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. . .

3.2 | from "Someting In the Way" by Sarah Layden

. . . According to the Internet, the celebrity
grows something inside herself. She won’t say
whether it’s a fetus or cancer. Or a fake
fetus. Or fake cancer. The talk show host
sighs and deadpans, “It’s always something.”

Of course he’s wrong. It’s something else.

3.3 | from "Mathmatics, Gallbladders, and Sticking Your Babies in the Mail" by Calvin Mills

Allow the failure to be housed in a small unimportant organ inside you—one you can live without. A tonsil or appendix would be my first choice, but many of you may already be sans these superfluous organs. Then what? Okay, I know what you’re considering, but let’s not lose our fertility over this.

3.4 | from "Avalanche" by Gregory Lawless

I knew a guy once
who died, and came back
as a planetary ring
somewhere in the space-boonies.
He’s still mostly dust.
And when he sends
letters home they just burn up
in the atmosphere...

4.1 | from "Love Terns" by Sean Patrick Hill

There is no love like theirs.
They couple, I’m told,
for life.

They build no nest
but balance eggs in palms ...

4.2 | from "On the Disappearance of Bees, Spring 2009" by Colin Pope

... You want something that
in its being can display more
than one emotion and that one
emotion not to be rage
pointed at the world it thinks
it owns with a little finger ...

4.3 | From "An Interview with Poet Brian Turner"

... [W]hen I was in Iraq (2003-2004) death became a much more living presence within every moment. I emphasize every. Words like “tragedy” simply don’t survey, or encompass, the gravity and depth of what’s being lost. Language is an incomplete vehicle for this kind of loss. But, for me, poetry is about as close as I can get to it.

4.4 | From "How to be a Ballroom Regular"

The worries of your common life have released you for the night.

The cat vomit you left next to the couch; your sometimes-boyfriend, who left a message on your machine while you blotted your lipstick with a credit card bill; your goal to become editor of the trite features section of the newspaper and still be a contributor to world peace, etc.; gone, all of it.