Not the word but the space after. Not the weight but the lifting. This corridor has no clock, this waiting has no waiting in it, a fluorescent hum with a smell of, an antiseptic pause with a pause of breath. Match two doors, neither one. No. Only in buildings without windows, only in rooms with machines. I will not sit down again. I will not. Someone is speaking. She pressed her back against the vending machine and it shuddered, humming. Found, in the pocket of associatio

pit Star of this soreness I laugh myself awake, sling deep into the heave. Straight out of dirt road walking and at capacity—this being the back-alley way; the heartbreak; the running away constantly. Interest’s beam catches the crowd which catches you before you collapse, tremendous, breathless, one hundred hands on your back. It’s true that at its best the thrum goes sugarwater sweet; I reduced from hypochondriac fractal to taut and trembling string. A vamp kid whose hurric

Abecedarian as Ars Poetica Already this feels too much. The way a line can break anywhere. Here even, if we aren’t careful. Too often I’m caught off guard, having dropped suddenly from the place I was standing, like an elevator with its cable cut, like another word falling down the stairs. Do you remember when God was a sonnet you could stumble into, or how enlightenment was the volta neither of us was prepared for? I nearly fell off the page taking that turn, and in fact, j

It is a good day when I find you, a petal of peony caught up in the wind or puzzling out the sky’s bent dipper over pancakes before school. Each night the moon-dish splits open like a honeydew its starry lake on a floating branch. Light falls from this dark as shining pennies we flung in the Trevi Fountain for luck we didn’t once need. We’re out in the garden as cells, Mad Libs, Motown, Hercules, principally as ourselves. There is never an outbound flight from the status quo/

While on an evening walk, we see two dogs mating in an abandoned lot full of tall grass. Holding your hand in mine I look up at the moon looking like a coin caught between two cypress trees. I wonder about the meaning of time, about disappearing fragments. To our right is a fortune teller with old hands. I wonder if she knows I wore blue tonight to hear you say I look beautiful, so I can believe in the future. Pale moths are flying above a closed divorce lawyer’s office to ou

beyond the trees as far as i can see there’s a small duck i’ve been waiting for. i tell the duck my name, who i am. it probably doesn’t remember, but that’s fine. i remind myself that when you find an acquaintance after a long while of not knowing, it’s both hard and easy to get them to like you again. at least that’s what i tell myself on those blue days by the pond, feeding the geese breadcrumbs, the duck looking at me like what the hell, man, where’s mine? i don’t bring it

Star of this soreness I laugh myself awake, sling deep into the heave. Straight out of dirt road walking and at capacity—this being the back-alley way; the heartbreak; the running away constantly. Interest’s beam catches the crowd which catches you before you collapse, tremendous, breathless, one hundred hands on your back. It’s true that at its best the thrum goes sugarwater sweet; I reduced from hypochondriac fractal to taut and trembling string. A vamp kid whose hurricane

I fetch her the toy bricks Father made from a fallen hornbeam, but she rolls her eyes, hands me a slice of castellated krustenbrot, sends me to town for a bushel of ginger. She bakes model cottages with strudel-work windows, byres with almond-paste oxen, kennels with marzipan puppies. When her schloss cake collapses from its surfeit of turrets, she simply laughs and starts again. Soon she’s building sturdy barns with dumpling mortar, merchants’ houses with pumpernickel shing

I. Our father was a tall man, a gaunt man, would hit like airplane whiskey, in the snowfields of the heart was supremely treacherous and knowledgeable in all things avalanche. One day up at the glass cabin we could look past his sunken eyes and see that he no longer knew the cold; he fell ill that winter. II. April is the saddest month. Winter has, again, failed to kill us, and when it cries I cry too. Not that I wish it had succeeded, but once, we were small and our father w

In the dream / I’m all hallways / windows where the doors should be / behind distorted glass / memories / all my shit / got miscoded / strobe light nervous system / blinking Christmas light response / lighthouse with a laser for an eye / someone came in / turned all the lights on / left them on for 20 years / the light bill came due / like an apocalypse / She was with me / in the last hallway / the one with the door / I thought I knew then what was in there / that was only th

