by MK Chavez

You
dreamer

wreck the house,
strip the facade,

surrender blue blouse,
lick pearl, unhook eyelet,

shoo button, bang fedora,
shiver up close, cover your sky,

harangue until– opens parasol
delivers green apple where once was an eye.

MK Chavez writes about the beauty that can be found in ugliness. You can find out more about her and her writing at Little Brown Sparrow

by Zachary Buscher

I was, or should I say me and my band were finishing up a Thursday night residency at Lester’s Lounge, which is kind of a misnomer because the place is a real dive, though it gave me some pocket change to get through the spring, and I’ve about hit the halfway point in my act when the yokels start chanting boooooo, and I respond Quiet, or I’ll cut short the denouement, although they probably don’t know what the word means and anyway I’m busy noodling through an extended jam cover of “Paperhouse” by Can, which if you recall is the opening track on their classic Tago Mago LP, hell, I told Lester we were a Kraut Rock tribute band since my grandfather was in the Hitler Youth with Pope what’s-his-name, and was always playing this sort of oompah music on his phonograph which might explain why I dig the motorik shit, but I’m trying to get into the Damo Suzuki finish when I hear a beer bottle whizzing past my right ear and I’m like, damn I’m taking fire, but the next thing I know I must have been hit because I’m in this hospital room with only my guitar and some German House music pumping out the walls, so I run, run, run until I make it back to Lester’s to get my cash but I must have been out a long time cause the place is demolished and they’ve built an abandoned warehouse over it for their little techno parties, kind of like how all the Hard Rock Cafes have converted to Happy Hardcore Cafes and the people I see move with such efficiency I think they might be robots (or Germans) and this, maybe, the future.

Zach Buscher always lives and writes, and occasionally teaches and serves as Poetry Editor for Sonora Review, in Tucson, AZ. Originally from the Wild West of Massachusetts, Zach is currently finishing up his MFA at The University of Arizona, where he is a Beverly Roger’s Fellow. Recent poems appear in 42opus and SHAMPOO.

by Amber Leffler

Great Grandma, with
half-gypsy blood, could tell;

when bees crawled through
your window in a dream,

it meant a fire in the house,
a burn for both your hands.

Because of this, she never married
out of love. Although my blood

is barely gypsy, I can tell;
when she crawls through

my window in a dream,
it means I am a fool

to go barehanded into beehives
for a taste of honey, fool

to think my house is not on fire,
and I won’t get burned.

Amber Ridenour (formerly Amber Leffler) is the co-editor of Nightbomb Press. Her work has previously appeared in Gumball Poetry, Quill and Parchment, Mirror Northwest, Slightly West, and Blown Out: Portland’s Indie Poets as well as several self-published chapbooks. She lives and performs poetry in Portland, Oregon.

Daniel Dissinger is a recent graduate of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. He is now living in New York, where he is originally from. There, Daniel is pursuing his poetics with vigor and excitement, while still maintaining his position as the Editor of In Stereo Press–an online journal he co-founded in Boulder. Daniel is very interested in the surrealist approach to poetry, set down by Andre Breton. If you were to ask Daniel about who makes up the audience for his poetry, he’d probably quote from Jack Kerouac, “My witness is the empty sky.”

by Anhvu Buchanan

Out of the loose tongue
of a four year old
you fell to me. Stayed close
like a warm fire. Never
leaving my side, even when
we crossed the country
in a tiny cramped car.
Your smooth two syllable
frame sang sweetly
in the mouth of others.
My mother loved you
even if you weren’t
what she wanted for me.
I was clay
lingering in your hand,
as you shaped me
with your confident fingers.
I know you didn’t mean it
that night everything changed.
My mother handing me
a piece of paper,
a single word written in the center.
“This is your real name”
But you had hid
under the bed,
behind the page,
and instead another name
loomed before me.
I couldn’t keep both of you,
since you each pulled for me
like a game of tug-a-war.
I let you go
knowing someone would come,
knowing someone would claim you.

Anhvu Buchanan’s poems has appeared or is forthcoming in Cream City Review, Brush Mountain Review, Silhouette, and Transfer. He lives and writes in San Francisco. He is currently a student in the MFA program at San Francisco State and also serves as poetry editor of Fourteen Hills Literary Magazine.

by Ori Fienberg

There was the sound of something chewing at the plow, and then, with a heave, the rough gleam appeared atop the soil with a vein of whitish-yellow porcelain beneath. The farmer gathered the dull uncut gems in a pouch to bring to town.

Some folk had heard of planting teeth in the ground, and they awaited the rise of legions of warriors. But instead when he returned the farmer found a sheer white cliff protruding from the gums of the earth. The farmer roped it off, since he reasoned, wherever stands a wall of teeth, it will not be long till someone tries to break them.

Travelers guided by mindful winds brought word of olives with golden pits and trees with beating hearts. In turn the farmer showed them the town’s teeth, till with time the wind and stories stopped, and the cliff crumbled back into the field.

Ori Fienberg is a recent graduate of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is also captain and founder of the NWP Bowling Kings in the Lone Tree Men’s league. He has had work accepted in 2 River View, the Diagram, [and] Subtropics, to name a few.

by Katrina Hays

One

I
hate gray.
Have no truck
for matters of
balance, subtlety,
issues requiring
reasoned, rational approach.
Please, let me be limited by
fear, anger, the narrow confines of
absolutes: blacks, whites, utter certainties.

Two

Rage.
My own
poisoning.
Heavy metal
collapses cell wall,
wreaks havoc in my blood,
pools interior darkness.
Invisibly ruined, and still I
stand—smiling—shake your hand: very pretty.

Katrina Hays is a second-year MFA student with the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She is the editor of Soundings, the RWW newsletter. She lives in Bend, Oregon.

by Steve Barbaro

Steve Barbaro is originally from the Chicagoland area, and is currently a first-year MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia. “Neo-neorealism” is from his first book-length manuscript, titled Abyss/Edifice.

by Amelia Chandler-Lewy

The deer head has returned, the headlights catch stags that are not as afraid
as I am. The white house blares through the cedar, through the smell of darkness and wind.

We sleep in the back room, and there are doves on the walls, lines sketched onto pale;
in the morning, coffee and laughter. It is always so warm. In the day,
the geraniums and bougainvillea all spines,

all red and blatant, all soft at the edges. The violets on the bench, not as many,
as there used to be.

Later, I write. Later, we point
out hummingbirds and red hawks climbing in the yard. Later
when we are doing nothing at all, she calls me mija,

before she hears her mouth shape the sound, surprising her. The word creaks

from disuse. Out the window,
a deer is standing behind the hanging oaks.

Amelia Chandler-Lewy was once almost fatally impaled upon hundreds of sea urchins. She shares a birthday with Anais Nin, Nina Simone, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Like all three, she has a fondness for silk pajamas.