By Ryan Nowicki There was a blossoming in my chest  One night, when I was alone  At home, mulling the day over  Again in my head,  Where my heart awakened, ceased to rest,  From which vines grew greener than envy—  She was there, an aspiration,  Both newly conceived  And forever longed for.  They were callously…

By Wynn Wilkinson We’ll be lucky to hear, over cast iron sizzles  A pillbug scampering earnestly in the grout  Glinting, concealed halo, I stoop but can’t quite see.  Silent Thatagāta, long beyond the wondering,  Patient wanderer crossing icy marble seas,  Middle way over crumbs, hair, skin, dust,  Whose antennae peruse the driftwood of life.  Please,…

By Trin Viet Ho every nerve receptive and tender  my body gentle and yawning  corners of my lips curling  tip of my tongue orbiting  tingling tracing titillating  how sensitive can we be with our soft subtle grazings between fingers  lips  nipples  nerve endings?  every space  touches brushes presses  little cosmic surprises  peach fuzz electric crossings …

By Julianna Riccioli give me plum-colored fingerprints  i can wear around my waist  like an unholy halo of adoration  or, i am Saturn, with my own rings  because there is no love  so divine  as ours.  in the hazy hours after midnight  as we bask in our shared sticky-satiation  i pray this heaven  (our heaven)…

By Ty Jones Down  down  down in the sea, in her cold,  sharp arms,  quiet,  finally unable to hear the ringing in my  ears,  Dark,  no more blinding light in my face,  no more need for the epileptic settings on my devices,  Even pressure against the  parts of me escaping,  pushing my soul back to …

By Lucia Llano the places in the wet, forest dirt where our little  fingers once dug knuckle-deep in search for the  purple, swollen rubber of odd creatures, are still  standing, the same throbbing earthworms are  there even now, crawling and slurring through  the wet dirt and now unbothered by our tiny  fingers, spend their time…

By Lucia Llano bc isn’t life just nerves like kitchen lights?  or like the same poem again and again?  hasn’t everything love-bent already been said?  ihavesomuchtosayitsbackloggedmythroatisallcloggedupnow  how bout you stick your fingers down it? i’m  just kidding.  i’m just stoned  in place,  a granite statue,  sending you a text  thinking of you,  the other day, …

By Wynn Wilkinson The full Moon shone ‘cross the babbling stream, and spoke: “Be still!  I’m full tonight, but your ripples shatter my image;  Be still, mirrorlike, and reflect the untarnished light of my grace!”  The stream cried, “I’m trying, I am! But think of my state–—  The earth consumes me, I fall through the…

By Molly Tompkins You proposed forever,  Twisting your knuckles above,  The honeyed veins of the tree Top  Table, in the corner of the coffee shop  Where we met, the first time, of many.  I put my hands over  Yours, easing the nerves that struck  Like hammers through your skin,  Merely at the thought of pressing…

By Molly Tompkins Between there and here, I  Saw a two-headed sunflower  That reminded me of him.  A double imprint in the green  Thumb, pushing the seed deep in soil  must have betrayed a cleft heart.  Still, planted—  The history of his insides  Were written in Vietnamese,  The signature resembling Fansipan peaks.  We only understood…

By Ryan Nowicki She gazes beyond the cave toward the frigid gales that ruffle the oak trees, a little creature within a great earthen tower. Her many compatriots and acquaintances and strangers flood in, wind-swept waves of them cresting the doorway in search of shelter. Some make their way through the colony to labor, moving…

By Wynn Wilkinson Let me clarify what I mean.  When You bite the grapefruit and juice runs down Your chin,  And You offer me the sweetest slice and I decline.  When You walk lockarmed through bitter freeze  And test the Northmost corner, of which You’d been warned  And You promise lahat chereb still cracks and…