kingsoftrain

M; Margo is a person who writes and resides in Cleveland, Ohio. Their books include Pennine Hillsongs (The Haunted Mask II) [Ghost City Press, 2018], yr yr [Ghost City Press, 2017], and Blueberry Lemonade [Bottlecap Press, 2015].

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washington, lincoln, lafayette

it is the beginning of the summer
& everywhere feels too hot
the ice cream truck circles its usual route
with a lonesome echo
its jingle keeps asking
“hello?”
as if to beg for the attention of this tired city
the kids are tired & the kids’ hands are exhausted
the sno-cones are desperate to melt
melting over sweaty fingers
or melting over thirsty tongues
mixing with either saliva or cement
bare toes burning on black roads
my next-door neighbors turn on the radio
& fill up the inflatable pool
the ice cream truck drives around until it no longer exists
& then all of us look…

Victoria Nordlund received her MALS from Wesleyan University. She is a 2018 Best of the Net Nominee whose work is published in PANK Magazine, Coffin Bell, Gone Lawn, Ghost Proposal, Amaryllis, Philosophical Idiot, and other journals. She lives in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

~*~

Memento Mori

I
Queen Victoria had a baby tooth brooch and bracelet
made with the first milk teeth of her brood.
Clean white polished pieces set with gold.
Delicate relics formed to mourn nine childhoods

long since passed.

II
After my mom died, I found
my primary collection in a copper box
with a lock from my first cut–
The initial trimmings before I realized

everything falls.

Strange to hold my baby teeth–Bits of me
Yellow/tiny/ broken/blood/brown/ kernels/
wrangled from their roots. Felt the gaps again.
And with each little loss

came the promise of permanent ones.

III
I ordered a silver keepsake bracelet with mom’s ashes–
Heavy…

Hal Y. Zhang is a tinkerer of things. She is online at halyzhang.com.

)

Sievelike

The lump on the back of my skull is not
draining and I fancied it might sprout flowers,
nice-smelling ones if I’m lucky, a narcissus

bulb stitching delicate white interlace and the smallest
yellow trumpets. I’d need a hat to shade it from the
sun, perhaps a crocodile funerary mesh for good

omens, and when the well-meaners pry I’ll break into
tears, saving them on the menisci of my nails to
sprinkle over the long finger leaves at my earliest

convenience. Are you glistening, I’d subvocalize
to my lovely parasite, who already knows how to
ask for more by straining its fine net of roots

through my important parts.

(

Aytan Laleh is a twenty-one-year-old writer based in Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review and is forthcoming with Riggwelter Press and Picaroon Poetry. She writes under a pseudonym and tweets at @AytanLaleh.

~

Child of Four

There is the sound of her laughter,
Purer than an image of oxblood,
She jumps from ship to ship, embarking on a
Journey to no-man’s-land.
She has a biscuit in her hand
Which drops, to make her squeal,
The grains stuck to her lips with epoxy,
Her lips the colour of rose-pink blush,
Her eyes emblems of dark times ahead,

But this child of four does not need to worry.
She is the sun that laboriously stays in place,
Her labour a work of easiness,
Never to set, rise or make a move,
She is the vapour not formed,
The lioness without a womb,
She is paint, red and yellow,