Volume 9

August 2023 - September 2023

“I am terrified of loneliness
but mostly I am terrified of letting
you know”

— Jillian Clasky, from Half Moon

“my sister said I was good but the sight of water only magnified my grief”

— J. L. Moultrie, Pop Music or False Sense of Well-Being

“You know to guard your bathing suit area,
To report so much as a vibe that unsettles

But do you know how to tell love from desire?
How to refuse sweetness when you’re starving?
How to look in the mirror”

— Francesca Leader, What You Know

“i want to bring this red bird home, give it sugar and seed, see

a future where you and i lay gay on sundays

in a hammock

buy a chicken at sprouts, make a roast”

— Julia Kooi Talen, cardinal longing

“If women have less blood but more plasma,
there must be an urgency in the bones
to story and carry vitamin,
mineral, and heme,
to stitch them together
into tender cells,
energy from energy, life from
life, good harbor from good harbor.”

— Kristin LaFollette, Family Medicine

“even when we are logically aware that no one is watching, it still feels as if the whole universe is staring”

— Uee Jung

“your daughter’s distress grew when doctors said they had nothing for girls with an illness few cared to thoroughly test. It was simpler to shrug behind desks, they confessed, to leave girls forgotten in beds,”

— Veronica Ashenhurst, Sestina For My Mother

“i think i want this thong and bralette by cosabella to break you.
i want it to make you so hot you need to pull off on the road’s shoulder and rub one out.
i want your tongue to dance phonemes of my benevolence, praise my body’s syllables in the ways that require contortion.
oh, you, you. oh, hell.”

— Adele Nwankwo, fuck me (break you).

“11. when you said teach me how to love you correctly. my syllabus is thirty pages of just hold me.”

— Carson Sandell, An Unfinished List of My Favorite Things, But Love You More Than

“and I’m alive
and it’s astonishing -
astonishing!”

— Jessica Heron, Chronic Decadence

“Starting the diet again every morning,
starting the starving, until the inevitable
binge, another reason to punish myself.

-

Years of this.”

— Robby Auld, Belly

“I am a body

marked and charted,
named and seen
for minor features

I did not request.”

— D.W. Baker, Nomeunclature

“we prepped a young woman for a bone marrow donation, her anxiety mirroring my own. She asked for something to calm her, and we gave it. She asked about the recovery, if her marrow would rebuild. In my mind, I repeated:

Body, great creator, show us what you yet may do.”

— Kristin LaFollette, One Week

“I am the only witness to this crumbling
body
if it is indeed crumbling—if a body falls apart
and the one inside is the only one to feel it—”

— Sarah Guilbault, scans

“I am forging another skeleton to scar myself into loving.”

— Jacob Jing

“I don’t know how many poems I have sitting in spined notebooks on my desk, stuffed in my drawers, scribbled on post-it notes tacked to my walls. Some are finished, most are not. Some leave a strange taste in my mouth when I read them. Often, this is intentional. They remind me of experiences I no longer want to have. I write the poem again.”

— Matti B, Againness