_{Poems by Dean Rhetoric}

Closing Time

     and my city is a tongue 

clucking in anticipation 

of chasing the last bus home 

on post-orgasmic 

Bambi legs

     and yes, come midnight 

these knees will hurt 

good with the 

soft arrogance 

of being alive past 

eleven on a 

Tuesday night 

     and it’s true there’s 

a chorus of stitches 

where I’ve sucked gut 

too long against the wind 

     and it’s true that 

there are nights 

I’ve touched myself 

but stopped before the climax

     as if to teach myself 

the beauty of a pause

     as if arthritic stars 

might burn away 

the softening flesh 

around my pelvis

     as if the space 

between what was 

and what will be 

is salting my bottom lip 

     and I’ve been trained 

to either bite down 

or fast restlessly 

on its quietness

     until yes, my city closes

like a bad mouth 

that’s done calling out 

for someone 

to die alone with.

---

Love is a Supernatural Bone-Stinker

     of an affliction a pesky little earworm 

of a condition a shrieking specter

that dares you to lick-pick 

at the locks it fastens  

on the tip of your tongue 

and abide by the promises 

it makes on the roof of your mouth

     for the love of God there was a girl 

who was beaten for getting pierced

and so she lay in bed all night 

picturing her father’s throat 

whispering     STRIKE     STRIKE     STRIKE

the next day a church steeple 

buckled in a storm 

and impaled him through the neck 

     we could’ve been time spent 

between the bowing of a church spire 

and the cleaver it became

you could’ve touched yourself 

and spat mud at the sky

until it     SPLIT     SPLIT     SPLIT

I could’ve fragmented into molecules

and reassembled on the tip of your finger 

     for the love of God there was a hypnotist 

who tripped and broke his skull 

before he could wake his patient 

from her induced sleep 

and so she lay there for two days 

smiling peacefully beside his corpse 

according to friends she was there

to confront her fear of death

     we could’ve been time spent 

between static and decay 

a pair of catatonic bone-stinkers

our souls dancing wildly 

to the thumping on the front door 

the Saturday night television 

purring its warm musical illness 

you can’t tell me you didn’t want that for us

---

Amateur Dramatics 

Every Thursday, after yoga. Subdue male suicides through art. 

Tell that to my neighbour, who in an anecdote that is 

sometimes a true story depending on his mood

was held at finger-gunpoint and forced to pretend he was a tree. 

Every Friday he’d wake up to find another teenager 

swaying by the neck from his extended left arm.

Every Saturday he’d drink to subdue the constant sound of rope 

creaking against his bicep. Almost reaching out for help,

but then, of course, not bothering, really.

The Sixth Month by Dylan Webster

Six months sober after so long;
Six months after I died, I’m here.
Half-life it feels, to me. Inhale
At one A.M., up late, early
Not drunk. No gun in hand, writing
To keep sane, yes, but my son has
His dad; I’m here alive, aware.
The first time in awhile, I thought
About waking, pounding my head,
That day. Headache, regret; repeat.
Again — again — again — a gun.
I put that gun — no, shoved, that gun
Into my mouth, tonguing metal;
My thoughts racing; almost thirty
And I’m sending drunk texts to my
Mom and stepdad, blaming them both.
And now, I taste copper thinking
My death will be atonement for
My life. Deserved — so spoke the voice,
The gin that stabs my mind right now.
I drank, fell down, passed out — blacked out
Again — again — again — a gun.
This gun, my gun, right now; do it.
Finger traces trigger, moments
Keep me from my heaven — or hell.
This hell, right now, is hell. I cry.
Weeping, gun drops, and I collapse.
I can’t pull it, leave her, leave him.
I can’t do it, coward I am —
In that dropping gun, death arrived.
No words between my God and me,
Not so spoken revelation —
Urgent intimation, no pomp,
Rather my heart quickened its beat,

Walking into the world, I’m dead
Yet live, resurrected or fooled;
Won’t care to find answers that way —
Almost thirty, gun to my head,
Bullets called me too weak, drinking
Showed me how close my grave can be;
Fingers yanked back, I know as fact,
I can’t return ever again.
Showed me how close this grace can be.
It took six months just to write this,
But these six months are full of life,
Half-life living longer than guns.
My blood attains nothing, this life
Instead is the release I sought —
I stand, again — again — and will, again.

