ALOCASIA

my office one thousand feet in the sky 
my cube of nothing one thousand
feet in the sky with the potted orchid 
in the corner that blooms violently
pink twice a year, budget blossoms
because HR says: studies show 
the presence of plants is soothing
to clients and hey, I like them too,
I’m not complaining, just drinking
coffee metallic-black every faded morning
waiting for the pigeons that shit
daily on my windowsill, come flurrying
in gray and green and black and white
and I can’t tell them apart, any more
than they can distinguish me
from every other gravity-defying ape
in this forest of glass–
and on some long overtime evenings I wonder: 
this interchangeability: deliberate?
this soft insistent signaling: 
the eggshell walls, fluorescence,
the calculated asymmetry 
the caffeine on tap the mirrored
mountain or seashore or rolling gold
quick-shifting plain of the screensaver
these murmurs get me forgetting
if I was ever given a name–
the air conditioning’s scent is called
Mountain Evergreen and it smells like nothing
that has ever existed, but on mornings
when I come into the office early 
its spice unlatches a truth, of a sort:
I was here before the falling-apart. I swear, 
I remember how the starlings on the telephone wires 
dotted out the notes to some atonal song
and there were fish then, great clouds of them 
drifting green-silver through the dark
of the lake and one summer I walked barefoot
in the grassy ditch along a gravel road
until my heels bled grasshoppers flinging
themselves against my ankles heat shimmering
off the earth like fish swimming
through the air red-tailed hawks
watching silent from the fence-posts–
these are the things I remember now,
when I think back to before they mattered–
there were fruits in the forest then,
salmonberries, pink-blooming plums,
the domed red heads of mushrooms pushing
through the leaf litter and sometimes,
on the luckiest of nights, I’d stand in the air,
just out in the clean evening air, 
and watch the starlings vortex upwards
in a single inhale.

Originally published in Radon Journal.

 

Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey is a California transplant studying creative writing in Portland, Oregon. In their work, they are interested in exploring human-nature relation and deconstructing binaries that cast humankind in opposition to the natural world. Their writing  appears or is forthcoming in publications such as Adroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly,  JMWW, and Gone Lawn. They are a prose reader for VERDANT, a mediocre guitarist, an awe-inspiring procrastinator, and a truly terrible swimmer. They can be found on X/Instagram @esmepromise.

i would have told her
ceanothus blueblossomed
overnight, except

slow is how we are taking it,
slow as siltstone sets, slow as spring
lambs slogging through bush,
slow, as a banana slug might
slide through sprouted yarrow.

every poppy i passed today
was open, i wanted to tell her,

to ask, how gold does trefoil
come in outside your terrace,

how many monarchs mounting
sun cup did you count, did pink

petal, did balm of heaven
make it down your throat?

i would have, except

 

mukethe kawinzi lives and works on a ranch in california. she loves the goats and adores the grass but is happy, in recent months, to be in the world alongside humans once more.

For me, I understand why this is poignant. Grimace instead of genial—shape is different—genre so immanent. As a kid, this is the closest friend of a bitter melon. As if my forehead tells. Lightest of its small form, branches are old and spreading. Ode to sour flavor dishes. Because Nanay’s sinigang is perfect—through this alternative mixes, effective in a natural essence. And extract the juice if you feel inclined—this remember. Leaves are downward, pointing low, and constrict your sadness persistently. I squashed its body and pitches my eyes. Blurred for a millisecond—to evinced joy. And the season of this tree, pops and germinate—looking plentiful.

 

Joefel Bolo is a queer writer from the Philippines. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Harvard Advocate, fifth wheel press, beestung, and elsewhere.

aloe

those teeth look sharp but you’re not here to hurt anyone.
au contraire, how you care—your right arm for the scrape
on my knee, your left arm for my love’s stoveburned wrist
it’s no problem you say with each node an anole you’ll
grow them all back & if we feel bad you remind us the
bitter truth is you were here thirteen million years before us
& you’ll outlast thirteen million more & while I know
you cheerful in chipped terracotta I’ve seen you grown
monstrous, five feet of serrated grace by the sea so I know
these aren’t pleasantries or platitudes & yet I am knifeshy.
it is in my nature, just like it’s in yours to casually sacrifice
what we feel irreplaceable for the sake of moving the plot
along—quit being so human about it you chide & I
butcher your sweet green limbs for our follies: you bleed
& we heal, you bleed & we heal.                    

