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Featuring work from Valerie Wetlaufer, Jordan Sanderson, Kirk Pinho, Jill Crammond, P.J. Williams, Bill Neumire, Carolyn Hembree, Marie Gauthier, Elizabeth Onusko, Tim Staley, Jenn Monroe, Sarah Freligh, Caroline Tanski, Kara Dorris, Jason Primm, Leyna Krow, Jeanine Deibel, Alex Yuschik, Christina Collins, Christopher Beard, Jane Loechler, Rachel Custer, Jakob Valammeren, Alyse Knorr, Meg Cowen, Cameron Cox, Lori Mosley, Gregory Lawless, TM De Vos, Shanan Ballam, Brad Efford, Justin Runge, and Laurel Hunt
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from Good Advice
by Kirk Pinho
Make promises you can’t keep. Dust. Let me finish. Eat offal
once and swallow your vowels with a bottle of whiskey. Say I’ll
drink to that regularly, but only when you’re older.
The water circles the shark, not the other way around. Thank
them later. Things aren’t nearly as bad as they seem
sometimes. The avant guardian angel in soft Italian loafers
might tremble like democracy, but bear it no mind. Yard-bird
can oar the breakwater and the river will give you something
called solace. Take its hand tight.
It’s not like there’s a good way to tell your mother about
birthday party or the keg. You could try writing an exquisite
corpse poem in Braille then translating it into Morse code. I’ll
show you how. See who’s laughing then. Me and me only,
probably.
Watch the mercurial junipers do the mamba in the gale, you,
little King or Queen of Southpaws. Your kingdoms are ready.
Frisk everyone and everything suspicious. Ask them their
lineage.
They will lead you astray.
___
Like the negative side
by Kara Doris
of a film strip, nights of small survivals
& small sacrifices bleeding through until
you can’t tell one from the other.
Until guessing at ghosts is the only thing
left. I know, I hear the moans,
giving birth to litters on the air, I hear
the coyotes taking what they think
is theirs. I hear the protest, the mediation
between mother & country: take
this one,
not those two.
burntdistrict 