JANNAT ALAM

failure girl monitoring override

guess what, i know
maiden dissection obstetric age
hang on, it seems like a waste
to smile so naturally
models solve colonies
exhaustion becomes a lullaby
who on earth created this kind of superclass
half-life functional override
i disperse once more
pulled from a claw-machine
is that enough? shut the hell up
i didn’t read the error script
there’s no way of knowing what’s behind
the words that’s been said, is there?

Jannat Alam is based in San Bernardino County. She edits Reap Thrill. 

EVIE RECKENDREES

taste like warm milk

wet cement drops
from scaffolding
uncertainty, into certainty made
by our hands dunking into it

laughing at dogs
make offerings to the river
speaking to the river
only living by the river —

by the river and
you say you have
never seen me
happier than this

down
f

wow - this merging is so difficult,
yet,

growing out of my fingers is touch
growing out of my thoughts is God

when does food turn into bait?
is your blood food or bait in this case meaning our case meaning ==

(thoughts i had)

we’re seen by each other, smelled by each other
through our pants (sometimes), fabrics
touched each other,

i love to speak in absolutes but no one can stand them

this state (of mind) loves a prefix

give me a word
give me two, actually

you say we can do magic
as a couple
one plus one equals three

on video call, i say something about being desire-driven,
you laugh,
i stood in the library garden, thought
i’m lucky enough to have
(you)

day in bed, not doing what i know i have

to
do a little too much

yet, river carries time
you get up with me, bring me water,
to make

trains to paris, flights to lisbon,
same sea that looks different

another one

i let you have a sip,
make an offering again to the river,
make an offering again to God,

again,
be impassable, this time //

after i wish i could fuck you
in a form that is not dictated by nature
or sexuality

let our bodies become untrue

with salt and oil
with baths and
hunger gives space
gives space to the real
to derangement
sense that somewhere in there

surpass capture
kneel down again
before that record player turned altar and

speak your spells,

making more life with you

i say i couldn’t open up much more than this

i want to carve those words into my body,
birch tree in garden / birch tree in heart -/- knife /-/

and we have nowhere else to start



Evie Reckendrees is a poet, writer & performance artist. She is writing about, and engaging with, desire, suffering, and God. She lives between Germany and the Atlantic shoreline(s).

IDA BAKHTIARY-RAHIMI

brown jouissance

i cud watch the presidential debate / or i cud get laid / see i can be soft and sharp like a / seared tongue on the edge of ur teeth / like u i keel at the sight of cute things / peer out from the casket of my desires / this wanting has to go somewhere / and i cud never hold it in my mouth long enough / see i came of age with a nostalgia so primal / i yearned for a place that no longer existed / like u i thought i wanted to die / walked in the middle of the street at night / this wanting has to go somewhere / and i cud never hold it in my mouth / long enough / see we were never asked for what we wanted / tucked it between oblivion and tomorrow / like u i wake up in this violent country / this wanting has somewhere to go / and i cud go on but ill / stop

THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH

I had a godless childhood
still do
To hear that even the stars
are dead was enough
to prove how lonely it feels:
you, a random point pulsing
through the timeline of infinite
grief, all of us scattered
They say that we’re all made
of stardust But leave out
the explosions
the matter that was destroyed
under these laws of physics
And still no clue how to make a
life

I DONT WANT UR MONEY
lets just care for each other
said no doctor
lawyer
politician
consultant
president
monarch
dictator
colonizer
cop
ever

When i told my friends i wanted
to be an artist
they said
why dont you want to get
married?

and i said
my parents had to escape death to
find each other and even that was
not enough of a reason to call this
living

and they said
lollll but you would have such
cute little brown bab–
and ive been running through
space-time ever since

Ida Bakhtiary-Rahimi is a queer, Iranian American writer and artist. Ida’s work was selected for the 2024-2025 Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program and is the recipient of fellowships from VONA and the Somerville Arts Council. Ida works and studies in the English Dept. at Tufts University.

NATHAN MUKA

The hardest part is finding someone to play with

finally, charming comments
draw forward a set of unfamiliar teeth
a code cracks and a strategy emerges:
I’ll make me happy with your happy

it’s not long before a proven tactic stales
and takes reminding that theres a reward
in what happens next

a new thing is really the same thing,
though theres amphetamines
in the cornucopia of fresh tries
playing wide instead of tall
you become vulnerable
to a diversity of forces

I’m never any good at long games
but I don’t mind losing
if it’s interesting

Nathan Muka lives in Brooklyn, New York with a small, dog-like entity named Lily. He likes short walks with a distinct endpoint and really sour lemonade.

