Settling Accounts
By Jerry Lieblich
On the ground
it’s just
more water. This
is the edge
of the porch—
no language
is a clearing
house. No,
language is
a clearing house,
the corner where
the lawn begins
Thomas Jefferson
By Jessica Laser
I said I was a horse
because I like to be compelled.
You said it when you called
adulthood learning
to live according to your values.
Could you have a value
that says it is my value
to have values that do not conflict?
A horse just carries
obedience gracefully,
like that one choice you made
without deliberating.
Thomas Jefferson invented
the swivel chair, apparently
desiring to build all sides
of an argument into a piece
of furniture, and even if,
with that reading, I wouldn’t
at first agree, I could see
swiveling my way there.
I said I was a horse but
of course I was a chair.
And the chair I was is the horse
I will be, that’s how I get
all the legs I need.
Who hasn’t once or twice
said the wrong thing?
Who hasn’t said something right?
Sometimes the right words lag
behind you, and you are their horse
for a season, for a season
you are their transportation.
Edward Thomas
By Jessica Laser
Sometimes I read you for anger
To see in your face
The confines of a medium.
What wouldn’t I think
To be a thought in your head?
The youngest and most beautiful
Love no one, but still I love
Everyone I’ve loved.
“I love roads”
Unlike a governmental body,
Mine can be shot
In the street in the broad
Daylight of democracy.
I’d leave this country
But democracy loves me.
Invisalign
By Cleo Abramian
I brush my teeth with my thumb
like a good American
feeding you a cucumber
in bas-relief, it feels so good
to wear an updo to the yard sale
a lime green wrap dress
to my vows, I wake up
to the blooming harps
alarm, the crease
of a digital hand
I like it when
what to do
crepuscular wanting
sunset on my breasts
you’re gone, what
an erotic gesture
to leave
with your teeth
like a pile of cranes
at the party
my butt is a thick curd
I stand and shape
my cuticles
telepathically
I fear the highway
I fear biology, I want
a popsicle
I like it when
you move
me across a sown
field
& In the Baroque Night We Lie Down
By Cleo Abramian
My aunt misses her flight
she is too busy arranging her Tupperware
of kotlet along the windowsill of Terminal B
& when she hears her name on the loudspeaker
she just hears hey you & goes & turns on
her megachurch like a ceiling fan in the dark
like a pike in brackish weeds & she won’t
circumnavigate her bad tooth & when she
touches her forehead to the computer
she won’t say motherboard she’ll say
where Noah finally landed his ship
& with rollers in her hair say come sip
on this peeled cantaloupe Jana & I have
never been back to climb the mountain
& I have never used the word lacunae
without hearing Ofra Haza singing
Shecharchoret my skin was pale & like a wave
I watch it like a graph not the moment
when it crashes but when it begins to lose
its breath & in Yerevan they mail dried
honeydew & say where have you been
& in Isfahan they say it’s still too soon
& in the Powerball mashup the Christmas
spirals chirp and coo & in the motel
my felt box swallows every baptism
& in Tel Aviv in Tel Aviv I am sent
into the breakout room with the men
with the paranoid beards & we are touched
& we go out with our white tongues
I Love Juice, I Hate Almost Dying
By Peter Soucy
I have a friend named Guev
he lives in a house with a dirt patch
imprint of a swimming pool
his mom’s been dying for four years
she gave him kombucha starter
on his birthday, symbiotic organisms
growing in her memory
while my brother and his
girlfriend jumped into our emerald pool
with Guev, we played soccer
Guev kicked the ball so hard at my head I
passed out, fell into the water
I remember closing my eyes, everything turning dark
my friends saying, he’s out, but in my head
it felt like I was faking it
Woke up in my brother’s bed in our shared room
I was in the hospital for two days
now in my house, I shouldn’t get up
there was the girl from my poetry class
then she was my friend Guev, they explained
to me that they kicked a ball at my head
their gender dripping back-and-forth
I got up. The house was filled with orange light
like someone was about to commit murder
my brother told me I should join him next time
Guev’s mom was there in a wheelchair
Guev cried, why is this so hard, mom
she looked at him and told him to close
his eyes and feel his hand—really feel it
without touching it, just feel it was there
then his foot in the same way
he did this for an hour
his body produced green ribbons
ribbons ran around his blue eyes
every inch of his body, he froze
on the living room couch for three days
I tried to catch his tears in my
kombucha jar, his mom looked at him thrashing
he nearly fell off the couch, she took
his head in her hands, it’s so hard
because you’re still gonna be here
but you can feel me in the ribbons
from your blue eyes, when you see
the sunlight shine through the front
window, the cat stretching out