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Two Poems by Z.H. Gill

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Discussion [Mufasa] rambling down the bank, i set my pace to the speed at which you drift there in the water— i do this to prolong our discussion. ——— Spirit Chimes We’re here for what’s beneath my feet. Raw, extreme. We’re in Portland, Oregon. You grew up here. I know you’re from here. Is it weird being here now? It is—now I know about all the hauntings here. We need to know what went on down here. These were sailors, loggers, cowboys, sheepherders, transients, not residents. The captain softened the transients with liquor or drugs. [ An innocent night out turns into a nightmare in the blink of an eye .] This was called a deadfall. Down the trap door, hauled off to a cell. These are like bones. These are like human remains. More knock-out drops and they bring you to a ship. You’re safe. I’m sure a lot of them sobered up and tried fighting back. I’m sure a lot were tortured, beaten, killed down here. The objective wasn’t to kill them but people did die. There is an aggressive energy ...
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Two Poems by Ian Lee

Dogwoods Trees grow The branches stick out And when viewed from the ground The angle from the side Makes them jut out Wide and broad And when you view the roads in a city From the top down It looks like the angle From the side Of the tree Eyes emoji Sideways fist emoji Eggplant emoji Sweat droplets emoji Moaning emoji Purple devil emoji Pregnant woman emoji Leaves emoji Fire emoji Face in cloud emoji Eyes closed laughing emoji Pizza emoji Chocolate chip cookie emoji Taco emoji *** Sometimes Goodbye Is a Second Chance Comments are sad But a little bit funny Why are there so many comments about suicide On Shinedown music videos And there are so many replies All of them are supportive My life would be a bad YouTube video YouTube is now filled with video essays They should make a social media for essays I wouldn’t read them though There’s Substack which I have an account for But I don’t use it I also don’t comment on videos Because I am not supportive And I am suicidal  Maybe people wo...
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Two sentences by Danny Evans

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When your body was  withering,  its metabolic and  digestive systems gradually approaching  a state of total  externalization,  organ after organ  transferred from inside to  out,  supplemented  by dripping plastic  bags   or fully replaced by beeping, flickering  modules,  I would sit beside you  on the  bed,  struggling to portray  the materiality of  a death in the family ,  an immense  loss ,  observing those auto-  matic cadences, those  mechanical sequences  of signifiers  the English language  produced via my passive,  trembling  hand;  still,  I would probe  for some singular  arrangement of  words,  pithy and Saxonite  or multisyllabic  in their medical  precision,  perhaps a  synthesis of  the two,  straining  to adequately  depict the particular- ity  of...
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Rainbow Fish, I Hate You by Annika Haakonsen

Oh, Rainbow Fish, stop giving away those iridescent scales to people you love. Those scales don’t grow back. You are a poorly constructed childhood character – the controversial offspring of some pseudo-Mother-Goose who thought transactional conformism was a better bedtime story than anything Aesop came up with. You swim stupidly around waiting to drown in a brine of your own fishy stink. The algae has turned this whole tank green, which is your favorite color, yes, but it makes your skin slick with slime, and it clogs your pores and dulls the shine of your hair and deepens the stains on your teeth. You can’t seem to shower it away or groom it out, so you sit in the filth, and you let it spread. You’re just a fish. What else are you supposed to do? What do you know about describing the crushing weight of deep blue fathoms to sand suckers and silt dwellers? So, keeping with brackish marine themes, this fish will migrate — travel upstream — to the muddy clay of man-made Oklahoma swimming...
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Executive Outcomes by Michael Hollaback

I have undergone a paramount moral awakening. Were you aware that there are places around the world where people are uneducated in Western values? My, oh my… how have they gotten along without us? In a world like this? My most prosperous students and I have flown to Angola on an academic yet no less humanitarian mission to deliver the people our validation, our love — the love of the world. Why? Because we must. They must know they are loved by the West. So here I am, in my grand, well-ironed safari suit, lifting and lowering my great big magnifying glass to a beautiful boy’s head. How anyone could ever call a boy like this anything besides “adorable” is beyond me. He is cute as a button in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt faded to appear as if it were produced in the ‘90s. How my step-daughter would love to thrift something like that. Little does this boy know, he’s rocking some of the flyest threads available. It’s true. In Philadelphia, they might nod in honor of his swag. In ...
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THE DARK CORNER by Malcolm Hoyt

There used to be moonshine distilleries in the dark corner of South Carolina. Up through the foothills toward Henderson county, Polk county, the serpent water gap, the dark extends north. The summer is obscurant and green, each vantage in particular surrounded by rolling waves and walls, terene smell. Dynamism of mountain ecology! It is Fall now, we are inside. The trees are being skeletonized. "A greek man who ran the restaurant stood on his porch when the developers came, suffice to say he was dead within a week." I pee into the night three times imagining all sorts of terror in the dark corners of the property, a loping galloper out of the black... Witches... "A man proposed to a woman while they were walking up the mountain,           (There were no cars and 176 was not built yet, can you IMAGINE...) He shot her on the way down, I don't think she said yes; HA!" Patrol of Cherokee Confederates Union Recruits Germans off a botched revolt On the...
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Three Poems by Ian Lee

Richmond Is A City Richmond is a city With bikes And coffee There are old buildings And sidewalks that are imperfect You can get nice cake And hang out on the river The city has a lot of people Mostly students And hipsters A lot of stoners as well And yeah The place is a city *** Life Is A Vape Life is a vape Take a nice hit Enjoy the buzz And you can taste the delicious flavors While wearing a trucker hat and Vintage jeans And you can sip that Espresso tonic Which costs nine bucks And you can read (Kind of) Maybe something from one of the Brontes Or Rowling But only the first few pages And you can hop inside the old Ranger you purchased Off of Facebook Marketplace That barely runs Unlike you Who has gotten into running marathons this past spring Which is around the same time you got into hardcore music Which is well after when you started collecting vinyl Which was like over one year ago When brat dropped Which shows you can be fun to party with At times Like that time you were At a...
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Location: Richmond, VA, USA
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