MAX PASAKORN
and nothing comes out. I didn’t know / what I was expecting— //
babies, perhaps? Ones with wings / too small to lift them back up, / cursed little things / with no-return policies….Continue Reading I tear open the sky
GRACE ESCOE
I draw a line / My finger digs deep into the sand taking out a nice long straight line / That isn’t really my own even though I made it / The line that I cannot cross / The line that keeps me from making…Continue Reading Drawing lines in the sand
MEL ARTHUR
…the researcher nibbles at [murmurs] and learns what it means for hands to enfold in one, too, tree steps. Tensions that are touched upon include affliction…Continue Reading Awakening of Reverence
ELEANOR WALSH
And when I hear false my tongue twists G-o-d / But in street lights I see / The moons all around me / Foxes follow me home to you / I pull the Priestess / Your lips are red / The ring I lost months ago…Continue Reading Hymn
NICOLE ITKIN
not echoes, maybe / not even ghosts / still, they stand in
for // everything (everything) / I need most. // A girl in red curls over a bridge, / Dress trailing longer, lower- // who’s falling?…Continue Reading Stand to See
EMILY WYKOFF
I’ve loved and lost and respected you / Things I never thought I’d say / I never wanted to love you / Nonetheless, the adoration found a way // They say that love is a choice / But, for you, it felt like falling…Continue Reading Veneration
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I experienced the soft colliding of bodies as more of a pleasure and less of an annoyance. In the crowded gallery, I immediately made out the sound of the bass, the piano, the drums…Continue Reading Observations at the Gallery
FAHIM ZAMAN
I met him the night before / In that signature diner / Where all the cars go to die / Where green stars hide inside / With the man who wears the suit. // Who has milk and cookies, and waits till / The Beatles plays on the radio …Continue Reading Orphic Overture LXXXI
PAULINE BISSELL
Look: / I once believed my blood ran blue in my body, just because my veins told me so. We keep telling ourselves little lies. We’re not supposed to believe them, but I do….Continue Reading Illusioned
GABBY AVENA
the tree kneels / at the pond the tree / kneels to touch the / pond touch neither the / tree nor the pond / which the tree wants / touching your fingers / which cannot touch…Continue Reading stuplimity
PHO VU
For those who are brought up in Asian households, “reverence” is like “respect” but with a higher level of intensity. In case you are Asian but do not see the word that way, my statement merely stems…Continue Reading Faith, Fear, and Finding My Path
GABY WEAVER
His home sits on the edge of a cliffside. It had once sat a few feet further from it, but the sandstone has eroded in his lifetime. He rests on a rocking chair, the ocean view unobstructed in front of him…Continue Reading The Water’s Not Waiting
SEBASTIAN PAREDES
He drinks coffee. He embraces the bitter liquid. He does not care that it burns the roof of his mouth. He does not care that he can see his hands trembling. He does not care that he can feel his body shaking….Continue Reading Addiction
AWA DIOP
My makeup bag is full of shades of brown. Before me lay my brushes sprawled out and richly coated with this palette: my foundations of ebony, expresso, deep mahogany. My concealers of mocha, chestnut…Continue Reading girlhood: BLK edition
DAVIS RENNELLA
To remember is to live again. It takes a collaboration of our powers of feeling– living in the raw sensory and emotional records imprinted on our bodies, combining them with awareness…Continue Reading Sketches of the Past
Editor’s Note By SARAH WU, MEL ARTHUR, and GABBY AVENA Mel Arthur:What do Bridges mean to me? I want to invoke Christopher Soto and what they wrote in the book titled Queer Poets of Color. They borrow a quote from Gloria E. Anzaldua, who writes, “Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of…Continue Reading Fall 2022
DUSTIN COPELAND
My mother said that the pedestrian bridge over arrow-straight Route 1 was finally finished and that we were going to stop to talk a walk over it and my brother said what, why…Continue Reading A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth
FAHIM ZAMAN
John Borges, we would love to award you, / Before you leave, for a good life / Lived, Johnny – / If not for a few objections. // Let’s see here, ah, at four some years just, / You cursed in Church…Continue Reading Good Life
JACKELINE FERNANDES
I’d like to imagine my mother spiraling in space, a constellation of the galaxy Andromeda, blueshifted, moving against the force of time, that force which causes the expansion of the universe….Continue Reading Blueshift
GABBY AVENA
we had to learn to share, my sister-and-i. / older by a year, she laid claim to the color purple. there was only one color left for little girls. i hated pink, but it was mine: my-pink, her-purple….Continue Reading WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE
WILLOW DELP
The water was brown. / The Brabantio family had adamantly tried to ignore this fact – even the more progressive members politely refused to comment. …Continue Reading Water Beneath the Bridge
M. LAWSON
There was a sale at Ace Hardware today: forty percent off washers, so Ophelia walked home with tiny metal discs pinging around in his coat pocket….Continue Reading dead on arrival
DAVIS RENNELLA
For this solitary space traveler, what had started as a bold expedition to new horizons for his people had become a disorienting journey through a galaxy…Continue Reading Welcome to Earth
By ANONYMOUS
A small stream bubbles below a little bridge whose boards creek disconcertingly when stepped on. Surrounding greenery hums in the wind. Time slows down here, or perhaps doesn’t exist here at all. …Continue Reading Disappearing Bridge
ESTEBAN SANCHEZ
I walk with you through a field of wild grass on a path laid out for us by others. Dandelion seeds float slowly, discernible against the blue sky, like white snowflakes that fall in other parts of the world….Continue Reading Reification: A Question in Serial
EVELYN CHI
To be loved / Is to wake up to a bowl of steaming hot 稀飯 / Tender, bright orange 地瓜 floating / In a sea of glistening 白飯, / To have the tablemat set out already…Continue Reading 阿嬤, 我想你
BLUMA HAMMARHEAD
Here is– the monument, / The bare room heavy with artifacts: / Strange velvet balls, stacks / Of letters, papers, / Old journals full of hypotheticals…Continue Reading Going Back
MIKAYAH PARSONS
She hugs her arms to her chest, wearing a white baby tee and velvet black lounge pants, dangling her legs over the edge of the bridge when I join her. …Continue Reading Bridges
MEL ARTHUR
what do you feel in the silence / what do you feel in the warmth / what do you feel in the center of your being / whatdoyoufeel between / silence what–wheredoyoufeel / the warmth lies…Continue Reading Km:mk
RACHEL HENDRICKSON
The woods were broken, Willa decided. The woods were broken, and she didn’t know how to fix them. The Earth always died when December came, but she still found a beauty in it then….Continue Reading A Spot of Pond