Hannah V. Warren

Uninhibited, she swims
deeper than sand. When she sings,
I hum her rhythm and sink softly
after her chords, weaving
in the woman’s easy thrum.
If she is infamy, I want to quit
this bare-bristle burning.
I feel a turning point
pushing me over the ship’s
side, tossing me into/out of
waves. She plucks at my thighs,
inching beneath my skin
and pulling away molecular strands.
I don’t remember if I turned
in on myself or if she folded
me into a tight, red pocket square.

HANNAH V. WARREN is an MFA student at the University of Kansas and serves as the poetry editor for Beecher’s Magazine. Her works have appeared or will soon appear in Soundings East, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Spirit’s Tincture. She often writes about death but hopes never to experience it.

Frances Klein

The man next to me on the MAX
                         –car is empty why so close–
clears his throat noisily and hocks spit onto the floor.
Something moves in the fluid,
                         –that a maggot what the hell–
then shudders, stills.
He clears his throat again
and my eyes slide back,
expecting to see white
writhing between chapped lips.
Then he’s nodding at my book
on Socratic learning, leaning in
                         –too close too close too close–
confidentially to tell me,
“Socrates was a frog, you know.”
                         –frog can’t be frog–
“A . . . fraud?”
A snort of derision, another
jet engine intake of mucus collected
and ejected into the puddle at his feet.
Crushed carapace glint
in the fluorescent lights.
                         –jesus mary and joseph oh christ–
“Yeah, that too, I guess.”
He sniffs a wayward antenna
back up one nostril,
wipes on his sleeve, coughs.
“I never could figure out how that frog motherfucker got so famous.”
                         –saying frog not fraud frog–
He leans his head back,
apparently content with the course
our conversation has run.
The vent above us
starts wheezing heat and he murmurs
with pleasure, rolling up his sleeves
to reveal hair covered arms.
                         –barbed those hairs are barbed what tarantula shit –
It slow opens one eye
to fix on me again, smile spreading,
translucent film hammocked
between row after row
                         –too many too many so many too many–
of needle teeth.
“This right here’s the best spot. Get that vent goin’, feels like the fuckin’ swamp in here.”
I sit past the end of the line,
book long since fallen from my hand.
Inchoate fear and unseasonal sweat
web me to the slick plastic seat
as it wallows in the humidity,
                         –no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no-
ecstatic, obscene.
“Yeah man, I tell ya, feels just like home.”

FRANCES KLEIN is a high school English teacher. She was born and raised in Southeast Alaska, and taught in Bolivia and California before settling in Indianapolis with her husband Kris. She has been published in GFT Press, and Molotov Cocktail, among others.

Louis Wenzlow

For When They Come

There needs to be a
labia or scrotum,
stitches, piercings,
an abrasive to underline
the condition.

Animals must play
a role, signifying
we all inflict/suffer
in different ways, or . . .

Jars of eyes.

Brazilian uber-wax
striping down
to the sub layer.

Stray pubic hairs must be
plucked out
with surgery grade tweezers.
Off, off, you lendings!

Old men are babes again.
Pristine, deeper

and deeper penetration.
Pain and knowledge beyond
our standard electromagnetic
range . . .

. . . all so we will be ready

when the earthlings come.

Body Glittering

You are not comfortable
in your body.

Your barnacled seashell eyes
bludgeon the landscape.

Your elbow reflexes
only one way.

When you breathe into a cup
the residue is like a
canopy/lost dreams are beautiful.

FYI I am ordering a semen sample
for on your way out.

And can you read the chart
on the wall there, the lowest
line?

Caress those tiny letters.
Don’t stumble
over the finer print.

Softly now. Gently.

Others are coming, fresh,
glittering.

Love Lessons from the Monster Bazaar

Whenever they went to the bazaar, she always bought two, one as a nestling and the other for dinner, to remind the family that everyone is meat.

Another day, she culled only the adopted children. This was to teach un/fairness. The rush and primal pull of blood for

no one came back from there, yet they loved her like crazy, like Father, who only played for meals, if he played at all, until her grin that night, the smudge of red, lip smacking

vengeance, she said, was the secret sauce. If you could just bottle it, the world would forever be raving/ravenous but

what shocked them most when her own time came was how unprepared she seemed, increasingly so, as their slow-roasting hunger and love manifested.

LOUIS WENZLOW‘s poetry and short fiction have appeared in The Airgonaut, Cease Cows, Cleaver, Eclectica, The Forge Literary Magazine, Jellyfish Review, here in Jersey Devil Press and other places. New poems are forthcoming in (b)OINK and The Inflectionist Review. He lives with his family in Baraboo, Wisconsin.