LAGNAJITA MUKHOPADHYAY

semantics

he said it’s all just semantics anyway
there were always borders

i think about how he makes a living on word

clouds

almost like a swing
dancing in the corner

pulling up to it
adjusting
the moon

i think about how it felt to hold your hand but not love you
how you took your hand off my knee when this happened
but it was under the table anyways so no one saw
you put it there
like a secret

like a guilty pleasure

i am tired of arguing with people about colonialism
the way it was done, who it was done to, who did it,
who paid the price, i am tired, and there are problems:

how i never went looking for anything,
not love, not pain, not infamy,
and not the words to speak about it
how it makes a theft,
how it becomes who you are,
how the signs are always there,
and you spend

your whole life recovering

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay is an Indian-born poet, musician, and anthropologist, and the author of the books this is our war (Penmanship Press, Brooklyn, 2016) and everything is always leaving (M.C. Sarkar & Sons, Kolkata, 2019), and poetry album "i don’t know anyone here" (2020). She was the first Nashville Youth Poet Laureate, finalist for the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her latest book Towards a Poetic Memory of Bengal Partition was out with Natyachinta in December 2023. She is the poet and bassist in the band JAWARI, whose debut album "ROAD RASA” has propelled them to the Paris Olympics and SXSW. With a Masters’ in Migration and Diaspora at SOAS and a Masters’ in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, find her work in Poetry Society of America, Tagvverk, and Anthropocene, among others.

JOLIAMOUR DUBOSE-MORRIS

s’mores

I can use the smoke of the Bronx to melt marshmallows. Sticky fingers of chocolate and dirt—ashes of graham cracker and gravel—Highbridge burns, and those left sit around in campfires.

The July backside of 1975—it's a stick up! Stick up! Afros of sorts, when the boys catch notice of my D trains. Barbershop packed, boombox basing, New York lives in a Donna Summer.

The back of my neck, a forest of loop-dee-loops, and little girls hula-hoop on the steps that aren’t broken.

Sidewalk-marching, panthers on a day off, swap out the leather for Levis, smizing in eyeshadow, ears singing in jewels pierced from Momma’s sewing needle and kitchen mandarin.

The river runs down, MC’s smashing the fire hydrants with hammers, and it all washes away. And they all wash away—

Shoelaces dangle, electric chords for where their footsteps used to be. Kangols by the sewer pitch, for where their heads used to be. We all saw it.

When the foot was on the back, when the metal was on the wrist, and a crowd of us watched, and Five-O was up to no good in that blue that’s almost Black, which should make us the same, but don’t.

When them street lights come on, quick legs that scatter, sky so blue that it’s almost Black, which should make us safe, but don’t.

Graffiti gangs don’t mind a little darkness—the moon a vanilla scoop.

Red and blue, matches my outfit. It’s a stick up, stick up! Make ‘em dance when that stick sing, and I saw it, spray cans clanky, badges shiny, fingers itchy off that trigger, pointed dagger, twist it

like a soda pop, and the bullet will bliss you! All of you! The boys like to share—I got one too! Right in between these D trains.

And there, did I feel the spark. The smoke that brewed. And there, did I catch it and eat it, dissolving the sting on my tongue, and I put my hands to the sky, my knees to the ground, and

sucked on the vanilla scoop, and I caught the brain freeze to go with it, and it tasted of all the death. Crunchy. I know I left crumbs.

JoliAmour DuBose-Morris is a writer from New York. She has worked with Document Journal, Cultured Magazine, Elephant Magazine, StyleCaster, and more. Most recently, she was a 2024 PEN American Emerging Voices Finalist, a 2025 Lewis Latimer Scholar, and a 2025 Brooklyn Poets Fellow.

ARCADIA MOLINAS

Things I Have Stolen

An avocado
A discounted chicken club sandwich
25 toilet rolls from work
50 cigarettes from 50 hotties at the club
Boxers from the shittiest ex I’ve ever had
The hairstyle of a cute girl I saw once at a cafe
3 tote bags from 3 different lovers
Ideas from books, films, songs and strangers
A little more life by dancing in the dark
Hope from mopes who only wanted me naked
Happiness from sunlight hitting my toes
A couple of bus fares here and there
Blades of grass from unsuspecting prairies
A friend’s ex-boyfriend two times too many
My time back from data and tech
And as much as I can get away with
stuff under my shirt fit in the fucking void.

