Troy Ashcroft - Poor Man’s Pie

You are French and even

those that don’t speak

know the meaning

when you say you grew up

eating Poor Man’s Pie.

Potatoes mashed

butter browned

corn creamed and kernel sweet

beef ground and layered

some prefer peas and carrots

point of contention

but you know they know 

what you mean when you say 

you grew up Poor

Man’s Pie.

Home from school,

crockpot’s condensation, 

slow cooked

no note 

from Mum the last

roast on sale 

with potatoes, carrots

and 151 next to clear

liquor, always chosen first

(because water blends best)

smoked mango kush 

from the kid who died last

week street racing his

girl thrown from the passenger

seat helps forget

sat second in silence

a dissimilar sliced peace

first taste on tongue inebriated

evaluation rendered in whispers 

of the Poor Man.

Your family’s reunion a favorite 

cousin couldn’t make it

with another Father 

that week next time

see him, a lie.

You’d leave and never 

look back

at the family

but he would

die too 

not from the street racing 

a hospital

a text

felt from far

away.

You couldn’t make the funeral

your French family ate Poor 

Man’s Pie without

your absence felt

you left and never

looked back.

Other kids laughed 

because you ate Poor 

Man’s Pie and enjoyed

the mashed, swirled meat, 

potatoes, corn, canned carrots 

and peas in reverence to Gram

who sang her François Québécois

while browning beef and mincing

onions

she took the recipe 

when she left.

The French family knew

how to layer mash

potatoes with creamed corn 

and browned beef

but it couldn’t compare

to how she made the Poor

Man’s Pie.

She spoke her French,

but that went with her

your father never learned

to speak the language 

of love

never spoke 

of when he too 

ate Poor Man’s Pie.

Olivia Stephani - Epiphany of September 23rd

I tell myself the reason I think she’s pretty is because I want to look like her

I like her dark brown hair and her freckles that look like she spent an hour tattooing them on with henna

She’s taller than me

Nobody is taller than me 

And she stands confident

Unlike me

Her fingers are long

And her hands seem soft

She’s wearing three rings but they keep slipping 

She dresses like I would on days that I don’t see my parents

Her tote bag screams emotionally available 

But the locket necklace she wears says otherwise

I don’t like the book that she’s reading

Thomas Hardy is horrible

But not in the same way that William Faulkner is

So that’s okay I guess

I wonder if she knows I’m thinking all of this

I wonder if she wants to look like me too

I wonder if she’s looking at me

I wonder if she knows that she looks like light shimmering onto a windowpane 

That she sounds like September 23rd

That she smells like black honey all over

And that I just really want to look like her

Ruyen Phan - Cherry

Baby, I swear that when I held you in my arms outside our highschool, the trees was cherry blossoms. That — when you buried your face into my chest, I looked around and saw pink snow in the air, and that was when I knew, that I watched too much anime. That’s why I learned to play the bass two months after, I wanted to be cool, I should’ve learned to play the guitar instead. 

Maybe then we would have talked more after we shared those beers in your dorm on Indian (Indigenous) you had a man back in the Bronx, start of a pattern. Homies said “quit it” I would have started for you, I should’ve said “no” when you asked that question I’m sorry I forgot it was February 14th when you were helping me hit your bong, the smoke framing your face, I still wanna see you dance in it, I still want my tupperware back. Everytime I text you my heart beats faster, like I ain’t tall enough for this ride, I gotta start playing the guitar again, cause baking ain’t work. Take my name out your schedule, I’m not worth your time. I can’t justify it, I just wanna see cherry blossoms.

Hannah Karim - Multiple Works

A Stream of Consciousness that means Nothing, but actually Everything 

I didn’t know I was allowed to touch myself and like it before I met you. I only feel like I became a real person in the last year or so. I feel guilty for the things I never get caught doing. And I don’t like being the older sibling because I don’t like the pressure of having to be something for someone that I cannot even be for myself. And I don’t know what to do because I am bruised but not broken. And sometimes I wish I was broken because then it would no longer be my fault. And you tried, but you built things that couldn’t satisfy me, and it was nice to pretend for a while, but you mistook something meant to hurt as something meant to last. And you feed me lines of lives I’ve only seen as short vignettes. And I’ll beg anyone to give me any notion of self so that I can feel real. I like it when people tell me things about myself. I like it when they seem insightful doing so. I like it when those insights tell me that I haven’t been loved properly. I like when this is explained as if it is an interesting fact rather than a point of pity. I think the world puts away good things for people like you. I like to think there is just enough good out there for me as there is for you. I like to think that one day I will be a mom and I like to think that I won’t be terrible at it. I like to think that I will be able to have a daughter and give her more than I ever was and I like to think I will not resent her too much for it. I’d like to think these things and actually believe them.

