READING [IN ISOLATION]

At night she folds herself into one, filmy,
shrinkwrapped and bound by things that

puncture the mind and sink under surface, dead-
bark and wood. At first the cover proves

unmalleable much like a globe but to press a
finger in and dig up pulls Algeria to Greenland,

oceans kneaded, nations overturned. At the
heart of it sidles up four walls on each side of her,

foreign, like the inner skin of ice when it tries to
flower. In the end only one clover remains

standing, its membrane of leaves threadbare, pushing
against light, the feeling of multiplying and rising

and fading all at once. At night she folds herelf in,
can never get out. Dreaming in different colors

like religions, bowing to a single word.

By Yejin Suh

Biography:

Yejin Suh is an aspiring writer from New Jersey who appears or is forthcoming in Half Mystic, Juke Joint Mag, and Prometheus Dreaming, among others.

Unnatural Selection

my palms are flowering with white cul-de-sacs
tied with crisp ribbons and dyed crimson at the tips,
they lure drooling blue and brown and hazel eyes
towards the glorious American Dream.
black eyes are not on this color spectrum.
black eyes possess a void—
a void that not even papier-mâché can fill.

I lick lilacs off my fingertips,
varnish my skin with sticky oils,
hoping to sweeten my blood for birds to peck at
and drain.
maybe if the fat is gone, my eyes will have more space.
maybe then my eyes won’t be mistaken for
a slit of a button hole in my lint-eaten flannel.

I dream of a day where having folds
in the crest of my lid will open caverns to light
and my yellowing skin doesn’t stench
of the fat tofu I ate.

dear god,
please spare me of this tyrant king’s reign,
quench the fires that gulp syllables like pulp.

I want to be nestled in the crook of your shoulder
I want to be lulled to sleep with a song about dried raisins
I want to breathe of candlewicks and dusty closets,
but for now, I’ll marinate under these stolen stars.

By Katherine Wei

Biography:

Katherine is currently a sophomore attending BASIS Chandler in Arizona. She likes to skateboard, paint acrylic portraits, and play volleyball. Her writing has been recognized by Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and been published by Risen Zine, Page and Spine, Life in 10, and many others.

Plum Blossom

From this height, this is womanhood.
Fleshy and blistered, razor against womb –

chrysalis into smoke or a wall or a plea. A
building weighs itself, windows too heavy to

carry itself; woman too light to carry herself,
too rented to carry a person. Of a man,

you find a woman; fortified tire tracks on road
crack unto roots. Mouths drool dirt.

From bedrock, this is humanity. Frozen
and clinical, seed into pill into bloodstream;

oxygen eviscerates till skinned human
bleeds plum blossom. Clavius looks too far

from here. Balance on bedrock –
mold into bedrock, bury ourselves.

By Sarah Street

Biography:

Sarah Street is a junior and Writing Fellow at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta, where she also writes for the school newspaper and edits the literary magazine. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Aerie International, DoveTales: An International Journal of the Arts, Just Poetry National Quarterly, The America Library of Poetry, and Live Poet’s Society among others. Sarah’s work has been recognized by the New York Times Student Poetry Contest, the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Writing for Peace Young Writers Contest, and River of Words Poetry Project. Sarah’s writing frequently explores themes of children’s rights and social justice; she is passionate about promoting diversity, advocating for human rights, and inspiring unity through writing, music, and community service.

te quiero con limón y sal

crab legs steamed in garlic
fish tacos and hornitos
on the coast of california
queer with my lover, we’re

the only gays in this bar
and we don’t give a fuck
I’m in love with a smoky
mid-summer day, a honeyed

shot of sol where nothing
seems sweeter, this type
of amor I heard about from
my tía: a chavela grito

on the hottest night of
the year my heart
breaks en borrachero
over seafood, tequila gold

mi queridx es un alacrán
the scorpion from an old
folktale about a brujx that
hexes men into dry deserts

in this version of the story
they are marimacha, charmer
of lesbianas across bramble
and bush, in each prickled spine

my lover is a heart biter
centuries old, they sting
more lips and hips than don juan
smoother than a casket cabrón

 

By Antonia Silva

Biography:

Antonia Silva is a queer Mexican-American poet from Santa Ana, California who currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Antonia’s work is published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal.