 

snaketongue

from dorm to duplex you’ve been there with your kindness
of spears & your strapping adaptability while I was still
nerves & neuroses about tending to your kin: which
window is your favourite? tap water or tea? how late do
you sleep? a beginner’s friend, patiently amiable while I
fretted my fingers black & now I am old hat, my nails
veteraned with rinds of soil my voice scale-smooth from
singing to you my grip sure as shears as I slice up a
rhizome—I know now we all need repotting sometimes,
that not every plant wants water each day, that to divide is
not to conquer but to propagate & still you surprise me
my gentlest mentor, still you push new shoots up from the
ground when I’m not looking.                  

Originally published in hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart.

 

Sienna Tristen is an author, poet, and literary organizer living in Treaty 3 territory who explores queer platonic partnership, the nonhuman world, and mythmaking in their work. Among their published works are the award-winning literary fantasy duology The Heretic’s Guide to Homecoming, the poetry chapbook hortus animarum: a new herbal for the queer heart, and poems in Augur Magazine, Plenitude, and the League of Canadian Poets’ Poetry Pause. When the sun is up, they work with The Word On The
Street Toronto to showcase the coolest in Canadian & Indigenous literature.

this year, my loneliness grows. you cannot imagine the thirst of roots i’m trapped with. at dawn, I call them dreams. at dusk, they become weeds. dry leaves of tragedy, piled in my soil. it becomes a little hard to bloom like i used to, yet I can’t unlearn my attraction to the irrigation of fantasies. it is a survival tool. it is what I tell my seeds. it is what I will whisper tomorrow — you will be loved. everything will be fine.

 

Eniola Ajao (she/they) is an emerging writer. They play chess and read romance novels when they are not working. You can find them on Instagram @the_cute_gemini.

our parents as deciduous forests of the upper midwest

blunt needles where cuffed jeans of hemlock want kindling. his mouth dead with kentucky 

coffeetree in the plaque. we snap balsam in our pockets. you point at an elm & say life’s a beech. 

                 somewhere wind stirs, somewhere 

it doesn’t. or the leaves stir the wind, creepers sinch around wooden ankles, & entrapment. even 

hands as soft as northern catalpa. even stolons, the name for runners or clones 

or false. even our nails, chipped & hanging on. swamp 

                                                                                               white oak where she threw sheep’s head 

into the grist. everyone or thing standing around us is tall & holding blades. when black ash trees 

cripple & fall, 

                                              the process is called a failure. you can tell the run-off wants to form 

a river here, or something else we don’t have the veins for. we don’t look at a samara & say 

                 yes. that. 

that will one day be what we never expected. we’re told, by next solstice, the buds will 

be more than veneer. we have to trust that.

 

regret poem with stem cut close to soil

sawzall bent back to your thumb. the smaller the separation, the less you have to call it a wound. fruit body, trama, the cuticle farthest from the heart, what you might consider memory. weft & 

woof yarn, legs crossed for too long. a reference to flesh is a reference to disconnection. the softest tissue of a mushroom where vacancy crumbles into hollow. when picked, it’s picked. if 

the mycelium decides to grow in the same spot again, then it was never picked. it will do what’s right for it.

 

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cripple punk writer and photographer who owns two Squishmallows, three Buddhas, a VHS of Cats The Musical, and somewhere between four and eight jean jackets. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone’s Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Find them on Instagram/Twitter: @beanbie666.  linktr.ee/liamstrong666.

Species: Lonicera subspicata

San Diego sweet, dewgong¹ white honeysuckles fill the black vinyl fences, separating
us kids from “the real world.” As a daily ritual, I spend recess foraging them, plucking 

honeysuckles off diamond-shaped openings. Today it’s after I scrape my jansport
knees—the popular wasp kids don’t wanna include loud me and my boi crush chose

Barbie Ashley over me. I feel like the playground’s tired rubber floor. At least there’s
honeysuckles: free gregarious snacks with petals flared like Farrah Fawcett hair.

