Poetry, Issue 19, 2025-2026

Olivia Velanova

Time Bandits

Newly spring & all my questions answered

in a low basement room. The saints, body parts

cracked off & hidden away, graciously loosen

their long silence. Consider the jaw

of Saint Anthony, suspended behind glass & halo, body enfleshed

in cabochon gems. Where one looks for eyes, they find only teeth. I am assured

medieval people made decisions as consciously as we do

today: mysterious & unknowable people with faces & first loves.

We walk to the train under lush canopies; I think I must hate you

until you offer an earbud. That first time you asked

for me, for everything—I dodged

that self-inflicted chaos & fell off the bed.

As it does, time’s murkiness unfastens the rules we cling to; the untouched

dead assailed by some brave person snipping away the superfluous—eyelashes,

nails, molars popped from skulls. I think about your body under dawn’s

blue tinge & there is nothing I would change. Catherine’s lovely face

enshrined in mother of pearl, briny & unyielding, yet poets in my phone insist doubt

& hesitation are of the same substance & in my dream

last night, it was me in the cage over that inky abyss.

I am not the first to suffer, I am not the first to do anything,

I did not paint orange stars onto barrel vaults, or mosaic

my beloved’s eyes with glass & porphyry; I have not seen

marble ebb & flow under a revolving sunlight, or

built a tiny version of you out of the most precious things I could find—

after you left, laying on the bare mattress, mouth

open, fading perfume on the tongue, tasting your small hands

& dark hair & careful smile. The plate shattering

next to my head. No, I cannot summon my love for you.

Shayana Foroutan

Azadi

— Farsi word, translating to “freedom.”

Winner of the Editor’s Award in Poetry

Azad and I meet for drinks Saturday night on the Lower East Side. He tells

me he doesn’t

think much of his name, but it’s cool that I love it so much. I think about that. Azad

doesn’t think much of the fact that he is always Free. Azad doesn’t think much

of his name, the mantra of the Iranian Revolution: Zan, Zendegi, Azadi.

Woman, Life, Freedom.

Azad and I split our second drink and then our Uber home. I imagine, only

for a second,

what it would be like if we took the subway instead. I wonder out loud about

what I would do

if as I stepped onto the train, Azad suddenly grabbed me by my unruly, Iranian hair

and threw me to the floor. I guess I wouldn’t do anything. I guess I’d be unconscious.

Azad tells me not to get in my head about these things. I think about that.

Azad does not think much of the fact that he is always free.

On October 1st, 2023, 16-year-old Armita Geravand steps on the Tehran metro,

her Iranian hair slipping out of her hijab. Swiftly, she is grabbed, be-daste

“gashte ershad.”

At the hands of the “Morality Police.”

She hits her head on the platform and does not wake, suffocating in a coma

for 28 days.

She is declared brain dead the 22nd. Dead the 28th. I think about Armita

turning seventeen on the hospital bed, eyes taped shut, mind floating above

her small,

sleeping body. I imagine her breath rising one last time, an act of resistance

screaming:

I am still here

before laying down. Azad tells me he hadn’t heard this story ‘til now.

‘Wow,’ he says, ‘They killed her just for showing her hair? Don’t you think

that’s hardly a big enough

offense?’

I think about that. Azad doesn’t think much. He is always free.

Sara Ali

White Triptych

(Inspired by “Pelvis with the Distance” by Georgia O’Keeffe, 1943)

The white world is a closed system

a blind eye turned inward

calcium sky domed over the suspension.

Nothing reddens here

but the beak

sharpening its one argument

against the shell.

In the ice house

the milk separates.

The sheet on the hedge

stiffens into false snow

a rigor mortis of cotton.

This is the cleanliness

that summons the maggot.

The moon dissolves

like a lozenge on the tongue.

Foxgloves hang their toxic throats

over stones washed smooth of story.

Something has finished its feeding here.

The silence is not empty.

It is a bone

scraped clean.

Audrey Crocco

Lenapehoking (Memory and Now)

I. Northampton Town

If you look closely in the field, you might find an arrowhead my mom whispered to me. That day, /

if I hold my breath long enough I can still feel the cinder fill my lungs

we were held in the jaw of perfect harvest containment,

sliding down the Valley’s tongue

of Dutch festivities

sweet sticky apple glaze caught the charcoal like fly to

honey,

Liquid, European dress dancing over dried bank hold my hand.

b’yond: the riverbed:

we found a plot in her most fertile and soft

...s

igh...

...lance

...

Streaks of light caught the soft Earth as I shifted through

her feathery belly.

This land is full of artifacts, Mom cooed,

but other voices in the wind swept hers with it:

Delaaaaaaa

ware,

Lenni

Lenape

Original

People

What knowledge does the arrow’s head

contain?

II. Manhatta (hilly mountain)

“The works of the Great Spirit are seen on every hand,

Flowers, forests, mountains, stars, sun, and even man.

The Lenape all should gather in the Autumn there to praise.”

Richard C. Adams, “A Delaware Indian Legend”

Rivers and histories run blindly, screaming,

Suss

queee

hanna.

Counternarratives in branching streams

of thought.

