Poetry

The shrink prescribed me three little blue tablets. Told me to take them every morning with water. Take them to fend off reality. The brute. Also, a little pink and gray capsule. God only knows what’s in that one. But it, too, must be taken, she said. Who am I to question her? She is …

Jeanne Yu is an emerging poet, life-long environmentalist, an engineer and a mom who loves to hike in the beautiful Pacific Northwest forests. She completed her MFA at Pacific University in January 2023. Jeanne’s work can be found in Rattle, Breakwater Review, Paper Dragon, Intima, The Inflectionist Review, New Letters, Otterhouse Arts, and the Oregon …

Absent billions, conjure dumplings: eggs, flour, gleaming hands interlaced, jam jars kept loose-lidded. Muster nectar. Open piquant quinces. Ribbons strung through unlatched vaulted windows,wind-waved, violet, umber, turquoise. Read, reread. Quote poets on needful matters, lunar kennings. Jump into handsprings, giddy for everything—drifting, clapping bells, alleluias. Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner …

Please put the hearts on a skewer—you can call theman appetizer if you want to, charge me more than they are worth. I’ll buy it. I only have an appetite for what’s unwanted;all the foods I grew up on now made gourmet.It’s the fish collar I want, bony triangle of tendertucked between the gills, a …

I imagine my true tongue ignitinghis fist—see my future prophecy losing its grip, swinging to make blue-blackmy eye, but I won’t die. I call my sister, rehearsing what she’ll say: Run away.Come home. I’m nearer than the road suggests. I feel my chest heave a century of women leaving scared & singing with straight spine …

I am sitting on the futon wondering when I will earn my parentsa house. A poet in Vietnamese is nhà thơ, thus, the body is a housefor the poem. I want to contain more than one. Maybethis is too much to ask because my parents never got the chanceto learn more than what they already …

Sophie Drukman-Feldstein is a writer, translator, and editor living in New York City. Their poetry has previously appeared in Contemporary Verse 2.

once, in America, I told a girl white as salt that I used to shake it straight fromits silver can into my mouth, & swallow. she told me to stop lying. but I’m the kindof human who scrapes & pinches the crumbs at the bottom of the bag of hot chips, who licksthumb & pointer …

Some days I am full of hope Others, a single thing could kill me: a weed where I’ve already weeded, twice the clerk muttering Sir uhhh ma’am one wisp of cloud in the clear blue Some days I am full of things Others, a single hope could kill me: that you already did the dishes …

I had a dream where I brought you back to life. No power tools, just grief; gummy bears, my eucharist. I refrained from paraphrasing my sadness and planked on your grave. The clear vowels of my cry, echoing from head-stone to headstone; the illusion of sibling harmony. From that cry, you rose;I told you I …