• Issue #10
  • Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey :: “the office/the after”

    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 QuarterlyJMWW, 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.

  • mukethe kawinzi :: “woman”

    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.

  • Joefel Bolo :: “Kamias”

    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.

  • Sienna Tristen :: “aloe” & “snaketongue:” two excerpts from hortus animarum

    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.

  • Eniola Ajao :: “flowerpot”

    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.

  • Liam Strong :: “our parents as deciduous forests of the upper midwest” and “regret poem with stem cut close to soil”

    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.

  • Emdash :: “Honeysuckles at Ocean Air Elementary School”

    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.

  • Dorothy Lune :: “Desire & quiet moon” and “Head trauma”

    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.

     

    ladybug on leafladybug

    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.

  • Julia Yong :: “a step to heaven and/or”

     

                        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/.

  • Erin Grace :: “Bloom”

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