Oreo Eyes

When we were young,
we built a snowman
at the base of Jimmy’s hill.
Built him on the line we ourselves drew,
a finish line to mark
our sled-run down the monster hill.
We built him large:
An icy Ozymandias
to proclaim our greatness
with stick arms
raising a rag-pile flag
to celebrate our glorious finish, later.
We would explode from a cloud of white
and slash across
that self-proclaimed final line, victorious.
Later,
we were always building
for later, back then.

But when our snowman was done,
we saw he had no eyes.
So we traded a little bit
of our gooey delicious present
for our vision of later
and gave our snowman
Oreo eyes.
Two sweet and empty black holes
absorbing everything
and seeing nothing.

We were so strong, then,
laughing as we dragged our sled
up that heroic hill,
slapping each other with cries
“Faster! Faster! More! More!”
Each step and cry
building muscles
building futures
until we reached the top,
proud and in a hurry
to take our seats
for the downhill slide.

We pushed until
the sled tipped downward,
imperceptibly slow at first.
We were still in control.
Then the white world
started to slide by
faster and faster until
we became captives
of the world’s cold gravity.
Small pieces of our fears
falling off of us like snow
as we flew,
unstoppable and screaming,
down the hill.

We squeezed our eyes shut
and found our lifetime prayer:
“Faster! Make it go faster forever!”
The snowman waits
with open arms, and Oreo eyes.

By Michael Guillebeau

On Being Told to Be Careful

Do you remember childhood? All snot
Bubbles and chubby wrists and skinned knees

Grown-ups with gentle hands on our backs
Pushing us to try it, go boldly, be brave

Tell me: when did be brave become be careful?
New mantras for new bodies with new parts

You in Guadalajara three margaritas deep
Dancing salsa with men in a dingy club

Me late at night on an empty train car
Back from Brooklyn with a penned-in book

There are many ways a hand learns to tremble.
If we have daughters, let’s not tell them to be careful

No more indoctrination into fear. Instead, we’ll
Meet their eyes and say,

Pay attention

Pay attention, of course, to those daily dangers:
Sharp corners and hard falls and cruel men

But pay attention, also, to the monotonous miracles:
Rainbows and stray cats, and songs that give you chills

The sun on your face as you nap in the yard,
And the long-distance love of a sister

Air coming—

and going—

The sensation of your precious breath

Pay attention to these things, too. Yes—

these too.

By Jane McBride

Biography:

Jane McBride (she/her) is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City where she now works as a library assistant. Originally from the heart of the Rockies in Colorado, she spends her time writing fantasy novels, curating playlists, and solving crosswords. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in After Happy Hour!, Blue Marble Review, Quarto Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find her rambling about writing at janemcbride.substack.com

The Vietnam Vet

His bicycle pulls a trailer: four garbage bags
and two car tires. His hair is long in the back,
the US flag flies above his seat. Is he that grateful
to his country? Bending his body halfway
into a trashcan on the street, he suddenly swings
his fist toward oncoming cars.

He sits in the shade of an underpass
of the 87-freeway in downtown San Jose,
a structure so enormous and empty
it could be a stage for the rampart scene of Hamlet,
and he the watchman. But he knows
he’s the reason people complain.

His face is blistered from raw weather;
the city folks might think, “It’s Ok, nothing can last
long on the street.”
No welcoming parade for the losers,
but it’s not like he signed up.
His return home was his exile.

At night, he finds a corner to sleep,
his back against a hard wall;
his flag is a warning sign for any invader
of a soldier’s campsite.

Occasionally he mutters in wrath,
but that, too, will fade like the green
of his jacket, his patches unrecognizable.
Someday soon, he will become just like
any other homeless man.

By Hee-June Choi

Biography:

Hee-June Choi has published three poetry books in Korea while living in the US. His work has appeared in Korean poetry magazines and journals since the late 1990s, and in the JoongAng Daily, a top-three newspaper by circulation, in Korea. His work has been published in the 2014-16 editions of the Red Wheelbarrow and volumes six and eight of The American Journal of Poetry.

Fragment 37 – In My Pain

sappho said
my pain
drips
and i cry.
my pain
leaks like
a faucet.
this metaphor
did not exist
for her.
it has been
two thousand
five hundred
odd years
and still the
pain dripping.
it drips and
hits me like
a penny
dropped
from a
skyscraper.
it hits me
and makes
a hole in my
head.

