Issue #67

Cade Smith

Unboxing Video of a Forty-Year-Old Promotional Gym Mat 

there are sorenesses in parts of me I forgot could ache
and I mean this in the most meaty, literal sense of
muscles I barely remembered I had and new, green-gold tension
just below my breastbone when I stretch up too far
because I forgot how and why I can’t do real sit-ups anymore,
I mean the way my hips crack in new and exciting ways that I know
are from stretching and slumping and his voice in my ear in equal measure,
a pull from behind my knee (instead of the joint for once) as glazed honey ham-
strings sing new hurts my body hasn’t yet filed away as background hum

Cade Smith (they/he) is a queer and disabled emerging artist, educator, and sometimes-poet. They hold an MA in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute. He is currently based on occupied Lenape and Merrick land (Long Island, NY).

Jordan Potter

Pictures of Saints

in bar windows
under business hours,
sunned to oblivion,

sat next to scratchers
and stamina pills,
tucked in truck visors

bearing down Cajon pass,
or raining, in pieces,
after the blast.

Saints painted on rockets,
bayoneted in fields,
or bent in back pockets

haloed by sweat.
Saints in red rooms
and casting couch sets,

shot through
with green arrows
in the back of a Dodge.

Or raised with young corpses
by outraged crowds,
garrisoned on doorways

of ruined houses.
Saints on great pennants
marched into battle,

worn in both allies’
and enemies’ sleeves
and plated in bibles

and bookmarked in penthouse
and sworn to, in earnest,
over cold prison counters.

Saints of the pervert,
the scion, the founder,
worshiped and lied to,

fired on and confessed,
saints in blue robes
with God fearing faces

taped to the skin
of the dictator’s chest.
Blazoned in purple,

bordered in gold,
frayed in the corners
of a mass produced soul,

saints in white temples
and agitprop posters,
saints still at the bar

standing in for a coaster.

Jordan Potter is an actor and writer from Huntington Beach.

E. Martin Pedersen

Bend It

Till it breaks
bend it till it breaks
grab both ends
slowly bend
keep bending
past the point of
this should be plenty
past this could be
dangerous
past the point of
ok, no, here goes
don’t be ruled by fear
don’t be prudent
keep bending
it’s about to snap
close tight your eyes
keep bending
what will happen next
it could be
enlightenment
or painful death
don’t be surprised
open your eyes
past the point of
no going back
only one outcome
come on, risk
you’re young
see what happens
better or worse
for heaven’s sake
bend it till it breaks.

E. Martin Pedersen, originally from San Francisco, has lived for over forty years in eastern Sicily, where he taught English at the local university. His poetry appeared most recently in Avatar Review, Canyon Voices, Slab, SurVision, and Helix Literary Magazine, among others. Martin is an alumnus of the Community of Writers.

Nat Raum

livewire

i don’t trust myself in the dark, electrified
limbs skating a surface of gravel and
sparkspitting into the chalky orange
of evening brume. this side of the equinox
breathes new fear into me with the same
sultry chill i coveted when i packed up
my fisherman sweater this summer—
the same chill that holds my arms, sternum
to fingertip, when my jaw and shoulders
coil like a crushed spring, compressing my
nerves as the ache jolts across the heavy
horizon lines of my skeleton.

nat raum (b. 1996) is a disabled artist, writer, and genderless disaster from Baltimore, MD. They’re a current MFA candidate, the editor-in-chief of fifth wheel press, and the author of you stupid slut (Dream Boy Book Club) and specter dust (Bullshit Lit), among others. Find them online: natraum.com/links.