Arcadia Molinas is a writer based in London. Her writing has appeared on Write or Die, Spectra Poets, Tetragrammaton, Cringe, minor lit[s], Worms, and elsewhere. She makes a mean negroni and loves to light up a stage.

VIVIEN ADAMIAN

Follicular

You text jane:
I’m feeling an implacable feeling
it’s like I’m feeling nothing
You gather the facts:
you woke up at 6am
which is 4am in LA,
where lesbians look at you
and smile instead of disappearing flightily
around corners
where the poet laureate of SF
with his little baby in his lap said,
Whatever’s left on the plate of imperialism
will for sure be devoured by this one
where you write things like,
I always mistook the stillness of cowboys
for gentleness
when it’s really just
thinly veiled violence

Somehow, at 3pm in Chicago
you’re still energetic, you think
I’ll go somewhere and write!
You text everyone
and how can no one reply when you are so abundant?
So healthy you are more than alive
how can no one respond when nothing hurts
when you need them
not pathetically but just to share
this miraculous absence of suffering?

On the way home you stop at the expensive pub
You sit at the bar
Your body in perfect equilibrium with the world
and write a poem about spring,
like some knockoff Frank O’Hara:

Dry dry dry
like the bush that burned
Now baby-like
green leaves
Who’s he fooling?
By the magnolias
budding
This pigeon thinks he’s a peacock
Spring is all pretending
Pretending

You track your cycle by counting
how many days since the full moon
You’re in the follicular phase
the AI overview tells you
this phase is linked with a boost
in mood, energy, and motivation
That’s gotta be it, you think
You text jane,
This has gotta be it
I’m follicular

At home you lay down because it feels
so fucking good and for the next four hours you try
not to call your suffering ex and say,
Want me to come over
and make you feel better?
Want me to? I feel so good I’ve got
plenty to share...
and you can’t even get off
because there is no fantasy
so what is
this feeling

And then
actually the light
is too bright and
when you close your eyes
blue and green
visions and when you open them
Joanie Mitchell’s face
on the CD stand
How can I sleep now, you think
how can I sleep now
when I’m so awake?

Vivien Adamian is a writer, artist, and zinester from Glendale, CA. She is pursuing an MFA in Writing from the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago. Her writing has appeared in the Qafiyah Review, and her publications have been acquired by the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection.

ANA DELGADO PALOMINO / TRANSLATED BY OLIVIA BRALEY

X

Oh ojalá ser
misericordiosamente estrangulada,

arrojada en ríos de leche,

ojalá ver

el nacimiento de un bosque

y cuando vuelva
escribir/hacer
corazón

X

Oh I’d like to be
strangled mercifully,

thrown in rivers of milk,

I’d like to see

the birth of a forest

and when I return
to write / to be
a heart

Ana Delgado Palomino (2001, Spain) graduated in Classical Dance and Fine Arts by University of Granada. Always carry one or two Mercadona n06 lipsticks in her bag. She has worked in galleries such as Ethall (Barcelona, Spain) and art fairs such as La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy) or Lateral (Granada, Spain). She likes shabby sculpture, cobalt blue and eating with her hands in small bites. 

Olivia Braley is a DC-based writer, author and activist. She is the author of the chapbook SOFTENING (ELJ Editions) and co-founder of Stone of Madness Press. Read more of her work and reach out to her through her website, oliviabraleywrites.com, or on Instagram @o_t_b.

