Anatolios Magazine: Issue #2 by Anatolios Magazine

~ Issue 2, October 2018 ~

Editor-in-chief Aya Whitfield (@avolitorial) Poetry Editors Kavi Kshiraj (@thermonous) Charle Liu (@streetsiding) Prose Editors Aimi Liu (@aavillainess) Lianna Schreiber (@ragewrites)

Anatolios Magazine accepts submissions of poetry, prose, and visual art (including photography) during the open submission periods indicated on our site, anatoliosmagazine.wordpress.com. Cover photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

General Submissions Where the Hurricanes Can't Reach Us by Wanda Deglane………….………….…………….4 Gamelan by Allison Hummel………….………….………….………….………….………….5 Ophiostoma novo-ulmi by Trace Ramsey………….………….………….………….………….6 I drink my own blood by B.A. O’Connell………….………….………….………….………7 Figure With Wings by Shana Ross………….………….………….………….………….……8 OUR LOVE by Edward Lee………….………….………….………….………….…………...9 I Don’t Bother Saying Goodbye by Loria Mendoza………….………….………….10 Components of a Tricolor by Carter Vance………….………….………….………….……….11 Anna by Natalie House………….………….………….………….………….………….……12 Rojas by Jesse Sensibar………….………….………….………….………….………….……13 Prayer for This Family by Wanda Deglane………….………….………….………….14 Taraxacum officinale by Trace Ramsey………….………….………….…………...15 INEVITABILITY by Edward Lee………….………….………….………….………….……16 Genoel by Allison Hummel………….………….………….………….………….………….17 El Dorado by Ryan Clark………….………….………….………….………….………….…18 All of It, Everything by Wanda Deglane………….………….………….………….………19 Going Through That Motion Is a Surrender by Loria Mendoza………….………….……….20 I’d like to be alone in the fire by B.A. O’Connell………….………….………….………….21 How Do You Feel About Europe? by Carter Vance………….………….………….………….22 .

Members Section: new york is just a concrete heaven by Charle Liu………….………….………….………….24 Sacred by Lianna Schreiber………….………….………….………….………….………….25 Prayer by Aya Whitfield………….………….………….………….………….………….26 Seawater by Aimi Liu………………………………………………………………………27 (MAYBE I LONG FOR A ROMANCE LESS MORTAL THAN LOVE.) by Charle Liu….28 Salvations by Kavi Kshiraj………….………….………….………….………….………….…29 Secular by Lianna Schreiber………….………….………….………….………….…………..31 .

Where the Hurricanes Can’t Reach Us Wanda Deglane she begins to put her pieces together on a too-warm wednesday night in juneI watch her from my bedroom window. there is a piece of her spine in the driveway, her lungs strewn in a bush. she collects them all, washes the ants and dirt off with a hose. she sews herself together with thread made from drowning prayers and longing, replacing parts as she sees fit: silk softness here, a touch of fire there. she wails the whole night, joining the whine of distant sirens, the song of crickets that watch her anxiously. I want to open the window and tell her, no no, that’s not where the tibia goes. and this is where the aorta goes, but I know this has to be done alone. when the sun comes up, weary and angry, she stumbles inside the house, her skin patched together and ruby raw like newborn child. but the blood finds a better way to flow through her limbs, her face is lit bright pink like the sky. there is nothing like newness to make one stand a little stronger, scream a little louder, bleed a little younger. she finds herself in the mirror, brushes strands of hair out of diamond eyes. I’ve never been so beautiful, she says. Let’s leave this place and never come back.

Gamelan Allison Hummel Otto, Otto everywhere. That was how I felt for a while, biting into wax fruit, crafting crusades in miniature, many pastoral hills to die on. Otto cuts some meat with a knife. Otto and that unspeakably tactile sound. Otto and that exquisitely tactical silence. Otto and did you know that bone china is made of bone? Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true, though. Unlike almost all things one might encounter in leonine Los Angeles I miss you, playing your bones like flutes. You were very wrapped up in your brilliance. Some perversion of a Tesla Coil. I guess this is a love poem. Now I listen to gamelan. And I revisit the Zurburans at the museum. All those garments all lashed up, longing is just loneliness in translation

Ophiostoma novo-ulmi Trace Ramsey They call it flagging, the way the leaves die on an infected elm tree. The leaves yellow and fly before the usual, timed demands of senescence. Varied bark beetles carry a fungal load—called Dutch Elm Disease though its origins are Asian; no one knows who to blame—beneath the thin skin of the tree. A sack of hyphae bursts as the insects tunnel. The tree reacts by killing itself, cutting off its own nutrient channels to combat the disease, vascular constriction like our own heart’s illness, a gum in the arteries. There is no cure.