Land and people synonymous

Shateeee

muc.

No more towering metallic overshadowing memory:

Past the riverbank,

there

is

soft dirt.

Rory Lustberg

Bedtime Sestina

On Jupiter, dinner arrives on a comet

Mother and Father are arguing, but they table

It as Tacky Tourists peer in the window

“I thought Jupiter was supposed to be orange,”

One shouts, and Boy takes a spoon and chucks it, misses by a hair

Mother tsks and tsks, her face white and grooved like a shell

After dinner, Father slumps, a shell

Boy takes a comet

To play, pulling his blue hair

Mother with the etched face clears the table

Father quietly peels an orange

Dessert looks nice through the window

Downstairs, Boy jimmies a window

Sneaks out and nabs a shell

Mother and Father don’t hear; their anger is orange

A Tacky tourist launches a comet

Boy smells smoke while he brushes his teeth and hair

First in flames: the table

It burns, it burns, the table

cries, but Mother and Father are focused on their window

We had it once, Father grits, pulling at his hair

And Mother’s face contorts into a new shell

One where you can’t hear the ocean, only the whiz of a burning comet

The boy puts on his pajamas, orange

Jupiter peels like an orange

father. Everything is silent but the crying table

And Mother and father and the comet

On fire, it’s visible through the window

The boy has lines in his palm from gripping the shell

He closes his eyes, pets his own hair

Mother is thinner than a hair

Father is turning orange

Their perfect house is a shell

Tacky Tourists try to steal the crying table

Boy left the basement door open, a window

As the house burns up like a comet

Boy holds his hair by the window, says goodbye to his comet, drops

the shell outside

Then sits at the table and lets it all go orange.

Guest Poem by Terrance Hayes

Pop-Up Poem

Sarah Maronilla

Flaming Autumn, Holy Ground

Today as I was sitting in the backyard

I saw light dispelled in soft, golden lasers that

Gathered between the crooked fingers of the canopy;

I saw where the curtain of sunlight caught between clusters of leaves,

And when the filigree of branches frayed its veil into tantalizing strings.

I saw those taut golden ropes sing out to the wind:

Draw nigh, and play my lyre!

Now that the trees blush the blaze of fire,

I know they mark the memory of the bush on Mount Horem that day;

I know in their rustle they still quiver to the Lord’s voice,

All fear,

All reverence to its echo, its resound.

And I, too—

Like Moses knew,

I know

As their orange scales lilt to the wind, sailing down:

Yes, Father, I’ll take off my shoes;

I am on holy ground.

Katie Liao

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dick

after Wallace Stevens

I.

My legs were already spread,

but the stirrups were too far away

for a ten-year-old.

I wiggled farther down.

The anesthetist said I was too fat.

II.

You need to find yourself a husband,

young lady. Yes, so I keep hearing.

IVF is unreliable and so is my visa;

I understand the rules.

If only my clit had grown out.

III.

I once asked a Mormon out to the Père Lachaise.

Well, my friends said, he has the face.

It was not a compliment.

He ghosted me, of course,

no pun intended.

IV.

The gynecologist spurts blue gel on my belly

the way ketchup forces itself on fries.

My friend jokes about the sexual undertone.

My boyfriend does that too,

she says, and the gynecologist laughs.

V.

In the morning news,

a familiar man reportedly fired

after allegations of sexual harassment.

Colleagues said he’s obsessed with genitalia.

Great, now I have to find a new gynecologist.

VI.

If XY chromosomes, then SRY.

If SRY, then testes.

If testes, then testosterone.

If testosterone, then man.

If man, then dad.

VII.

屌 means awesome in Chinese,

so you could imagine how relieved I was

when I first learned English.

I was never taught

how to live without one.

VIII.

My father wasn’t there.

In the hospital, my mother’s head

rested on a box of tissues while I

learned to walk on all fours.

That was my first birth.

IX.

The ultrasound probe is just a euphemism

for the dildo, though I’ve never seen a dildo

with an arm-length needle attached.

Oh darling, they say.

That’s what anesthesia is for.

X.

I kept saying ten

whenever the nurse asked me to scale the pain.

She wouldn’t believe me,

thought I was being dramatic.

I puked on her white shoes as revenge.

XI.

I stared straight

into her

cleavage. I thought,

to be a boy, then,

was to have her.

XII.

The procedures were simple.

In order for the laparoscope to enter my pelvis, he needed to puncture it.

In order for the ultrasound probe to enter my vagina, he needed to penetrate it.

The hardest part was always stitching me back up.

He had to keep me fuckable.

XIII.

Strap one on,

preferably the purple one,

really feel it out.

The trick is to think

yourself God.

Evelyn Meeker

Renaissance Woman

Today I had my teeth power-washed

and I feel brand new.

I wish I could have that for all of me—

wish I could lay myself naked

on the doorstep of every doctor in America

and ask them to love me in their scientific way.

Wish I could leave myself in a baby bassinet

outside a fire station

and they’d tell me where home is

without asking a word from me.

They’d assume I don’t know any yet,

and at the very least, float me down a river

in a picnic basket.

I’d sink, of course.