Preamble to Breaking 

Stomach plummets, nonetheless, I push, I push past the brink of sanity, until it is lost, until I am certain it will never come back, just to find it on my bedside table in the morning. 

This is the bed I have made for myself. For myself, the sheets are soiled, the arrangement unkempt. For you, I’ll spray the mattress, hope your nostrils avoid the stench. 

Supposedly you enter me thinking more than thin outer lining remains. Traversing through the abandoned attic, you witness lack of upkeep, pervasive cobwebs, the residues of visitors not willing to stay. As you look at me, I see within your pupils a foggy reflection, opening wider to reflect back at me an image of irrevocable brokenness, until your eyes settle on a cruel glare, dripping with the conviction that all I hide away, all I really am, is all very bad and all very much my fault. 

I like to remember first giving you a part of myself, your boy-ish excitement, your false belief that you have caught something worth having. I remember your silhouette in the panel of the door, my sister’s swift appearance. Her hushed, stern tone, as she demanded you leave because 

you 

Break 

Me. 

Writing is my distraction from the Breaking. 

In the writings of my imagination, you drown in susceptibility, losing sight of any other cheap means of inspiration. To stay afloat, I cling to the notion that the fascination you have in the people you meet is fueled by the intensity of only knowing them for a short while and perhaps never knowing them at all, only ever acquainting yourself with the scripted image of what they desire to be and can only exist as for a fragment of time. 

I like to tell myself that I have climbed Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to a state of self-actualization that leaves me immune to the effects of someone’s presence or absence as if any number

of philosophy books or mental detoxes can numb out what it means to be human. It’s a facade I maintain quite well, until you are Breaking me from the doorway as I am begging you to stay. 

Because I told you what happened behind the rose gardens when I was freshly fifteen. And you can drown without even knowing. You can convince yourself it’s only water, what you are made of, as if it makes no difference, as if it is natural. So I will Break until I can no longer, until I lie, floating on my back, ears submerged, sounds echoing in reality’s aftertaste.

Extremities 

I appreciate the harshness of his sincerity until it bruises, what is left: a flesh wound, subtle, but nonetheless there. I know I am high strung. I know one day he will leave me for someone not, someone willing to loosen the knot, someone willing to not hang themselves in the process. I don’t know how to hold another hand without crushing bones, I’d like to taste you, but I don’t know how, not without losing higher consciousness. A lick of your skin becomes violence, my teeth sinking, your flesh weeping, stopping only after the blood runs out. It’s horrid, my urges, self-control might kill and bury, but I still smell the decay. I like that we pretend we are not carnal beings. With you, I pretend I am good. You ground me which is good, but you do so into soiled ground, to the roots of the truths I once succumbed to, but have since gladly slaughtered. To preserve stability, I lull to sleep the rawest parts of me, but I don’t know how much is left uneaten, until it is all gone. I’ve been starving long before I met you and I’ll be starving long after. I often leave the plate untouched, having learned that hunger is easier to digest than guilt. I told you about the grandparents that lived in the Adirondacks, how they built the home, the pond, carved a space just for them, just to abandon the wintry harshness for platonic sun-kissed Floridian blues when the years got too heavy, and if that’s not evidence for the limit on the person’s tolerance for pain, I don’t know what is, but I know I’m lying on my dorm bed, wishing I could sleep, wishing I could remember to take my meds. And the other night I didn’t mean it, I swear, but the bottle was there, the sertraline like eye candy, and I wished to taste it, if only all at once.