I drink my own blood B.A. Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connell late at night in the womb of my bedroom--the ocean of the night sky always threatening to crash right through my bedroom window; My secrets buried in the black dirt of my floor and the silver of the floating stars threatens to bring them to the surface; my tongue looks for a way to let me breathe again, but eyes cannot see until dawn a way to rise to the surface, by then I am weak from the loss of blood and oxygen--looking only for the reflection of death in the always shimmering and bubbling glass of my bathroom mirror, and my teeth covered with my sins lock my jaw shut--just as my feet fall out from under me I collapse as a messy puddle on the desert tile-soothingly cold as I reserve my strength for no more days ahead and let whatever is eating me go straight for the bone marrow so I may be hollow like a bird when my mother buries me.

Figure With Wings Shana Ross When I say there was a man with wings Do you picture an angel, or Icarus? What is the quality of the light in your mind’s eye? Locusts are a thing with wings But not the thing with feathers – this explains Why hope is solitary and never Descends in purring community In multitudes that blot out the sky Is such a darkness always terrible? We are so attached to the good and bad Idea of a thing, but they change This whole scene will read differently some day Let time pass, symbols twist Like tinsel brought to nest by jackdaws Thought, memory, fly – shine and become Hard to follow out of the woods as we swallow our own stones Small and white, once laid to say “I was here.” Things change. Your god was tumescent In death for a good chunk of painted history Virile to the last. I am descended Of those who cannot be sure what they wrestle My sinews cry out, straining to bend around other perspectives: Certainty and clarity are not holier than complexity and the Inseparable mix of twilight that is not day is also not night. There is a purple that is filled with all other possibilities That can be tasted when you dream at the right time of day. This is the liminal space, I too am crepuscular The bats fly now, wings of warm skin Stretched fragile and strong, like a woman, like The spot right behind your earlobe that feels Like the circumsized head of first love. No one is all Good or bad but in some lights Not even faith can yet see tomorrow. When you can tell green from blue from wine-dark sea It will be morning, and thank god you can see the difference.

OUR LOVE Edward Lee There is fresh blood on your teeth as you smile, grin, satisfaction shuddering your limbs. I realise the blood is mine, though, with my body one giant pylon of pain, I call not tell from where I bleed, or even if the wound is fatal, though there is a white dizziness lurking in the corner of my eyes. I imagine the wound, wherever it may be, will become just another scar to add to the others, the endless record of reckoning that my body has been made by whatever it is that keeps us together, even when we are apart.

I Don’t Bother Saying Goodbye Loria Mendoza We hurl watermelon slice after slice like knives trade turns strapped to the target’s swirling red and white wheel perched on backyard cinder blocks we miss on purpose I know it’s both a kindness and a fear of letting go we get so good at missing we start hurling whatever we can dig up impossible grief disguised as potatoes our arms sculpted from unburying and wasp venom each throw farther from missing it’s inevitable and there is nothing kind left between us it’s as if someone dragged over some dead thing you can deny it all you want but there’s still a trail of blood and in the other room I hear the bleating of a lamb the flies are creeping in the wound already draining into their mouths you refuse to believe it like you refuse anesthesia and vaccines and therapy overdosing on aspirin nose bleeds spitting watermelon seeds at an empty wheel your fake teeth baptized in the hate souring what’s left of you

Components of a Tricolor Carter Vance Your mouth makes shapes that call to work, the kind most freely taken in good spirit where sun shines freely in heated miracle; How much beloved to take it on, the hearty pickaxe shade it takes to shelter beneath. Your eyes call forth ships to battle brotherhood, that many-thrown sacrifice to names that came close before this crass age; How much obliged to carry up the dead-weighted pole of rotten expectations, clichĂŠs on banners. Your hair flip-flowers with ripples of freedom, keys jangling long into brackish swamp of summer nights, touching door locks; How much closer to signed, sealed, stamped, delivered these visas to real life seem in such moments.

