I’ve Lived So Long as a Dream Girl-old

I’ve Lived So Long as a Dream Girl by Jacklin Farley I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be real. Between meals, I pinch up belly fat, chubby bunny marshmallow bites sandwiched by my suspicious fingertips. I then attempt to conjure metabolism like a monsoon of China Slim Tea and sugar-free Haribo gummy bears through my blood. So it goes for those of us past the acceptable age for playing Bloody Mary and comparing thigh gaps at sleepovers. As I get older, I realize it takes velocity to exist in organic form, especially mine. One minute, my love language is sophisticated curve, peach slice dripping sweet with juice. The next, it’s an aspirin tablet dropped into a liter-sized Pepsi bottle with the cap screwed shut, transparent jugular bulging with carbonated excess seeking evaporative exodus in the snack aisle of your local Walgreens. It’s on the days I feel the emptiest that I want to explode the most, feel like I am running through a Reese’s peanut buttercup field encased by green Jell-O salad, that I want someone to unbuckle my ankle straps and call me “kitten” despite the fact I haven’t been teacup-sized since I was fourteen, despite my repressed scheming to eventually fit my fat ass back into Paris Hilton’s handbag. But if I can’t have hip dips, whipped cream on my titties, or armpit jiggle ready to embrace the lips of a saxophone player, do I even want this life? I must be eating more to have such energy to philosophize, to embrace living like a back alley duct tape Brazilian: throbbing and shameless, fleshy and blushed down to the bone in places no one else can see. It’s painful, but at least I can feel more than nerve damage in my hands, the urge to hold my coffee cup in a compactor-tight grip to register even a Celsius of warmth. Call it my own method for moderation, aftermath of disorder. Call it crème brûléeing the wound after it curdles. As long as you sing, paradox of my digestive tract. For I know one day I will cease to be cute. For all I know, today is that day pouring into my palms over my belt line, spilled pitcher of milkshake, too much love in my handles. The world can tell me I am too old to be silly or fat. It won’t stop me from molting, coming back in a different skin. For I think I am rather too young to be dead. Poetry Home Art by Winslow Schmelling

Missing You

Missing You by Dante Novario I ate the cat. It was the first Tuesdayof winter and I was missing you. Thoughtmaybe the taste of your palm print could stillbe found as it slid down but I only coughed out hairballs for weeks. I opened the dusty closet, foundyour favorite scarf, hand-sewn sweaters, slurpedthem string by string but your scent wasn’t hidingin the arm holes or collar trims. I was afraid of my mouth, the way it wouldn’t stop speakingyour name. I ate our words,the local dialect, our language of angels strippedof all definitions. Some things couldn’t be swallowed: the leftover slice of pecan pie, old photographstoo sweet to eat, the starved futurethat we once feasted upon together. I started licking door framesand floorboard cracks, gnawing on scribbled notesthat carried sacred messages likeHeaded OutWe Needed Peaches I thought I’d die from hunger. Chewedthe walls of our once-home down to their bones, stoodstill in its empty lot trying to stop my stomachfrom spewing our life back up, knowing no one would want to bear witness to such a stunning mess. I wishI had eaten you when I had the chance, kept yousomewhere safe. Is it too lateto crawl into my open mouth, remind meof spring, of what it feels like to be full? Poetry Home Art by Michael Moreth

How to Lament on a Tuesday at a Coffee Shop at 16:23 PST

How to lament on a Tuesday at a coffee shop at 16:23 PDT by Jarred Mercer I saw scenes of war that made me,held the dying child and bleeding mother,watched the man who never lived without shaking shake untilhe didn’t live. I knowthe sea’s creatures are strangled by our greedsmell the hellfire of dry leaves stripped from naked trees butmy daughter’s hugs sink in like rain in soil likesomething new will grow. I know the forcibly displaced with no homesee the erosion of my coastlinetouch the fear of generations butseals play like sea-puppies chasingtheir tales, bouncing their bellies onbulbous boulders at the same shore shaking offdespair into the deep and as I do the dishes the sun blushescherry and plum behind the house andwithout purpose laughter tickles our tongues andrattles our chest and on any given day a stranger’s smilecan save a life and sex can be good notjust a weapon and white veronicas bloom evenafter winter and someone somewhereis starting to sing. We weep on knees for centuries to learn lamentis the shape of hope. Poetry Home Art by Kateryna Bortsova

when i say my father is homeless, i mean:

when I say my father is homeless, I mean: by Harley Chapman a funhouse version of himself laughing,an eclipse where his mouth should be. so smart. Just like him. he fell off the roof one Christmas& kept on falling. The snow embraced himlike the open sea swallows a sinking ship. dad vs. the State of California. I am talking about criminalities.I am talking about the act of committing a crimeas inseparable from being a criminal. my face is a long stretch of unshavenyears, stacked neatly on the tile. each implosion is entirely my fault(it is not my faultbut it is, still, entirely my fault). a portrait of god in his sunhat, shears poisedbefore an unsuspecting shoot of green. I no longer wish to be called honey,shrink from your touch. my story is changing. I cannot rememberwhat is real & what is just a name. fuck the government. Fuck the law,the police, the purse-clutchers,& every asshole with a brand-new car. an alternative phrasefor airing your dirty laundry isI have nowhere left to hide. I made a mess of it, drank myself stupid& rode that white line like a bronc. the record is stuck. A scratchy repeat:just like him. each year feels more & more like a dare. shame is a debt unpayable. Please,don’t make me explain. Poetry Home Art by Belle Dorcas

Girlhood Sonnet

Girlhood Sonnet by Sophia Ivey I lost my girlhood when my brother ripped out my first baby tooth. I can still rummage through my mother’s attic to find the VHS tape of him holding the small bleeding thing with his hands as if it were a rock bass he had just caught down at Lake Apopka. I told my palm reader this and she insisted I find all of my baby teeth and burn them to ash. I don’t. I keep them in my nightstand, though, most nights I am eager to flick my lighter in the little girl’s direction, burn each tooth to ash, bury each crumb into the dirt so I will not be reminded of things that used to be mine to hold. It would be easier, I know, but instead, I am determined to suck on each tooth like a cherry sour until it is sweet enough for me to spit out. One day, when I am done, I will rest them on my kitchen windowsill. Dry them by the wishbones I save. Like a stuffed rock bass hung on a living room wall I will find pride in preserving a slaughtered thing. Poetry Home Art by k kuulz