by Emily Zogbi

Dream Cataclysm

or Terminator 2 Is the Better Movie


          I. Sarah Connor

“Like being born, maybe.”
“Look, the dream's the same.”
“Children:” “burnt paper,” “not moving.”
“The wave hits
and they fly apart like leaves.”
“Not a dream, you moron.”
“It's real.” “A highway at night.”
“It happens.”
[panicked hysterical rage]
“You think you're alive.” “But nothing
dead will go.” “I know
it happens.” “Everything you see,”
“a dream.”

          II. T-800, Cyberdyne Systems Model 101

I have some vague understanding
of liquid and metal. I know now
why you cry. You feel better. Clearer.
You found a big truck. A useful tool
for plowing through buildings and men.
You see a girl in your dreams.
Sitting by the ocean. Climbing a tree.
Band-Aids on her knees.
Her back is always turned to you.
You are trying to get to her.
You are running through the trees.
You say, “Don’t open the door
to anyone but me.”


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Emily Zogbi is a writer from Long Island and earned her MFA in poetry from The New School in 2021. Her work has been published in Chronogram, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, RHINO Poetry, Half Mystic, and Ocean State Review, among others. Emily was also the recipient of the 2021 Sappho Poetry Prize from Palette Poetry, selected by Maggie Smith. Her debut poetry collection all the time more than anything is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in October 2023. She wishes she had been a dancer.

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by Emily Zogbi

Sundown

i am telling you i’m outside myself
             in the room behind the door

behind the door the light is on
             & i am home

i promise i am not lost
             in the grocery wandering

about my four lemons & a pair of socks
             i gathered you in my basket

with a bushel of keys i need these
             for the plane ride back somewhere

i can’t think of what door
             do i stand behind

it’s on the tip of my name the door
             that i stand behind the box

where my head goes where my dinner
             lives where children make

potted plants become swing sets
             every library i dream

of the afternoon where we hung
             pinecones from a cheek

& waited for winged mammals
             to turn another branch

my children lived inside the telephone
             it never remembers

who i go or where i leave my numbers
             she walked into the citrus & never

turned sideways that’s what they’ll collect
             about me when i am

on my shelf behind a door
             deep inside a cupboard


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Emily Zogbi is a writer from Long Island and earned her MFA in poetry from The New School in 2021. Her work has been published in Chronogram, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, RHINO Poetry, Half Mystic, and Ocean State Review, among others. Emily was also the recipient of the 2021 Sappho Poetry Prize from Palette Poetry, selected by Maggie Smith. Her debut poetry collection all the time more than anything is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in October 2023. She wishes she had been a dancer.

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by Andrea Syzdek

Phantom

New stone inside my seriousness

I stand in the middle of the road demanding risk

Near a sidewalk lined with palm trees

Ruined buildings and art

Light rippling waves

And gulls running through them 

A black dog approached me in the courtyard of a mosque

As I watched the city slowly wake up

A vista of ancient peace

Low hum of an orange sunrise

My anger will not soften but sweeten

Tons of lilies about to bloom

Not to be removed from the sea

Inside my past

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Andrea Syzdek received her MFA from the University of Houston and currently writes independently for her website Against the Grain which focuses on book reviews and essays. www.andreasyzdek.com.

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by Lucia Morello

Driving Home

two hours of that golden moment
that makes the world seem worth living in the
wind turbines standing watch over me,
endless sentinels like the hawks on
each wire, each pole, peering down
at the ground fervently
the little town i shout
out loud that i know you would love
the endless dead-dying fields
that stretch out beyond me and pull me
into them, the dead animals lining
the roads, their little bodies
crushed like stars, still warm
their bloodied soft,
and the rain i am always outrunning,
the desperate bad weather that
chases me all the way home
the people i am leaving behind

who i imagine do not
go home either,
freeze in place and, when i step
back in the city limits
will return to life again

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Lucia Morello is currently a student at Miami University where they study zoology and creative writing. They have previously been published in Inklings Magazine, the Big Windows Review, the Ashland Historical Society Newsletter, BlazeVOX, Blue Earth Review and t4t zine. Besides writing, Lucia enjoys hanging out with their two sugar gliders. To read more of their work, email them at lucia.m.morello@gmail.com

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by Julia Laxer

Behind God's Back

You once liked touching.