LIZZIE SCHEADER

The week where nothing happened

Google: At what week in pregnancy does morning sickness start? That night I threw up halal and half a modelo. Nah. Last time I had sex was like ???, there is no way in fuck I am experiencing the repercussions of human chorionic gonadotropin aka HCG aka morning sickness aka hell on earth (as per one lovely redditor put it). I allowed myself 30 seconds to cry. Bad word. Bad word. Bad word. The 2 vertical lines, practically mimicking the twin towers: was this my 9/11? For nearly 10 days thereafter, I didn’t leave my bed. The smell of coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, nearly all those I loved, triggered retching. My mom repeatedly told me, eat saltines. NO! Those taste like anorexia. And besides, I haven’t showered in days, I cannot subject my roommates to seeing and smelling me in this state while ravaging the kitchen. They don’t deserve that. I don't deserve that. Do you get up slow in the morning? I don’t remember when I got up last. It’s important that you see the sun. The sun doesn’t give a shit about me (victim complex). I’m reaping what I sowed. A man would come to my bedroom (he’s totally done with, btw), touch my back and tell me everythings fucked. Yeah. I’m aware. I’m knocked up, and too broke/hated/and tired to talk about it. And the regurgitated, mastibutory, philosophy-bro-speak couldn’t even impair me beyond the nausea. Every waking moment, I was debilitated by car sickness, that was more relentless than a black Marlboro headrush (omg). And he’s there, practically jerking off to me about Foucault, and my ambivalent attachment style. Where was my community of women from r/pregnant when I needed them most? I have never wished to kill a small good thing so badly. Christ, I talk to the ants when I have my coffee in the morning, and there was a guppy inside me, half of someone I loved. Upon my appointment, I took note of the 9 people who checked in after me, answering the question “how are you?” all the same. They said they were good, because any other answer would be ill mannered, no? And I knew they weren’t good. Some without insurance. Had their moms there, daggering eyes of disappointment, and premarital impurity. But we take off our big girl panties, and get the damn thing done! Sit my assless ass in a recliner, arranged in a Sofia-Coppola-kind-of-way. “You go girl! You’re part of the club now!”, says the Lena Dunham-loving, pink-pussy-hatted, white feminist biotch, holding a poster that says something explicit, glittered with the word “CUNT”, and suddenly you feel like a prude right-winger, because every bit of your being is holding back an eye roll, so dramatic, it’s century defining. Cool. Sure. I can get down with it, but ya’ll didn’t warn me it’d suck this much? You seemed to have left that part out.

Lizzie Scheader is a New York based multidisciplinary artist and writer.

NICOLETTE NODINE

with the fishes

miss you pink

Nicolette Nodine is an abolitionist, poet, collagist, and full time lover girl. They write about loving, revolting, and resting in LA. On her iPad or in the club, she's just looking for a good time. 

RYAN TAYLOR

yr light floods me till I’m a still lake singing yr reflection.

Will we ever be kids on the train again? This time is short, composed of bracketed, intimate infinities. I love you all. We may never play as we do now. We may lose our enemies and angels and live by other rules, in other worlds. It will be different.

You are married with children,
are living in Lima,
are buried in West Virginia,
are joining the USCG,
are getting your PhD,
are breaking my heart.

The tender invention of my life has so many moving parts, and it is yet too soon to say what it does. I live in hope we are Amateurs forever.

Ryan Taylor writes in Queens and sleeps in Yonkers, NY. Their work has appeared in Polyester Zine, Pure Nowhere, the Luna Collective, and Peregrine Mag, which they edit. Their website is https://hopechest.neocities.org/. They love you, and hope you will forgive them.

KD SIMS

KD Sims is a lesbian poet and smut writer from Illinois. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Dream Boy Book Club, Stone of Madness Press, Hooligan Magazine, Hot People Read Poetry, PITS MAG, and Cosmic Dog House Press, among others. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

BEE LB

BEE LB is the facsimile of a living poet; a porcelain pierrot with a painted face. they collect champagne bottles, portraits of strange women, and diagnoses. they've been published in PULP, Dirt Child, MOODY, and Landfill, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and they can be found at patreon.com/twinbrights

LILY HERMAN

Underwater

My gynecologist says There are
other fish in the sea, and also
Starting at 35, we do rectals,
and
I think, What the hell,
what’s one more
sensation
demanding surrender

And anyway
maybe if I lay very still
my grief won’t be able to find me
Maybe it’s a tracking animal
whose eyes live to follow
the line of my movement,
to find I’ve grown complacent
and stopped guarding
against it

The doctor tells me Take a deep breath
And
I say
Yes, OK, the sea

Lily Herman is a writer from Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Bruiser, 86 Logic, Blue Fifth Review, and Across the Margin. Her poetry chapbook, Each Day There is a Little Love in a Book For You was published by Dryad Press. She has been supported by residencies at Yaddo, Wildacres, and Monson Arts.

