The Body by O. Darcy

The body moralised.
The body politicised.
The body pathologized.

The Burning Bush by Tiffany Firebaugh

Love drearily calls out the wrong names
but I always remember yours.

The healer cautions that there is a difference
between the pain of injury and the pain of something leaving
that should go

Selfie with Nostalgia and Optimism by Lisa Summe

I fantasize, as we say goodnight
in your driveway, that we won’t
get used to anything, won’t take
each other’s company at breakfast
for granted, won’t become a pattern,
one that runs as regular
as the blood circulating our veins,
won’t become tallies in each other’s bedposts,

2 Poems by Melissa Atkinson Mercer

Come let us enter the body

All your bones are women, my mother said, a scaffolding of ghosts.

Could I be inevitable, the sum of your first confessions?

Godmother of the wild orchid: teach me to riot,
to light long candles in the rusted trees, in the cadavers of my saints.

Matriarch of departure: be my tongue, my steady guide,

2 Poems by Bailey Pittenger

Garlic Powder

Before the apocalypse, every man will passive aggressively talk to every woman who wouldn’t date him about Madame Bovary.

And every man will lose control of his bowels and slide in his own shit like a slug. Every man will wiggle and bend in either pain or constipation.

Before the apocalypse, every man will pray for a heaven. Every man will call to his dead mother for forgiveness.

And every man will lose his sight. Every man will evolve an acute sense of smell. Every man will look for his mother by following the scent of garlic powder.

Getting Mary Out of the Way by Natalie Solmer

So, maybe Mary met Joseph at reggae night
in a small basement bar and maybe Joseph
was an exceptional dancer, an athlete with arthritis.

Could it have been? Joseph was a Jamaican immigrant—
balding and spiritual, not religious. And maybe Mary
sold flowers at the grocery store and perhaps

when she went home and prayed at her altar,
she lit a pink candle called Manifest A Miracle,
and shuffled her tarot cards. Would you believe

Mary refused to marry Joseph when he asked?
Maybe Jesus was their second son. Maybe this Joseph’s
father was in fact a carpenter, but he himself

installed cable. What if Mary caught Joseph cheating
by finding condoms and receipts? Maybe Mary moved
out and received food stamps. Sorrow, sorrow, we all know

I Know the Radio Is On by Jenna Cardinale

A Vigil by Michael L. Counter Jr.

BROWN DISABILITY or by Keith J. Castillo

here is
your body,

brown,
chronic pain dancing on joints,

an exercise in screaming
made physical

here is your soul,
a cardboard cutout
decorated with stars,
sliced through with matches
waiting to be set aflame

Inside Jokes by Emily K. Michael

A long draped table hosts five blind guests, two microphones, one moderator:
a last supper strewn with free pencils, insufficient paper, and clear water glasses.

In reaching for the only microphone that still works my partner threatens
to send his decorous goblet tinkling to the floor – its thousand shards

a dark promise for the paws of our assembled guide dogs. A second swipe
for the mic brings the glass an inch from peril, so he hands it to me.