Oh to bloom like you without the need for external praise. Ivory honeysuckles wear their
emerald leaves like ostrich boas, happily faint into play-doh fingers who covet your long

stamen: yellow straws springing out from your tapered center. I suck on these for
a butterscotch buzz. Can’t recall who taught me to pinch them between thumb & index.

Someone’s older woodchip sibling? I shift my weight crestfallen there’s only roly polys
& sage scrub to ask. The honeysuckle haven turns my monkey bar hands sticky, the very

oobleck hands who made turkeys earlier. Honeysuckles taste like caramelized fishing line,
like how it felt to find 25¢ in my pocket for the gumball crank at Ranch 99 where hangry I

will accompany Mama after Chinese school tennis; like realizing I’m actually early
to the function, not late; like having working parents arrive on time so you’re not last at

drop-off; like eventually not taking it so personally. One brother left you for Middle
School, the other for UC Irvine. I pull a wedding dress honeysuckle, their rhubarb vines

patient. They don’t mind if I skip church or what I wear to church. Honeysuckles are
trumpets I sneak into DEAR² time for girls I don’t realize are crushes. If I were one I’d

befriend honeybees I once feared but ache to be. I’d offer extra nectar to good apples who
dreaded going home like I did. Home: empty two-story conch shell, chaparral cinched

wonder what is wrong with me. Lonely in this unhappy-should-be-happy, I flip a square
tawny red pillow to hide my cheese puff fingerprints. Laoye is a comma asleep on the sofa

mandrake body a’snore, Chinese soap opera still going. How fun to exit human skin,
be a honeysuckle with perfect pitch, naturally sweet, turn drab fences beautiful.

My stunning short life devoted to tasty feelgood, laughing ladybugs, holy jacarandas.
My desire to be wanted won’t be satiated by others: I need to want myself.

I need to want myself. Be my own bounty.

Stop believing all I do is hurt people I love.

Learn from the honeysuckle halcyons of my past—practice memorizing my worth.
I need what feels feels impossible: an overdue rainfall of desire for myself, a rushing

deluge lining every curb          a majesty for myself          banyan roots upheaving sidewalks.

---

_¹ Yes, the pokémon.
_² Drop Everything and Read

 

Emdash AKA Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a writer, open mic maker, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve earned funding from Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, Jersey City Arts Council, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and Rutgers-Newark—where they received an MFA in Poetry and taught undergraduates creative writing. She has also received a Best of the Net 2023 nomination in poetry and microfiction. Her writing can be found in underblong, Sine Theta, Poetry.Online, Kissing Dynamite, The Bellingham Review, Kweli Journal, Mochi Magazine, The Rumpus, Split Magazine, YLWRNGR and more. They’ve read at the San Diego Art Institute, Sunday Jump, Unnameable Books and more. They are Missouri-born, California-raised, and based in anxiety. When not writing, she’s likely telling one too many jokes. For full publication and performance history, visit emdashsays.com.

Desire & quiet moon

The crush is fleshless & so it peeled 
me, kicked up derma rubble released 
into orbit, each face 
is its own planet on their own 
accord, in his face is petal republic 
good as desire: peony, dahlia, oblivious 
rose, chrysanthemum. My stomach 
strums a pitiful ballad, my struggle 
oval shaped, & I am beavertail, I lose 
you for good as desire— love 
is impossible to be in trouble 
with, sit down if your head’s on fire.

 

Head trauma 

Stem    &     or     soil     reckless      on      a      wick,       battery 
powered everglow— chalk dusts itself off the petrol station
cement, I consider if all this is in my best interest, it extends
itself into a body of brick— nearing the clouds more each
try. 

A cadet blue crayon was the one I scribbled with the most, 
making spirals & spikes in hopes of a velvet pasture to manifest. 

Trauma is said to make oneself tough / strenuous / stiff / 
fierce, like a dingo, a dingo at a green or red light. 

I ran into a plum 
behind the petrol station store 
 ( I was so little / eyes 
milked of juice), 
it sputtered sepia like candle wax 
yet so sweet I shivered— 
I know I have changed.

 

Dorothy Lune is a Yorta Yorta poet, born in Australia & a Best of the Net 2024 nominee. Her poems have appeared in Overland journal, Many Nice Donkeys & more. She is looking to publish her manuscripts, & runs the substack Ladybug Central at dorothylune.substack.com.

