When All Else Fails Author | James Diaz This body is hard to find a place to crawl into or out of depending on the weight of your hell not all scars tell a story or were deserved it’s just the thing that you carry and don’t know what else to call it where to set it…

Trash Author |Eleanore Lee To find where the Johnsons used to live You have to turn up the old dirt road, Hang left, then go on past the splintered gate of the town dump (You’d drag your bags of trash out of the trunk or down from the truck bed. And just leave them on…

Edge of the Brightening Bay China Basin, San Francisco Author | Noel Kalenian In a fog blanket of slow-eyed men grumbling shopping carts along gray water, a boy lifts himself from concrete where he slept as I stumble into guardianship around the razor wire keep, pressed into service by memories, shadows and longing for a different…

Day One Author | Noel Kalenian After César Vallejo I will die in the high desert, trying to write a poem about dying, on a windy day that sucks moisture from the air. I will die in the high desert, in a gale that evaporates clouds atop the mesas and dries ink up in the pen. It…

My Life where Dresden Used to Be Author |Carl Boon morning, small blondes carrying cakes and my brother doing equations on the good linen napkins my mother kept for company. There are many ways of being scolded. We knew when Mother’s lipstick smeared how unhappy she was, and fed us Butterbrot as if it were…

Watching the Waves Author | Emma Lee The wave looks clear where it turns over shingle, recedes, rises, pulls itself in and up to its fullest height before discharging again. Each time slightly less than before. It leaves a damp line of sparkle that contrasts with the drab, sun-beached pebbles left by earlier waves. I can’t explain why…

Bass Author | Marty Carlock the fly looks delicious her pursed lips inhale it it won’t go down such pain she has lost volition tries to turn and swim is tugged to the air shudders at his rude touch hangs stiff knowing herself dead Nice bass says the fisherman he slips the pain from her…

At the İnceoğlu Bakery Author | Carl Boon We agreed on the tea, disagreed on İlhan Berk and İnci Asena. A boy in a high chair cried because confined boys cry when the light hits their faces, when the books their parents read transport them to other parents, other cities where toddlers roam luna parks…