Kaitlyn Kessinger - Multiple Works

Quarter Life Crisis 

oh god, i got milk from the bodega and it tasted weird -er than my name on a dog tag, chips for a crunch to locate, gps-triangulate, wild wolves into domestic creatures of habit find comfort, plush socks that indent swollen feet as a sort of punishment for never leaving home, being there and being here is the same level of anxiety, fomo, or yolo, or some weird acronym the kids say i never give new things a chance, but that's true not really because i adopted a cat from the pound and she’s not a dog who barks but sheds the same black i never wear, but i own it too afraid to throw it away, fast fashion is all the rage but i can’t sew i buy yarn in bulk, but can’t crochet, my estate sale will be fun unlike the onions that give me heartburn pork skin makes me nauseous, still remember cars filled with their stench, crunch, and the window went down but never rolled up again, needed taped shut and it whistled the whole way home 

they still ask about the boyfriend that doesn’t exist like the back problems i only feel never diagnose because doctors are expensive like the ring my cousin begs for and the children she thinks tangible but goddamn she owns a husky and lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a ferret no child for her or me or the girlfriend they opt for when i say no boyfriend and my mom gives me gifts of rainbows as if to subliminally message that gay is okay but please dear god have sex with someone who can gives you a ring a kid a home in the same state because we never fixed the car and i haven’t gotten an oil change since four big trips ago and the man from the street from the store from the shop all told me to get an oil change before and after every big trip the office is not a big trip nor is it an office but not a department store in between a big boy small boy job but it lets me eat fresh fruit that rots in my fridge and buy the baked potatoes i eat every night.

there are stars in her 

cropped pink tee pulls up 

under the stars’ caress 

but I was distracted by Just Dance your lipstick (pink) as you whispered why that Katy Perry song got bleeped 

and I never understood 

you tasted like cherry drizzle 

the first time you cried 

we kissed the moon in ode 

nails baby-doll pink the same 

as your eyes and swollen lips 

graze the stars in yawn 

flash of under boob 

from reaching high cause 

pickup lines to die on my pink 

cheeks, once I knew the smoothest 

crease in softest skin, connect-the-dot to pubis to stomach pudge 

how sweet is the wrinkle from thigh to the vibrancy in a g-string 

neon green contrasts your pink 

personal growth in the hips 

from a surgery unique to 

toned pink stomach scars 

and you hula-hooped saturn's rings, o’ dearest galaxy girl.

Bastardized Tea Time for the Youthful 

it’s the tea leaves not strained— floating dead bug carcasses embalmed with mango bits, fragrant but a tasteless film in a mouth burned, stained container made to hold 

ruined— a never more ivory, 

disillusioned care into painted porcelain with golden edges too dainty to forgive 

and where does all the honey go? 

farmer’s markets with golden guilt in heaps and spooned— folded to dissipate 

hopes of something warm 

to avoid sticky pools in empty cups, 

an amber for the reading of dissected legs and withered petals 

for a future told from remains must end pleasantly, or at least in celestial theory simplicity is the only sin, bejeweled 

spoon tiny, only crafted for hand wash, whirlpool in miniature only to flow over, filling saucers and leaving droplets 

on white papers carelessly lost 

crystalized expectations for an event idolized in past, causing china cabinets bursting with cozies and cups, stacked high with a wibble-wobble every time someone takes a step, the temptation to covet the history of someone else’s sip matching their lips with a ghostly brew, coaxes lace out to dance upon the table

it is a day (sunny) 

It is a sunny day 

when my mother cries for a winter forecast 

not due for 9 months 

she howls when they 

cut down the trees. 

The sun is a day 

amongst the sawdust 

with nowhere squirrels solace in our porch 

rotted from feminine neglect. 

Day it is sunny 

my father calls 

to check the pressure 

from away 

but I never learned 

how to drive. 

It is a day 

the town floods, 

sewers never worked 

they house the crocodiles and dandelion fields. 

Day sunny is it 

when my sister has 

labor of cooing baby 

shitting in her arms 

wailing never have kids in between soft kisses 

and adult lego kits 

for her boyfriend. 

Sunny is 

my cousin who bartends in a karaoke bar, drunk to

tunes of love boat 

his sister swaddles 

a ferret in croon. 

