Adam Gianforcaro

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

The bones inside my body have a PhD
in mechanical engineering. For weeks
after I broke my arm, the severed ulna
sprouted a baby bone bridge
that reached across waterways to connect
our peoples again. Later, when I punched a tree

& dislocated knuckle to wrist, the former
ultimately found its way back home.
That is not to say my body is a home.
Home is something else altogether.

But back to my body: spine as a didgeridoo,
hips as a Vienna horn, & the music
my body makes branded as classical
mood disorder. A mood too focused on things stuck
inside. Bones as pet store goldfish. Bones
as boxes in the crawl space.

& sometimes my body can’t sleep.
Sometimes the sponge that is my brain
inside the skull that is my head
remembers that hands are skeletons all their own.

27 bones resting next to my pillow. A figure
I thought would have been a prime number
but isn’t. & yet these metacarpals
could teach AP algebra if they had to.
Would ask you to solve for x
when x is a boneyard of forearms.

& by adulthood, humans are left with 206 bones
though we are born into the world
with 64 more inside of us.
It’s not that 64 bones just disappear. Bones
fuse together, become stronger. As in,

my depression was a bone & my anxiety
was a bone & now they are one ball of stress
inside a single swollen throat. & so finally,
the prime number I was searching for—
stronger now & ready to solve
for whatever equation you throw its way.

Cheryl Pallant

CARRIER OF BONES AND SONG

I do not want to be a collector of bodies. I do not want to wipe blood from the brow and write to a beloved
who will curse my words. I do not want to pile the livid and lost and shake loose unused change from
pockets. I do not want to gather courage like scant kindling for a camp.

I do not want to bear the burden. I do not want to know who was carrying a child. I do not want to walk a
bombed and burned earth. I do not want to be accused of neglect nor be put on trial. I do not want to
separate words in a river from tears.

I re-embody disowned land and flesh. I light and lust to tender hearts and stack stones that lead to next
door. I keep watch not in fear of an enemy arriving but to meet the revel of a friend. I see brown and blue
and white and black as drops in the sea and rivulets to quench thirst.

I carry stories of bones and kneel in song. Secrets shared and silence respected set trajectories in motion like
shooting stars. I want solutions pondered and desires gathered in dance.

I filter all languages of despair into a resilient splash. I witness leaps of faith as a quiet voice. What remains
of the day serves as refuge for taste, swallow, and touch. Crack yourself open. Brush off the rubble as beasts
we can and cross the border to feast on thrive.

Isa Guzman

WEATHERED INSCRIPTION

mountains behindus rise
in a color

golden sere&lifeless
a midsummershimmer

            we eat lunch
                                    convert / ferment
our meals / ideas               into dust

            we walk out             into the blank
street             with   vacantwindows
                                                displaying fog

splayed cemeteries soclearlymarked
risefrom our pelvis

            we wander now                  scanstones
buried in small children
                                    growingin    a grove
            below their bellybuttons

slow paced drags dragusinto fatigue

we are searching for the askedmenot
past

i should have known it
i’ve stepped far intoit

            when we finally arrive at an altar
                        we make our offerings
quarters&dimes
                                    brittlebonepens

             we look up for the main path
                        between the clusters of tiltedgraves
                        caught up in it seaofgrey

we overlooked our hauntings
we’re coming back

Kathleen Hellen

YOU SAY A HAPA GIRL LIKE ME

is always looking for her daddy’s
nose—not flat, lacking

cartilage, not snubbed
with shortened septum but

aquiline, rhinoplastic, under-
going Greek or Roman

aspirations. Head-
quartered

in post-war training
operations

hooked to bases
of exclusion

wavy to approximate
Caucasian
sniffing out the quotas

Emily Blair

LOVE POEM: MY PARTNER BINDS ME

taut as a fiddle string, guitar twang, reverberate, make celestial music, baby
I need some water
and it is brought to me, miraculous

once every few moments one of us thinks so loudly the other hears
I love you
turning my chest and cheeks disturbingly, boiled-crawdad red,
and you’re the butter, and I’m ready

what if we had even once
seen women in bed
in ways not seditious or cavernous, not waiting for man and his seed;
what if I’m not a field for plowing but
ivy grown over a winter bathroom window so
the first time you dare raise the panes
for a false-spring heat wave
you see me: hopeful, radiant, naïve,
having grown in a not-so-cold Southern winter
to surprise you

you love plants, collect plants,
those hanging and reaching and longing plants so
you must love me
as I rise up,
close enough to blister
even this shy skin

Amy Bassin

CUT-OUT 1

(2018) Acrylic, oil and collage on canvas 70x70 cm
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This image shows a painted black background that resembles the night sky with stars. On the right, there is a blue hoodie with hood raised and an invisible face. The left side of the image shows a figure in a dress cut from a travel magazine. Words like "Africa," "Hong Kong," and "O.A.T" are visible in the cut-out.

