Summer Job 

Engine blocks
came off production lines
all summer
in 1970
like nothing was wrong
even with Vietnam
and all that was happening
if a line went down
there was hell to pay
I filled in
where I could do the most damage
a foreman told me
I was like a bad blade on a lawn mower
no matter how many times I crossed
the grass it wouldn’t be right
you have a gift
he said—
afterwards
I wanted to thank him
and the millwrights and electricians
who worked nonstop
forgetting me
but I wrote this poem instead

By John Stupp

Biography:

John Stupp is the author of the 2007 chapbook The Blue Pacific and the 2015 full-length collection Advice from the Bed of a Friend both by Main Street Rag. His new book How Tuesday Began will be published by Finishing Line Press. Recent poetry has appeared or will be appearing in The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, By&By Poetry, LitMag and Off The Coast. He lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

One-Sided Conversations Between a Black Girl and God

Dear God,
I have begun picturing
my entrance to Your kingdom
with my hands up
What does it mean
when I pray
until my palms are streaked with ash
Moses never mentioned
the aftermath of seeing God, burning,
turned to cinder
Lord, What does it mean
to be saved?

Dear God,
I pray that You teach me
how to bleed with mercy
I am slow of speech and
tongue but my hands are willing,
open

Dear God,
I toss the word
Surrender
around my mouth,
my tongue burdened
by the weight of parting
this sea, keeping a dry path
for grief across my teeth
Why do You ask us
for such heavy a thing?

Dear God,
Postcard, burning bush, bullet,
send me a sign, Lord
I’ll be waiting with
my hands up

By Madelyn McZeal

Madelyn McZeal is a queer 17 year old African American girl from Houston, Texas. She enjoys old books, rainy days, and unfinished poems. She is an editor of Zig Zag Zine, a small publication for women, PoC, and members of the lgbt+ community. More information about the zine can be found at zigzagzine.co.vu and her own poetry can be found at blood-to-ink.tumblr.com.

evolution

in loving memory of Chug Siu

I.
a little boy with jet black hair
has already seen too much
the last name Yang sticks out against
ground the color of rotting meat
he doesn’t hear his mother’s cries
her whispers of we must save him
he doesn’t hear the violence
he doesn’t know what to listen for.

II.
the young man with jet black hair
doesn’t want his new name
Chang is only two letters off
but saves him from war-torn China
Chang leaves behind his mother and father
and everything he ever knew.

III.
the young man can’t write
or rather, the soldier can’t read
Chang on a forged passport becomes Chug
and the young man with jet black hair
sits in a boat with his back to the wind
the further from Yang, the better.

IV.
the old man trades jet black hair for streaks of silver
and hands Chug to his daughter in a box with a doll
and a yellow silk dress
the name falls from her to me
but Chug sounds funny on private school playgrounds
mixed with middle names like Elizabeth and John
little boys and girls spit out a laugh and point
chewed fingers saying she’s different she’s weird.

V.
a young woman
(her hair not quite as black)
fidgets in her seat as she fills out the forms before her
what is your middle name? they ask.

she leaves the question blank.

By Nooshin Ghanbari

Biography:

Nooshin Ghanbari is a third-year English major at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was recently awarded the 2016 Ellen Engler Burks Memorial Scholarship for Creative Writing. She currently serves as the assistant poetry editor of The Nocturnal Literary Review, the official journal of the university’s Plan II Honors program. Her poetry has previously appeared in Skylark Review.

BASIC ALLOWANCE FOR HOUSING

One week before deployment,
we staged his wedding
behind India company’s barracks.

In the smoke-pit, his seabag
is stacked with issued gear:
shit-paper, load bearing vests.

One week before deployment,
she carried a bouquet of sand
in a Coors Lite can down the aisle.

The wedding party was a fire-team;
with the best man in a wife beater,
his bride walked the beach in a Goodwill dress

One full week before deployment,
he had a thought: combat pay
with dependents is twice as much

In the smoke-pit, his seabag
is stacked with issued gear:
diesel drums, canteen cups, flack jackets.

The whole week before deployment,
Their couch quartered a shit-canned
best man a honeymoon went unused.

In the smoke-pit, a seabag stacked
with issued gear: Malaria pills
anthrax vaccine and typhus, face paint.

for deployment five-man flocks of shitbirds—
load stacked gear: trauma plates and three point
slings,
lazar sights, E-tools, parachutes and pistol-grips

For five years she sang:

maa                 nee                              rah

come                  to                          the house

my tamarisk drinks no water,
dust lies on door and bolt,
the garden like a lament the city lifts

its lord, in five years
on a front lawn,
an aborted mission
a triangle folded flag.

By Aaron Graham

Biography:

Aaron Graham hails from Glenrock, Wyoming, population 1159, which boasts seven bars, six churches, a single 4-way stop sign and no stoplights. He served as the assistant editor for the Squaw Valley Review, is an alumnus of Squaw Valley Writers Workshop and The Ashbury Home School (Hudson), and was recently the “Cecilia Baker Memorial Visiting Scholar” for the 2016 Seaside Writer’s Conference. Aaron is a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where he served with The Marine Corps’ Human Intelligence and Counterterrorism Task Force Middle East as an analyst and linguist.

His work has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Print Oriented Bastards, SAND, The Tishman Review, The East Bay Review, Zero-Dark-Thirty and f(r)iction, His poems have been Finalists in the Tishman Review’s 2015 Poetry Contest, Tethered by Letters’ 2016 Poetry Contest, Sequestrum’s New Writer Awards, and was a national finalist for The Luminaire Award. His chapbook “Skyping from a Combat Zone” was Shortlisted for Tupelo Press’s 2016 Sunken Garden Prize. His first full length collection, “Blood Stripes”, was a finalist for Tupelo’s 2015 Berkshire Poetry Prize, and his poem, “Olfaction”, won the Seven Hills Literary Journal’s Penumbra Poetry Prize. Aaron is currently finishing his PhD in Literature at Emory University.