Poetry from Lauren Ainslie
Blessing
You stand, still and calm,
waiting for me,
waiting for something.
The proud ridges curving above your eyes make you look disapproving,
I am not in the mood to be disapproved.
There is dust on your scalloped feathers, dust in the crevices of your eyes.
Your short wick is clean and whole, the crown of your head smooth and unmelted.
Even as a child I knew not to disturb your beauty
and you have waited since then.
Waited with your yellow wings folded at your side,
And the thought of you melting away without ever flying
made the dust settle like first snow.
I am afraid to pick you up,
afraid that the warmth of my hands will smudge
your delicate wax feathers.
You are a blessing, but a sad one,
because I do not need you
I will never light you
but you look nice amongst my books.
Poetry from Kaia Hobson
“sunlit molecules”
I have never
wanted to breathe
in those
crepuscular rays
illuminating the coruscant dust
that does not float
down to earth
like the leaves outside
and suddenly
I wonder
if time matters to those particles
always drifting
until perhaps
the dew that hangs
on my cloudy window
and remain
till they
d i s s i p a t e
Poetry from J.J. Campbell
Poetry from Sequoia Hack
Do Not Use Me As Deodorant, Jerry.
A lone nib of dark chocolate in
A bowl of milk
Like the coldness of neglect
That slides down your tongue that quivers
When Linda is not resting on your shoulder
Instead, I hit you hard,
Your soft belly bouncing like
Junior Mints in a toddler’s stomach
The acid
Destroys yellowed teeth then creeps to your toes
Dissolves all future aspirations because
Sudoku, Jerry, is not the damn way of life like your
Sick business of running beauty pageants in Montana
That recharge your brain cells ruthlessly shriveled
When I took Linda from you,
The light of thousands of Cheetos and olives
Gave you hope like Linda did. Oh yeah,
Linda is my wife now, here’s her number:
303-381-oh, sorry, you still have it written on a floorboard
Under a rug.
My Bad. Patch together your solid n striped life like make it all solid or
Fully striped because I cannot deal with you when doses
Of your yearning for love override
Chapped lips that crack
And crack until tourists from Rome come to see the new
Grand Canyon of the East
Poetry from Joe Balaz
BEYOND DA NINTH ISLAND
Plumeria Ikeda
wuz wun rambler and wun gambler.
Rather den just go Vegas
she kept on flying east
until she wen end up landing
by wun huge lake
dat looked as big as wun ocean.
In da city wit da Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
she suddenly found herself in Cleveland.
Poetry from Ryan Flanagan
He Lost His Virginity to a Ball of Wool
His grandmother used to knit slippers
year round for all the grandkids
and –
during that entire summer he spent with her
he got ideas, finding himself home alone
he stared at the basket of wool on the floor
for hours, imagining the softness of each ball
before fingering himself a hole and defiling his favourite.
A large grey mass of fabric which he humped and threw away.
After that, he no longer considered himself a virgin.
And the slippers he got each Christmas
made him uneasy.
Precision Bombing, like Painting Your Nails
with a Bunker Buster Named Quincey
WHAT IF WAR COMES?
he yelled
like a chimney spout
full of soot.
Right to your house?
I asked.
Then I guess you’re
goners.
And he could tell
I was mocking him
which meant that he
was still there
in the outstanding
cable bill sense.
As I thought
about that chimney sweep
in a William Blake poem I had read
many years before.
And how no one escapes the prison
of anything if they don’t
want to.