Anna Natalie House Anna says to me “your hair looks like cotton candy”. It took two boxes of dye and half a bottle of conditioner to get it that way and the towels haven’t looked the same since. We dyed it in my university bathroom and left a ring of pink around the sink that the cleaners hated me for and I lost my room deposit. She curled it for me afterwards and I felt the prettiest I’ve ever felt around her. Anna is driving us to the Peak District at 3am because she said her skin felt itchy, like she just had to get out of the building into the cold night air and the car windows are rolled all the way down and we’re screaming the lyrics to songs that we think mirror our situation. We skid on the ice and Anna spins us into a snowdrift before we crash and we scream even louder with both fear and excitement. Anna won’t get out of bed today so I try and lure her with the promise of a cigarette but when she cries and says she can’t move, that the bed is holding her like the covers are weighted, I crawl under the duvet and hold her until the bad thoughts stop. Anna and I are out at a rock music night and a boy won’t stop following us so she kisses me on the lips hard enough to leave a red imprint. I don’t rub it off. Later I kiss a girl who tastes of watermelon and smoke and when I close my eyes I think of Anna again and laugh at the thought of how we look together.

Rojas Jesse Sensibar Behind the bunkhouse before dawn I watch the sun set hundreds of miles to the east over the White Sands Missile Range. I still wait for your 2 a.m. call, the test rockets, the UFOs, things that burn with sudden bright light. I wait for you. You came to life as one of them, a rocket, a rock star, we knew you were destined for greater things fresh out of high school even working the wet t-shirt contests and topless clubs in our small town hung between the mountain and the interstate. You loved me hard with melting Popsicle lips in the frozen food section at midnight with those dark Brazilian eyes wide open. You left the same hard way too soon, eyes open wide to a heroin moon shining down on a white leather couch ice melting in your vodka glass on an empty apartment balcony in Dallas.

Prayer for This Family Wanda Deglane say there is a version of us in a young, teenaged universe that is happy and less thorn-studded and only holds soft cloud-coated memories. say there is a you and me that speaks only in shades of pinks and sun loved oranges. say we are us, and it’ll be okaythat next weekend I’ll come home to rearranged furniture and hurt swept not under a rug but out the back door. say the grief still clutches us by the throats, but say it makes us stronger in the end. say there comes a day where we can feel it all without crumbling to bitter-gritted sand. say the hands that mangled us fall off like molted skin and there comes a time when we learn to exhale. say all of this happened for a reason for some greater good, say it, please. say we’re allowed to hurt outside of sound-smothering pillowcase, say I’m allowed to cry even if it’s loud, even if it’s ugly, even if it screams I need you. say there is a version of us who can breathe so sweetly, discarded lungs and rebuilt dreams. say we are new, say we are holding each other and we are us and this will all be okay. say it’ll be okay. amen amen amen amen.

Taraxacum officinale Trace Ramsey With dandelion stems and pine needles, the children built cages for the pollinators. Into the frail bars went honeybees, cabbage moths, ruby throated hummingbirds. They took the cages to the moon, to the bottom of the oceans, to the dresser tops of their grandparentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rooms.

INEVITABILITY Edward Lee The leaves bleed red in the still river, while birds cease singing as they take scattering wing, eluding the coming wind that carries the hint of death in its invisible fingers. Can you smell it, that odour of the future? Can you feel it lightly settle on your skin, a stain that begs to be challenged by cleansing salvia and tongue, even as instinct older than your breaths tells you how futile a gesture would be; your hair stands on edge, just as your heartâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beat quickens, You know, without knowing, that while this is a dream, yes, only a dream, a dream to wake from and, with luck and effort, forget, it is a dream that will blur itself into your wakefulness, a dream of tomorrow, now today, your hand shaking as you hesitate to open the curtains.

