Blues at the edge of the parking lot

Somewhere in Miami, birds
ruckus in the palms. Rust
seeps from street sign to stain
concrete coral & lamplight
fractures trees, leaves fan
frilly out of reach.
All of these images,
& one of them you—
baggy shorts, you turquoise
tube top, you puckering
fabric, you abstract
tattoo, you
architecture blue
as painted doorways, you
sidewalk sunbath.
When you text me
u have a home, I am
high school whiplashed
to nights split apart
by the train, or the greyhound
where I left a message
over the road roar, something
about catching up when I should
have said let’s catch the blue line
to Wonderland or something so
concrete. Years
without a whisper
and from the blue, 9 images, 1 video
& this text. I’m a wave
crashing down, fingers
unfurling. Yes, yes,
I wish, I wish
we were handheld
by the same city
still. All the colors
you send me blur
like brushing fingertips
through the rush hour crowd—
a taut line, barely-there contact
the promise of seeing
you on the other side—somewhere
in Miami, maybe. Wherever
vivid seeps sloshing
from headlights, wherever bedsheets
are blush-tinged by sunspill.
I scroll through my photos
for the one that will say you too.
Head on shoulder,
forehead smooch, window frosted
& melting in dawn.

Emma Fuchs (rhymes with books) is a poet, printmaker and aspiring filmmaker. Emma has many homes but she currently lives in New York City and dreams of endless summer. She is a poetry reader for TriQuarterly and the winner of Foundlings Press' 2022 Ralph Angel Poetry Prize. Her work can be found in Neon Door, Figure 1, Bright Wall/Dark Room and perhappened mag.

by Stephen Ira

"The seagulls have no dignity."

I was feeling really good about my outfit
til I went shopping and I saw the mirror, and it’s all because of how
the only shorts I have right now—due only to a promise I made
to myself—are these skintight nonpainful elastic black ones that I’m hoping
that woman didn’t notice last night at Chris’s boss’s opening,
blue chip, at which we had to perch and kind of yell
over low tables like obstacles in a dream, and I did it
so that I could have my views heard on the possibilities of fashion
not just for art but suffering cessation oh my god!
Like I'm all talking just about how I have had
this liberatory fashion
revelation And I’m like wearing this ill fitting denim jacket
and like bike shorts It’s embarrassing. I couldn’t help but wonder
whether if I still had hair, it might have charmed her.
On the train
is a late transitioner: her thin precariously parted hair
styled in a neat chic pageboy, today she is featuring
a floor length dress with tiny blue diamonds on it
I am always looking at people’s outfits
and thinking about how disappointed Elizabeth Bishop would be in me
for learning neither the lessons of her successes or mistakes
For example earlier a woman passed me with her hair piled up on her head
bound by an orange strip of fabric, as is the custom here
She was with a stud wearing all black Champion
and this fag who had with her this somehow already really
fucked up looking lavender Telfar which—, bitch
How Because that color just came out?? Who even cares
How you describe a Telfar The whole point of one is you don’t have to
and Miss Bishop would hate that because when I do
do description, again, I learn nothing because all I can see is my thoughts
The train lady touches her hair too often,
fiddling with it and tossing her head, as if without direct manipulation
it might naturally fall in a better place I grew up in Los Angeles
And so I love to dawdle around the MTA feeling a magnetic combination
of power and grievance Like a woman whose place is a description of the eyes
of animals Like I tried to write in Cherry Grove before Elana made me come
put on sunscreen and drink water and wipe the white rings off my nose
without trying again with the seagulls
Without even taking notes
All I had was an opening line in an arch chatty tone and it talks about dignity
I didn’t want to be chatty I was accused of invisibility:
How many pictures of Lota do you see in a suit, for example, which was
apparently what she would wear mostly
More importantly (Bishop thought a lot about this
problem, though of course was unable to discuss it or describe it
even in art), more accurately, I’m unable to stop being seen

Stephen Ira is the author of the chapbook Chasers (2022, New Michigan Press). You can find his work in the Paris Review, Poetry (Chicago), the American Poetry Review, DIAGRAM, Fence, and more. As a performer and director, his work has appeared in venues like the Sundance Film Festival, La Mama Etc, and OutFest. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

by Ben Kassoy

Timelapse

my body

til it’s a garden

fast forward the tape

til i’m a candy wrapper on the phone

and salt & pepper static on the screen

call me the anti phoenix

the fallen sun

flip my feather body

to the dark side of the mattress

watch my dimples become black holes

that inhale the future

then vanish

like a raindrop on a pond

i’ll be the blank page & the blinking cursor

the bunnies

& the salted caramel cones

& the silhouettes of bright new words

emerging through the vertical vanilla

and i’ll watch

as you look up

and throw your eye into the clouds like a penny

and make a wish

Ben Kassoy is a meerkat in a life jacket. His chapbook, The Funny Thing About A Panic Attack, is now available from Bottlecap Press. (www.benkassoy.com/books)