ALEXA VALLEJO

Top Down

On a layover in Dallas, I bottle
my newlywed joy and pretend
Jess and I are nothing more
than friends. Sluggish and
travel-weary, we eat fish and
chips in the airport terminal,
mindful of the people around
us. But I let my guard down in
Palm Springs, where the rental
car clerk sees our rings and
offers us a convertible for no
extra charge. We thank him
but stick with the Nissan Rogue.
Outside it’s dark, and the wind
won’t quit. We kiss at a stoplight
while coyotes sprint across
the highway. Deeper into the desert,
I roll down the windows and think
about that convertible, how we
could have Thelma and Louise’d
our way to Joshua Tree. But that’s
not quite the honeymoon vibe.
Who would choose an outlaw love?
Give me a science fiction where
everyone is gay and no one is afraid.

Alexa Vallejo is a transfemme, Filipina-American writer and musician living in West Philadelphia. Her work has most recently been published in Black Fox Literary Magazine, swamp pink, and TriQuarterly.

HANNAH STRAUSS

everything under my hand is intolerably round 

infinite as in 
oh no wonder 
nobody can bear to be unboxed 
turning this annihilatory 
gesture on things 
instead every thing 
that is sacramental void 
cheque like 
the belly of a vase 
whose interior 
is always emptying 
little unwitnessed deaths 
into regular air 
to mingle 
with everything not 
under my hand 
like clockwork 
or Key West 
anything is as open 
to interpretation as 
death even 
my words who are growing up 
by the way to be 
entitled sons of bitches 
even across the length 
of this page and these 
last few lines 
much as I 
keep getting better and better 
until I rot, like a – you get it – 
a joke in little adidas shorts 
still my deaths keep 
coming back for me 
in nascent forms 
all the things I like 
a lot or a little 
even trout 
seems to turn up 
under my hand 
diminished, round, 
and infinite

Hannah Azar Strauss is an artist and occasional translator living in Montréal. You can find her online at https://hannahazarstrauss.com. 

ANNIE LOU MARTIN

Attention is a Way of Loving

I.

I don’t believe utopia 
is any more stable than muse.
If I can’t have stability 
I would like to have beauty,
that thinning that turns 
the vignette pink. 
Utopia’s detritus: 
plant clippings, a full set 
of knives, fresh ground coffee, 
clean needles, a toothbrush 
unmissed, the lover’s copy
now used to scrub the tile cracks.
Attention, taken to its highest degree,
is the same thing as prayer. 
It presupposes faith and love. 
I’m showing you what I’ve made because I want 
to be closer to you, because how I see says 
something about who I am. But that’s not quite right. 
Courtney says a poem is like a birdhouse.
I think your movie’s like a poem. 

II.

Looking is a way of loving.
Love makes me want to turn out my pockets.
I can’t imagine anything less than sharing 
every dream as it comes to me. Last night,
two men, one famous, in a cabin on ranch property.
My father knocks on the door, the shadow
of a cowboy hat. I pull out, 
say, pretend you’re my gay professors!
And when I wake up the light is orange, 
sex still as banal and central as it’s ever been. 

III.

Thought is a vector of attention, and every pattern is imposed. 
But there are signs that endure, like a toothbrush or a party.
I like parties because they’re domestic, with certain effects dialed up;
the potential of anonymity, a so-called public. You look
because you want to be looked at. I’m looking at you.
You’re a Pisces. Your fish skin gleams when you flip.
Strobe light, tea kettle. You seek a wet archive. 

IV.

