Isabelle Doyle

The dump bear is so hungry. People see her plodding, 
weirdly elegant, around the green dumpster. They see her 
on two legs banging a tuna can like a battle drum,
slapping flies away from winnowed chicken bones 
with weary paws. They see her crouching in the parking lot, 
naked and vulnerable, over half a cinnabon. 

People don’t know what’s going on with the dump bear. 
The dump bear gets nervous about the disintegration of the planet
in a way where it’s like Girl, you can’t do anything about that. 

She insists on humiliating herself in public, 
and this makes everyone feel uneasy. 
Everyone is reminded of many unpleasant things 
watching the dump bear feast on garbage 
and listen—the dump bear picks up on that. 
If the dump bear is making everybody else uncomfortable, 
there is a good chance she is making herself uncomfortable as well. 

The dump bear used to worry that maybe 
she isn’t as self-aware as she thinks she is—
but no, the dump bear understands 
that she is constituted through action, 
that her classification is a consequence of her own decisions, 
that she could stop anytime, walk back into the woods. 
But the dump bear is so hungry. No matter what, she will eat. 

ISABELLE DOYLE lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and loves chrysanthemums. She is between twelve and thirteen feet tall in high heels.

Iain Grinbergs

They often wander along the artificial lake and ruffle their way through the small beech-colored field behind my rented apartment. I still wonder what they eat. I could look it up, but sometimes I’d rather not have an answer. I wonder, too, how they stay warm here in a North Florida winter—their feathers don’t seem adequate. But who am I to critique creation? God, I hope this poem doesn’t sound like a knock-off Mary Oliver. But if that’s what I’m worrying about, I’d say, for now, I’m doing quite well. Often, though, nothing ever feels enough. I hope I don’t sound dramatic, but I’ve looked up assisted suicide. You need to join a Zen monastery first. I’d just like to go out silently, not cause any fuss. I’d just like to disappear into myself like a mindful black hole. I’ve lived long enough to know that to get through the day, we must count small successes, like how I’ve stopped picking my right thumb; how, at this moment, I do not crave alcohol.

IAIN GRINBERGS (he/they) is a PhD student in creative writing at Florida State University. He’s a finalist for Black Lawrence Press’s Fall 2021 Black River Chapbook Competition. You can find his recent work in Wilderness House Literary Review and forthcoming from Ghost Parachute and Juke Joint.

Yash Seyedbagheri

every night,
I’m in a car
and I’m cruising faster and faster
the steering wheel is impotent
like rubber
and the horns blare
among all the exhaust
faster, faster, faster

and I’m at a party
where mustaches bear into me 
telling me what to say, how to do it,
but I have to go to the bathroom
one jiggle of a toilet handle
and the room explodes
with only the frowns left
in the dust-covered clouds
I can’t even flush 

YASH SEYEDBAGHERI is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA fiction program. His stories, “Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” “Tales From A Communion Line,” and “Community Time,” have been nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.