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

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

—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 went to uncle’s house after the funeral — the house was filled with water. I couldn’t see my legs once I entered. People stood on chairs to breathe. Children on their swim rings to stay alive. Everyone in the house, except the family, tried to find the tap left open. Nobody could ask or speak about the tap, the outline of the house’s inside, or the water. Cousins held shut the doors of other rooms — so no one could see what the water touched. The wife of the youngest cousin

Our lines stretch and waver; pieces of DNA from an ancient spool reach out tentative to touch parallel lives, wanting to envelop,...

森闺 献给飞飞 临春我带你游乡港，远处不仅有灯还有星。 Deep Chambers For Feyfei When it is almost spring, I take you to roam along the village harbor. In the...

will they remember how she needed to feel the ocean, how it brought her visions of a lover left behind in another life, before she was...

I read a poem that takes up half the book. There are boys crying in the cornfields of its pages. A living will tucked into the stanzas of...

I. jennette, i’ve encouraged my mother to delete her will. it’s unnecessary. would there be a squabble, the kind siblings wield when they...

1 climbs the bluff to the oceanside cemetery— patches of pink plastic geraniums and plaster angels baseball caps, rosaries in fenced...

The tree is topless, all trunk. Its body cuts open to the sky, slit running up most its length like a dress designed to surprise, when...

In the upstairs hallway, I struggle with the intruder while downstairs the boys try to figure out the rotary phone to dial the...

To the physicist and artist, both sides of the coin are the same: truth-beauty reduced to particle-waves, images...