I often feel overwhelmed and utterly unequipped to deal with my problems; yet, looking back, I can see that I’ve completed many challenges I previously considered insurmountable. I used to struggle to draw stick figures – now, I have Lydia.

And, like the flowers on her face, I am always growing. 

Energy is chemical and physical and spiritual and ineffable. It makes you take action.

Energy is breakthrough, breakup; violent and/or loving; energy is ghost.

Next month, we are looking at poison. Submissions are due October 25th.

Love,

 billy lezra 
Editor-in-Chief

2 years later

(excerpt)

 journey wade-hak 

And then I’m driving away for the last time, and there’s gospel blues playing, but it doesn’t really matter. And it hasn’t quite hit me yet because I’m numb to all the years we shared, a third of my life, depending on how you look at it. But now I am out of your equation; there is someone else.

I stick to drinking and flirting, and telling really, really bad jokes. I don’t ever want to be seen again and I certainly don’t want to be alone. I get a spot with an old friend, and start fresh.

Every conversation feels like birds chirping at one another. We trade sounds for feelings, constantly, and everything feels empty and transactional and gross.

Where is the intimacy? Where are the fingers and toes I used to feel the world with?

golden hour glare 

(excerpt)

 euna bonovich 

I felt    you
early in the morning
trying to hold   on
to the body I stay in.

Remember looking at
me:
Gold underneath your
eyes when the sun looks
through our window,
blue moves across your
neck as stars follow us,

looking at me,
is all you do now.

living in violence

(excerpt)
 joy robinson 

I am violent because I came into a violent world, violently. When my mom was eight months pregnant, my older brother dove into a dumpster and cut his cheek with a jagged shard of metal. My mom took one look at the blood and went into labor.

My first breath was violent; the cord wrapped around my neck stunted my growth. Everyone is aggressive when you’re a short black woman. I started fighting at four. I’d watch my father hit my mother and my mother hit my brothers.

I’ve cussed out over 3,000 people, daring them to talk shit just so I could punch them in the mouth. So nonviolence is not my fairytale because my life is violent so I am violent. I live violently. I love violently.

But I also know what love is. I know what peace is; I know how to protect it.

My peace is in my home; my peace is in my children; my peace is in my lover. But I make sure my children fear me. I’m the little voice in their heads that reminds them that there will be consequences when they fuck up. Because you’re supposed to grow up knowing that someone is always watching.

But they know I love them. And that’s what matters.

how to fall out of love with a ghost

 noemi rose 

demand its name
this usually terrifies them
giving you a moment to glimpse them
coming into focus requires taking a form
becoming visible
they like this, they like to play hide and seek me
oops you peeped me    now I am seen
now I am not

hold a mirror up to your ghost
if they turn to admire themselves
their body
their garment
this ghost might be caught
and a caught ghost reveals it’s mortal

invite the ghost to swim
if the ghost tries to cover
its flimsy nature
in the substance of all your love
you’ve been flinging like mud
onto its face
you’ll realize you’ve frightened a ghost
note this

terrors can be terrified

put pepper lavender and rosemary on your tongue
tell the ghost everything
the fragrance and the sting.