PAINTINGS

VIAN BORCHERT

“The paintings depict mainly yellow and blue skyscapes in various hues through an abstract form. The abstract color-fields of different yellows mingling with the blues of the sky and sea allude to hints of sunrises and sunsets along with momentary light. Clouds, subtle ripples and waves within the lemon skies and its surroundings are presented in these abstract paintings. The artwork is rendered in a minimal painterly touch with the intention of capturing soft accents of light and its glory.
The idea for this work is that one is completely absorbed by the color yellow within the artwork that one can’t help but get drunk on the impact of its sweet yellowness. One of the paintings titled “Lemoncello” plays on this idea and aims metaphorically and abstractly to capture the smooth and sweet intense lemony flavors. The painting wants the viewer to almost get drunk in joy by its luminous lemon hues’ beauty.
The titles also give glimpses to the warm experiences.  An embrace of the color yellow which is the epitome of warmth and light is also highlighted to express the enrichment it bestows upon one’s lives in so many ways.”

Collage Poems by James Diaz

Always Graceful, Always Delicate

by Melissa Ren

My mother always had delicate hands, the kind that embodied elegance in lace gloves on her wedding day. Ones that gently grasped a Montblanc fountain pen as she signed her name, Amelia Chen, with swooping curls in a balletic dance.

The same hands that braided my hair
when I was a child, clasped my cheek when I felt unwell, pulled me into an embrace on bluer days.

She was so young then.

My mother taught me how to make jiaozi, her fingers working with precision as she folded each pleat to perfection. “All the love you put into your food is good energy for your body,” she said.

After my baby brother arrived, she showed me how to hold him, to support his neck while being the carrier that he needed. “Hold him tight, so he knows you’re here for him. He will never doubt he can always count on you.”

Upon my first heartbreak, she dabbed a tissue to my eyes. Her palm stroked my back when she said, “Your qi is meant for another.” Her words burrowed into my chest, making a
home there.

On my wedding day, she fastened the row of silk buttons lining my spine. She clipped Poh Poh’s hairpin in my up do, and slid her gold bangles on my wrist. When it was time to walk me down the aisle, her palm graced my arm and led the way.

When she got sick, her hands grew weak, unable to feed or care for herself. On her hospital bed, I took her frail fingers in mine.

Always graceful, always delicate.

Even after her last breath.

END

Poems by James Joseph Brown

The Bottom of the Sea

Not strong enough to carry rocks
across the ocean floor, bare feet
digging sparrow-claw trails
to the shore, not even strong
enough to shuffle from one end

of the hospital ward to the other
impossible to drink from snaking
spiderweb tubes stuck in veins
bitter mouth, chalk throat, this
feeling I think is called empty

star, cold dark dwarf, shadow
ring in the sky where the sun
used to burn, they tell you
this shell-shock is a beginning
a recovery, but now you’re unsure

where to place your feet, that slow
climb back from the bottom
of the sea, each step up and out
a tightrope walk, a balancing act
a steeplechase leap with no net

---

Convalescence

The desert is cold at night
I listen to my bones drying
the box canyon echo, the
reptile chill turning dark to ice

this place is meant to cure
the uncurable, to stop the
chronically ill from fading
to sagebrush in slanted sun

each day a notch carved into
the bark of this ancient tree
time ticks by in centuries while
my heart makes the same sound

as fire drums, thunder and howl
listen to my moonglow, my firefly
buzz, my distant coyote crawl
my delicate mothwing libretto

rate your pain on a scale
of won to lost, I don’t want
to roll these dice in my hand
or sweep the layout with my

swollen knuckles, I used to sit
in this stall and cry into my hands
at work, each sound swallowed
by confessional, therapist, outlet

for grief and remarkable ruin
what you need is a hot, dry
climate, what you need is
evening breeze with no rain

the sky filled with lightning bugs
that turn into stars, the inside
of your eyelids turning black
into night, using your spine

to climb campfire smoke
into the scorched clouds
your always need to heal
that world beneath your skin