 

                    a garden yet to be planted:
                    what if the both of us, yet
                    to be planted in the dearth
                    of two simple suns, amber
                                    undoing winter’s wrongs.
a tie around her pinky finger
                    reminds that flesh is fleeting
                    similar to a kitchen glow, 
                    echoing across this apartment
                    that is altogether ours echo
                    echo the same song needs
                    to, need to play an oblivion
                                    of spells when the rain forgets
you’re wondering when the
                    poem gets green, when the
                    ikea table is unearthed from
                    paint chips and is cast out
                    the bay window an all-out
                    tantrum where belongings
                    revolt and build communes
                                    from every one avocado pit
the queen swallowtail sits at
                    her new desk, awaiting every
                    other surface that supervenes
                    for an entire little life, brims
                    with infinite cinnamon scrolls
                    and folds into a two month
                    yoga stint, no one ever told me
                    that a habit could make you
                                    believe in new things again
words mince garlic buds
                    (a seed drops in the space 
                    between them and now)  
                    something mornings dipped
                    dewy drooling a mouth open
                    the day perching beside us
                                    asking what’s for breakfast

 

Julia Yong is a poet and perpetual student, currently rooted in Philadelphia, PA. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Temple University’s esteemed undergraduate literary and art magazine, Hyphen. Her poems have received recognition from The Academy of American Poets, SORTES,  JMWW, and Moonstone Arts Center, among others. If you so please, you can find more information about Julia here: juliayonglaf.tilda.ws/.

We met when he was a seedling. After nineteen years in the seed pod, he had finally cracked into the sunshine.

We went to the supermarket—he wanted to find orchids. He picked up each little plastic pot and brushed the medium away with delicate fingers. “They force the orchids to bloom, and it kills them,” he said. He inspected the roots.

When an orchid is ready to bloom, it produces a spike. The spike supports the blooms as they hang from their fragile stems. To make an orchid bloom, you can be patient and treat it right, or you can overwhelm it with excess fertilizer. If you’re patient, the plant lives quietly for most of its life, blooming in its time and resting after. If you overwhelm it, the plant grows hard and fast, the fertilizer at first feeding and then burning it with chemical fire. It will bloom and burn out, withering to dust and ash.

He held up a phalaenopsis with breathtaking pale pink flowers. Beneath the medium, the roots were yellowing and wrinkled.

He said, “This one is sad, but savable if we treat it right.”

#

An orchid seems such a delicate thing. To a human, they’re impossibly fussy—to thrive, they need perfect water, perfect light, perfect temperature, perfect humidity.

They only seem so delicate because they are satisfied with restraint, happy with adequacy. They’ve evolved to survive on a sip of water, a nibble of nutrition, a glimpse of sunlight.

Humans do not do simplicity. Humans are a flood, a feast, an incandescence.

An orchid will accept their abundance—what creature could refuse it?—but die in the acceptance.

#

When he was a seedling, he grew fast and hard. He was green and vibrant and striving and alive. He stretched his roots into nook and crevice, grasped hard to hold himself in his home, grew little leaves to gather light. He was sad, but savable if we treated him right.

He was supple and smooth—impossible not to touch.

Everyone wanted their lips on him.

Everyone put their lips on him.

It’s okay—abundance doesn’t ask.

Everyone wanted so badly for him to bloom for them. His small, firm body would surely produce something beautiful if he was given the right attention. They poured into him all the love a human can give—flood, feast, incandescence.

None were satisfied with restraint. How could they be? Who could justify giving mere adequacy to something that showed such promise?

He acquiesced to their abundance.

#

When he was filled to bursting with abundance, he raised a spike: a strong cord, red and satin, coiled and thrown over a rafter. He slithered it around his throat, supporting the bloom everyone had tried so hard to grow, letting it hang from its fragile stem.

The next time I saw him, he was ash.

 

Erin Grace (she/he/they) is a queer, Indigenous (Chetco/Tututni) writer from the Pacific Northwest. He loves to swim so much that it should be no surprise the salmon are his cousins. According to her gramma, she’s been writing since before she could read, copying books longhand. “Bloom” is their first publication.