Redemptive Readings | Apoorva Yadav

She shuts herself in her bolthole to cry. No, to howl, yet again.

Her blank CV stares back at her. Name, Address, Phone Number. No worthwhile internships, publications, workshops, skillset…nothing. The document that was supposed to be an…

Named | Hea-Ream Lee

I’ll be at a party, clutching a plastic cup of something that probably doesn’t deserve to be called beer and making the motions of small talk but actually just shouting to be heard over the loud music. A tall econ major and I will be talking about something utterly banal, maybe an…

The Dust On This Poem Could Choke You | Lora Mathis

I am throwing out all of the clothes you touched me in.
I am burning every poem with your name in it.
But I am still holding onto some of the letters you wrote me.
I tell myself it’s to remember.
I tell myself it’s because I am afraid
of…

2 Poems | Dorianne Laux

Hypogeum

Even after everything we know Mother
I would meet you forehead to forehead
like horses in a field,
unclothed, untouched,
I would come to you again,
splitting the dark, your voice,
your dishes, money from your purse,
all stolen.

Verbal Abuse | Kelsey O’Connell

I never saw you beating me.
I found phantom bruises down my shins,
swollen eyelids,
and scars.
I woke up broken with
finger and palm prints on each arm.

Super Woman | J. L. Harlow

the evening’s indigo sky seeps through.
it empties me, pulling out my blood.
shadows caress a frame of a monster.
the trees’ arms needle through,

Things I Had Forgotten to Tell You, Lover | Lauren Griffith

I had meant to tell you that I no longer feel like drowning.

I no longer stare at white-capped waves with longing and I no longer stare at the sky like it is something that I will miss, because the…

Exposed | Deepika Kapoor

John Dominique once said,
“You cannot kill truth. You cannot kill justice.
You cannot kill what we are fighting for”

I begin unraveling the binding covering my abrasions,

The Best Fruit Salad In the World | Lacy LaLonde

I had one thing to do: make a fruit salad.

An entire year had gone by before I was asked to “help out” again, as my mother likes to call it. Another way to call it is nonnegotiable-unrequited-subservience. Do what your…