CUT-OUT 5

(2018) acrylic and ink on board 20x30 cm
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: This background is white scribbled over heavily in heavy beige cross hatches. A pope with his face scribbled over in black hangs downwards from the top of the image. A woman in a black dress with her head covered in white fabric prays to the floating pope. The folded hands show that both people are Caucasian.

CUT-OUT 3

Artist statement:

Cut-Outs are scissored collages that echo how women are presently being cut out of sovereignty over their individual bodies and minds by malicious male government cabals.

Robin Moss

TO MINISTER

One pair of hands
is not enough.
I want to be

          touched
and                           touched
     and       touched

heels and palms
of men, of women
on shoulders, on thighs

a fingertip
dipped
in unguent

rubbed into my hips
so they will glide,
into my back so it will give,

into my chest
so this, too, can accept
touch,

               soft,
              softer,
                 —

Justin Vicari

THE MALE VAGINA GOOGLES HERSELF

From Wikipedia I learn about myself.
I’m a curse.
I’m a supernatural being.
And my mother might be a witch;
I’m a sign of that.
I’m an ancient type:
Diodorus Siculus in the first century
reports the Hermaphroditus.
In Rome, what is now Italy,
I was rife. I’m plural.
I am they and I am them.
I am we and I am us.
Early Brits thought Common Law
let me inherit man and woman’s share.
I’m a self-pollinating flower.
I’m the third box,
the one you cannot check on forms
because it’s never offered.
I learn what I have always known.
I’m a social emergency.

Kalyn McAlister

THE LULULEMON QUESTION

What I want to know is if I practice yoga, really dedicate, will I be able to finger myself. Like not just the tip, a full finger inside, to the last knuckle, a couple, several. An entire fist, if I paced myself and really stretched before and after. What about my tongue on my nipples, those lauded berries of mammary? Clitoris? Peel back my own purple-veined petals. Will I be able to run a finger shivery down my spine or cup an apple cheek and give a good-natured squeeze, a promise of more to come? And then deliver. Will shaving be a breeze and self-pedicures a cinch? How about zipping up my dresses or getting out of a too-tight shirt? Will my contortions allow me to look at that weird bump on my back, or stretch to scratch the itch right below my bra strap—no a little up, to the left, the other left? When I get a line of zits beneath my sports bra from all this yoga sweat, will I be able to pop my own bacne? Will I be able to give myself massages after a fight with my parents or whisper in my ear when I least expect it? Can I give myself risqué pets when no one’s looking and forehead kisses goodnight? Will I be able to wrap my arms around myself front to back, listening to my own heartbeat echo itself, a dialogued monologue—or from back to front, spooning at night, a reassuring weight inciting night sweats, the type ghosts and spooks of all kinds fear most? Will I be able to rest my head on my own shoulder, when I’ve been on my feet all day, when someone yells at me, when I yelled at someone else, when my dog dies, when I’m spun out, when I’m at the movies, when on public transportation, when I brim with affection, when I need to close my eyes for just a second, be hidden from the buzzing stinging world, and just exist with my heart on my sleeve.

Jessica Lynne Furtado

A MOUTH, FULL

I am all hunger and caked hands
waiting for banana bread to rise.
For the first time in my life, patient
enough to birth a batter from scratch,
flour dusting fingerprints across
my apron, a ghost of evidence.
Creation is about the process,
each ingredient added to the right bowl
at the right moment, success
in precision. A minor flourish
could be the difference between
a mouthful and a mouth full
of want. I want to believe
that I won’t regret my decision
to hold my empty womb like a full
moon, eclipsed – the rare desired abyss
maintained with purpose. The bread
is perfection, all butter and confidence.
Better knowing I don’t even have to share it.