Genoel Allison Hummel I. I have no respect for the moment I am pulling your long toes seaward I am squeezing them in the direction of your heart because vague interest in reflexology and because creatively staving off bedtime. And I chew on the scythe of mango, I lap at the future, sick wave. II. You say: it started to snow. We approached the huge shape in the field and this sort of bleeds into a parallel tale, about a paradise, teeming with unusual life- Arcadia in view!the mango as big as a camelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart, all of my aether gone heartward, now through the toes. A terrifying lack of strategy here, black bird in freedive - I wonder where I have put all those feathery fragments that in theory make up the woman. But in my disperse state I just am, that is just the way that I am and it is also sort of sacred, sort of santa sangre. Even my tangible gaze is a bit Arcadia. 17

El Dorado Ryan Clark for Eldorado, Oklahoma Eldorado fidgeted, meaning: the field the town would shift within call of the mail, a light map of spelling El Dorado, the heave of name etched on the post office application and washed radial over location. For the dust-torn throat seeking land knocked at the door once and said our journey gone long enough to stop. The first town that came to need us is a radius of tired feet. In the end, gold is a place to rest, to say done, the shift of feet made permanently located. It covers us as we are being constructed, which is another way of saying repaired in the night while we wait for the railroad to lay its way through. The tune of ours finally came, the ping of our harvested crops and cattle― this is deafening, to read arrival into owned. Because the grass found its way to claw home out of the clay and I need it to rain and the rail car sound of thunder rang across the dry scars of drought that held the door open, nailed it shut.

All of It, Everything Wanda Deglane here is the beach in California, the one cold afternoon in May. here we are, asleep between sea and land with the seagulls watching over us curiously. here are the thousands of miles we’ve put on your truck, here is every house and building we drove past, pointed out and said, that’s the park where I first learned to ride a bike. this is the place where my mom and I used to get Chinese every week before the divorce. see it? it’s a hardware store now. that’s where my favorite aunt used to live before she accidentally set the whole place on fire. she never could look at her flat iron again after. here are all the new memories we make, all these states i keep you in. here are late nights dancing in the kitchen to Promiscuous while you make me mac n cheese from the box. here’s our first real date, how we didn’t know it was a date until i kissed you like a fever. my mouth tasted like mint and honey storms for months after. here are the ashes of every trauma, every worst day, how you helped me light them on fire, how they still smell rotten floating in the sky. here’s the first I love you your mouth ever spilled, in an empty church parking lot. we were naked and laughing then. what is the word for that kind of aching nervous happy frenzy? what is the word for the vacancies left behind by another person? here is an intertwining, here is my bruised skin becoming sweet fruit-flesh when fused to yours. here are fingers squeezed together on the center console. here is a ring made of pearl and ivy. here is the voice you gave me. the sobs you collected from my lips. here are the dreams I dug out of your bones and never let you fall out of love with. the pieces of me I brought back for you to keep as souvenirs. here are the secrets that poured effortlessly out of both of us- a level of comfortable my body never knew to crave. here you are, shakily telling me the names that make your mind reel back years. here I am, showing you the intersection where my heart stops beating. here’s a gas station cup, half slushy, half cola. here’s every memorized order from every restaurant we’ve ever been to.here’s a sulfur-crested cockatoo and turquoise light streaming down from Scottsdale. here’s soft-smelling June and slow-falling November. here is hopelessness, redefined. here we are at the aquarium. I’m watching the jellyfish drift up to heaven. you’re watching me.

Going Through That Motion Is a Surrender Loria Mendoza the color of it changes depending on which ghost fastens my necklace hands like my mother’s fingers like mine markings on the skin give it away what word has the ghost scribbled on the mirror this morning are the jewels pointed up or down into my skin am I bleeding or just seeing spots am I Lady Macbeth or corpse posing what will I not notice where did I put those teeth what is it I’m supposed to find in this recurring the closed-off well in the yard where for years the elephant canna lily recedes to see-through decay hatching underfoot loud as cicadas we find small toys and sandals in the pale foliage wonder if it ate up the children we once were if it still eats us up if we are still children receding too afraid to look down the well afraid of finding something terrible I can’t tell if I’m stepping into or out of whether it’s my ghost or my skin whether they aren’t the same thing

I’d like to be alone in the fire— B.A. O’Connell I’d like to remake my skin in the image of ash and death, to sit in the raw stink of decay and pain, while the ocean pulls away and the night eats the day.

Oil slick in my reflection, Oil slick between my thighs, who am I?

While the sun sets on my asymmetrical breasts, the embers burn away in my open mouth, the blackness longs to speak, glass melts in the sand, I’m touching everything. I’m touching no one.

The moon has her eyes on me, naked and shivering on a beach I never meant to find.