SAFI ALSEBAI

This fear feels anachronistic

“NO WORD FROM YOU FEELING LONESOME
KINDLY CABLE WHETHER ANYTHING NEW AUF
WIEDERSEHEN MAX”
—Max Horkheimer to Theodor Adorno
15 March 1960

All that is description

A genealogy of jilted subject-object relations goes
something like:
the sublime, the alienated, the uncanny

Relations of: property, domestication

The one who all they did was palm
escapes years later into a horizon of puniness
leaves no address no account no number I have
to find those too find like meaning like puns

Is the curriculum of
laugher canned, uncanny, or cannibal?

V-effect

Ferric or ferrous juice of life on tap from a samovar
Irony

Prague spring saltwater

The sublime, the alienated, the uncanny, the ambiguous
the grotesque

Property, domestication, failure, mystery

Give me a break:
remain in touch, which
sounds after all
like a threat from some modernist

The flute, the bat, how ungallant

The sublime, the alienated, the uncanny, the ambiguous,
the grotesque, the abject, the ambivalent, the pathetic

Property, domestication, failure, mystery,
collapse, optimism, inimitability?

What to do with modernism at the end of the world?

The only gift is that
my throat is sore anyway

Otherwise I would be gelastic
It’s what we’ve been taught to be

Safi Alsebai is a writer from Arkansas, where he also studies medicine. 

JAMES MILANESI

my thumb in my makeshift gloryhole

all this silver in my mouth, we lay
talking of how we became our own parents
left to tame wild accusations
of parasitic tendencies in my sweat soaked bed
my heart orbits the front door
trying to get back to you
thumb in my makeshift glory hole
till then.

here’s a concave mold where skin stains the earth
poor little God! wrapped guilty in a stitched blanket of past lovers
there was a shooting in the park—someone recorded it
blood like grease coated over a frying sidewalk
i ask why more of late,

why being early feels pretentious and sad?
here’s the poisoned peace; here we can rot in harmony
poor little Me! my friends searching for their shadow
earmuffed and bandaged; big eyed smiling
you say something when I ask why you’re leaving
my mind permeates the room
trying to find you

James Milanesi is a Philadelphian poet who is retroactively late for work. He is the curator and founder of Poet’s Row. His latest chapbook, Momentary Sweetheart, is published with Bottlecap Press.

TAYLOR STRICKLAND

‘ ’

How monitor turns to loch
takes imagination, likewise the
not-for-profit profitable data lake:
columns, streaks-in-the-making,
their fathoms only healthcare
could dream, or dream up.
Langmuir circulation,
the wind-script. Huge bluelit
depths through which souls slide
like slender naiad, aibhneag.
We value, translate soul.
Analogy veils what it reveals,
even nothing. Say nothing holds
or is held by a single empty string.
Quoted blank. Two apostrophes
that can quote blank. See what
the analyst’s longing seeks,
then leaves? A wee placeholder
whose length is less than less than.
Neither/nor. The shortest gospel.
Zero thing, an empty string
zeroing in on nothingness.
I would expect nothing less.

Taylor Strickland is the author of Dastram/Delirium, 2023 Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, and a Poetry Book Society Translation Choice. Dwell Time, his next collection, will be released in November 2025. His work has featured in Poetry London, Poetry Northwest, New Statesman, The TLS, and elsewhere. He lives in Glasgow.

STUART RAWLINSON

Is it Hot? Does it Look Good? Are You Proud to Serve it?

Is it a list of definitions
procured from a weathered,
second hand dictionary of art terms?
Does it involve chiaroscuro?
Are you crying right now?

Is it softly running a finger
over your lips? Does it kiss
behind your ear?
Are you often found
thinking about the curve of its spine?

Is it varnished?
Does it compel everyone who encounters it
to stop, to stop in their tracks,
and completely re-evaluate their life?
Are you thinking about giving up?

Is it moving?
Does it move you?
Are you making it move?

Is its theme or content
inherently problematic?
Does it look representative enough
for an imagined,
algorithm-derived audience?
Are you sufficient?

Is it hot?
Does it look good?
Are you ready for a stranger
to push their finger
inside its steaming centre?

Stuart Rawlinson (he/him) is a writer living in Glasgow, Scotland. Poems of his can be found in Magma, fourteen poems, Silly Goose Press, and Seaford Review, among other places. In 2022 he was selected as one of four mentees for the Clydebuilt 15 program, designed by St Mungo's Mirrorball.

DANIELLE CLOUGH

antisuppressant

we are readymade reticence
eating the same meal for eternity

eyes melting mirrors into spirulina
a wellness juice, outworn

i’m good at risking nothing
unmarred by wrenched thinspo

a lie for a pebble is still a lie,
the diagnosis: proximity.

you witness me tantrum like a toddler
we’re harsh in the wrong ways

i remind myself to love is to let go
a bee sting creation, an astigmatic bird

i learned to sew to carry more
my mom willed me not the bag

but pious heartburn, a rubber band
memory, a bass line ritual. we

whittle sea salt into clarinets—
the ocean between us

is an uncracked back, a gong
turned harp, an unhummed tune,

i’m learning to wade is
just to stand

Danielle Clough is a poet from Los Angeles. She works at the Los Angeles Review of Books.