Up the worms came, rotini-thick, chubby palindromes of flesh. “Sorry,” I said. “That’s OK,” said the dirt-specked brain at the bottom of the can. “You could use a win.” "I could blame my misery on the family business but truthfully I wanted it." I would’ve licked glass for a tin can, an old boot—the smallest tug of resistance would cure my everything. Instead: limp nothing. It wasn’t the ocean’s fault—on the other side of the dock, my sister Maude reeled in cascades of wr

Out the second story window, I see daffodils and dog shit. It’s sunny and there’s screaming. I crane my neck and notice her beat-up deck chair unraveling Rebecca Ferlotti (she/her) is a writer, poetry instructor, and editor based in Ohio. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Journal, Poetry South, The Bayou Review, and other magazines. Rebecca’s work also has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. More at rebeccaferlotti.com.

Reprint. Originally published in Choatic Merge's last issue The guy in the pizza shop is a conspiracy theorist who thinks giving women too many rights makes them violent offenders who’ll knock a man to the floor over a thin-crust pepperoni. Most days, you linger outside and wait for him to get sidetracked by a call, so his kid takes over the counter – he’s a quiet lad, who just sort of mumbles and passes your order along to his dad after he’s hung up. No fuss, then. You can p

—which is why I keep quiet. The small forest where I grow what should happen, which is really just what I want to happen. Like anything, this could burn, too. ⯀ I watched a documentary about forests. Reminded me of dad too much. The planting after clear cuts, all new so the trees grow identical. Same height, same everything. And walking through it reminds me that I didn’t grow fast enough. Made small by a thousand mirror-image trees. ⯀ Mom, the burns. Not prescribed

You have to first take out your guts so that it has a place to go But then, what happens if it doesn’t grow? The bear gets stuck at cub the hollow stays, the bear claws air. Remember how you used to say “Hit me” when you knew you’d done something wrong? You’d flex your stomach so, you said, it wouldn’t hurt, You’d tell us, “Do it now.” There would be tears You’d tell my brother, be a man and you’d be smiling, buttons straining on your shirt Nadia Kalman is an NEA Literature g

She likes her grapes frozen. He can’t stand the texture. She drops two or three into a glass of Pinot Gris. Summer’s a porch screened by burgeoning gardens. Already floras enclose, obscure them— He serves breakfast nude each weekend. She paints him from memory, her colors homage to tanager and towhee— What was once shameless now carries intricacies, innumerable steps (tempo dawns). Their dance, not rote, but rueful as moonbeams escaping grasp. The trailing light of one more c

The palm and the fist and the knife in the Fist of the hand. You’re the side that enters The throat, the bed of the mouth. Take As long as you need. There’s sleep in the Back on the edge of the knife. It’s cold On the counter. The numbers are flat Like a palm. Life, round. That’s the sound Of it rolling, plane reconning. Sky is more Bowl than plate. In the kitchen the stars Watch the sweep of our bodies. They wink Like a knife. What I saw first was a flash In the fist, then w

I wasn’t a girl back then. I was wearing nylon dresses with clay sleeves. I was wearing heels and bracelets made of muddy pretzels. Back then, only mothers delivered babies. I wasn’t a girl back then. The zipper of the days pulled up smoothly to the chest. I wrapped my hips in plaid evenings. Sadness grew clearly, its cogs screeching. Mothers were anthills and we could have taken shelter. I would surprisingly put on their raincoats as big as a house. And then, suddenly tall,

Queer hopeless romantic Mae Fraser (any pronouns) is a New Hampshire based poet and book enthusiast. After receiving their degree in Creative Writing from Salem State University, they have gone on to have work featured or forthcoming with Wayfarer. LEVITATE, Juste Milieu Zine, and others. Find them online @maeflowerreads.

I have only been to the seafood restaurant once since the crabs took over. Waiting at the bar for a table was not the same experience: with the bartender scuttling sideways along the bar top, using leverage and small bottles to spindle the drinks. Do I tip a crab as much as I would a student bartender working her way through college? When we achieved main dining and were seated, I recognized the menu cover but wondered what severe changes awaited inside. But crab was still th