By Chris Campanioni

My father learned English

On the radio—

Sing-song Santiago Spanish

“Rocks Off,” The Rolling Stones

By Fina García Marruz
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

There’s no time to start from the beginning, everything
in order, shamelessly, in the elemental, candid blue.
There’s no possible lucidity, the circle’s closed off
its horizon where humble paradises swaggered.

By Anton Arrufat

Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

What do you think of the word metal?
Do you like it?
If I say,
the metal of your voice,
do you like it?

By Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
Translated by Katherine M. Hedeen

1 [158 Campanario Street]

first and foremost to scrape
everything you see
the homeland’s in the claves
the city rooster waking up traffic

By Jo Reyes-Boitel

a lot of our history is gone, let’s be honest –
when your family has been in four countries in three generations
the nonessential is quickly cast off

By Jo Reyes-Boitel

here I am: grafted from the resilience of a 4’7” matriarch traveling 46 hundred miles to freedom
island sensibilities moated by Texas deserts mud pies and dark nights scented in pine
cold Minnesota Septembers

By Satoshi Iwai

I stole a giraffe from the public zoo and hid it in the kitchen of my apartment. The kitchen was so small that the giraffe had to stick its head out of the window.

By Satoshi Iwai

I love her like a pretty chick, but she dumps me like a rotten egg. She tells me that she is going to marry a young and rich anaconda. After her departure, I watch “Anaconda Mating” on YouTube.

By Satoshi Iwai

Don’t tell me anything about rainbows, because every rainbow belongs to someone else’s summer. All I have is one afternoon and seven cigarette burns on my bare stomach.

By Jessica Murray

To drive north, alone, toward the ghost
of the Laurentide Icesheet retreating
through boreal forests, the long miles
spending themselves

By Theodore Worozbyt

stepped onto the sloop Velveteen, where nightly

coffee rounds gray into buttered wood

and the glares are both less and more

accurate than the sum of my fingerprint:

By Evan Hansen

Birds silently froth the hills

In a dream or film about how

Life is beautiful in some near

Elsewhere. At work all day

By Evan Hansen

Market forces of evening. I place the infant

in a vibrating chair purchased at Target.

Plush monkeys encircle her. A tinny song plays.

I tell her welcome to Monkey Island.

By Scott Beal

they didn’t know my last thought

was thank god they weren’t in the car

that I thought of the times I’d cut off a Buick

with their bodies buckled in the backseat and seen EMTs

By Scott Beal

were they relieved that my suffering was over
had I told them my one great fear
was being unable to remember or think
in the way that was mine

By Scott Beal

they had to go on doing algebra

and taking out the trash

there was no patch they could point to

and say that’s where he lies

By Simon Perchik

With your mouth closed
swallow though this rain
is already rain and further on

By Jen Schalliol

Or so she says. The poem’s a lie

of green, an assurance of a clean

bill of health, a hope to carry on

By Jen Schalliol

turning white with light or milk

the color of music says one

and another says: obscene

the moon’s white face. this year is white

By Jessica Murray

For a sign, a pinhole in the firmament,

and me the open eye.

Peace without stasis, each mellow
fruit

eaten.

By S Cearley

S Cearley is a former AI researcher in computer-derived writing and professor of philosophy, currently living eight inches above a river watching ducks and herons in between salmon runs.

Diana Arterian

A BOAT OVERTURNED AND THE LIVES OF A
YOUNG MAN AND A GIRL LOST.
JUNE 21, 1879

In an instant

the boat overturned

By S Cearley

S Cearley is a former AI researcher in computer-derived writing and professor of philosophy, currently living eight inches above a river watching ducks and herons in between salmon runs.

Diana Arterian

APRIL 29, 1882

Kennedy was rowing along
when he noticed an animal

floundering near the shore
He quickly fired at the monster

Diana Arterian

JUNE 15, 1884

Laborers were leveling

a mound of earth

on the shores

of Onondaga Lake

Diana Arterian

Several Persons Believed to Have Been
Drowned in Lake Onondaga—Much
Damage to Property
AUG. 28, 1895

And wind and rain

of terrific violence

By Ron Riekki

I’m sure he’s never murdered anyone.

He has a book in his pocket and that’s a good sign.

The snow is falling on him, so he’s not a ghost.

He looks cold, so he’s human.

By Chris Carosi

it was made to prove something

to throw away was to have it first

to be a trap kid in there

shouldering forgiveness

By Chris Carosi

a word works through soil, a transit breaching blood
cell, magnetized as message

wait for me to die and you will know death too
shares a brackish voice

By Lauren Camp

As a girl, I fell many times, my uncertain bones bending out, a potential for perfection lost in a clumsy arrangement of body parts linked with diabolical thought. A finger, a finger, an outline, a draft, the fascia, the proximal row of a hand, ligament, nerve, and each carpal bone to my radial-ulna fitting abruptly,