by Sam Schieren

In Between

Her dog ran off in the middle of a storm. She went out at the height of the storm, with her three-pound flashlight, to search her fields and the woods, and fell. She tripped over a root and scraped her leg badly. The next day she called both of her neighbors, told them about her dog, the search the night before, her injury. Neither of them had seen Luna. Both suggested different creams for the scrape. One cream was supposed to clean and reduce pain, the other was solely meant to prevent infection. She bought one of these creams. She called the pound, several friends, and the owner of the largest farm in the area. No one had seen Luna. A few asked how she was holding up given the situation. She mentioned the late night search, the scrape, and the cream. They said they hoped she’d feel better. A few days later she’d gone into town to put up posters so that if someone living near her in the country ventured into town they’d be made aware. Since it was summer she was wearing shorts so the scrape on her leg was exposed. All the walking had caused the skin to stretch and the new scab to open. A man in town told her she was bleeding. She looked at her leg and immediately cried. The man asked what was wrong and she explained her dog had run off, she’d gone looking and fallen, she’d called everyone she could think of and all they’d been able to do was suggest a cream for her leg. She was postering the town in case anyone she hadn’t thought to call knew something, anything. He told her he’d keep an eye out for the dog and that he hoped she’d feel better then he continued on. She waited inside so as not to miss the phone for nearly a week. Luna was a well-behaved dog, a shepherd. She never barked and always came when she was called. Even though Luna had been so well-behaved, with her gone the house took on a fretful silence. She’d put the radio on but that didn’t seem to help. Every time the phone rang, wherever she was in the house, she jolted upright and with thudding steps hurried to the phone. The man she met on the street called and mentioned a posting in the local paper, about a shepherd. But it hadn’t panned out. Other callers offered her free tickets for a cruise, asked if she’d donate to a mayoral campaign, her mother had some questions about insurance, and one man with a deep voice offered to buy her a new dog if she’d go with him to Vegas. She called the pound each day for two weeks until they stopped answering her calls. She called her friends, every day. They tried to give her comfort, told her Luna was probably being taken care of, she should think of it like her dog had gone on vacation. These calls grew shorter and shorter as the friends ran out of things to say. Most of the posters in town were still up but they were starting to be posted over or else became impossible to read because the rain ran the ink. The scrape on her leg had nearly healed. The skin left behind was quite smooth. Because of the scab she hadn’t been able to shave the area and so a small patch of hair had grown from it. After a month she’d stopped responding to any phone calls. They were always false alarms. She stopped calling her friends. Her mother left messages on the answering machine wondering what was wrong. She shaved the patch of hair on her leg. She watched TV or listened to the radio for most of the day. During storms she’d drink then try and sleep or if this failed, sit on the porch. Sometimes it’d rain and she’d watch the rain as it fell on her fields. She cut her hair. She started volunteering at a place that taught disabled children to ride horses. She donated more than she could afford to the woman running for mayor. She lost ten pounds. Once or twice a week she slept with the man she had met months ago on the street who’d called with a false alarm. She had been able to pick out his number from her call log. Her mother got sicker. She visited her but rarely said much. She told her mother she was thinking of getting a new dog. Her mother said that would be nice. But she couldn’t bring herself to get a new dog.

Sam Schieren is a writer from Valley Cottage, New York. He received his MFA from the University of California, Davis. He currently lives in a garden, two hours north of New York City.

by SG Huerta

Candy People Explode When They Get Scared

I’m feeling nostalgic for the man that assaulted me when I was barely a teenager. I might just be nostalgic for Nintendo games and Cartoon Network, things I can’t enjoy without remembering our childhood.

There is comfort in transition. Comfort in the zombies Princess Bubblegum hides from everyone in episode one of Adventure Time. Comfort in the way I’ve since shaped the body he thought was his to have his way with nearly nine years ago. He owned my skin before it was inked before the eating disorder before the weight loss and then gain and then loss and then gain and then gain and then gain and then gain. He will never know my skin again.

I think I have avoided writing about this for so long due to the complexity of the issue. Now that I am here, sitting down to actually write, it’s really not so complex at all. I was a teenager, he was twenty, I was asleep, he thought he was entitled to something that should have been all mine, and now I’ve lived my entire adult life feeling like a screw up. Cause and effect. Not so complex.

That first full episode of Adventure Time begins with intrigue. I love that about cartoons. Straight to the action. In the cemetery, Finn the Human and Princess Bubblegum use PB’s decorpsinator serum to try to bring dead candy people back to life. Instead, they create candy zombies. PB then makes Finn royal promise not to tell anyone about the imminent danger and gathers everyone for a sleepover in order to protect them.

The drama escalates when Finn has to decide whether or not to break his royal promise, whether or not to speak up about danger. After hiding the zombies from even his brother, Jake the Dog, the 12-year-old has no choice. Eventually time freezes.

I guess the complexity moreso lies in the resulting politics of the assault. Stereotypes about Mexican men. Our Welita and her love for all her nietos. My dad’s existing suspicion of our closeness anyway— him always being right about me anyway. It’s complicated, too complicated to wrap up in 11 minutes.

SG Huerta is a queer Xicanx writer from Dallas. They are the poetry editor of Abode Press and author of the chapbooks The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press 2021) and Last Stop (Defunkt Magazine 2023). Their work has appeared in The Offing, Split Lip Magazine, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. They live in Texas with their partner and two cats. Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry