Tagert Ellis – Westside Friendship House

Tagert Ellis Westside Friendship House She had the most igneous arms, seriously, she could lift over forty pounds, her arms were Gaulish, they told tales of glory. She’s the reason I took the job at the Westside Friendship House. I wanted this woman with the mutual arms. The Westside Friendship House was originally founded to […]

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Caitlin McGuire – The Radium Girl’s Undark

Caitlin McGuire The Radium Girl’s Undark I They invented watches for us, the boys they sent to die. Belted green-glowing clocks around our wrists, light enough to tell the time and dark enough to keep us hidden in the mired trenches and the green-glowing pools we washed in when our heads and skins had turned […]

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Sarah Giragosian – Mummified Baboon, Unburied, The Queer Creatures that Rise at Dusk

Sarah Giragosian Mummified Baboon, Unburied When they come for me, they come with shovels,augers and picks. A cloth still holds dermisto bone, but barely, and when they raise mefrom an oven of hot sands to daylight,I’m a dazzlement of husk. They lay outmy face, my hips, the undeveloped stripof my spine, all turned to anthracite […]

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J. P. Grasser – Statutes

J. P. Grasser Statutes with a line by Justice We ingest the photographs of a Tanzanian lake           so reflective, so salty, that birds crash and bleedunderwater and are calcified, no ossified, and turn up           as stone animals. We know the one about showingMedusa the mirror. We have heard about avocados           the size of seedless watermelons. […]

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Javier Zamora – El Chillón Means Crybaby, Pump Water from the Well

Javier Zamora El Chillón Means Crybaby All I was was a chillón.Neighbors lined up against our fencewhile the nurse checked for fever.Mamá Pati called me her ear’s fruit fly.Backyard mangos begged god,¡Callá este chillón diosmío!This is what Abuelita tells me. She says everyone brushed ash-toothpastewith horsehair toothbrushes, thatMamá Pati had a baker’s sleep schedule,that before […]

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Katie Moulton – Getting in at the Dead Dad Club

Katie Moulton Getting in at the Dead Dad Club There will be a password. It’s the pet namehe stopped calling youthe second time you emptiedyour little yellow bucket over the lip of the tub. You were two. You looked himstraight in the eye. You did itanyway. In the first dark vestibulethey will stamp your soft […]

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