SIMON JOHANNIN / TRANSLATED BY: MAUD BOUGEROL

(15)

Les grands moments sont rares
Dans les ruelles confuses
Mais certains
Sur le rebord du risque
Chuchotent aux crans qui s'ouvrent
Le long de la cambrure
Great moments are rare

In the chaotic alleyways
But some
At the edge of risk
Whisper to the notches opened
Along the arch of their back

(67)

L'agencement d'un tout
Autonome
Et sorti de
Nulle part
Il est là le divin
Au fond du geste

Things falling into place
On their own
Out of
Nowhere
Here comes the divine
At the heart of the gesture

Simon Johannin is from Marseille, France. He is the author of four novels and three poetry collections. 

Maud Bougerol is a translator, teacher and researcher from Paris. She lives and works in Marseille. 

VICTORIA BROOKS

unicorn

I’m a writer and I’m crushing on
a woman and a man
I’m a ______
Obsessed with their bestselling books
hooks, Love
Clues on the Gram like
The peak of another hand across a dinner table
Gender of partner unclear
Relationship status a moon
Let me be your unicorn
This awkward fuck fancies you

In the stowaway bar
I sidle up to one and watch the other
Boy I like you
He can’t hear me, I’m the monster
Girl I like you
She can’t hear me, I’m the mother and the

translucent floating boundary

Where the party’s at
No one speaks my language
No matter what I write, Mummy nor Daddy love me
I got both issues, like wings

Embryo

I’m a mother
Of four cell clusters
One became twins

The others were miscarriages
here are their names:
wife,
mistress
woman
(I have black and white photos)

My living children a blastocyst-split
Named bi and NB
or something
I wish I could tend to them lickety-split
Creating a womb

Instead
Inside, I’m rocking the babies
Cooking pie for my husband, not cruising
Wondering if there’s enough time
To touch their face and
Travel the desire lines

Vic/toria Brooks is a queer nonbinary writer living in London, and parent to an octopod (2-year-old identical twins). Their first queer literary sci-fi novel, Silicone God, was published by MOIST Books in the UK (December 2023) and House of Vlad Press in the US (February 2025). They have also published various essays, short fiction and prose poetry, always rooted in imaginings of trans-dimensional and futuristic sexuality. 

SASCHA COHEN

death drive pleasure principle

I have released my carnival prize fish into the ocean.
My super-ego skipped death and we skinny-dipped
into some groovy scenes: the claw machine
and the colosseum. The motel and the madhouse.

We took quaaludes at the bathhouse. I do
whatever the hell I want: Feed the wildlife.
Stare at the sun and tap on the glass. You can pry
this God molecule from my cold, dead brain.

Sometimes a corpse is just your mother.
The universe folds us all back together
after death, and every day I start over
on this same beach, counting the grains
of sand. One must imagine my goldfish happy.

Sascha Cohen is a writer from Los Angeles. Her poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

MICHAEL JULIANI

Posing Nude

After the breakup, we both admit
we still crave

this kind of afternoon: no curtains,
dirty auburn light,

and her locked wrist
shading my angles

while the sun’s last rays
bend over me.

Michael Juliani is a poet, editor, and writer from Pasadena, California. His poems have appeared in outlets such as the Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, Sixth Finch, Epiphany, Bear Review, SARKA, and NECK. He lives in Los Angeles.

MAD SUNDQUIST

Club Kid

in the club i feel rage
a kid-girl sitting against a wall waiting to leave.
this is towards nothing and no one but anticipation.

anticipation like thirteen,
kicking rocks at the strip mall
waiting for some place or thing to be meant for you.

entitled but honest,
it takes no accountability;
a feeling as helpless
as soles on scuffed concrete.

in the club i feel guilt
a child unraveling
anger from grown-out hair,
revealing i am not doing what i came here to do,
which was to kiss lips and kill the unwanted parts of myself,
to glow against the cheekbones of my peers.

tonight i am caught in the wind
i am impossible, i am a weapon on the dance floor,
sharp-rubbing shoulders i hardly know, a risk
an open wound
a vibrant contagion of noise and senseless irritation.

no gloss nor grace,
im burning louder than the sounds meant to be heard,
the real ones beating over my head,
built and spun to transfigure those in their path,
to consume us with pure presence and light-dappled hands.

my teeth appear in flashes in the black box, illuminated fang-white
shamed frustration smile
misplaced contempt
i wonder where my arms ought to go next

fly outside, tie self to picnic bench
sit on claws
keep eyes down like knifepoint.

