Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Editor’s note
—
There’s something seasonal about this issue, and not just the season — a sense of familiar if slippery change, the ground shifting, strange weather, maybe even… a website feeling a bit different from before? A little sleeker, a little slinkier? It’s a time of change, outside and in. We’re excited to hear how it feels.
The poems in this issue are hot-blooded and bloodied, soberly unsober. They navigate their concerns with imagistic abandon, wild music, and humor. Loss pervades many of these pieces, but not despair — even as their interior landscapes crack and shift, the poets brave speech.
This is a feral issue for feral times. It’s the autumn of empire. We’ve gathered an incredible collection of poets. Thanks for coming by.
Quinn Franzen
Co-Editor
Rishona Michael
—
The World Wants My Love, Redirected
Each day I crave a new type of fish. Mackerel, salmon, tilapia, cod.
Ignoring each pair of eyes when pouring curry over them. Paying attention instead
To their itty-bitty bones. If I can’t have you, at least I can pick and choose which body parts
are worth my love. Yesterday, my elbows allowed me to reach further. Not towards you,
But towards a liquid nourishment. Drink paya, my mom orders, it’ll strengthen your bones.
Even the goat hooves that made the paya want their offerings to be in reverence.
The birds are a guiding constellation. The electricity towers reek of zapping energy.
All I want is to weaken underneath your body. I cook my salmon with honey, and each time
It burns into charcoal on the pan. It takes all of my elbow grease to scrub it off.
The metal sponge against the steel appliance scraping at my insides. The salmon breaks
apart into layers, clean and matter of fact. All to say, please tear me apart. I am here to be shared.
Rishona Michael (she/her) is a Brooklyn based poet. A graduate of the Sarah Lawrence College MFA program where she won an Academy of American Poets University Prize, her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from No, Dear, Sho Journal, Poets.org, Black Warrior Review, and more. She has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts, reads for Pigeon Pages, and teaches poetry courses through GrubStreet. She is currently the Poetry Coalition Fellow at Kundiman.