Jonathan B. Aibel

IT ALL DEPENDS

on a string hammock
loosely stretched between oak and ash

which can not now be used
with snow falling, the one

place to carry my vibrating
self to stillness. It depends

on the hammock, a cloudless day, not
too hot, when I can lift my spirit

out of this biological gutter, so
I become breath, and thoughts

clouded sulphurs, touch weightlessly
and flit, the susurrus of leaf louder

than my list of things to do; it depends
on aspirin and ibuprofen, on

my heart, liver and lungs,
flanked by kidneys aligning

like all eight planets tugging
magnetic and gravitic tides ...

it depends on the hammock,
a cloudless day and stillness, on

turning my brain outside
in, on raising my hands

and making light come out my palms,
each cell rejoicing,

all the ripples in my head
resolving into a single tone —

B above middle C —
droning honey for my hive.

Issue 52 Contributors

Jonathan B. Aibel is a poet and software engineer. His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in Lily Poetry Review, The Aurorean, Mason's Road, Round Magazine, and in the anthology Rhyme and Punishment (Local Gems Press). Jonathan lives in Concord, MA with his family.

Amy Bassin is a widely exhibited and published multi-disciplinary artist from NYC whose work encompasses artist books, altered books, drawing, collage, fine art photography, and video. A text-based art collaboration with writer Mark Blickley, Dream Streams was published May 2019 by Clare Songbirds Publishing. In 2018 she participated in an art residency in Lisbon, Portugal and exhibited at the Art Book Fair in Antwerp, Belgium. She is a co-founder of the five continent international artists collective, Urban Dialogues.

Emily Blair is a queer Appalachian poet and blue-collar scholar originally from Fort Chiswell, Virginia. She currently lives and teaches community college in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her work can be found or is soon forthcoming in Contrary Magazine, Heavy Feather Review, Impossible Archetype, The New Southern Fugitives, Pidgeonholes, Posit: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Pinch Journal, and Riggwelter Press. Further information and previous publications can be found on her website, emilyblairpoet.com.

Jessica Lynne Furtado is a poet, photographer, & children’s librarian. Her work has previously been published under the pseudonym JJ Lynne, with photography and micro-poem collages featured in CALYX, Muzzle Magazine, PANK, and The Brooklyn Quarterly. Her writing has appeared in apt, Hobart, A Narrow Fellow, Rust + Moth, Spry, and Stirring, among others. Jessica previously served as co-editor of poetry for Paper Nautilus, and she lives in Massachusetts. Visit her at www.jessicafurtado.com.

Adam Gianforcaro lives in Wilmington, Delaware. His poems can be found in Poet Lore, Little Patuxent Review, Maudlin House, the minnesota review, Sundog Lit, and others.

Isa Guzman is a TITERE poet from Los Sures, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Dedicated to exploring the traumas and hardships of his Puerto Rican community and society at large, his work has been featured in several magazines and anthologies, such as: The Bridge (Brooklyn Poets), The Acentos Review, The Casita Grande Lounge, The Good Men Project, and The Other Side of Violet. He is currently pursuing his MFA at Brooklyn College.

Born in Tokyo, half Japanese, Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin, the award-winning Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for two Pushcart prizes and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, among others. For more on Kathleen visit https://www.kathleenhellen.com/ .

Kalyn McAlister writes and teaches writing in Oklahoma, where she lives with her two hounds.

Robin Moss lives in the Midwest with her husband, three sons and three cats. She teaches and organizes writing courses and craft-focused literature discussions for dedicated writers outside the academic writing community. Her work is published in Rust + Moth and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.

Cheryl Pallant is the author of twelve poetry and nonfiction books, most recently, Writing and the Body in Motion: Awakening Voice through Somatic Practice (McFarland and Co., 2018) and Her Body Listening (Blaze Vox Books, 2017). She teaches dance at University of Richmond, writing at University of Virginia, and leads her Writing from the Body workshop around the U.S. and abroad.

Justin Vicari is a lifelong poet who has authored two collections, In Search of Lost Joy (Main Street Rag, 2018) and The Professional Weepers (Pavement Saw Press, 2011). His work has appeared in such journals as The Ledge, 32 Poems, Southern Poetry Review, Hotel Amerika, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, and others. He is also the author of six books of critical theory, and a literary translator. He is on Instagram at justin_vicari.

ISSUE 52CONTENTS