by Alais Mara Misunderstanding sucks the sun out of the sky leans the walls in and expands my heaving heart until all I see is red  all I feel is the urge to run.  You smile and tell me,  All of these shadows are harmless, my love.  While you smooth out the knots of someone […]

by Jen Hitchcock Click HERE to listen! Jen Hitchcock owns and operates a book shop and creative space called Book Show in Los Angeles. She is a writer and music journalist whose work has been published in the LA Weekly, LA Art News, Mix Magazine, Tattoo Savage, Razorcake, Metal Hammer and a slew of fanzines […]

by Naomi E. Cornejo Why do I suffer in silence? It has been a year since I met you. A year since I fell for a man, youthful at heart in his black skinny jeans, worn-out converse and punk jean jacket. You promised me the world and I, like a fool, believed you. I fell […]

by Manuel Chavarria Among dead stars, Eurydice did claim to find the lady fairWho’d held aloft our shatt’ring world in eras fraught, times of despair,And though that lady waned beneath the lashes of the sudden glareOf raging lights that lurched across the galaxy to find her, where The wind slipped toward the edge of plain […]

by Karo Ska inside me, strawberry jam  thickens  before leaking, dripping  then gushing. an 11 day early knock  at my cervix door. the moon  & me unsynced. the moon: predictable, well- behaved. not me. not this month. does my flesh crave reproduction? is it angry  i won’t host a family of cells? i have no […]

by Yasmine Sosa I should have told you  often how beautiful you are, how your idiosyncrasies though scattered  came together  to paint a sanctuary Did I assume incorrectly? I should not have assumed at all. Did I Not integrate empathy? Perhaps it was apathy. I realize now Sanctuary is hollowed space  Rendered into solace  Through […]

by Keren Darancette That decade we spent trapped in a smoke cloud. We gathered beneath the black ceilings of the bar, joined hands as one mass of sadness  one destruction.  We became dingy birds, caged and yellow, we sat in our cages hung deep in the mine waiting to die, to absorb the poison before […]

by Ellie Lopez Honey / sweet water / fingertips / more than hands could feed / sliced lemon / sting / hands washed clean / want you around / like an open wound / salt on your cuts / tender to touch / honey over flesh / suck the bittersweet / spit the seeds out […]

by Maritza Ocampo She’s there the reckless spirit the one who got you  through so much bullshit the one you relied on to pull you out of the hole you dug yourself into  she’s there she hasn’t cracked she hasn’t left  she’s transforming letting different emotions filter through and settle in challenging you she’s waiting […]