need
Written & Read by Dan Chung
good at fulfilling
needs but do they fulfill you?
options as duties
separation's ruse:
tender sweetness to return
home to our us-ness
time apart relished
precious precursor to join
reunited joy
jealousy: a fear
how can you lose what's not yours?
possess paradox
desire and loss
aversion to discomfort
risk all to gain all
trying is futile
cannot keep together what
doesn't want to stay
allow yourself truth
courage sprouts in that plowed field
tilled by acceptance
feel you are worthy
of love freedom happiness
despite what you think
Shadow Love
Written & Read by Rebecca Geiger
Come swim with me.
Under the full moon,
Under the bright stars above.
I love you.
Your hands on mine,
Your strong back over me.
I will draw you, then everyone will see
Your naked beauty.
Only now I see you, now I don’t
So quiet, like the wind,
You’re a whisper
Or white, a ghost
Only don’t go
Stay with me.
Leon Trotsky is now on Facebook
Written & read by Elana Seplow-Jolley
Comrade, you have memories to look back on today with Stalin
Would you like to share them on Facebook?
He’s scrubbed me from the photographs and to the right of Lenin there is always only a smudge—
a shadow shrugging off a shadow coat
a blur standing tall and proud
a patch of shade sitting beside brethren
Malkov, Rahja, Tomsky, Lashevich…
Before he learned to disappear my face
before he taught a country to look through my...
Collide Escape
Written by Derrick C Brown & read by David Trudo
Whatever you dropped in the dark
can be recovered in the morning.
We will find the turquoise ring
that clutched the mud and grass
as I ripped your costly jeans,
down to your soft calves.
The night rain, beading upon your skinny spine.
If you were drunk, I didn’t know.
You didn’t say anything stupid.
Your tongue was blossoming,
pronouncing your kiss, cleanly.
I was glad your breath was hot enough
to melt the night resin off of me.
I read my hands down your simple gospel
and I no longer need 34th Street miracles.
Are you sure you want this mess?
I am a submarine
full of gasoline
and you’re waterproof matches.
I am suspended in the cinema of that moment
next to the house
collapsing in the dirt
where I needed you.
Fathoms under fathoms,
that’s how heavy I laid upon you.
What are you to me?
You are more than on my side,
you are the weapon on my side.
Safety off.
Rest under the shadow of my gut.
Unsentimental kissing.
A gushing reveille for strangers becoming...
The Philosopher
Written by Edna St. Vincent Malay & read by Skye Cleary
And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?
And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?
I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?
Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,—
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?
No.
Written & read by Elana Seplow-Jolley
And then I take all the pieces, the loose ones coming apart off the fray
I sift them slow between my fingers and the table
small fractals of glass coming off to lodge
in the grooves of the wood where I have
placed my hands before.
And I lay my hands there over the pieces and I begin—
I slide them back and forth, back and
forth with no mind to the sting
until the faces are smoother
and less defined
the edges more
jagged a...
XXXVIII
Written by Tullia d'Aragona & read by Skye Cleary
I thought, fleeing my beloved Sun,
to diminish (O misery!) this constant fire
by seeking clear rivers and staying in the shadows
in the most leafy, the most lonely woods;
but the further away extend his shining rays
the stronger, hour by hour, grows my flame.
Who would believe that this flame
increases with distance from the sun?
And yet the further extends this divine ray,
the more it redoubles its fire.
It does me no good to haunt fountain or wood;
worthless in my pain are breezes, waves, and shade.
I no longer seek fresh breezes, waves, or shade,
for my blazing and fierce flame cannot be quenched in stream of wood;
always will I follow my beloved Sun,
for as a salamander lives anew in fire,
I love in joy, thanks to his divine ray.
Then why does it not illuminate me, the living ray,
wherever I go, in sunlight or in shadow?
With pleasure would I suffer such a sweet fire
and die content from its great flame.
But I do not hope (alas) to see the s...