---

Base Camp

If you teach me how to set up a tent
I’ll find a way to burrow into the icy
ground, carefully, when everyone is
so deeply asleep there won’t be any
witnesses, you take first watch, I’ve
been meaning to start waking up early

if you bring me a basket of painted
desert stones, I’ll find one that
looks good enough to eat, then
make you swallow the entire night
whole, traveler, I want to dive into
the lake by the side of the road

want to share a secret underwater
where no one will hear, want to
whittle the night away with your
breaths marking the time between
hours, your hands folding paper
swans in your shuddering sleep

---

Locked Unit

It’s not like the movies but
oh god, if only

the anorexics push food around
their plates, this is

a game for them, a competition
who can stall long

enough to waste our half hour
of cafeteria privilege

who can sneak into the bathroom
squeeze themselves

dry like a sponge, who can vanish
into the air

disappear from their chair, we notice
when someone

is missing in group, but no one
mentions it

not the haunted, the
manic, the lost in the sky

the tortured, the buzzing
the shivering, the wide-eyed

the cross-addicted teens, the
depressives, the charged

the schizophrenics, bound by
this circle of chairs

someone always gone and
we pretend

not to notice, don’t mention
the overdoses

the scars, the roughly cut
shirts and raspy

sore throats, instead
we talk about

the music therapist with
mismatched braids and

a handmade guitar, the songs
in the night

the flashlights every hour
making sure

we’re still breathing, still visible
shapes beneath blankets

Collages by Goran Tomic

Poems by Harley Claes

The Cabaret Dancer

i am the cunt deity
dealer of illusions
seething as cross-legged temptress
awaiting the coin
men taunt us with cum-sludge
holding over our heads a revered reality
we exist as willing filth-beings
in the scheme of a fetid society
the flowering of our future
daunting, nearly non-existent
to embody travesty you have to forge a place in non-being
head dissolved from the dissociative and deviant
seemingly docile but deliberate
we are analysts ravishing monsters
with a familiar ritual of regulars
we have to dump like trash after every paid dinner and daunting dime
prowling creatures that seep sociopathy in the miscreants den of crime

---

The Jive

I am bathed in sun
& purified by jazz
Infinitely aroused
By the alchemy
Of your flesh on my flesh
Tongue meeting ancient tongue
Entwined in past lives
I am a channel through which
Tender things demise
In lavender slips
Secreting
Bodily fluids and sentiment
Mute me with
Your rosy tones
And suggestive specimens
I will seep into your dreams
Willing faithfully
into disgrace and detriment

Lighting Candles by Erich von Hungen

I do it for the dead.
Some light candles,
say a prayer,
try to remember,
set flowers on a grave.
But I, I do this living-thing,
this flushing of the toilet,
this crunching of toasted bread,
this taking up and putting down
of books, feet, hands,
this sleeping, when I do or can.
This living-thing. I do it,
each shy retreating moment of it,
I do it in answer. I do it for the dead.
The year is turning in its bed,
the one, I must press near to,
the one, whose covers I must share,
and yet, even this, this sleeping,
this nearness, itself, to it,
I do it. I do even that, all of it,
I do it for the dead.
Should it be another way?
Perhaps, but I would have to know,
know it to do it, know the livingness,
the brewing seed that roots
and grows from this same place:
the dark home of the dead.
If we could separate,
but how, how do you separate
by a simple invisibility like time
those present, those remembered,
the living from the dead?
Even trees, even they stand
on feet of lost, fallen leaves.
There the forests, groves, the jungles,
because of them.
There, because of the dead.

