Category: Issue #22

Delusionship Bingo

Picasso! Paint red flags green.	45 minutes late to the date that isn’t a date.	They’re just friends with their ex.	Being the more interesting half of your conversations.	They have a lot going on* *note: anything that requires clarification can be considered a lot going on.
Intimacy beginning and ending at the closeness of your skin.	. I should get this for them!	I love you  before the first argument.	Speaking honestly only after you’ve swallowed spirits braver than you.	Butterflies! or Anxiety!
Checking your phone every two minutes for a text you won’t receive for two hours  or two days.	They’re soo cute! (true)	Free Space! For your childhood.	Covertly checking their instagram.	Underestimating your self worth.
Random bouts of jealousy.	Making them a playlist.	Sex Fantasies.	They’re not into labels	Intense fear of dying alone.
Wanting. Wanting more.   Wishing you were enough.	Thriving on Praise.	Hey Siri, play Why Don’t You Love Me by Beyoncé.	Always texting first.	Canceling plans to make time for them. Time for them becoming Time.

Nnenna Loveth Umelo Uzoma Nwafor (they/she) is an Igbo lesbian poet, performer, and facilitator. Their work explores Black g*rlhood, Black queerness, Igbo Cosmology, Sensual play and rituals of healing. Nnenna published their debut chapbook, Already Knew You Were Coming, with Game Over Books in January of 2022 and has also been featured on Button Poetry, WBUR’s ARTery, VIBEs Magazine, and Ujima #Wire. When they speak, their ancestors are pleased. Please follow their work on IG @pleasure.as.compass or at pleasurearthealing.com

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.