Hot Things to Me Are Not Dark by Jennifer Martelli

—Nurse Wolf, Dominatrix
 

I saw her on Donahue in the ’90s, began my slow transformation

into a blotched cow, learned to line dance on the molecular level: this is how

I recovered from self-injury, from being a girl-child among girl-children.


When I had my daughter, my fears were lonely: I unzippered them

as if they were cattails by the pond where the snakes go. Unzippered their whole

velvet torsos, their tight girdles, let loose fear fear fear into the warm autumn sky.


Tonight, the gray moths stay stone still as angel hearts all night on my screen door,

gush dumb tragedy from their arterial wings. The moths are collective: come

as one thought to their deaths at the porch light.

Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens and My Tarantella, named a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her work has appeared in Poetry and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review.

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

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doing my t shot in front of strangers on the internet by quinton chinwe

i can’t get the words out
of my head. what is it
about living that—. i am
not who i thought i was. i am
still ending. but then what.
and then what. how will i
fill the evenings. death
is just another thing
to do tonight. there is no you
i die and wipe the shit on my shirt
who will tell me not to.
i mean the big death
what will you take me for.
i promise you a body
but how much is my word worth
beneath your tongue
i want the green and small
of it, who will you be
when i become beautiful,
the devil’s chagrin,
a new thing with wings
and blood and eyes
and all this selfish life
blooming from my fresh
wounds. this is about me.
there is no you.
i could be cruel with this ending
body. instead i will bury you
beneath my navel until until until

quinton chinwe is a black trans poet from north carolina, where they study english & comparative literature at the university of north carolina at chapel hill.

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

Within Us After by Carole Symer

A hard no in the look of a hard blue sky, a jet’s long whisper
before the languishing set in
 
like a prehistoric crane, its cold red eyes flaring on final descent,
ripped through us like thickening black clouds   	caught
in the tops of trees
 
along the edges of a narrow clearing        	amidst mud & rocks
 
I dreamed my gray dream body: a breakfast of oats & water,
a garden out back, utterly sodden. Still
a lot is quietly happening
out there in the rain: Potted azaleas, the new crab apple,
sticks covered with a mass of tight buds.               
 
It has taken me years to figure out the something romantic in rain
about to turn snow. To count the minutes until the gray branches of plum
trees become hidden & a single trail of fox prints come up to the back door

Carole Symer is a psychologist and teaches at New York University. Symer’s poems have appeared in Across the Margin, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Dunes Review, Sky Island Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. She won the Oomen-Schultz Interlochen Writers Award in 2020 and authored Glint (Small Harbor Publishing, 2021).

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

Last Night by Maya Williams

I had a dream
another trans friend
died. It’s
his birthday today.
Thankfully
he is still breathing.
What a blessing
to wake up to softness
after a rough night
of sleep.

Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a Black Multiracial suicide survivor who is currently Portland, Maine’s seventh poet laureate.

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

Delta by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers

When the sun lasts long enough to fade color out of objects, all I want to do is lay still but I squirm through the ashen sky. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I wish I didn’t have a body. That is all to say I think it’s a good idea to be a part of a glacial crevasse or maybe loam along the river delta. 

When I was fourteen, there was nothing I wanted more than hands on skin, and skin and skin and there was one night with those wanted hands around my throat but I didn’t know that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be in my body and feel it squeezed. Without a body, there is no need for reflection. But I recall how both my hands embrace the cold sweat of a dark Yuengling bottle while I sit facing the sun’s long going, wanting to become faded color as well. 

Kristiane Weeks-Rogers (she/her/hers) is a Poet-Writer among other titles such as copy editor. She’s the author of the poetry collection, Self-Anointment with Lemons (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and 2nd place winner of Casa Cultural de las Americas’ inaugural Poetic Bridges contest.

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

Water by Jen Karetnick

is a fluid I never drink, liquid that I don’t believe my camelid girth requires—not in any
existential sense, but the physical one. For H2O to drizzle on my tongue, I just don’t thirst.
 
Coffee me, Diet Coke me, wine me. Nestle Quik me. In the end, they dry me. Fissure me
into sponge. Desert bones. My skinny extremities reject me. But I thrive. Zoologic wonder me,
 
buzzing like bees from queen-less hives, jumpy, programmed for loss. How I absorb and absorb,
cull drops from air. Epidermis me. Osmosis me. Need is a loyal orchid, a blossom expressed.
 
To fix my ills, though! Vivacity is what I should aim for, right? I can’t look only to aqua
Miami bays to justify tranquility, whiz through shallows and pools for my tonics. And so:
 
Vivify me. Quantify me. Count the dozens of ounces going in, the jaundiced pee—Pantone
flax— nozzling out. Balloon me. Weight me. Bounce me back to society’s idea of ability.

Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020), a CIPA EVVY winner, an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist, and a Kops Fetherling Honorable Mention. She is also the author of Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023). Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has had work recently or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Cutthroat, DIAGRAM, Jet Fuel Review, Notre Dame Review, The Penn Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. 

