“City and not city”
Until we run out of space / Folding and refolding Separating dust from the water, hoping for A wall-shaped apparatus / Wide-reaching Spaces between fingers finding the field’s flowers With no streets to guide me, I fell into gulch
Amoeba Records I think is gone now / The smell lingers Squealing
Now, the longer shades have vanished / And the Tides pulling our nails to the sea Shoreline littered with strips of human skin
[Charity, car acara mi amor]
Televised and monetized
And subtle, / john zorn opens a ticket booth and Falls. But with orange light haloed through hair.
Bind, bind, bind trice knotted this curse upon them Periphery of my inner city, The ink stain
All our hair ends / So many comets playing our old game Glad in tissue paper and sweat, shining, swaying, My way through sky spreading Among the bramble and disrepair
// From Sun to Earth //
The sun was angry, yellow, hot. She turned to share a final thought"I'm sorry, but I really must turn you into carbon dust."
// To the Sea //
The moon pulls you ever farther out to sea, to the deep black waters where you'll drown in cold ecstasy, leaving me alone on the shore, wet sand where once my heart beat
Michael Nevares | @bedstvie Max Hausdorff | @maxhausd
MA YEYA
I use to hate the freckles on my face
I couldn’t do much to get rid of them but the moments my family would come pretending my freckles were specks of dirt peeling away to tear my skin
I felt my face was given to me as a curse the bag from under my eyes played alongside my insecurities they were there for some nights i couldn’t sleep
I much rather come up with a new placement for my ears and eyes and methods to clear away my imperfections
I speak of these incidents with my friends and some of their stories walk the same line as mine, tearing, picking and scratching off marks that now we know make us more special it still scars me the way i felt less than because of the angel kisses on my face, how my skin wasn’t as smooth as the other kids’ skin in my elementary class. my worst insecurity started at birth
I was born a baby with no hair and a big birthmark on the side of my head, i would look at pictures of myself and feel disgusted of my birthmark but only because some of my family said it looked like shit on my head and how it made me ugly, i thought it was a curse of stupidity.
When I pull my hair really hard back slicked into a ponytail, I can feel strands of my hair coming out. I can see perfectly the canas spilling growing out of my birthmark on my head..
“si sacas una te vuelven a crecer dos canas más” my grandma would tell me as she paid me 25 cents for each cana i pulled from her hair. as i grew i understood my insecurities were shared amongst the men and women in my family they were told the same as they now tell me about my looks and personality, but just because they didn’t cry about it, and I do cry about it, I'm weak and too sensitive I'm too sensitive because I'm not ok with people talking about my body in a negative way because my cry ’ s are too loud for their ears for they’ve never heard a mexican cry, I was a lloróna when i was smaller and i still am I cannot hold back my tears when my mother raises a drunken hand I cannot hold in my wines when i plead for a night of peace and i can’t try to yell back because my tears will spill out before any words do.
My mother tells me how she grew up not being able to be sad, when she would cry my grandma would hit her for being too sensitive.
It amazes me hearing this now, because my grandma is the nicest woman I've ever met, she’s giving and loving to all my imperfections and I feel it’s because she too shares my insecurities.
She knows what it feels like to cry.
Vivian Mata | @empty.yea.cup
“And then we saw the spectres of the colosseum!”
I care for the stem
We hold our hands hard and apart Mushroom top purled onto my lap
Would that I could Summarize a whole universe in the pearl of a poem
For I am not who you are
What is our hair, so tangled and rough? Invisible time? hindrance?
I push off against the sky, hurtle outward Oh colossus, what the fuck did you d
Vanessa Valenzuela-Berumen | @vaneggo Max Guerrero | @ nvmmax
Love
My sister says I say I love you too much
She tells me that with a touch of scorn, like Every I love you drives another thorn in my sincerity
And yes, my tendency towards those three words could easily mimic some Vapid popular girl spending more Declarations of adoration
Than she can afford, gushing love like A fountain fish spouts regurgitated water, Hollow and stonyhearted
So if I’m not overly guarded, I must simply be Simple and silly, Speaking love willy nilly, Without really knowing what I love you means.
And it’s true.
I don’t know love, I feel it, to the very depth and breadth and height of my soul How do I love thee? Let me count the ways, and Miss Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I love you for the way your words wash over my heart like a tidal wave sounding
I love you, I love you, I love you
How can I help but say I love you to all those who deepen that happy ache? It takes a bit of bravery to say it, I guess, not to say it but to say it in earnest I love you bares my soul, how I care and revel in your smile and laughter and radiant goodness And goodness gracious, I love you.