I told you I like poetry because it feels like cinema,
a birdhouse built from crystal and gelatin emulsion.
The muse liberates energy by requiring full attention.
There is an “I” that functions on its knees.
Roost; I know I can be fed on light alone. 
I don’t need specificity or anonymity.
If this is a gift it’s vacant and proud, the reflection 
of a glass of water in a smudged table. 

V.

Sometimes, in my dreams, I hold the camera. 
I watch people I’ve brushed against and forgotten. 
They embrace and turn each other around. 
It rarely comes to sex. Of course, in my dreams
they’re all me, and in my dreams I’m nobody at all.

Annie Lou Martin is a poet. They read and write in Brooklyn, NY.

ZO FLICKER

Zo Flicker is a poet, sound artist, and photographer from the San Francisco Bay Area, now based in Philly. Her writing has appeared in Reality Beach, Voicemail Poems, Frozen Sea, and Peel Lit, and has been collected in two homemade and handmade chapbooks, Anaerobics (2018) and [SIC].rar (2022). Her preferred styles include serial poems, queer forms, noise, drone, sampling, and collage.

JEREMIAH MORIARTY

Surveil Me Daddy Before My Time Finally Comes

Joke’s on them 
because I love the attention. 

Corporate revenant at my bedside, 
a million-eyed sky orphan greeting me 

at sunrise and sunset, and it plays 
the bit xylophone alarm that, in my mind, 

is now synonymous with defeat. 
How lucky are we, the watchers and 

the watched—a cat’s cradle of engagement. 
Alongside the eyes I come awake, so many 

eyes. White and silver and rose-gold. 
Plastic and plasma-hewn. Wings of 

aluminum. Under its eyes I come 
alive, approximation of alive, and another 

watcher nods his head in passing, falls 
as a dust cloud into my outstretched 

digits. A cat sticker put over a phone mic 
sings a xylophone dirge with 

its little cat mouth, but all I can hear 
is a voice that resembles mine 

finally confessing 
you were famous to me.

Jeremiah Moriarty is a queer writer based in Minneapolis. His poems have appeared in Diode Poetry Journal, poetry.onl, The Cortland Review, Puerto del Sol, No Tokens, and elsewhere. His micro-chapbook of poems 5G PROTECTION SPELL was released in 2023 from Ghost City Press. Additionally, his writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize, and Best of the Net. You can find him on X and Instagram at @horse_updates, or read more of his work at jeremiahmoriarty.com

HENRY GOLDKAMP

FAT CONTENT

(ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE hands out no. 2 pencils and scantrons to STUDENTS WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR.)  

ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE: If stranded on an existential desert island, which of the following, given in unlimited supply, offers the greatest chance of survival?  
A: Bread and butter
B: Bread and water
C: Bread and circuses 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 1: There's sand in my mouth! 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 2: Were we supposed to read for today? 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 3: Ain't no mountain high enough. 

ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE: If stranded on an existential desert island, which of the following, given in unlimited supply, offers the greatest chance of survival?  
A: Bread and butter  
B: Bread and water  
C: Bread and circuses 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 1: This is a "no"-6 pencil. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 2: I don't even know what question we're on. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 3: This paper tastes like peppermint. 

ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE: If stranded on an existential desert island, which of the following, given in unlimited supply, offers the greatest chance of survival?  
A: Bread and butter  
B: Bread and water  
C: Bread and circuses 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 1: I used to be a slick chef.

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 2: I used to lead a life of crime. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 3: I used to tell people I'm going to be a U.S. Sentator. 

(ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE collects scantrons, puts them through a paper shredder, lights the shreds on fire, and eats the flames. The STUDENTS WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS  LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR rise and leave.) 

ADJUNCT GETTING $2000 PER 16-WEEK COURSE: (To their backs. Flames escape at each word.) We still have 48 minutes left. Please. Y'all. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 1: I'm going to the drinking fountain. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 2: I'm going to milk my cow. 

STUDENT WHOSE MEDIAN INCOME IS LESS THAN $27000 PER YEAR 3: I'm going to get that bread.