How Do You Feel About Europe? Carter Vance I thought about kissing you in the Sandinista rain, grey sky storming reflected in revolutionary sunglass, trains carrying our tender skin, milk-white in shade from Beirut to Buenos Aries and back, and never had I known your touch from the opposite side of a kitchen table. I thought about you at a rooftop party in Brooklyn, the dusk of August breezes dancing through strands of your hair as hitchhikers and squeegee men through a Don Valley traffic jam; you’d make the round, red wine glass in hand and talk to me just the same as the others. My life seemed so bland to compare, colourless, eating Tesco bread and jelly snakes in a County Tipperary coroner’s office, the sun tick-tapered behind about six layers of concrete and piping, double that for clouds and clinging indifference coming on tight as turning hairpins. I thought about your many-coloured coats streaming through Prague’s November snows and the breweries of Plzen, standing still as Cubist lampposts on the side-street, my legs shivered bone-deep beneath thin polyester pant, reaching limit, stepped into the bar with the pivo place-mats, neon flicked a second off.

new york is just a concrete heaven Charle Liu i meet god crouched in an alley somewhere near Times Square. she's sat in the safehouse between a brick wall and a puddle 'cause it's winter and raining, and she looks like my childhood best friend. her breaths fog up the air, mist spreading as if it could take flight. i sit next to her because my parents have disappeared into neon lights. the people walking past don't even look at us. i lost my voice to the bustle of noon crowds, dissipated it amidst this person and the next as the sun bled over the skyscrapers. i shouted it into billboards made bright by the heavy darkness, so she fills the space with her own soft murmurings, teaches me secrets that sound more like wishes. i tell her mine. i tell her more. i lost all my barriers to the slivers of sidewalk just barely visible underfoot, and my ribcage seems to unfold like birdwings. she asks me what i know of loving and losing and having lost. she asks me to tell her, to say it out loud: i have never known anything but loving and losing and sometimes, they seem like one and the same. she is gone when my parents find me again, as if to prove it true- i do not know of anything but losing and loving, in whichever order they come

sacred Lianna Schreiber at the marbled feet of Astarte ——— altars smoking of white willow and frankincense; shrinemaidens with their temples adorned, cassia staining stars across a delicate blossoming of lips. pale arms swirl in serpentine dances, honoring the mother of nights—coils of dark hair coming undone with it, cascades of midnight ink; what a sight they are, oh, what a heaven of limbs. how I long to be drawn in their midst: to have my flesh stripped clean of sins, to be fed the dreamfruit of ripened lotus; to become other, bones blooming, transfigured into marble pillars. oh, how I long to be laid on that dais from where she holds her spectral court—to be made into offering, into sinuous sinner; into her blaspheming saint, her mortal, lily-bodied lover. rise me toward you, o, mater tenebra: I want to taste the silver of your light, the salts that line the slit of your mouth, of your tongue; let us become twined echoes of eons long past. o! Astarte, Astoreth, Ishtar ——— Inanna, queen and slayer of heaven, of gilt gods; thine is the glory and thine is the carnage, as am I with all that is mine; roses and nadir of rainfall.

prayer Aya Whitfield power lines tangle into the sky, humming a note outside of human hearing. birds roost there, bare feet against flowing electricity, safe with no path to the ground. supplication tastes like glass and singed feathers. you found the dead sparrow on the sidewalk below the gleaming window, open eyes black and feathers brown like regret, stirring in the wind. there are places where riverstones carve deep holes into the bedrock with their circular motions in the current, and you feel the same way: stone grinding against itself until there is nothing left to eat away into empty. you’re convinced the sparrow knows your name. you’re convinced there is a pebble drilling into your riverbed-chest, and this pebble has the same black eyes. you stand under the wires, and the birds tumble one by one into your waiting hands. their hollow bones remind you of hymns. the gentle brutality of their necks snapping under your fingers reminds you of mercy. this is a sort of prayer, or maybe a sacrifice— erosion blurs the difference. kneel by the river and dip your hands. wash your feathers clean. the sparrow watches you, its wings tangled in dead copper wire. there are many ways to wear away stone, but time and water work best. relearn this. bones are mineral, all earth-born heaviness, but the birds still fly. it’s a matter of hollowness, the sparrow tells you. carve away enough, and the sky will open for you.