---

Poems by Abigail Myers

Waxing Gibbous

We looked up at the waxing moon,
there on Eighth Avenue between
unleaving trees and unyielding stone,
and like ancient priests or farmers
consulted the skies for prophecies and portents.
You said,
The moon will be full tomorrow.
In that moment,
all prognostications failed.
Your tribe and mine
set the almanacs aflame.
Omens appeared in the heavens
and the streetlights switched on,
telling fools and children to close their games
and return home.

---

An Eternal Resurrection

Unlike other events in the life of Jesus, nobody describes the actual Resurrection. 
What would I have seen if I was right there at the moment it happened? —John Dominic Crossan

Every time it happens this way:

Through blood-stained linen, thin hips press

into sandy soil, lift the torso as life drains into it.

A slow blink. No shaft of light, no choirs,

just the one angel, who nods, tosses him a tunic

and a mantle. You won again, the angel assures him—

the great light swallowed the great darkness,

the place was harrowed, hollowed, consumed, 

balled up to nothing. He nods, rubs both eyes

with one punctured hand, breathes in, out, long. 

You could have a new one, no? the angel asks.

Not the point, he finally says, plucking a thorn

from coarse dark curls.What are they up to, anyway?

The angel shrugs. The usual— hands over this year’s artifact:

An outline of a white rabbit suggested by a profusion

of tissue-paper squares, translucent as stained glass,

a name of a child scrawled in magic marker beside

HAPPY EASTER! He chuckles, kisses the rabbit’s nose,

folds it and slides it in his mantle, beside his heart.

Suffer the children and what have you, 

the angel remarks. For sure, he agrees. 

And the angel shakes their head. For this?

Your only body broken and sent into battle, 

your only life reduced to magic tricks,

your only rest interrupted—for this?

He smiles, presses his bare feet into the earth of the tomb,

taps the paper rabbit on his chest, slaps the angel

on their winged shoulder. Is she waiting for me?

The angel sighs. You know that she is.

He raises himself, straightens his mantle.

Thanks, he says, faces the sun. Hit it.

---

poems by Everett Cruz

Meet Cute During the Euphoria of a Beginner’s Yoga Class

Somewhere between the child and the tree,

I found a moment golden like wheatfields waving

In July. The warmth whelmed me in a tide of bliss.

When I emerged, my body skimmed the honey

Surface. Its sweetness stuck to my skin. I felt

Movement down my lateral line. I stretched

Toward a bright intensity. It was you

flowing in the wake of the glowing brilliance.

I reached for you. You reached for me too.

Two lights yearned to become one. 

I leaned toward you and whispered

I wanted to kiss you. You obliged. 

A billion firecrackers exploded. We were

The beacon burning gold for a moment. 

---

Once You Swim Pass all the Tourists  

There’s so much blue out there. The sky kisses 

The ocean. Intimacy horizons 

Stretching to infinity. And Beyond 

The boundary, The blue sirens lie

 And whisper with the waves. Their tide pulls you,

A lover’s embrace. They guide you gently 

With paradise promises: pleasures 

And the release of all guilt. Before you

The ocean and the sky do not know shame.

They public their love. They spread all their blue 

Onto each other. Deep inside, you know 

You, too, are blue, willing to gratify 

Your blue sky endlessly until the night

Turns it all black, and the ocean pulls down. 

---

Stygiomedusa Gigantea

Down here, the darkness prevails 

against the diminishing light. 

Night and day have no meaning

In this place. Black is infinite. Yet,

the creature stretches his tentacles

in the gloom of abyss. Always

searching for connection. Tiny bits drift 

and sustain his existence. The creature

glows without ever knowing the sun. 

Down here, the creature is his own sun. 

200 by Matt Bechtold

You didn’t care 

that the main vein of Big Sur 

ran right behind our room 

And I pointed my flashlight at rushing water 

and bugs 

and rocks 

and I picked up a glowing worm. 

Maybe I was beautiful when I shined that flashlight 

and maybe I wasn’t

and maybe I have 15 years 

or maybe I have 20, but 

this is how I’ll live to be 200.

---