Category: Issue #22

And on the twelfth night, they said watch out we’ve got a biter.                 
                         And so I woke up on my twentieth birthday in no one’s bed but my own
and I’m certain it’s because of who I was when I was blonde. I think your dad     
caught me trying to exorcize hindsight last time I was over at your house because nothing
haunts me more than knowing the things I could have done differently                       
if only I had 20/20 vision. I think that freaked your dad out and not just because he’s    
walking McCarthyism and I’m gayer than the literary canon.                              
I’ve always had a sweet tooth for libel within reason and a heart made of
biodegradable straws now and then and now you’re all fascists but I can’t say      
that you are because that’s not polite and I’ve been trying my best to be polite     
since I started wearing that God damn cone-like someone’s ball-less dog.             
     You’d hate to feel like that, wouldn’t you? I don’t think you could
pull it off, not like I can. When you can pull off calves that aren’t pretty enough
to be saved from becoming a half-eaten burger you can pull off anything.                 
              When I drive with you in shotgun,  I can see you pull on                                                      
 the grab handle when it’s my mom’s red minivan.                                         
you laugh at me when I say even that’s political. Similar to how America is the
best country in the world like how the used car dealership off Calle Rojo has the
best Hondas. If you had it your way I would have become normal the minute
I walked out of that bathroom stall. The one where you wrote your
phone number when we were freshmen in spirit.
And I knew then that I had no intention of ruining your life but
Then again…when in Rome.

 

Merlin June Mack (they/them) is a hemiplegic writer from Southern California. When they aren’t writing they can be found reading a book with at least one good literary motif in it. Merlin has been previously published in magazines such as The Lavender Review and Does It Have Pockets Magazine. Their work has also been Best of Net nominated. Merlin is currently working towards a BFA in creative writing at Southern Oregon University. You can find more of them @ merlin_june_is_a_lover on Instagram.

for a

remember: all the bike lanes end in Roxbury. when that one cop fell down the slide, we expected him to shoot the whole damn playground. WholeFoods only farms data now but the landlord had blue hair and pronouns so we forgot that Monopoly was a threat. the world dropped its laundry to look for those billionaires when the Ocean was a comrade and in the horror movie no one was shocked that we died first. the past tense wants us gone, after all. when the surprise guest at the DNC was COVID no one was actually surprised, just coughed a laugh and made us tinfoil hats. i used to think Brad Pitt was a bad choice in that zombie film until we saw who survives and you said we must expect to fail so that we keep trying. hope never fit well between our rough shoulders, beloved. again i say: how could i blame you, beloved?

 

Em Roth (they) is a mad educator and organizer based in Boston. They believe in the promise of liberation and are enamored with the way goats look in the sunset. They have been previously published in BRAWL Lit and Libre, and have work forthcoming in The B’K.

beginning with a line from Megan Fernandes

Every poet has a love affair with a bridge.
Mine was the Brooklyn—of course,

though it wasn’t for anyone’s ghost who floated across
then seemed to wave goodbye as they drowned.

I was in love with the drive to a cramped room 
in the attic floor of a Fort Greene brownstone.

The tin ceiling shimmered with heat as we laid 
naked under her bedsheets, talking, then

not, as the hours deepened. The drive to her
was always calm: after three hours on the highway,

parting Merritt Parkway’s darkness
with my headlights, I’d slide down the side 

of Manhattan by midnight. Mileage mounting
on my dash—hundreds, thousands of miles

covered by a car with a flickering headlight—
I’d glance at the silhouettes of skyscrapers,

the river dotted by ships, lamps on in offices,
bedrooms rented, owned, or borrowed.

In the cool rush of the midnight 
highway, I had the city to myself.

I could have pulled off FDR Drive
and rented one of those rooms. Or

I could have pulled over. I could have
sat in that darkness, my car rocking side 

to side as each truck and semi hissed by.
I could have gotten out and climbed

between the diagonal beams, balanced
on the edge of the bridge and let 

a sea breeze sweep my back. I listened
to the rhythmic thumping of my wheels

rocking each concrete plate as I hurtled
down the highway. I thought of us, still 

breathless, lighting a joint on the windowsill
and sharing it in the dark. I watched the reflections

of the beams rise and fall across the gloss
of my hood. I glanced at the water.

Its countless, shimmering stars. I couldn’t stop 
watching that famous, repeated plunge

into the river. I wanted her. Because I did,
I always will. Every poet has a love affair

with a bridge. I was in love with the drive
across mine to midnight’s other shore.

 

Robin’s poems have appeared in beestung, Impossible Task, Midway Journal, Poetry Online, and Quarter After Eight, among others. She studied literature and creative writing at Hampshire College and works as a substitute teacher in Holyoke, where she grew up. https://linktr.ee/arblerobin.

says a curly haired young man on the B line to Boston College on the eve
of trans day of remembrance. I am trying
to get to Brighton where my beloved waits, but the train keeps skipping

and the lights blinking out. “Major moves,” he repeats as the brakes
cry for help. I imagine every person I see on the train
could be trans. I imagine they could be harboring this same fear.

So many lost. So many killed. So many misknown.
Now he talks about artificial intelligence. The selfmade intelligence
of every trans person claiming their own right to be

what they are compels me more. 
“I don’t want to wait fifteen years to get there,” he says. I don’t want to wait
fifteen years for an affirmation of life. Fifteen years from now,

will I still hold my beloved all night? The train stops again. The train and I,
we know what it means to falter. To wish the tracks were kinder. “All the people
I gravitate towards are older.” Every trans person who is older than me

is a treasure. I get off the train a stop early because I am afraid of derailment.

 

C.M. Green is a Boston-based writer with a focus on history, memory, gender, and religion. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Full House Literary, Southeast Review, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Their debut hybrid chapbook, I Am Never Leaving Williamsburg, is out with fifth wheel press in February 2025, and their poetry chapbook Without Instruction is forthcoming from JAKE in 2025. They stand for a free Palestine and encourage you to find tangible ways to do the same. You can find their work at cmgreenwrites.com.