It is a sunny day 

when it is a sunny day 

and outside is the longing 

despite the glare and fog 

like midwestern wheat bars 

feed children protein 

shakes and varnish in a shack with skinned deer from the interstate 

like mac and cheese (sun) 

but something wasn’t quite right because that's not what guts are like, noodles spiraled amish but the stock, maybe, 

was the lining of 

yours mine ours 

in the stew in the pie 

in the zucchini bread 

that i ate before i knew 

it was a vegetable disguise 

day is sunny then why is 

a time it just 

won’t go away the creeping basements 

in houses i no longer live in no 

basements in most of them now i used to run quick in the dark afraid of the closets 

and why were there so many in base ments 

no one ever meant for it 

to flood so often

the sun is not enough 

because they are cutting down the trees and we hit foxes in the road 

while their babies watch 

on the side did you want 

fries at the bar to soak up the 

bad beer the bud light on tap 

no i don’t drink that but the eel might who powers the home 

if it is not phallic than 

vagina organic 

and i cry, 

it is a sunny day.

Shaya Bock - Multiple Works

Short Stories

I read a book of short stories, title

Useless and Lupus Dead at thirty-nine.

Putrid spitting lizard gouging under

Limbs and hourglass tunnels pattering.

Autumn citrus saplings out of season

Birthing bitter lumps of fruit to a branch,

Squeezing lemons under glass booted leaves

Cinderblock walls razed for a meadow of

Children’s laughter growing amongst the weeds

The shade leaking syrup on our bellies.

You worry about things like having kids

killing you, working hard to live to find

life’s not worth living. That’s why you waited

six months after writing that resume.

Why you leave your artwork in the basement

Illusions faded and cut to bear frame,

still echoing in canyons of stretched skin

and that damned little life expectancy.

LIVING THROUGH MEMORY

The burial lot at the end of the strip,

Miles of scouring for names

all so close to being familiar.

I try to hold each name

in my memory for a moment,

and it’s gone in place of hers.

101.1 WCBS FM, NEW YORK!

Beegies, Blondie, and The Beatles;

Bronx to new jersey every other weekend

An anthem pressed up to autoglass.

Those moments, ambered like honey in my memory

She chauffeured in a shrunk

Ruby red Toyota Camry sedan

The three boys squished in a

clown car back seat. A bubble of nausea

headache and forever new car smell

Unveiling the grave

- Myrna balch

She gave with an open hand -

soft weighty pebbles line the headstone

Still freshly turned wet silt

almost choked down tears

the sole’s edge plastered with red clay

on borrowed leather dress shoes.

We tucked her coffin under soil blanket.

And to comfort an eternity,

sang a farewell lullaby.

Her perfume of soft flowers,

a bourbon-colored splash

in the glass flacon half-full,

and the form of a woman, classy

if not for the frosting hidden hips.

The smell of strawberry lime, lacquered

Trident chewing gum,

of cheap nespresso instant coffee, stuck to

acid yellowed teeth. That’s how

I will remember her.

Red Line Bus Haibun

Passing yellow parking bollards cast no shadows seen through the stipple-edged, gray scum-

stained windows of the 905. And the Albany streets shimmer ever so unnaturally under a sun

shining directly overhead. Pavement crumbles even after they redo it – and redo it –

cobblestoned roads rest unbeaten beneath Central Avenue. The telephone poles fly past in rows

imitating a limbless winter forest rotting in the sun. There were once real forests here too. Oak or

ash or pine, something other than bare poles weathered in service of commodified information.

Corporate signage buzzing electric pulses, humming through the cold of winter. And the pigeons

who nest their chicks under neon warmth instead of their native tree hollows. Track the poles and

wires, follow transformer to generator,

where trees are stolen

from our children’s future and

again, their children.

The Metropolitan Water Cycle

(In Response to No. 61 Rust and Blue, & Untitled (Black on Grey) – Mark Rothko)

The mold had stayed

in the bathroom until now,

a well-trained pet. Sit mold. Stay mold.

Fed from leaky faucets,

It stares back in complacency.

Rain after dusk; a sheet of gruel-sleet gunking

the auto glass. Wipers clogged stiff with old water grime.

Pointed tips of curled-in, dewy leaves scrambling off

The fragile limbs of hollowed oaks

after summer hailstorms, crossed croons

calling across Hudson River ripples at the moon.

My mind is sidewalk spit, a pond of

condensation swelling with dust bunnies

and gathering dirt flecks. A universe full

of nothing but period, and comma.

