ISSUE TWELVE
A Flash of Beauty
POETRY
SAMPSON STARKWEATHER
Villainous Song
Why I Am Not a Painter or a Musician or
Employable
MICHAEL KLEIN
Blue St. Bird
CÉSAR DÁVILA ANDRADE
There Will Be
(translated from Spanish by
Jonathan Simkins)
RENNIE AMENT
Total Wonder
BERNADETTE GEYER
Self-Portrait as a Shark
Brief Rhapsody on Leisure
JASMINE KHALIQ
Approaching November
ANDY SIA
Domatophilia
RAJNESH CHAKRAPANI
A Place Is Where You Have the
Wrong Nose
NATHAN SPOON
The Winner
LISA OLSTEIN
Apparent Winner
Host
KATIE BERTA
[I was bored of the brunch of it]
[Someone told you what you were at
one time]
REBECCA HAZELTON
The Husband Proposes
JACKIE SABBAGH
The Lifeguard I’m Paying
TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN
Dear Metka!
16.III.1979
(translated from Slovenian by
Brian Henry)
LIDIJA DIMKOVSKA
Do You Feel Dizzy?
Emptiness
(translated from Macedonian by
Ljubica Arsovska and Patricia Marsh-
Stefanovska)
SIWAR MASANNAT
[it has been said in the thieving]
KAREN ELIZABETH BISHOP
iris
JOHN BLAIR
Aphorism 32: Pain Is Inevitable but
Suffering Is Optional
FELICIA ZAMORA
Not on Geological Time
ALLISON TITUS
Summer, Virginia
REBECCA LEHMANN
Train Villanelle
Skeleton Key Villanelle
EUGENIA LEIGH
Off the Medication: New Year’s Eve 2019
STELLA WONG
Chinese Remainder Theorem
Scorpion W2
Ars Poetica
LARA EGGER
Ars Poetica
MARY HELEN CALLIER
Still Life with Flowers
The Insatiable Glory of Renaissance
Dinners
KIM HYESOON
A Shell’s Life
(translated from Korean by
Cindy Juyoung Ok)
ALEXANDRIA HALL
Oysters
Into a Single Being
SYLEE GORE
We Call It Time in Use
MUYAKA BIN HAJI AL-GHASSANIY
The World Is a Brittle Tree
Everything Would Be Scattered
(translated from the Swahili by
Richard Prins)
MORGAN HAMILL
We found feathers
You; You say something
ADAM GIANNELLI
Um, Uh
DANIEL COUDRIET
The Meteorologist
JESSICA CUELLO
Beauty
St. Francis, Patron Saint of Animals
MARY G. WILSON
No Purchase
GILAD JAFFE
Michelangelo’s Moses
JESSICA JACOBS
And Abraham Came to Eulogize Sarah
and to Weep for Her
KAI IHNS
I Felt My Form Only When Losing It
EMILY PITTINOS
Orphan, Lissome in the Dust Storm
[Unmoved by morning, she scales
a silo]
[But then— / avoiding speech]
HEO NANSEOLHEON
Verse on Swing Excursion
Eight Lines, Elated
(translated from Old Korean by
Suphil Lee Park)
VALERIE WOHLFELD
Rushes
ROBERT WOOD LYNN
Riding Over the Brooklyn Bridge
DENISE DUHAMEL
The West Village
ELTON GLASER
Mortropolis
RODRIGO TOSCANO
Write the City
July 4th, 2021
BRIAN SWANN
The Snake
The Ocean
SIHLE NTULI
In the Presence of Ocean Water
PETER GRANDBOIS
The Cave
BRUCE BEASLEY
Climate Assessment
CYNTHIA MARIE HOFFMAN
Quality of Life
JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ
The Anniversary
ELMIRA ELVAZOVA
The Possibility of a Beautiful Death
KAREN RIGBY
Things I Never Told You
DAN O’BRIEN
Motherless 1 & 2
SCOUT KATHERINE TURKEL
Starring
EMILY BARK BROWN
What I Wanted My Body to Do Was
Be Patient
MICK TOMA
Diorama
BRITTANY CAVALLARO
Late to the Party
SARAH WOLFSON
The Pigeon
KIERON WALQUIST
All Seasons Landscaping
Oh, Iron Giant: Double Portrait
CHRISTOPHER BREAN MURRAY
The Meadowlark
JEFFREY MORGAN
Quarantine
SETH GARCÍA
Primer for an Isolation
MYA MATTEO ALEXICE
And Upon His Horns, Ten Crowns
Boyfriend Material
REBECCA BOYLE
Nightchange
The General
RAE GOUIRAND
Whatever Dimness or Brightness
HIRONDINA JOSHUA
[I don’t write to be seen, I write not
to be seen.]
