean holster of memories.
The water gains upwards too.
And this is all coming at you too fast.
Your last thought is what a second grade teacher told you:
things lay
people lie. Like how
he fooled you somehow. Like how you won’t ever return,
and that child
will never know love either.

So this is what it looks like

  by Kevin Zhang

A small window with
Blinds giving a slotted view
Snow and leaves drifting
Down past the fire escape

Five centimeters per second
Or so I hope is the speed
When the snow and leaves
Introduce themselves
To the ground

Quiet streets lit by
Shimmers in the wind
Street lamps buzz

Frozen dust kicks up the light
Weaving through my fingers
Brushing strokes of her hair
Dark on the wind’s easel

Lifting up the veil
The flake on her nose
A white summer flower
Suddenly a bead of water

Avant le déluge

  by Shinji Moon

No one ever talks about what came before the flood.

Jean and Jeannette are long forgotten.
Their lovemaking wasn’t halted by the water that sloshed by their ankles.
At first, they thought it was a miracle—and underneath
ten feet of ocean, they kissed for the last time, grinning.
—When he opened his mouth to say I love you, he swallowed an entire sea.

All Hell

  by Kurt Havens

Half an ear was on the sidewalk.

The neighborhood kids were taking turns
riding a light blue mountain bike around it

making machine-gun noises

yelling what sounded
like either all hail or all hell.

I told his wet eyes:
It’s the best I can do.
A menthol blue seashell
floating on a milk-hungry tongue
& calves for him to knead
until it ended.

Go By Train

  by William Savinar

Here’s where the ‘Go By’ train went through.
Right through this building
calling upon generators
and house guests with its whistle like usual.
When it came through here though
it was distracted by haystacks.
Not the same
stray lines
angles, borders
and reservation casinos
serving cocktail peanuts and smoke.
Here’s where the train went through
in your sleep
cold like
an ice box.
They figured
your
tides and charts
were whole for the taking.

I even saw a man holler out his window,
seeing his stereoscope of new roots,
“Illuminate the crops and
harvest the singing fields!”
It was lost on you thank God
while you slobbered on your pillow.
An empty waltz off beat
his hands around no one’s waist.
In The Dalles
derelict ladies fight for their beers.
On the Deschutes
the salmon finally come clean.
And somehow
you do too.
But your memory
is blunt like
a numb pressure tooth.
You may find out about the train that night
like barbed wire running through it forever.
But I could never describe to you
the pillaging
they had in mind.

More Field

 by Kurt Havens

Solveig’s memories of the tomato field.

    The morning frost.

Similar evening frost.

    Her older brother burying five or six of the family cat’s kittens

none of which were reborn as trees, parts
    of trees, or otherwise.

Not one. Black tarp over the saplings

    stiff with its thousand separate spines.