Henry Goldkamp (he/they) is an interdisciplinary poet who enjoys clowning boundaries between language, visual art, and sensory performance. He lives in New Orleans, where he hosts the poetry reading Splice, acts as intermedia editor for Tilted House, teaches experimental poetics and clown studies at Louisiana State University, and serves as communications director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival. Recent art, criticism, and performance appear or are forthcoming in Chicago Review, DIAGRAM, Annulet, Volt, Blue Bag Press, Poetry Northwest, Accelerants: An Action Books Poetry Film Series, Triquarterly, NOIR SAUNA, and Sonora Review, among others.

JONATHON TODD

Livestream

An espresso and a few grapes later
I am communing with dead labor in the
Form of spectacular myths every purchase 
Imagines a future without time
Desire captured in the direction of profit
Every dream (every sleep) runs counter
To clocks or stasis.

Christ the end of transcendence
The constant irony of a refusal to cast
Sound against production
Property reimagined 
Which is why the middle class shits itself.

I’m beginning to believe in cycles
Chants and objects, fetish
Our desire is just another commodity.
I take short naps as a way to communicate
Indifference and awe.

God striking down the last capitalist
On live TV.

Jonathon Todd is a poet, essayist, leftist, and musician who is also not any of those things. He lives in philly with his familly and enjoys performing.

FRANCESCA KRITIKOS

Pink

You’re brutal in the morning
Neck of a slender dog

Bad things stay bad
The good things turn cold

You don’t clean me up
when you leave

Does pink skin stay pink
under white sheets of snow

Francesca Kritikos is the author of SWEET BLOODY SALTY CLEAN (Feral Dove, 2023) and Exercise in Desire (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2022) as well as the chapbooks In the Bed of Sickness (Pitymilk Press, 2023) and Animals Don't Go To Hell (Bottlecap Press, 2021). Her works of poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published in English, French and Greek in numerous online and print publications. She also serves as editor in chief of SARKA, a journal and publisher focused on works of the flesh.

SAM WRIGHT FAIRBANKS

Called a Faggot

How many years of bleaching until I become Americana?
You don’t strike me as a crier, but we both were born in July.

Am I expected to believe you
had too much love?

The future’s come. It is not chrome
and does not shine.

Have some fucking reverence for deep time.
All the world can be staged

as a marked-up online showroom, and the shape
of the universe is no concern

since everything on earth became a top with nothing under.
I am called a faggot in the grass where I write this draft,

and I am. I say goodbye from the moment we meet
and the last sun sinks in the bottomless television.

I take your picture when I go but have none to give
and hear voices at the wrong time.

Life is a brief comparison with nothing,
and I fight it like a punishment.

I travel every living room in an evening, screaming
Aspirations are never the same as their taglines.

Now everyone’s on top of me at bedtime, screaming back
The harm has already happened so it’s okay for banks to be gay.

I will never sleep—a bloodshot diva never dreaming
through the west’s most flammable night,

stomping every solid wood credenza in the lower 48
to pulp and hoping for a spark.

Time Theft Is Best Practice

Note the finer textures of dystopia

Technologies of touching, plucking
files from screens or clouds from skies

with like effort, ingesting them
with comparable dispassion.
There's a search bar where my eyes close.

Is interstitial something we can be?
Are years a thing we can consume?
Could there be undoctorable proof
of the online marketplace for subjunct summers rolling jokes
and almost blowing damp-socked jocks against snack
hut cinder block; of the shared delusion of plastic houses,
ponds called lakes, mulch and pine cone beaches, sap-
stained boxer shorts, vestigial mills, dry sockets, bloody
breaths, sprigs in our nail beds; we fluky creatures
of discomfort sucking dew from boulders, fanning damaged
hair across the creek to lift an errant fleck of mica from
suspension or, when ritual or spasm caught us (a coin I
have termed dozen-meets-dime), when, neither content
nor content, the console could console us by some slippage
in depiction?

Do we carry ideology,

or does it fall on us, e.g., anvils?

In any event, the country’s now a corporation,

and time theft is best practice.

Sam Wright Fairbanks was born in a bog and raised on the internet. They write poetry in Brooklyn.