My shoes are concrete

and I know it’s hard to get clean—

even harder to stay that way.

Best to cope according to old girlhood strategies,

gnawing off my own arm in the corner,

rocking back and forth, repeating:

I am good. I went to Sunday School.

There I saw Jesus grow out of the ground.

God knows me criss-crossed on linoleum

and I’m invited to his kingdom anytime.

But I’m not little. I’m not a precious thing.

I’m not even a teenage girl anymore.

I ate that smaller self along with the garden

and blamed it on the deer.

This is something I realize only when the

mushrooms hit in the Macy’s attached to the Springfield Mall

and under the fluorescent lights:

I think I’ve had this dream before.

The Ruby Tuesday burned down.

I’m older now, a renaissance woman: my hips

are child-bearing, my right arm

is a Swiss Army knife, and my head hurts.

I’m a good daughter and an even better liar.

I am so many things I can hardly keep count.

This is my secret trick,

like a magician’s assistant

who will go down with her cruise ship.

I can rearrange myself to fit into any compartment.

Just point to where you want me and I’ll start sawing.

Naseem Anjaria

Black Southern Porch

I believe that I exist

I believe that joy doesn’t lie to me

Happiness is not my foe.

I believe that

Sand clutters on a beach

And gray asphalt scalds in the sun’s yellow gaze

I believe white is

A color pure and untouched

I believe bright purple neon signs

Are as beautiful as

Pink-painted wings of butterflies

Growing softly in vibrant cocoons

That are as gorgeous as the river

I swam out of

When I chased my brother

Out of my mother’s warm womb.

I believe in living

And breathing in the promise that

Tomorrow

Will be a day filled

With the songs of poetry read by

The breaths of those

Who are fulfilled by the

Truly wondrous and curious people

Who walk our earth

With elegant soles

That have yet

To become hardened by rough rocks of time.

I believe in time too,

Her sweet old soul,

Old bosom perched atop a rocking chair on a black southern porch.

Amy Shin

Thinking of Our So-Called “History”

I crawl inside my fist,

wondering what it’s like

to have the barrel of a gun blinking in my mouth,

the way little girls three generations before

were torn open by the good strong hands of soldiers

as public toilets for catharsis, things to use and discard.

The crimson tides surging in my belly mirror

the bleeding sun of the Japanese flag.

I think of the

little girls back home from school, twirling in golden spirals

around a blossoming persimmon tree;

little girls blooming little dreams of sunlit stalls and paper kites,

of selling roasted chestnuts next to mother under lantern light;

little girls swallowed beneath a soldier’s arm, afloat

across their backyard before a chance to say goodbye

only to find their mother crouching

in the same corner of a rattling military truck;

little girls no longer little nor girl,

but a crowded tourist attraction, free-entry for all;

soldiers slithered up onto sunken mattresses,

pumping seeds into tattered vaginas,

a crumpled ticket in each fist; so many men to comfort;

little girls counting sheep to the sound of corpses trundling in carts,

watching Japanese soldiers atop their mother, bloodied and bruised;

little girls with limbs like torn ribbons, clutching

the severed leg of their muddied rag dolls;

little girls stepping over erupting bodies

to arrive at their station on time;

crackling away through the merciless night;

little girls distilled into polished statistics of history;

little girls pressed onto paper:

20,000 killings or is there another zero?

little girls languishing inside an enemy’s body;

little girls

little girls

little girls

buried beneath my skin

clenching muffled apologies.

Avi Zalkin

A Smile Line Psalm

The river licks sweat off the sun

Spits spangles on Manhattan:

Strips of blue and red and bone

On bathhouses and megaphones

On twisted arms and sirens’ laughter.

Manufactured lightdrops drip

On golden calves inside museums

That tourists worship for a minute

Before they scorn the swollen apple

And every Eve who bit it.

Scrapbook faces become overwritten

With scrawls of our own lust—

Streetlamp fingers peel the clothes

Off bankers dressed in judges’ robes,

Consigning them to New York City’s Trust;

While cardboard bums’ blue lips

Turn chapped and raw and split

With prayers bent on forgiveness,

The mayor treads on concrete bribes

Embalming gilded imprints.

And I can’t speak a lick of sunlight

Cannot heave my golden tongue

Across the howling hermits sculpting breath

In barricades against coquettes

Who whisper: “Darling, come.”

I cannot shuck the shadows off

My paper-mâché gray ladies

Who pet me with a frown

Before they return to angel dust

Awaiting flesh my flesh will crown.

But on the corner of 14th st.

I see lips drop like nectar

Into crawling catacombs

While scaffolds of curdling foam

Erode the Union from the center.

Encircled by swarms, shreds of lit lamps

In the beehive husks of buildings

Band together like a fist

And in each yellow window frame

One separate million people kiss.

Now the lightbulb studded tongue

Of the Hudson slurps up moonshine

And our looms of threaded blood.

And in our shadow of the flood

A single hairline cracks the spine—

A spinal tap, a thousand fractured pipes

Shoot souls up nostrils of the black

And give to G-d his own design;

These white hot strings of lightning

Give the Lord his smile lines.