Seawater Aimi Liu (TO LOVE IS TO DROWN IN YOUR EYES) love for us is like this; abstraction of emotions, silence between words, & your beating heart placed in my hands. you name me seawater & beg me to leave the salt-stained kisses of a sinner on your skin. you name me your ocean, your night tide; strong enough to wash away your sins & take them as my own. when you drown, you name your death destiny like it’s victory, like it’s love. your body, buried under the sand, unveiled from my taking. we are but two sides of a whole. our true colors bloom from within & paint us like this; you cower & i devour. bite your tongue & press the salt into your wounded cheeks. let me seep into your bloodstream. i’ve learned others to heal with this burning in place of aching; pain is all the same, anyway. hold my hand one last time. a lifeline tethering you to reality you’ve lost from summer nights. a knot of trust tied as we unravel our ropes from each other & the loose ends remain untouched. you name me your seawater, your ocean, when you drown & become forgotten seafoam washed ashore.

(MAYBE I LONG FOR A ROMANCE LESS MORTAL THAN LOVE.) Charle Liu i dream in shades of red, the colour of royalty & spilt wine, fresh on altars. call it blood, call it flesh, call it whatever you'd like but it is still a consumption. i dream of you, standing in purple fields, in muddy river water, in the golden glow of the sun- i dream of you, and i do not know the scent of lavender. and i told you this, in wishes and prayers, that i wanted you to cup my face in cold hands, burn me with divinity. wanted, wished, i said every word to the sky as if it would not break me. i have never known a tongue other than mine, not even in kisses, not even in flightless dreams. you asked me this: what is less mortal than love? and you knew the answer, you only wanted to hear it from me- worship, i tell you, and kiss a mouth full of ichor.

salvations Kavi Kshiraj my skull becomes a dusk breaking against the sky when you look at me like this, and i fractalize into redefinition, carry my mouth into this, let my teeth drag over the syllables. you tell me you can’t build a house on unstable ground, bricks rusted as they fall from your hands, and i say watch me, and no god . comes to tell me what this is. still, shiva is holding the tenderness of my fluted throat between his blue hands, beheading me like snapping a wishbone. i don’t know what i mean here. my head lolls over soft dirt, detached, mouth half-parted and dust gentling against my head. and i . don’t know what i mean here, but it is nothing wholly fixable, lungs rattling around white petals and incense. prayer curls around my scapulae, sindoor streaked on my skin, and you know that i don’t wear kindness well, but you holy my mouth into this, fingertips melting my jutted-out shoulder blades into . crooked swanwings. i am ruled by impatiences here - i think i am ruled by impatiences here - aching to swallow a sun, calling this hunger an invasion and meaning this body is an invasion, splintering ill fit ribs apart. hanuman’s lips catch around gold when he nods. your hands on me are . soft, even when your wrist bones show in jagged, bleak whites. i think, sometimes, the air becomes prashad cupped between my hands, or water 29

sanctified over shiva linga to seep cool between the gaps of my fingers, like i have been dying my whole life and this is my salvation. sometimes, i donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to be saved. .

secular Lianna Schreiber and I shall lay rose upon rose, until I have built thee a stairway which opens into the gilt gardens of Heaven â&#x20AC;&#x201D; set your dainty feet upon its verdant soils, my dove; let light and angels press their myrrh and their hallowed kisses on the pearls of your toes, across your dimpled ankles, at the back of your knees where stars pool their pale waters. in turn, I ask only that thee weave; take the sky into thy hands, my dove â&#x20AC;&#x201D; unravel and unspool it, then make a rug from its cocoon, one embroidered with the likeness of swans; a lake for me to lay down my weary bones and listen, adrift, as muses are singing folk songs in their sweet voices, bodies lucent with tragedy and merriment. it shall be our Lethe, this tapestry: when time will have wearied us to dust and our dried-out veins will lay as bare sediments deep underwater, then the susurrus of waves shall lick age away from our remnants, and within that act of unremembrance shall lay a kindness that will allow us our rest; a loverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sleep, eternally entwined.