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

Everything and Everyone by James Diaz

I was only just beginning
I was only just
 
I took off my layers
my shame my skin
I said "if I know you I know you"
and everything we need to be good
and settled is just a small breath away
 
I took it lower
my whole face
against the parking lot pavement
some are born this way
I've seen it happen
 
enough gets taken and a person becomes gone inside
 
I'm done with cruelty
with small hands mouths minds
let them have it
whatever this is
 
when they ask you what you love
tell them: everything
 
everything
and everyone
 
and I am only just beginning.

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared in Thrush Poetry Journal, Corporeal, Rust + Moth, and Cleaver Magazine. They reside in upstate New York.

Guest Editor Allison Blevins is a queer disabled writer.  She is the author of the collections Handbook for the Newly Disabled, A Lyric Memoir (BlazeVox, 2022) and Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021).  Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023), a finalist for the Pamet River Prize, is forthcoming. She is also the author of the chapbooks Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022), Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), part of the Robin Becker Series. Her chapbook fiery poppies bruising their own throats (Glass Lyre Press) is forthcoming.  Allison is the Founder and Director of Small Harbor Publishing and the Executive Editor at the museum of americana. She lives in Missouri with her partner and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.  For more information visit allisonblevins.com.

When you undo the done by Allison Blevins

you startle like a tall step, a red sign, a flashing light. Some unbecomes happen slowly—melting ice on granite, the swiftly turn of a hand lifting, bread fresh six days: how mold seems to rise rather than fall to rest and spread. Some unbecomes happen quickly as lace or thin surface water, frozen, scraped to curls. 
 
To unbecome your pain is to become pain, to warm bathe in short breath and the quick shallow beats of your stumbling heart and know every day the pain will come, the car drive away, the door shut, the lid close.

Allison Blevins is the author of the chapbooks Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her books Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021) and Cataloging Pain (YesYes Books, 2023) are forthcoming. Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press 2021), her collaborative chapbook, is forthcoming. She is the Director of Small Harbor Publishing and a Poetry Editor at Literary Mama. She lives in Missouri with her spouse and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series.

Guest Editor Julie Ramon is an English instructor at Crowder College and SNHU. She graduated with an M.F.A from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She is currently working on two poetry chapbooks and serves as a co-director of Downtown Poetry, a Joplin, Missouri poetry series. She lives in Joplin with her husband, daughter, and sons.

Who’s Afraid of Silence? by Allison Blevins

I want to tell you pain has whispered its silence on my skin: how we once spent an afternoon ripping our fingers into orange flesh over the kitchen sink, pulp and succulent dripping, sweet coating our arms. I’m washing in the still solidliquidsolid sound. How the yellow day shine-light is now so often both cold and alone—this silence is so loud—and I lay in our bed and form shapes with my mouth and hands to explain. You were supposed to love me enough to save us. I am stones once held together by your certainty. And one day, I might see me as you have. How terrible.
 
 
I wish I had at once known and numbered my dead, anticipated how they would flop to surface gasping. Isn’t love meant to love what rots in corners—love the remains unburied.

Allison Blevins is the author of the chapbooks Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). Her books Slowly/Suddenly (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2021) and Cataloging Pain (YesYes Books, 2023) are forthcoming. Chorus for the Kill (Seven Kitchens Press 2021), her collaborative chapbook, is forthcoming. She is the Director of Small Harbor Publishing and a Poetry Editor at Literary Mama. She lives in Missouri with her spouse and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series. For more information visit http://www.allisonblevins.com

Guest Editor Katelyn Roth graduated from Pittsburg State University with her Master’s in poetry. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.

Regarding the Conversation When We Compared Regrets by Allison Blevins

A bird somewhere has given up sleep to prove love.
Some moments demand speaking, so we say nothing.
This is true, though often we tell lies.  One day, a bird falls
accidentally.  I think the birds are women, really.  I’ll remember
these months as a great unburdening.  A bird somewhere sings
me too.  I would cry out with them, but the daughter growing
inside me would hear what she is coming to.  This child
is declarative, like a sentence ending.  Finally.
When birds speak on the subject of mourning, on
what a body has done, can do
                                             I want to say it more
plainly—feathered and blue as down as heather as
a leaf twisting—my daughter is mine.  One day, I’ll fall.
She may remember the worst of me.  A bird somewhere
has given up.  These months, I find myself breaking like wet sand.

Allison Blevins received her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte and is a Lecturer for the Women’s Studies Program at Pittsburg State University and the Department of English and Philosophy at Missouri Southern State University. She has been a finalist for the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and the Moon City Poetry Award.  Her work has appeared in such journals as Mid-American Review, the minnesota review, Nimrod International Journal, Sinister Wisdom, and Josephine Quarterly.  Her chapbook A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press), part of the Robin Becker Series, is forthcoming in 2019.  Another chapbook Letters to Joan (Lithic Press) is also forthcoming in 2019. She lives in Missouri with her wife and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series and is Editor-in-Chief of Harbor Review.

Guest Editor Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor, the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10^thAnniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Cavalier Literary Couture, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Born in Virginia Beach, Virginia, she has also lived and worked in Arizona and in Missouri.  She is married to the writer Roland Sodowsky and is one of the founders and the Co-President of the Board of SEK Women Helping Women.