Every poem I write opens with a parent. How else / do I bless the ones that birthed me?

We sit across from each other to play the game Othello.

In the house is a horse, or the house itself is a horse.

in the beginning there were no lines no markers of where & what belong to whom / or why

Still dark out when my father pulls / the trigger.

the mother circulates through Berlin’s arteries, / smacking through streets and bike lanes until a / DHL worker delivers her to my front door.

soundtrack: fall in love (remix), slum village / because it just might, / i dance like my life depends on it.

Mixed media artist Ellen Wiener on the featured art for issue 16.

I said goodbye to my father for the first and last time, after his death, in the quietest place in the United States.

He owns seven New Balance shoes, all rights / that have lost in this house their one-time partners.

Here, lens flare recalls the burn holes in her nightgown.

The problem with draining the world from your head / is what rushes in to take its place.

A little rasp in its throat whittled the exhaling air. The auk laid down at last / and stayed there, its breath / so quiet I didn’t know when / it gave way to a greater quiet.

I would like to tell you about my mother’s erratic heart, or share what I know of Las Patronas

so i keep renewing her favorite book / on our shared library card.