the one about pants by Sara Catherine Cook

the sun peaking sneaking through the blinds on a tuesday morning -- it's either sunny and chill or snowing outside and you can tell that it's going to be the type of day where someone new says hi to you in passing or you get a really good haircut, never both because that would be too much power for one pair of pants

and after it's all over you'll leave them there, packaged in their denim shell, too weak to stand without you, kicked off and crumbled in the corner of the floor to later be picked up and remembered

they are forever preserved in a perfect memory and when the time comes, i promise they'll greet you again

a remnant of the part of you that seems to never disappear - even if it seems far away on days that aren't as sunny or don't involve good haircuts (after all, most days don't)

When the girl leaves by Rachel Hsu

There’s this saying that goes:
If you say a hurtful thing enough times,
the pain will soften into nothing
If you spell it out enough times,
the letters will bleed into empty spaces and disappear
If you think about it enough times,
the thoughts will shoot themselves into oblivion
and the only thing you will have to do in the end
is bury them.
 
There’s this question that goes:
Why do things have to be like this?
Why do I have to be this way and
more importantly
why do you have to have a problem with it?
Why am I the one soaking up puddles
when I can’t even see the water on the floor?
Why is the floor wet to begin with?
 
We swim as we drink: with our bodies,
We breathe as we sleep: without agency,
We speak as we think: disagreeing,
and so there’s this girl that goes.
 
When the girl leaves, she is towel-dried, knowing
only that the color green means exit.
Her heart beats too fast for her to stay asleep,
which is to say her mind thinks too quickly
for her to explain herself with just words.
Her mouth is a handcuff, and her sighs have swallowed the key.
And so she turns to her body,
defers in hopes of hearing something new.
Her body just says to leave.
 
And there’s this girl that goes:
And there’s this girl that goes.
 
But when the girl leaves, she is still damp, shivering,
water singing between each strand of green
interwoven like baskets, weighing her down all the same—
you can’t prove that they’re tears if it’s raining.
 
And, still, she’s not ready to dry off. It’s warm outside,
but she likes the winter-wash of water, though it
seeps into her bones and melts her from the inside.
There’s this saying that goes:
Water beats fire.
There’s this saying that goes:
Stamp the fire out before it gets so large it swallows you.
There’s this saying that goes:
Drink your water, girl, drink your water.
 
The last question she asks herself before she dips back into the sea,
sun burning and bleeding to the side:
Why can’t people just let others be happy?
 
And there’s this girl that goes:
And there’s this girl that goes.

Ocean Blues by Rachel Hsu

We crack our wrists in sync like we’re the beats
of a live performance
Sometimes you’re the silence
in the pause
waiting for yourself to bloom lively to rhythm
Sometimes you’re the silence
at the end of the song, when it’s late
and audience footsteps are undulating a bit like puddles
and once-filtered words are coming out a bit mushy,
a bit scrambled like a mixed drink

I always wonder what you use to time yourself
because you bleed in and bleed out like ocean

Fish swimming in, sliding through
the dancing kelp in a soundtrack with no volume
The way you slip out of conversation like
calloused fingertips dragging across a keyboard
The way you stretch me like a guitar string
plucked and thrown pillows

If I’m the music, you’re the hand
and we make promises to the ears of the living
You promise me we’ll both make sound
so long as it’s me that you’re playing
I promise without words but it’s enough

I wonder if you’ve ever tried
to play a flute while underwater

In my mind, you inhale and thrust your lungs
into the body of a singer
The singer accepts this transaction as love
like form of currency and
zips her dress up while she coos your name
Then she blows bubbles and the bubbles
tell their friends about you too
and it goes like this until the body overflows
and the water spills onto hot dry land
and all the liquid and sound evaporates
gets sucked into a thirsty cloud
and so the whole ocean now is nothing except
the sound of your name in its mouth
as we dream to ourselves that
this catastrophe too must be music

In the silence, I wonder what’s on your mind
Calculations of shoelaces, flopping about
every time someone runs away from a problem
Circular suicide like a clock because you always knew
the Classics and the numbers
and you could always count
because you could always count
on me to play

I wonder if you could ever sing a lullaby
if you could write an anthem for nighttime
because the thought of you is like a song that
sends me to sleep but still wakes me up
as if you’re both the beginning and the end
as if you’re the silence before and after the music
as if you’re everything in the music and not
which would make you the equivalent of everything
which is to say
Do you think every song is in love with its writer?
Does every measure love its ending?
Does every ocean love its organs?

