18 – Innerlijk Zelfportret by Menke Biewenga I stare restlessly at the pink floor lamp beside my bed. Sometime before tomorrow, I am supposed to create “een innerlijk zelfportret”—an inner self-portrait. Why do Social Work students have to practice everything they learn on themselves first? I suppose this is one…
by Kashawn Taylor no longer can i surviveon bitter caffeine and self-hatred toppedwith old-fashioned determination sprinkleskeenly aware that my eyes lie, that whati see is / not mewhat I see is not me but i can’t helpthat sometimes eating’s a chore& i’d rather do anythingother than masticate and swallowanything else…
by Jarek Jarvis Morning—gold light saunters through the window— I wake in my old room, where the walls, once sunburst orange, lit my bed ablaze each dawn. I rose bathed in day’s nascent flame. Not a gasp of spark lingers to rouse me. The weather report beats against my door. Dishes chatter in the kitchen….
by Katie Kenney At the doctor’s office the carpet cloudy,matching magazines so melancholy with weepy celebrity stories, watery wallsfor wild vines reaching to nowhere. Curled-up posters of the elderlywith your disease, so happily the mere picture of livingwith a single peppy foot inside the grave. They’re saying the secret of…
by Kashawn Taylor In this big housealone in my own room I hear from downstairs fourteen strange men loafed on couches enraptured by guys in tights running back and forth across a manicured field on this day of Thanks hooting laughing shooting the shit It could be worse Shit, it has been worse much much worse than babysitters in an office under…
by Jarek Jarvis I am coming to terms with the cosmichorrors of everyday reality. Catastrophespropagate around me. Even if I ignorethe peripheries, I know that formillennia you have hidden your facebehind the sun. Despite light pollution,I scan the muddy horizon in anticipationof your eventual reemergence. Sure,some Mayan mathematician may haveforgotten…
by Jeffrey Kingman I’m dissolving into a girl on a pier on a lake. I thought you might see yourself that way my washy pastels. If there is a pier and a lakeyou might come along as a pair of eyes a singularity and all you can do is remember…
by Gil Hoy I’m watching the snow fallthrough my kitchen window,pine trees are crusted with snow.White shadowed in black,a squally wind is filled with snow. The phone rings. My sister Sallyis calling. Mother passed awaythis morning. I’m sitting all alonein my apartment, unpacking boxes loaded with dishes to fill my cabinets. I’m told…
by Frank William Finney I’m sucking on soapin a cabin kitchen while suds seep outthe broken windows. All of this is just to saywe all feed our sinks in our own woozy waysdespite your subtle spoof on spoons; the fine set of forksyou stole as a child; the way you…
by introverse Zeus, the unbearably human god that he is,decides to shake the apartment this afternoon. i’m tucked inside the covers as he burns the skywith rage, in search of his least favorite daughter. as above—stone pillars pulverized and clouds in disarray,so below—a line of trees catching fire, mortals stranded…
by Chanchal Kumar Sometimes, everything begins to fascinate me:The slow passage of nightacross the sky, the blur of traffic,the snare of my smartphone. What I want is a way out of presentness. I want to leave & hope to keep going—tho I don’t know if I want to get out of bedto do that.