Sundial

peroxide sun wheel                 the milky sky
my garments frothy                 gaze slanted shy

time flakes off in twelves                    the week yawns
halo of gnats        ragged face brushed soft

a raw scrape        fluid bones              paper cut
monkey wrench               coffee cake                dumb stump

I eat my eggs         I walk home          I tell lies
dazed by                 the sun       & its                wasteful suicide

the moon usurps               scornful                  a slim rib
growing fat on a                gorgeous brute’s                 whims

I want to die        I want no mother           or prophet
I                   choke             on                          god’s               gigantic              silence

By Maham K

Biography:

Maham K is a poet, artist & medical student from Karachi, Pakistan. She has been published by Indige Zine, Berry Magazine, Soliloquie Magazine, and Luna Rio Zine.

stranger alchemies

the both of us animal-soft in
a derelict parking lot. 5:14am & the
radio spits static. coming down at the end of
the night, it’s an afterparty, a
sickening sort of voyeurism. it’s all
the scenes from those coming-of-age
movies where the camera pans
out & afterwards you understand everything
beyond comprehension.
but now it’s just us & the smallest god
we know—nothing to see here, move
along. move along.
the world spins on its lithium-colored
axis. the storytellers all agree,
everything is the same story once
you get to the rotten core, the apple
-sliced desire of it. & in the afterglow,
history forgives many things. swallow the city
open-mouthed, dear. the fact of the
matter is, any one of us can be unraveled
now. we
noisemake. we search for light.
all we are asking for is to uncover the
truth, to leave a handprint on the
wall that matters, to say, i exist
i exist i exist
before the camera catches
up to us.

By Eunice Kim

Biography:

Eunice Kim is a Korean-American writer living in Seoul. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Polyphony, The Heritage Review, Vagabond City Lit, and more. She currently works as a staff reader for The Adroit Journal and a volunteer writer for Her Culture.

Sonnet in Infinitives

To be                       a matter when there’s no question
Or not to be           a question when nothing really matters

To sing                       with a frog squatting straight
On a lotus leaf in the Honghu Lake near Jingzhou

To recollect                       all the pasts, and mix them
Together like a glass of                   cocktail

To build                                  a nest of meaning
Between two broken branches on                 Ygdrasil

To strive           for deity
Longevity                       and
Even happiness

To come on and off line every other while

To compress consciousness into a file, and upload it
Onto a nanochip. To be          daying, to         die

By Yuan Changming

Biography:

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include 10 Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry and BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.

This is the almost

Hotel in our hometown,
the horizon burns as dusk
approaches. This is before I stop
wanting a thousand sleeps
with you across the world.

We talk about a place in the heart
of the French Quarter during Jazz fest.
Take me to tarot readers on sidewalks, as
the moon glows above us, let’s find ghosts
in the misty alleyways at dawn. I want
the heat burned into our skin and memories.

We start listing other destinations,
where we can hide in plain sight from
the world and our worries. I hold these
hopes in my hands that your promises are not empty

This is before the erosion of faith in you.

It is never a good time to explain how you wound,
how indulging those who bulldoze you—to achieve
their own desires—doesn’t crush just you.

How you slip stones down my throat
so everything is garbled—I am weighted
down with words you don’t want to hear.

I know how you have diminished me to others
with your lies, when it counted most.

By Marisa Silva-Dunbar

Biography:

Marisa Silva-Dunbar’s work has been published in 24 Neon Magazine, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Cabinet of Heed, and Marias At Sampaguitas. She is a contributing writer at Pussy Magic. Her work is forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, Sybil Journal, and The Charles River Journal. Marisa is the founder and EIC of Neon Mariposa Magazine. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @thesweetmaris