0.1 | from "44H" Heather K. Hummel:

There’s no way to disagree with the yumminess of something, especially if that something is the color of “whipped berry.”

1.1 | from "Phone" by Sally Albiso:

She swallowed her cell phone,
choked as it pressed on her larynx,

shoved there by her boyfriend
to still the tongue’s smug muscle. . .

1.2 | from "Premature Regrets" by Adina Kay:

Sara says, mamikah, tell me, what’s new in your private life?

1.3 | from "Dove Meat" by Eileen Malone:

She talks about the dove meat
in this special Adriatic gravy
the last one warbled “I’m sorry”
and she said “I don’t mean it”
going ahead, slicing its throat
so the blood spurted cleanly. . .

1.4 | from "Six Eggs and Grace" by Joel James Davis:

Mr. Jones’s fame made people give a holy crap about what he looked like with his insides on the outside.

1.5 | from "Clearcut" by Alice Derry:

A man and a woman can love each other
so much it would be impossible

to unravel what they have together,
the threads not just woven,

but matted...

2.1 | from "Bureaucracy of Trees" by Colie Hoffman:

Now is the perfect moment
To quit my job
And begin work as a tree.
That's the life:
Roots twisting nude in damp dirt,
No clean-up, no apology. . .

2.2 | from "A Little Fever" by Kristy Bowen:

In the glass factory, the space behind
her body is warm, chambered

like a heart. All wires and threaded light.
Her mind a railcar sideways on a track...

2.3 | from "Rue" by Kit Kennedy:

how my finger recoils
from a drop of juice
almost imperceptible the cut . . .

2.4 | from "Fugue State" by Ben Russell:

In my hand I’m holding
a can of tuna in aisle five
when the lights go out.
No one is moving. . .

2.5 | from "On Appearance" by Nicholas Ripatrazone:

When are a man’s shorts too short? The knee is an arbitrary, yet time-honored barrier. Anything lower feigns youth, and anything higher is feminine, because there is nothing less masculine than a thigh.

2.6 | from "The First Lovefall" by Corey Mesler

We all went outside.
Love was gathering in puddles
in the declivities of the parish lawn.
It was the first lovefall
and some of us thought we knew how
it would end. Some of
us were optimistic suddenly...

3.1 | from "Jellyfish" by Sarah J. Sloat

There are rooms underwater
we can't imagine, pellucid rooms
we'll never penetrate, gelid
chambers, fastened by lashes
to the tide. Dark sharpens
their sparkle, a trance of staircases
and chandeliers that traipse
and sway as those on ships
drawn far from shore. . .