Matthew Buxton

Alien being–with fingers like flippers

to slip into your prey’s carapace–

what is your intention with my body?

Your eyes of bronze pearl flip me 

upended when I reach your calcified retina 

like stringing up a fish by its tail.

You have evolved to capsize me 

with sight before you have seen me. 

Can we communicate though we are partitioned

by millennia of selective divergences,

having solely existed in space 

unoccupied by the other? I understand

in this moment of junction 

you could gash me open with your bite

of spiny stars, it’s happened before–

my flesh flaying in silence

amidst the vacuum of shared darkness. 

I wear teeth marks like scales.

Is it safe to assume that lust 

is the offering of oneself to be consumed?

Matthew Buxton

Nicole Cordasco

Peter took me like an impulse, 

grinning and pigeon-toed on my windowsill, 

crowing his impossible invitation with

a throat just starting to ripen with manhood. 

Yes, I said, yes and yes. 

Pixie dust caught in my pre-beard fuzz 

as he blew his magic across my cheeks, 

his lips pursed just-so, boyishly sweet. 

One breath had me flying, stolen, 

wheeling up past my yawning siblings 

to fit myself as his second shadow. 

AA

In Neverland, I championed his boy-king 

reign, giddy with his touches, as 

he wove his troop of Lost Boys like

a green Apollo, youth shimmering 

like glitter on his cheekbones. 

I thought, John and Peter Darling. 

I thought, I will never land 

if he does not want me to. 

But no boy notices his second shadow, 

not when there are skirmishes to win, 

hostages to take and hostages to rescue. 

AA

After my heart was traded as the spoils of war

and he stood in another boy’s window, 

I scrubbed my skin of its sparkling grit. 

I practiced my walk, bow-legged after flight, 

and I prayed for my beard to grow in.

Amanda Wolf

Rachel Prizer

Dance, dance, all visitors to Prague

until the snow under your feet turn

as firm as the sand in Vltava’s bank, 

and quit scrolling the daily feeds 

of your high-tech hamster’s cage

but try to read the many slogans 

along the walk of Charles bridge.  

AA

Dance, dance, all visitors to Prague

not until you stop mistaking fireworks 

for gunshots but smile at these ashes 

falling on your face, and replenish

your blood with more mulled wine,

so you see the nonsense of fitting in,

since you just pass by the museum 

of sex machine, since there is no in.  

AA

Dance, dance, all visitors to Prague 

wait until the circles of Polka bend 

your minds into the spiral shape  

of chimney cakes, then you will awake 

to live these ancient and stylish dreams:

Kafka’s metalic head out of order;

Orsino’s boots on top of Mozart’s plaque;

Antonio’s sword engaged in stage combat; 

a Chinese boy’s childhood is Pat & Mat;

and don’t miss 

Orpheus, now an old man out of grief, 

at sunset, plays his harp for the tourists at the castle’s gate;

Don Giovanni, now tired of the game,

strolls down the golden lane where his mistress used to stay.

AA

All visitors to Prague, dance, dance,

even if you check the time on the astronomical clock 

and know you have to say goodbye the very next day.

Yide (John) Cai

Kayla Barry

The body shop speakers lay lines of afropop 

over the clanging din around me, and I wish

(again) that you were here with your hands 

built for engines and your casual philosophy. 

AA

You’re in Miami now, with sunburnt forearms 

and backseat receipts for old vinyl records and 

my nail polish in your bathroom, accidentally 

left behind when I returned to Atlanta, where 

AA

skyscrapers scratch at the stars and my car doesn’t start. 

The AutoZone man says it’s just the battery but 

my Subaru looks dissected and I can hear her flatline. 

I miss your metal intestine terminology, the way 

AA

you kissed each part of me before piecing me together 

like I was one of your favorite junkyard drift cars.

Now I go solo, listening as the man lists jargon 

I don’t understand without your translation and

AA

eating fruit snacks with grimy fingers, 

their gummy sweetness overeager after 

the fresh fruit you bought me at a roadside stand 

as sweat dripped a crown across my hairline 

AA

and your car hummed in the numb Florida heat. 

The seatbelt tongue burned a welt into my hand after 

baking for hours on the blacktop while we lingered 

in the AC, learning the inner mechanics of each other. 

AA

This body shop is crowded with men and someone’s 

turned on ESPN so I step outside to stretch 

my folded-down limbs, and past the strip malls and 

college bars and Olympic Park I can almost see you. 

AA

Maybe the fruit snacks are gumming up 

my critical thinking skills, but if my Subaru 

wasn’t on the rack I’d drive the 13 hours 

back to you. I’d learn to parallel park 

AA

so our brake lights could share each other’s warmth, 

and I know my fingers are streaked with gasoline 

and dust and smell like artificial flavoring,

but we both know I’d still hold your hand.

Amanda Wolf

“How obfuse, this web before me;

Whereto, wherefore, spin I?“

Arachnid time whispered to me

Under the moon’s pale eye.

AA

“I know not where you spin,” said I,

“Nor from whence you once came;

“But lead me across your spindles,

“Various but selfsame,

AA

“And we shall find what can be found—

“Many curious things no doubt—;

“Therein lies your raison d’être,

“Or not: here is the route.”

AA

Starlight rained down upon our minds,

Revealing cosmic depths

And guiding us down celestial paths

With every twinkled breath.

AA

Dancing across these candescent tightropes,

We found at every turn

Endless unsearched-for rarities,

But naught that we could learn.

AA

“From void to void spin you,” said I,

“And how gay this spinning,

“Should be if you wondered no longer

“In your meandering:

AA

“‘Whereto, wherefore spin I?’ 

“But instead gave yourself

“To the emptiness that stretches

“Across this endless gulf.”

AA

And time, drunk with life’s dizziness,

Spun amok into the night,

Pirouetting across the void,

Finding there what one might.

AA

Thus is life: a gay vertigo;

And so spins on old time.

Going nowhere, it is ever,

And only, yours and mine.

Joshua Rubin

Catherine Minyard