Poetry
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Debt by Dana Delibovi
The slick road. The rain eating the courtyard, making gullies where grass has thinned. Scream of the blue jay, same sound as my grandmother’s clothesline. That day she pulled the sheets into her laundry shack in the rain. Knowing limits, knowing money running like rain. Gullies etched by gambling. Bookies crowbarring in, scattering birds in the courtyard. …
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Between Dusk and Dawn by Priscilla Carrillo
Today the cat’s fur smells like the burning aroma of sandalwood Just yesterday it held a fragrance of wet moss There are even days where it carries the faintest of dragon’s blood My beloved cat, what realms do you cross? Priscilla Carrillo is a San Franciscan native. As a child, her aunt would read Edgar Allan…
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Hyperbole by Jason Szydlik
That girl is a lost doggie sniffing the thunder-scented sidewalks. Somebody said she is even sweeter than the overripe mulberries we used to collect from them. The storm is done barking at her now, but the moon won’t leave her alone. When he raved about champagne, corn, mashed potatoes, he meant snow. Everyone knew him …
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Thesis by Kelly Egan
The party is a disco ball atop deep gloom. I watch it heaving darkly with taboo above the rim of my pink paloma: our host buzzing from group to group, her husband making drinks, the party stretched between them as a thing that together they are holding up, that we all are, to the deities…
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Cut-up Objects by Shannon Wolfe
“You have to know what you’re doing”, my sister says And she’s been through a lot A flood and a fire, A box of butterflies, milk thistle Though I know She’s still never been to Seattle “I have to figure out what I want to sound like” I reply, felling silly and cheaply made Because my tongue is lots of moved…
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memories of my mother. by Jackie Arrieta-Peixoto
sunday | july 26, 2020. 9:27pm memories of my mother. a leftover seed from lunch turned into a tree it leaned upon the kitchen window first inside, then outside rolling fog and burning sun in days of healing and maturing an avocado tree grows in san francisco dinner simmers in a pot my mother’s fingers reminiscent of chopped garlic and vanilla lotion a productive…
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A Troubled Route by Jillian Wasick
Is it time? she asks. Dinner churning in our bodies but only mine with a gate about to close. Come up then, when you’re ready. For shorter breaths,locking spider web, undershirt between steel shell and blistered skin. We gather to it, she a voice behind, Okay baby, pulling apart the slight space between the brace’s back. The meager opening not a joke not the slit cut into curtain…
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The Encounter That Makes Me Want to Eat by Skylar Wu
When you got closer I heard your stomach’s growl It rises in spirals, seduces the silver blade one uses for self-castration you bring about an overwhelming smell of re-digested salad, cheap, filled with hallucinogenic consciousness slathered with a thick, dampened, warm liquid; a gravity filling the gaps between yellowing teeth indiscriminately I read the fourteen lines of…
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Thea Matthews Interview
Thea Matthews in Conversation with Chloe Hull Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Thea is a queer black feminist activist, poet, educator, and author. She is Afro Latin X with Black, Indigenous, Mexican blood who writes on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. She earned her BA in Sociology at UC Berkeley where…
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magic spell
You will need–A preying mantis rescued from a lawnmower–Five ants rescued from a kitchen wherethe balabosta was going to crush them.–A wrapped piece of grocery cakeHostessor my new favorite that comes from Mexicowhite cake covered in chocolate with somespots of red jelly Gansito–Your favorite pair of colored socks–Your favorite pair of comfortable worn-out socks–A book…