Neighbors sift
through the trash

Roaches party
in my cabinets

The end of the world
always feels like this

Where are you now
barefoot
reading Henry Miller

Crying in the cafe
I apologized
to the stranger

Where are you stealing internet?

Not calling hospitals

I have your release papers
test strips
Narcan 

You were the body—
Out the door

The moon might not be here
tomorrow

If Heaven exists,
of course it’s Ascension

Far, far away
Behind God’s back.

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Julia Laxer is a first-generation Hungarian-American writer, poet, and performance artist living in Portland, Oregon. She received the Orlando Prize in 2014 for a lyrical essay, and her poems are found in journals including Luna Luna Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, So-to-Speak, The Thought Erotic, Pom Pom, Zócalo Public Square, and Yes, Poetry. She works best on a deadline and dreams of living beside the sea.

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by Josh Gaydos

Water Lilies, Lurching on the Canoe

the dark green deep
swallows runoff
carrying chips of flint
that cut through petals, fallen leaves
floating over levees, solemnly
crawling slate, the moss up the neck
of the waterlogged housing project

opalite and retina of lamb,
this orange sunset
begs me to scoop up the brine
with muddied white hands

the water mirror ripples,
gator hatchlings glide in the pool
biting at ankles, green scale triangles
below their eyes, glazed
water lilies etched on the tiles,
sunken

the heat, a thick cocoon
cacophony of running water,
humming insects,
the suction on the street sign oar

excavating opaque glass
from the peat
to be thrown back
laughing into the back of throats,
guttural guardrails, sloshed beasts
pinned and parleying in soggy mud

mired ascension
of fingers up verdant beads,
a pyre of sodden wood
above coiled water moccasins,
cold and rubber panting
bottled green

scarring no further would be ideal,
scaling the watershed with the walking stick
worn against the current

the dog hair coated throat
toasting the algae capped lake,
as tablets, as sayings among sweating nurses
could neither cure nor console
those fallen for the water,
dipping hands deep beneath weathered stone

half knowing my submerged skull
would crack into quartz,
my beard would turn to moss
as folks lightly sigh upon recognizing
the navy bill of my hat, overwashed and frayed,
as I guided water to the drain

fluttering back, insides of sog and scarlet,
the great organ wavering in the pews,
paltry tithes, sucking at the side
of the woodgrain flask

I run the carved ‘m’ of my hand over the
myrtle wool, shivering beside a sapling,
tadpoles skirting from my shadow,
the translucent blank
kissed, tipping, flooding lungs
in submission beneath white warped ceiling,
the caving beam collecting droplets,
the soaked plaster, tracing floral tiles,
yellow roses, blue outlines, white crux,
retching up skipping stones
rolling cold along the floor,
sunrise flooding in,
golden, encasing
this limbo that I tread,
the distortion of sirens
in the bath,
holding myself under
until red feather nerves
kick up

eight blue petals intertwined in the tile
with coral circles matching the pistil

lurching, wound surrounded stomach,
deep breath, the burning green circling
down dented brass
to the green-haired beauty drawing breath
like a freehand circle
carving gills with finger tips
capped in shells;
clam, shotgun, crawdad,
through the black bags
bound tight, without give,
as the men drag their nets above

carving gills with finger tips
capped in shells;

clam, shotgun, crawdad,

through the black bags

bound tight, without give,

as the men drag their nets above

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Josh Gaydos (he/him) is a self-taught poet who currently resides in Colorado. He has been published in Barren Magazine, Door Is a Jar Literary Magazine, South Broadway Ghost Society, and streetcake magazine. Follow him @jgwrites22.

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