Ugh, this is frustrating and the hardest decision The simplicity of the world The argument of our lives How can we both understand? Two different paths Two different dreams  One night of stars and darkened skies One day of unrealistic desires I cry and scream,...

James Sanders is a member of the Atlanta Poets Group, a writing and performing collective. He was included in the 2016 BAX: Best American Experimental Writing/ anthology. His most recent book, Self-Portrait in Plants, was published in 2015. The University of New Orleans Press also recently published the group’s An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside.

DESPITE CDC GUIDELINES This is notthe “new normal.”None of this isremotely normal. How can youstrip humansof all that isinnatelyhumanfor the sakeof humanity and expectusto benormal? WHAT IS LIKE TO SOCIALLY DISTANCE I’m okay with being alone.(I) used to think I was an...

DRIFTING There is an emptiness only found amidst three hours of sleep, silence beyond the stream — bodily facts become silhouetted through the submerged communication cables locating point to counterpoint. You red faced and wailing with the lost weight in the ossified...

MARE COGNITUM Lemon moon upon Azores and finbacks body harmonized to pitch and yaw sleeping above deck beside your fellow sailors now that the war is over now that you have been fired upon from a castle and buried a man at sea chased rebs for three years along the...

IN MY TEETH (for my hygienist) the morning before my  last check up  I wrote this little note  along a ribbon of dental floss  and wove it in my teeth slaloming between the  incisors and molars  and it read: "in my grill you will find...

Self-titled artist, poet, writer, and overall creative, Ayoola loves using her artistic abilities to express herself. Ayoola chose “Her Silence” as her poet’s name because she speaks from a place of solitude. Her Silence is a poet born from the trauma of complacency. Her Silence no longer allows the wavering doubt that has filled her head to stop her from speaking words of love, demise, acceptance, and control through poetic catharsis. The poem “Dear Body” was made from her experience with Sickle Cell Anemia and has allowed Ayoola to see her body in a vast way in retrospect to her pain.

Trinity Chastain is a student writer from Thomas University. She is a Film Studies Major, and she enjoys creative writing, playing soccer, skateboarding, and going to the beach. She plans to continue writing in poetry and prose and hopes to one day write a book. This will be her first publication, and she hopes to publish more in the future. She is excited with her new found love for reading and writing poetry, and is planning to continue her education in writing by adding a minor in creative writing.

DEEP ROOTS My feet keep patting even though there is no music My knees keep bending like I’s about to run My hips keep swaying with the rolls of water My stomach keeps churning with no smells in the distance My heart keeps pounding like fear is a new day dawning My...

30-SOMETHING VIRGIN MAN SKIPS AA MEETING TO ATTEND STREET CORNER SNAIL RACE Snails can self-fertilize. They can race a five-block marathon and bake to death before they reach the finish line. They can wade in beer puddles, fuck in beer puddles, fuck a variety of...

THE WAY OUT IS THE WAY THROUGH It's dawning now, in the green afternoon light,you’ve been mistaken for someone else.Look around: the street is empty and silent,houses in their motley of potted flowers and hanging fernssalute each other like old veterans.A lizard...

Étude in Nostalgia Minor, “You May Be Able to Help Solve a Mystery” The reliquary of Tab lacks a chalice, so puts a vending machine in confessional’s place. What’s the ordinance that confuses proverb with parochial gene? The implications were tax return or holy...

APHRODITE, I SHOULD HAVE THANKED YOU— I should have thanked you rather than takingthe kitchen scissors to the pudge of my bellyin attempt to cut off the parts of me I hated—instead of breaking apart the Bic razormeant for shaving and slicingit into my inner thighs. I...

SEVENTH PERIOD SHARES “Blah blah blah a bunch of whatever,” he says, butit is more than that. This is a gilled mushroom. Fourkinds. Some are purple. Human eyeball, wingspan diagram, fungi recyclesnutrients. Plant cells are different from animal cells.DNA passes from...

I DREAM OF CUBA If I lived here, the first thing I would do is remove my watch and throw it off a cliff.  Let time slip from this wrist.  Rejoin earth and air.  Have the sun let me know what to do and obey only the seasons.  Nothing else.  No...

COLORADO Summers were spent in motiontrimming the elm hedges andkneading the doughfor the Quetschekuchemy father loved,and how she sweated over the stovein that cauldron of a kitchen.And how she loved it becauseit was hers, the coppertone rangeand the chipped...

from NOW, HERE, THIS: HALF-SONNETS for Terence Winch & Ivan Sokolov IV A Zoom screen with hundreds of squares filling an entire wall. A sharp pain not in my right thumb but in the nerves in my palm leading to it. My father at 19, holding me aloft. All the mirrors...

MORNING EXERCISE I spend the morning as mornings are spent What is it to want without thought Wash the grains of rice, scrub cheeks Am I breathing yes Cut up fruit on a plate Dream of hiking down a cool mountainside alone AQI a bruise darkening Eat the zucchini,...

IN MY TEETH https://thomasu-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rcurtis_thomasu_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Frcurtis%5Fthomasu%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FIn%20My%20Teeth%2Emp4&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Frcurtis%5Fthomasu%5Fedu%2FDocuments&ga=1

Twentynine Palms December rasp, dust in stream, lust of color illumined. The dealer smears the stars & splits a stone decked & assembled by yesterday’s air. Tumbleweeds gambol sunward, and, in the dusk, by their shadows, weave the sky into the sand— Over...

WHAT THINKING FEELS LIKE I reckon I remember how the story goes, but then I come to the moment in the fable when the man pulls the thorn out of the lion’s paw, and the thorn turns out to be another tiny lion, rampant and raging, who also needs...

THE SHIP TRAFALGAR Non-stop northern light. Men moved in it like gurry sharks biting two days past death. We needed to fill our hold so we caught, cut, and barrelled. The usual process was gone through again, again. Only fog slowed us. Sometimes then we slept, leaving...

SEASICK I vomit all over the floor as my mother undoes my necklace. It was the fountain made of white chocolate seashells. I walk down the isle crying and gripping each petal, forgetting to let them drop. Or maybe I try, but my hands are too wet from nausea. My...

ARE YOU BORED YET? Acidic dreams rot my brain. The curves of the road twisting as I spiral down with it. We disturb a herd of deer that were bedded down in the backyard of a lonely woman. You compared her to an old snow white. I suppose i should feel something the...