(translated from Portuguese by
Grant Schutzman)
MATHEW WEITMAN
Trade Winds
People Also Ask
PETER JAY SHIPPY
The Ravenna Halation
ROALD HOFFMANN
Soil Science
DANIEL MOYSAENKO
Trompe l’Oeil
PETER STRECKFUS
My Mother’s Spider
Twenty Minutes
ALLAN PETERSON
They Say Sorry
GENTA NISHKU
Language Politics
CHARLES RAFFERTY
Poetry
H.R. WEBSTER
Poems
WILLIAM REPASS
Guzzlin’
EDITH LIDIA CLARE
Keep Going Keep Going
ELIZABETH SCANLON
State
How We Were Changed
NICK LANTZ
Word of the Day [eating my sandwich
outside I think a bird]
PRAGEETA SHARMA
Annual
JOANNE DIAZ
Ixion at the Museo del Prado
Thomas Edison with His Phonograph
EDWARD MAYES
The Vanishing Thalassocracy of Venice
PETER LABERGE
Andromeda
DAVID GROFF
Infinitive
ASHLEY KUNSA
Declaration
MYRONN HARDY
Ode to Destruction
KEVIN MCILVOY
Dean Young Anti-Ode
ERIC PANKEY
The Ruin
The Initiate
WESLEY ROTHMAN
The War
PAGE HILL STARZINGER
My Body Knows Its Limits
SAMUEL AMADON
Divers [I had a lot of things I had to do.]
KATHARINE WHITCOMB
I keep the calendar alive
VANDANA KHANNA
Dear O— [Once, we were king-bedded…]
TASIA TREVINO
Bully Echo
MICHAEL JULIANI
2020
JESSE WALLIS
Cueva de las Manos
On Seeing
XUELA ZHANG
Land Art
SYDNEY LEA
Maturity
CHRIS FORHAN
Aluminum and Screws
MATTHEW ROTH
Midsummer the parking lot makes its
own heat
Bigfoot
JACOB GRIFFIN HALL
Here’s Hoping
NICOLE ZDEB
Autobiography of the Moon
CARLIE HOFFMAN
When Will You Learn There Isn’t a Word
for Everything?
AMIE ZIMMERMAN
False Spring [careful / taking is a matter /
of reckoning]
False Spring [deconstructing the personal]
PAUL ILECHKO
Nature as Syndrome
Sonnet in Honor of the Postal Service
BENJAMIN VOIGT
Mirrors and Windows
RICHARD FOERSTER
Plein-Air Sketch
FICTION
EMILY NEUBERGER
The Unicorn
MARIE-HELENE BERTINO
Viola in Midwinter
ED TAYLOR
Speculative Fiction
Scarecrow
ALLIE ZENWIRTH
Isesu, Nice to Assess You. Ha-Ha!
HILDA JOHNSTON
Gaetano Bresci and the King of Italy
NONFICTION
MONICA MACANSANTOS
5:45 P.M. in Eastbourne, Wellington
J. M. TYREE
Delirious Berlin
VICTORIA BOSCH MURRAY
The Dean’s List
KATE COLBY
Contrast Agent
KRYSTAL LANGUELL
Nothing a Pair of Scissors Can’t Fix
TESS RAUSCHER
Denuded
KATHRYN NUERNBERGER
After
JESSICA FISHER and
MARGARET RONDA
Dear Friend
NAHAL SUZANNE JAMIR
Three Women
FILM
ZACK FINCH
After Before Sunrise
INTERVIEW
PRAGEETA SHARMA in conversation with MICHAEL DUMANIS