Author Biographies WANDA DEGLANE is a night-blooming desert flower from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University, pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology and family & human development. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Former Cactus, among other lovely places. Wanda is the author of Rainlily (2018) and Lady Saturn (Rhythm & Bones, 2019). ALLISON HUMMEL is a poet based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Voicemail Poems, the Cabildo Quarterly, A Glimpse Of, Humble Pie, and Anti-Heroin Chic. TRACE RAMSEY is a recipient of the 2017-2018 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Award in Prose, the 2017 Profane Journal Nonfiction Prize, the 2016 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize from the North Carolina Literary Review, the 2015 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Award in Literature, and was a 2015 contributor in non-fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Trace’s recent publications include essays in Profane Journal, At Length Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, concīs, North Carolina Literary Review and I Don’t Know How to Help You, a compilation zine from Pioneers Press. In 2014, Trace’s first book—an anthology of the zine Quitter (Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying)—was published by Pioneers Press. This was followed in 2017 by All I Want to Do is Live, also from Pioneers Press. In December 2014, Trace received a certificate in documentary arts in nonfiction writing from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. Trace is currently writing a memoir-in-essays, Carrying Capacity, and a novel, The Ornithologists. Trace lives in Durham with his partner and two children. B.A. O’CONNELL lives in Nowhere, Texas. They have two cats and a vinyl collection listened to rarely. They have a passion for the written word and believe firmly in its ability to heal. SHANA ROSS is a poet and playwright with a BA and MBA from Yale University. She bought her first computer working the graveyard shift in a windchime factory, and now pays her bills as a consultant and leadership expert. Her writing career has been dormant for 18 years for reasons both practical and best discussed in therapy. This year, her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Anapest Journal, Ghost City Review, Indolent Press’ What Rough Beast project, SHANTIH Journal, and Writers Resist. EDWARD LEE’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen and Smiths Knoll. His debut poetry collection "Playing Poohsticks 32

On Ha'Penny Bridge" was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection. LORIA MENDOZA is a writer, curator, musician, and performance artist. She hails from Austin, Texas, where she learned to keep it weird. Seeking the constancy of the bizarre, she moved to San Francisco, where she earned her MFA in the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Moon City Review, in The Acentos Review, Mobius, Subprimal, Fourteen Hills Magazine, Red Light Lit, The Walrus Literary Journal, and Transfer Magazine. Her book, Life’s Too Short (Fourteen Hills Press, 2017) won the Michael Rubin Book Award. She lives in Austin again. CARTER VANCE is a writer and poet originally from Cobourg, Ontario, Canada currently resident in Ottawa, Ontario. His work has appeared in such publications as The Vehicle, Contemporary Verse 2 and A Midwestern Review, amongst others. He is a 2018 Harrison Middleton University Ideas Fellow. His debut collection of poems, Songs About Girls, was published by Urban Farmhouse Press in 2017. NATALIE HOUSE is a 22 year old student training as a social worker. In their free time, they love to write, especially poetry and short stories. Their aim is for other queer young people to read their work and be inspired. You can find more of their work at http://itsaquotableworld.tumblr.com JESSE SENSIBAR’s work has appeared in such places as The Tishman Review, Stoneboat Journal, and Waxwing. Jesse's first full-length work, Blood in the Asphalt, is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. You can find him at jessesensibar.com. RYAN CLARK is obsessed with puns and writes much of his work through a unique method of homophonic translation. His poetry has most recently appeared in Red Earth Review, Ocotillo Review, Flock, Menacing Hedge, and Homonym, and his first book, How I Pitched the First Curve, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press. He is a winner of the 2018 San Antonio Writers Guild contest, and his work has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Waldorf University in Iowa. CHARLE LIU is a young Chinese-Canadian writer currently living in New Brunswick, Canada. He spends most of his time dreaming or writing or dreaming of writing and muddling around in his own past, trying to twist old memories into words. Oftentimes, his experiences with love and various other mishaps shape his poetry and writing pieces- you can find more of his works @streetsiding on Tumblr. LIANNA SCHREIBER is a Romanian author. A self-described “New Romantic”, her work mostly concerns itself with gods, monsters, and human nature as it is caught between the sacred and the profane — all wrapped up in an overabundance of floral imagery. She can be found @ragewrites on tumblr. 33

AYA WHITFIELD lives on the East Coast and never stops writing (but probably produces too much poetry about the moon and the ocean); thinks flowers and cats and eating berries are the best things in life; drinks far too much tea; and can be found as @avolitorial on most social media. AIMI LIU is a Chinese-Canadian university student, poet, and aspiring author. She loves bubble tea and Studio Ghibli films. She has a proclivity for drinking too much caffeine, overwriting, cooking at odd hours, and night wandering. You can find her at cafes or @aavillainess/@tuyetanliu on Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter. KAVI KSHIRAJ is a queer, Indo-American poet found in New Jersey. He spends time on hobbies such as writing, Greek mythology, and his various identity crises.