The Monster Is Familiar by Emily Anne Hopkins

The page: a body
is this, a body is that.
The threat: internal

and opaque. This might mean
the girl is external to everything.
Mirrors double the quick

movement. Impossible pleasure—
to picture her own closed eyes.
A mask of lack: the nose missing

petersburg, virginia / 1964 by Cantrice Janelle Penn

You’re a Wanker, No. 9 by Katherine Frain

Letting my Lover Insert my Tampon by Monalisa Maione

You have not left a reachable
surface on my body untouched, so why not?

I’m tired of the daily, hourly, monthly self-plunge
you, wearing your sympathy.

In the shower you run a hand
inside my thigh, print red on the wall.

2 Poems by Shakeema Smalls

rape kit

“(The hung juror) said no one was hurt and that it would be different if the victim were found in the river with her throat slit,” (Morgan Myers, Sun Gazette, November 6th, 2013)

FIND:

hysterectomy, or
annulment
camel toe. menthols.
kool moe dee sweatshirt
lap scarf
cover charge for The Scars He Left On Your Uterus.
1 nite. lost lighter.
the, ”Guide to Negro Phonetics for Public Defenders.”

Toward the Body by Simone Savannah

I can’t stop looking at children
I keep picking them up and imagining they are mine
Their noses, their fingers, the way the little girl’s eyes
have taken the shape of chocolate almonds.
If her name is Aniyah or Olivia, I know God is fucking with me.
I pick her up and want to kiss her, but just tickle her arms
so her mother doesn’t think I’m lonely or begging—

2 Poems by Emily Corwin

tantrum

at first, this terrible mirror, gutted. it is thinking of taking me.
at midnight, screaming illness, I fill a particular dark. I rustle, I
thrash—a girl loose in the bramble, getting wretched, smashing
up a glass syringe. how to return this rage, how it circles endless
—like bruise, like stone too black. I get hurt in you, becoming
skeleton. my ruffles everywhere, wilting.

2 Poems by Casey Moir

Content Warning: physical and sexual abuse. Please practice self-care.

2 Poems by María Cristina Hall

Saeta

Dejad la ventana abierta

So I can hear the city’s
guts. The mechanical exhale
of vented wind.

Dejad la ventana abierta

And every night I will decide
whether to give that hoarse-voiced
cat a slice of ham, or let him
keep rattling his coin-cup.

2 Poems by Milo Gallagher

Becoming April Third

I keep thinking I must be patient this spring,
patient with the changing days that smell like bonfire,

a wild Halloween wind. April is all contradiction,
moss and sap and hormones,

dogwood blossoms, the clamor of wasps.
I can learn from this month. April takes its time

letting us know how it’s going to be.
April bursts at the seams, puts on some gaudy colors:

ruby giants, flame azalea. A drama queen
whirling into sudden storms.