Somewhere, a seahorse holds up a glass of champagne
while jazz waves crash and fizzle into laughter
Somewhere, a lobster grabs a microphone and
shoots a crab in the head
with melody

Does every song end this way?
Because, I think, I do.

FLIGHT by James King

I think we all come to this place eventually.
Look outside the window
And see the pale winged whales,
Lumbering loudly through the dark.
I think— sitting here, drinking sullen airport coffee—
That everyone I’ve known
Has lived in the bellies of those grey whales,
Wet-skinned on an ocean of tarmac,
Callously rushing toward the light and sound
Above the cloud layer.

 

There’ll be some chop on the way up, what on account
Of the writhing phantoms of the lower atmosphere;
This is no air to test the wings in.
Yet why delay?
Soon we will all go away.
Yes, soon we will all go away up into the whiteness:
Whatever shall we find on the other side?
After all, there is so much sky.

damascus by Cia Gladden

mama told me, there’s a line
in the sand that doesn’t change.
it tells you who is a Saul.
he’s a killer, hang ‘em high!

 

hang ‘em high? i ask, but what
if Saul’s got kids? a wife? a
grandma? mama, what if he
never got his chance at light?

 

light, she repeats, is not his;
if Saul’s hands are stained with blood
then he’s a shadow, no light,
and when he’s gone, you’ll be safe.

we’re quiet, then, and she tucks
me beneath the blankets, but
forgets the nightlight. mama?
she stops, a scratched record.

 

if i was Saul, i whisper, mama, would you hang me high?

 

and she stops. and frowns. and looks
me dead in the eyes. honey,
you’re not bad, like Saul. you’re good,
and i’d never hang you high.

 

but if i forgot how to
be good, would you forgive me?
mama, what if i lost my
light and my hands were red, too?

 

your hands will never be red.

 

her ears are locked; i fumble
with the latch. mama, if I
was Saul, would you give me a
second chance? mama, tell me.

 

i think her bones are on fire.
she blinks: once, twice, three times, and
now she’s sitting on my bed,
softer, warmer, ears half-open.

 

if every Saul was you, i
declare, i’d give you another
chance. i’d give you three more,
because i love you that much.

 

so she smiles, finally,
and kisses my head; her
voice is chocolate: honey,
i’d give you a million.

Senseless by Samantha Brant

I washed my mouth with soap so I could no longer taste your name 
My tongue limp, your kisses spilled out one by one
Filling the sink. 
I replaced my perfume with vinegar so my nose forgot your smell
And bathed in the fireplace to burn your touch from my skin. 
I blinked
And your face flashed behind my eyes, a halo of white light
So I shut the blinds and shattered the lamp. 
I took the broken glass to shred my ears, deaf to your voice. 
Red dripped from my knuckles
Crescent moon divots deep in my palm. 
I cannot recall the fingers that once lay there, softly.


Dusty Silence by Alexsandra Terrio

the record scratches and the music stops
stretching up to the very top
of the bureau, I look for something to clean it with
so that the sound of synths
and the moody crooner
singing songs of love and desire may sooner
caress our ears with no fears
of what the coming days will bring

 
but man's first sin, well that's quite a funny thing
to blame Eve when Adam was just as culpable
there's no rag in sight and the dusty silence is pulpable-
was that what they heard when all was said and done?
when night was coming on and they were left with no sun?
it's a wonder they made it through that fateful night
while I, blundering through the room in the soft hazy light,
wander fruitlessly for answers and some kind of towel

 
did they hide in the quiet or did they howl?
knowing what they knew and with only a few,
moments to languish in Eden before bidding adieu
and leave forever, having once lived in paradise
did their departure leave them feeling cold as ice?
whatever the reality the outcome is known
a lifetime of misery, together they had sewn
and just when all hope was given up

 
and my patience had had more than enough,
there was a cloth in the back of some,
long-forgotten drawer and now the hum
of the singer and his lonely trumpets
drown out the half-baked thoughts and frets
of a mind always racing through useless places
and we sink back to oblivion, imagining the faces
we'll put on tomorrow to go through the paces