it is ugly to be seen like this:
scratched naked by sidewalk road rage
reeking of summer hubris,
a little desperate craving
for endless conversation,
no vessel for the words.

i reject the club
deny its release,
too much alive to contain in one room
too self-aware for strange communion;

no, tonight i alone must
kick the rocks
crank the song
skip the beat over the curb
swim the gutter fountain
cook the street greens from concrete
and pray a little.

crossing diagonals on red
i zig-zag myself home
the indoor fog transformed to moth-speckled streetlight

i remember slowly:
shame is like the blue stained glass on your windows;
fooling me in the early morning
but then so easily peeled off the pane.

Mad is a writer, archivist, and musician living in Berlin by way of Brooklyn. 

KORA DZBINSKI

EPISODIC, in four

ACT ONE
in which i flirt unabashedly with the
fourth-floor walk-up. in which i
have never been fucked in a library.
in which i read across skin anyway.
in which yesterday’s phone call was
last month. in which someone on
Zoom says “queer temporalities”
and it's all just candy floss. in which
self-care is a bath bomb. in which a
toaster is a bath bomb. in which
Everything is ok if you just take your
meds on time every day for the rest
of your life. in which you are the
rest, if you want it.

ACT TWO
if i keep writing about suicide
my advisor will
(redacted)

ACT THREE
& on the first day of my funeral,
you fill this dripping Mouth – body
of Christ, my body, rotting into flannel
sheets / turned in on itself at the first
sign of calories – such long deaths are
hungry work.

ACT FOUR
your fort and I swap
DNA //
the blanket builds a
Church //
i’ll cry in your basement
with
strangers //

Kora Dzbinski (he/they) is a Mad-queer poet and scholar based in Chicago, where they write about Madness, transness, disability, horror, film, and sex work. They hope you are drinking enough water. Find them on everything as @oatmilkmom.

PATRICIA KUSUMANINGTYAS

6 pm booty call

noah winces watching a cornea cut open on
how it’s made. he’s always been a tough guy,

telling me things like how you can get you
eyes fixed up without an appointment, nonchalantly,

but now his hands are covering his eyes and he’s
shrinking into the couch, watching me shrink too,

thanking ourselves for having twenty-twenty vision.
i pass by a church on the ride home. one, two, and

another. then a bar i know is going to close by the end of
the month. it was supposed to turn twenty-seven this year,

just like me. i go to record stores and flip through
the crates, always saying “that’s a good record,”

without buying anything. i go to bookstores and read a
paragraph off each book, always returning them after.

is this what it’s like, waiting around to die?
a woman walks by, stevie wonder through her speakers.

noah said portable speakers are the worst speakers
out there, right after he finished. don’t you wanna,

don’t you wanna, don’t you wanna fall in love with me.
before i let out a tear, she skips out to another song.

Patricia Kusumaningtyas is an Indonesian poet, tech worker, and film/music critic based in Brooklyn. Their poetry and prose have been published in Roi Fainéant Press, Major 7th Magazine, Dead End Zine, Poetry is a Team Sport, HaluHalo Journal, and Culinary Origami Journal. Her music, film, and art criticism have been featured in Our Home in the Dark, ACV CineVue, and Speed of Sound Magazine, and she organizes events with the Indonesian Film Forum New York. 

ZOFIA PROVIZER

day of the fever

it’s a fever day, there’s a pig named Emma
there’s a pig named Emma with a fever
with a fever, 17 babies
17 babies at once and a coyote on the loose
a coyote on the loose who must feast on the dogs and kill the pig named Emma
kill the pig named Emma without losing his grip and catching her fever
her fever leaves her alone in the big balmy barn
in the big balmy barn the pig named Emma is meant by God
to live
in the big balmy barn the pig named Emma is a star in the big dipper
a star in the big dipper small enough to hide from a coyote
a coyote who lives on the loose and must feast on the dogs and kill the pig named Emma
the pig named Emma is small, is only 330 pounds hurling through the sky
hurling through the sky with hands on her temples and they’re human
they’re human on her temples hurling through the sky
moving in slow circles we learn that
we learn that to keep
to keep that to learn

Zofia Provizer is a queer and transexual writer residing in Boston, MA. Their work appears in Stone of Maddness Press, Peach Mag, A Velvet Giant, elsewhere. They have a forthcoming publication in Gnashing Teeth Press’ 2025 anthology, “__figuration: an anthology of trans writers”. Their chapbook, “Lose Sight of Heaven” was published with Nixes Mate Review in 2019. They are a collaborator with T4T Reading Series and [Working Title] Worldwide Reading Series. Zofia writes from the gut, yearns for a good swim, and basks in desire.

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.