Contents:

newport mall

 by Tashiana Seebeck

i wonder if i will ever think of someone else
in jersey city the skyline
the wind tunnel how it froze my eyes to glass they
toppled out of my skull and rolled
collecting powdered remnants of snow
hot thai tea the sunflower orange in
jersey city the skyline steam
he plucked an alpaca from the glass figurine
bowl and sucked the chill away with three
petals of casual laughter i wonder if i will ever
taste orange on someone else

body transected

 by Serena Devi

a body
  falling past
  your window
while you fry eggs

think about
body
  the floating and the impact
what
makes skin
  split
from bone
about
color
on pavement
   how red looks
     almost purple
     from nine stories
     up
and the hands that
  scrub
and the nail beds that
trap
  gristle and brain
what bursts, what stains
what majesty
   intact
when you finish
poring over this
we will move
  to the vertebral column:
how it might
   bend and splinter
how god
  herself
ossified a crosspiece
  pliant enough to
contort through spaces in
the window frame
  but rigid enough
to shatter
     cruel and
     perfect

tibias:
  ropes unfurling
   an unbelievable white
   from the body
brilliant knives licked
clean from impact

   hands:
naked birds
   grabbing
for purchase
   surrendering
   then seizing
mid-clench
as the spinal cord
   denatures
half fists
blue
like
storm clouds

   pelvis:
a spade that
   broke without
making a dent
     there is nothing
     more to say here

   legs:
stressed like
artemis’s bow
   or something you find
  meaningful
     in the classical sense

   at last, feet:
you know
  they kissed the precipice
like a father
and stood against
   sky alone
at the corner
   of a tremendous
     breaking
they stood
rigid

Graft Survival

 by Carliann Rittman

my mother would never be an organ donor.
when I was five, everyday,
swallowed like Jonah in her whaleblack sweatshirt,
she would pick apart the skin at her fingers until they bled red.
when I was ten, I did the same.

when the blood caught her eye she ran to me with a box
of bandaids, plastered and wrapped each finger
as if in her own skin.

i know that experts say the organs from one donor can save
as many as 50 people or at least
change the lives of that many.
i’ve been told.
but my mother would never be an organ donor.

she already measures her life in terms of graft survival rate:
how long will my heart last in my daughter
how long will my eyes work for my son
how long will those fingers bleed.
that is what matters,
and so we are her little vessels
of lives changed.

i saw her face in my brain when I read that
in 1905, the world’s first corneal transplant took place.
doctors gave a 45 year old man the corneas of an 11 year old boy
who had his eyes pierced with metal

the eyes themselves couldn’t be saved for his own use but
the corneas could be isolated and given
to someone else and so suddenly
because of the wounded eyes of an unscathed youth,
a middle-aged farmer from a small town in the Czech Republic
could see again.

but my mother would never be an organ donor.
she would say
i have held myself together for far too long
for someone to pull me apart again.

Claudine, Unsleeping

 by Caroline Weeks

You mowed the lawn, filled the bathtub, poured
buttermilk. Once, I said I wanted just a handful of snow.
I relive you in a hat box of fingertip pearls.
Once, you gave me snowings.

Then, I only dreamt of a full crush of snow.
How much smoke is enough to call you home?
Please. You gave me snowings.
You let the low moon wax your heirlooms.

How much smoke is enough to call you home?
Will you see my fairy ring of train tickets?
In low moon you heirloomed your belongings to me
when the pacemaker rendered your flesh hymn-thin.

I’ve given you a fairy ring of train tickets.
I’ve watched ultrasound snow swarm in your chest.
Pacemaker rending your hymn-thin flesh. Unsleeping you:
ignoring a swelling knot in the freezing garden hose.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter but that Is OK Because the Burden of Proof Is on the Person Making the Claim

 by Nathan Mierski

this is the greatest poem ever.
this poem has won the nobel prize in literature.
it has won the other popular poetry award.
roger ebert came back to life
and gave this poem two petrified thumbs up.
this poem has the maximum amount of michelin stars.
i did not know poems could even win those awards.
i am very honored.

Play “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins at My Funeral. HAHA Not Really. You Can Play Whatever You Want. I Do Not Care.

 by Nathan Mierski

thank you for reading this poem.
i worked very hard on it.
all of the words and syllables are carefully placed.
no letter is placed thoughtlessly.

Mechanical Reproduction

 by Kit Zauhar

A computer will be
the best lover I’ve ever had.

We’ll meet at a Turing test
disguised as speed dating.

I am a big fan of the sharing economy.
I believe in streamlining pleasure.

I want to rent my body to Über,
make my nipples totems
of the neo-liberal agenda.

I don’t understand when
a friend gets mad
when I have sex
with her “crush.”

Doesn’t she want to know
beforehand whether or not
he could find the clit?

I rated him on Yelp
and gave him a pity star
for trying.

I have seen the future of my vagina
and it’s going to be an app
that lets me seamless an orgasm.

But in 20 years we’ll focus
on sex not love.
And you’ll still be my screensaver,
an unmoving smile, still pixels
of tan and off-tans.

And with you I’ll keep going analog,
till I have to marry the robot
who learned the binary code
that makes me feel only
good things for the rest of my life.

My Father Eats a Bed of Oysters, 2001

 by James Kelly Quigley

monochrome
ballerinas

so delicate
in pinstripes and white wine,

twelve sleek
arabesques

on a glacier
with lemon wedges.

tossing back
the finless gloss

like rose sugar,
the shucked

debris
a nude

and vinegary
conglomerate.

the quiet shrine
beneath

the emergency exit
and its neon vigil

disturbed
by my

inconclusive
autopsy.

mom i have something to tell you i should have told you

 by Tashiana Seebeck