Hero-Poet Wolf Found Thousands of Miles From Homeland, Dead
By Ryan Matera.
"I wonder what the wolf is thinking right now, watching me slip on rocks and get tracked by a bear while tracking wolves. It might feel so safe in my dumb presence that its mind begins to wander. Why do they call us lone? We are not lone, we travel in packs. They travel in packs too, do they call themselves lonely? I wouldn’t think so. I love my pack. I want to be the leader one day, but my uncle was the leader and he cheated on his wife so no one trusts me. He was a nice guy, he just got all tied up by love."
Mòó (Second Canto)
By Oluwafunmilayo Akinpelu
"Literature Review / Susan is life herself. She doesn’t look like it, though. Not with her literally strapped onto the bed, looking on her best days like a ghost-bride in waiting."
Can You Hear Me Now?
By Irene Cooper
"When I picture my father in this era, I imagine him buying a newspaper or window shopping watchbands alongside Frank O'Hara, unknown to each other, both humming to the vibration of the subway under their feet, whistling to the same lunchtime tune of promise and prosperity in the honking taxis and clanging steel girders."
“Wilted Shadows” after William Carlos Williams, “This is Just to Say”
By Em Dietrich
"she said cup my tears in the / palms of my hands—fresh plums / for when my doubts starve me."
The Phonecall
By Penelope Staehle (previously published)
"god calls me on the payphone, tells me there aren’t enough magnolia trees in the garden. asks me a question. i spend my whole life answering it."