By Olivia Lehnert

Biography:

Olivia Lehnert is a social worker living and working in Chicago, Illinois. She has been previously published by Ghost City Press and the Midsummer Dream House, and shares her work mainly via social media. Olivia reads and writes both poetry and fiction in her own time, and is inspired heavily by introspective and metaphoric language.

cursed

you used to soak
submerge yourself
in water and incense
the fractals of your hair
swirling about you
like the patterns of a place
older than you
where the fields smell
of wind-touched gold
the musk of a bible
long kept though
pages are missing
fields of women
bent beneath
the beating sun
tilling
sowing
harvesting
and you among them
so small
your mother’s hands
soaking her flail
with blood
like hers and hers
and hers before
a field of red
and gold

you feared
the empty pot
as much as you feared
its filling
what waited inside
matryoshka
each successive doll
carved open
the rings of a tree
collapsing in on itself
rotting wood
you feared
the end
the center
of the nest
hairless
skinless
cold nothingness of
unborn eyes

By Jacob David Snyder

Biography:

Jacob David Snyder is a freelance writer and editor. His work has been published in Eunoia Review and featured in the East Village variety show Hottie Bop. He’s contributed to the production of several publications, including Poems in the Aftermath: An Anthology from the 2016 Presidential Transition Period by Indolent Books. He lives in New York City.

Wish Bottle

[the corked bottle sways→and tips→with the horizontal movement→of the waves]
[the waves→spike dark water→up→down→sending the bottle→tossed by the moon]
[the moon→unseen past the stone-grey sky→pushes the bottle forth→toward shore]
[the glassy shore→receives the bottle→as the water subsides→at the boot→of a man]
[the man→looks rugged and white→all over→and picks up→hungrily→the bottle]
[the bottle→is empty→is opened→is empty still→is raised to the man’s pale eye]
[the man’s eye→eyes the rim→of the interior→of the bottle→and grins hard]

[first wish: absolve] “Absolve
the world, please.
Among the glimmering,
decadent points in life,
human hands have forged ruin.
Though, I wish forgiveness.
The men who have broken this earth,
each other,
have done so in fear, in hope,
and—yes—in selfishness.
It comes with the territory
of being human. I wish to
absolve the crime of
not knowing how to live.”

[second wish: surge] “Surge
the world, please.
So many lives
have had their vibrancy sold
in pursuit of love, security, pennies.
I wish wonderful ferocity.
Unblock our numb dams
and flow fantastic feeling
through every body. Good.
Bad. Everything. Unavoidable.
Just for a second,
I wish to surge all life
with living.”

[third wish: decompose]
“Decompose the world, please.
Unwrite every symphony.
Erase every map charted.
Undo the done.
We’re finding less and less

discovery to be found. We’ve
lost wonder. I wish
everything anew.
Turn the world unturned.
I wish to decompose
and give way for our new lives.”

By Ensor Stull

i.
My mother loves in the hard wax
she uses to pull black hairs from my
armpits. They were the only black
hairs I grew when I was younger,
more white-passing, when I looked
more like my father. She loves with
every clean inch of my body, where
none of herself is to be found. My
mother loves in the french braids she
used to tug my hair into, in her words
Aiya, you almost look European, if
you put on a longer skirt you’re almost
pretty. Like ritual she says this after
every waxing session, no matter which
apartment, which continent, which
ocean crossed. I cannot remember when
she began, and tonight especially the
only thing on my mind is how the
monster in Frankenstein never had a
name. How it was referred to as Adam
but perhaps felt more related to Eve
than Shelley ever intended for it to—
or what would have happened if the
monster was ever loved.

ii.
I buy myself hair bleach
this Christmas.

By Vanessa Y. Niu

We Had Fights

Somewhere far, a singularly perfect couple
causes all the light which softly blows
through windows on the eastern side of houses
on quiet weekday afternoons,
and though one party stops
by angels’ farmer’s markets to pick and send
the other Eden fruits, like antidote and resolution
skating down on heaven’s gentle bend
to earth, they often fall offhand
and into books and cabinets which open only by
those who turn their parts through generations.
Outside as fruits drop down to Earth,
the concrete trucks’ barrels barrel toward
the edges of this mattered world
and gather up a thing as old as mountain stone
to churn and render back into the world, but flat.
Out it flattens, like a ball of clay
which before showed infinite, brutal points of edge—
he makes pie, and she swooshes the birds
from their ledge to hang their starry clothes
into the abyss where all religions intersect
and underpin their home, and so it goes,
what flies and is flying back from them, past what
we call the sun, kiss beak to beak and prick
a bit of fruit, and land invisibly on every
human shoulder, sent, and spent, and resolute,
and solving us.

By Haley Laningham

To my bystanders

People stand by during attack of elderly Asian woman
– Associated Press

Did you catch a whiff of lilac
on that warm summer eve
while we gathered at the bus stop,
each wandering our mind?

Out the corner of your eye
did you flinch, did you see him
rushing twilight, pushing rudely in?

In a flash of recognition,
did your stomach tell your throat
what was going down?

Did you see my toes curl fetal
while I lay sideways
on the concrete stunned?

Did you freeze in fear and horror?
Did you look the other way?
Did you reach down for your phone
or was it already in your hand?

Were you scared to intervene?
Did your silence cheer him on?

Was it you who kneeled down
and whispered something kind
I didn’t understand?

Did you see my bruised face on TV?
Did they say my name?
Did they even try?

This poem first appeared in the chapbook Last Will and Best Guesses (Finishing Line Press, 2022).

By Deborah Jang