Addy | Jessica Standifird (Rich)

"She closed her eyes, opened up her mommombox in her head. She saw Mom-mom’s voice and turned it into steam, like when Grandma was boiling spaghetti noodles..."

The Ugly Sweatshirt | Megan Savage

"We divvy up the shirts while your body is still there in the room. The hospice worker helps us. We need to know what you should wear when your body is sent away to the place where bodies go..."

Variations on Three Fables by Aesop | Lillie Franks

"One winter the grasshopper came to the anthill and begged for food. The ants refused for personal reasons, and that was their affair. The grasshopper decided to grow weaker and die, alone, in the cold, and that was its affair..."

Joy | Samantha Fain

"a limbless thing, / a flushed pink tube / that bristles & grows / symmetrical, / that wiggles rings / around your heart / & drums around, / but dim. & in the rain / joy arrives—"

Flying Fox | Kristi Maxwell

The beautiful outlaw, a lipogram that does not use the letters in the subject’s name (in this case, the name of an endangered species) explores what happens when what is endangered is instead absent—gone.

Selected Poems | Alex Behr

"The body is the skin with the new spit across it... The pacifier: to shove something in a (child’s) mouth / and hope nothing will come out..."