My sister says I say I love you too much
As if the words can be diluted
Overused like exclamation points in my middle school essays
But I say love is neverending, effervescing
I’ll sing it to the world like everyone ’ s listening.
I love you I love you I love you
Alyssa Gailica | @lordaspec
Marina Martinez | @aniramdzenitram
Sebastian Tamiano | @plot bunny Kristin Slavick | @kris10slavick
Holy Panties
My panties are diaphanous to the point of unraveling. The tatters tell me it’s time to banish the blue scrap to the trash, but I have always been a sentimental sap. Besides, I learned never to discard my secrets. When I was younger, I snuck allowance money
to scoop three-set thongs studded with butterfly charms immortalized mid-flutter above my ass. I wore them in wonder: is this what it means to feel sexy?
Newly adorned, I ascended into a cosmic cloud of pink & purple swirls until the debut of Jupiter's Great Red Spot precipitated an emergency landing, rigged
with yellow inflatable slides, blow-up life vests. That’s not very sexy, I thought, slinging the stained underthing into garbage. My mom truffle hogs the nylon mesh
from shadows of my shame and dangles the extraterrestrial stain in my face, banishing me to a dishonorable planet among beetles on the earth where I lie now
in a red dress freckled with flowers wearing my oversized panties. The sun greets the curves of my vulva, makes her way through frayed fabric,
my folds gladdening at warmth. I go to greet the sun giving herself away expecting nothing in return. This must be the feeling. Hello.
Susan Moon | @smoon1211 Max Guerrero | @ nvmmax
HOUR DRIVE
I’d drive 2 hours for a donut, an open mic and a decent hug, But haven’t seen a primary care doc in 7 years, And haven’t made a plan for it. Maybe if doctors held open mics or had Disney movies, puzzles And served a nice Syrah, I might go.
But not on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, because those are poetry nights Not during the NBA Playoffs or when UConn is on.
Can Doctors give you a prescription to walk across Spain,
Can a doctor help me do more pullups or keep my cuticles from smelling like garlic for a week after mincing?
Can they make my brother call more often and not just for birthdays and death announcements?
Can a doctor un-sicken my student loan, cause that thing gives me nausea and headaches
Can a doc keep Trump from the helm?
Help drivers from Colorado and Georgia pull their heads out of their asses, Teach the ‘Bruh’s’ from the Bay Area to suck their own dicks so we don’t have to endure their verbal masturbation at the bars.
Can a Doc help me be more grateful, cure my endless complaining?
I woke up a couple days ago and saw my years in the mirror, The one ’ s not fully lived and spent running from tree to tree and nut to nut, Moved 11 times in 12 years, many without an extra set of hands, But those days have passed.
Took me a week to recover from carrying a queen-sized mattress 50 yards and down a small flight of stairs.
Saw my aching shoulder in the mirror and last week’s patients under my eyes, My fortune telling skills are fucked
My crystal ball is cracked
I stare down the cracked barrel in the morning, I can see I am almost shot
More F.U.B.A.R. than fuckable.
My jump shot is 16 feet now and not 19, I signed up for a 10k, ran 2 miles and said, “fuck this”, Walked back to my car, got a donut and coffee, met up with an Ex, We made out and then went and read poems at an open mic. This is life.
Doctor or not, I have my answers and people pay me to guide them through their own version of hell.
I say that so I stay humble, not because I don’t think I am a dope psychologist. I say it on a mic so you remember no one has it all figured out, But we keep working,
And in the time it took me to write this, I could have made and appointment with a primary care doc.
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Stela Apostolova
Samantha Boothe
Boukra Press
Seema Christie
Evelyn Duprey
Kaitlin Emmons
McKenzie Floyd
Alyssa Galicia
John R. Garry
Kylene Gilmore
Valerie Guardiola
Max Guerrero
Tatiana Hart
Max Hausdorff
Elana Kline
Morgan Lewis
Marina Martinez
Vivian Mata
Susan Moon
Michael Nevares
Miranda Register
Alex Ramirez
Caitlin Reclusado
Rebecca Ricks
Kristin Slavick
Jenn Smith
Sebastian Tamiano
Samantha Ulloa
Vanessa Valenzuela-Berumen
Alexandra Vieille
EDITED BY Valerie Guardiola Tatiana Hart