A puddle screaming for the sun

to dry up its only

existence.

Eric Turner - Multiple Works

i really wish that writing this poem made me feel any better about myself

i’m either a mirror or a window, depending on how you look at me. sometimes i blow vape at bugs to prove that i exist. i haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. here’s a list of things that can change my mind: alcohol, nicotine, suffocation, heroin, xanax, rope, paracetamol, knives, heights, a cinder block tied to each of my ankles as i fall from a diving board, pistols, rifles, shotguns, slowly but inevitably time, a solid sleep schedule.

i feel like i’m talking all of the time but i never say anything. sometimes i make people laugh. no one knows anything about me that matters. here’s a list of things that matter: nothing, everything, everybody, somebody, nobody, something probably, great writing, good coffee, intimate sex, making children laugh, fixing the environment, being kind, skincare routines.

the concept of emotional availability gives me a panic attack. my parents weren’t as bad as i make them sound. they weren’t as good as i like to think they were. i don’t know how to let people care about me. here’s a list of ways i try to care about people: saying explicitly all the good feelings we only imply, holding doors, remembering their name, making them laugh, giving head, looking them deeply in the eye, trying to remember times i felt the way they’re feeling, being sincere when i apologize, working on things i apologize for, giving them little gifts, saying warm words, wiping tears from their face, telling them crying is a good thing.

here’s a list of things that have made me cry since i turned 18: my grandfather dying, my grandmother dying, my grandfather dying, my cousin being born, my cousin saying his first words, realizing that i was the problem, realizing that i wasn’t the only problem, a make a wish kid getting to meet john cena, rewatching episodes of scooby doo while high off my ass at six in the morning, when my stepdad tried to fight me, realizing how much louder my family was, realizing no one i knew grew up like that, realizing no one knows anything about me that matters.

the problem with me is that i would never let myself be supported but i want to feel like people would support me if i gave them the opportunity. i don’t want to ever give them the opportunity. i don’t think i’ve ever really felt loved. here’s a list of things that make me feel loved:

imagination (but like with spongebob hands)

i wish people would stop writing songs with your name in them because every time i hear one i imagine it’s about you and when the volume is just right and the sun has been down for a while i imagine that maybe i wrote them or maybe i’m writing them while i’m signing along and that’s how a song can make me imagine i’m in love with you which isn’t a difficult thing to do in the first place.  maybe because you’re easy to imagine loving or maybe because i imagine everything easily. maybe i’m an asshole because i will never allow you to be anything other than what i imagine you are or imagined you could be or will imagine you were. i like to imagine that this doesn’t make me a horrible person or boyfriend or girlfriend or partner or friend or whatever.

i wish i could ask you every question that i have for you and i wish i could get a real answer out of you because then i wouldn’t have to imagine and i could know you for who you really are which is what i imagine i’m imagining when i have to imagine the answers to all of the questions i can imagine myself asking you. do you think you’ll ever be happy? are you happy now? is there a difference between now and ever? was there one before? will there ever be one again? she asks if i can imagine myself loving you and i say i can imagine myself saying that i do and that i can imagine you acting like it.

i wish that i could stop writing romance poetry so that people would stop asking me if i’m writing about a girl because i’m really good at making people imagine that my poetry is about my ex or my other ex or the other one or that it’s about this girl i know or it’s about some other girl or it’s about them or it’s about someone that they know and they’ve secretly written the poetry themselves. i imagine people wish i would say a name so they can imagine i’m writing about them or someone they love better. i imagine i’m good at making people imagine things. i imagine that you imagine me better than i am. i imagine that it’s obvious that this is a poem about myself. i imagine that it’s obvious that i’m lying all of the time.

i wish there was a drug that could make me stop imagining things because if there was i imagine i would get a full nights sleep every night and i imagine i would get a high paying job and i imagine i’d do well in it and i imagine i would be happier in life. i tried weed and whiskey and xanax and addies and marlbs and camels and parliaments and a lot of prescriptions and i’m still imagining things. i imagine i’ll die soon. i imagine i’ll die of imagining because i’ve been imagining so much my heart is all tired of imagining and it will explode soon, i imagine the infinite blackness, silence so silent silence can’t imagine the lack of noise.