Heidi Kasa
Heidi Kasa is the author of the fiction chapbook Split (Monday Night Press, 2022). Her flash fiction collection The Beginners won the 2023 Digging Press Chapbook Contest, and is forthcoming in 2025. Her work has been a finalist for a Black Lawrence Press award and shortlisted for a Fractured Lit award. Kasa’s writing has appeared in many anthologies and journals, and is often at the intersection of reality and imagination. Kasa works as an editor, makes small print runs of handmade artist books, and designs necklaces. She lives in Austin. See more at www.heidikasa.com.
The following work is Copyright © 2024, and owned by Heidi Kasa and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
When I Write I Feel Close to You and When I Write I Feel You Close (cento)
you don’t belong
in this vicinity, too close1
to my scratch sting kill laugh2
as subtle as fibers of light3
everything and nothing
are synonymous when4
a liquid golden octopus5
rushes to mind and mirror,
all eye and spirit breathing6
living on each word
I’d rather be
guided like a thread7
by another way of seeing,
a backward-and-forward-at-once8
all of it disclosed
by the stars and the silence9
not needing a name for
I am what you see10
living in between the rules
that other people make11
I breathe at the heart
of a punctuation that revives a generation:12
If the thirst for love is not
the thirst for death, what is it?13
your energy zooming toward me
and it’s a taste on our tongues
making me think with what balm can I
soothe these burning lips? The blood14
no longer responds15 so let me
pierce words with my pointed tongue16
1 Roxane Carter, “17.4 in Beyond This Point Are Monsters”
2 Joyce Mansour, “Untitled: I like to play with little things…”
3 Rumi, “Sexual Urgency, What a Woman’s Laughter Can Do, and the Nature of True Virility”
4 William Carlos Williams, “To Have Done Nothing”
5 Joyce Mansour, “Untitled: A liquid golden octopus…”
6 Rumi, “Sexual Urgency, What a Woman’s Laughter Can Do, and the Nature of True Virility”
7 Roxane Carter, “22.5 in Beyond This Point Are Monsters”
8 Rumi, “Emptiness”
9 June Jordan, “Poem About My Rights”
10 Ai, “Capture”
11 Ai, “James Dean”
12 Nicole Brossard, “The Silence of the Hibiscus”
13 Ai, “Last Seen”
14 Yosano Akiko, “Tanka: with what balm…”
15 Nicole Brossard, “Key West Poems”
16 Joyce Mansour, “Untitled: Let me love you…”
Son of a Gun
is my son
the gun
or
is your son
the gun
or
if we load all mothers
do they become guns
or
did we all suck
the teats of guns
are we all
bright guns or bright bright suns
or
are you the gun
please can you tell me
is the gun
you
Nicole Adabunu
Nicole Adabunu is an MFA Poetry graduate from The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is a 2024 Cave Canem Fellow, and her work has been published by Writer’s Digest, The Academy of American Poets, The Drift, and elsewhere. Visit her on the web here.
The following work is Copyright © 2024, and owned by Nicole Adabunu and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
teeth
in front of boys a shirt is of little help. i learn
this at nine. my face comes alive with face
when told i’m terrifying. got no idea
how much that means to me i always reply. so easy
to hard. the boy from across the counter. or the father
he’s leaning against. tall shadows in an unlit alley.
you all look the same at midnight.
the first boy i called a bitch begged me to.
corporate crack light through office window
type boy. i’d just turned eighteen & he found me
online, water down his bare chest, wading.
during our sessions i’d call him bitch and he’d
say again and he never once touched me. i am
only as alive as a stranger’s mercy. a wife alone
in a robe doing the math. will my life ever
be beautiful. i hold myself the way jesus
gripped the table, scanning the landscape
of hunger. all my boys stand at attention. then run
into radio silence. the temporary pause
between i and sent. an image unlucky.
does it still count if he never. he’s already
putting his shoes on. he’ll be here in ten.
bones arched like flowers
after alejandra pizarnik
in the middle of a rain storm i take my neighbor’s dog
for a walk, as promised. i’d just been laid off
and i needed the money, and who doesn’t love
sending Black girls into sharpened water.
she watches me attach the leash.
goodmorning ma’am is working from home
today, per the echo of her pinned fingers. her dog
suffers from dementia, cannot hold a sit
without his legs sliding from under
him, bites when his memory brackets.
on our walk he leans against me like a better
ghost. i want breathing to stay
away from me. this can’t be unlearned.
and the dog, just himself, no talk of selfish
for letting the ache reach his eyes. am i lucky
that guilt isn’t flexible? perhaps this is all
i ever was, considering the audience before
the room, because nurse beth can’t live without me,
because she cuffed me to the hospital bed to book
mark the animal, my face into the hot bowl
of her neck, five unsupervised minutes.
the dog mistakes another dog for something nearer.
sometimes dying gets distracted. the wind slants
the rain until it burns, until we’re glossy
at the traffic light. i could stand this
in my sleep.
Victoria Melekian
Victoria Melekian writes poetry, stories, and once wrote a novella-in-flash that was a runner up for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. She won the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize, placed second in the Medmic Summer Poetry contest, and was the third-place winner in last year’s Poetry Super Highway contest. She’s been nominated for both Best of the Net Awards and the Pushcart Prize. She gardens, makes quilts, and hangs out with family. She lives with her husband in Carlsbad, California.
The following work is Copyright © 2024, and owned by Victoria Melekian and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Katie Asks Why Not Be Optimistic
Listen, Katie, hope is not that easy.
Humanity is a collision of red and blue
chaos, a giant slop of disharmony
that’s killing us and the planet. You can’t
just order up a box of hope and be an optimist
by noon tomorrow—you’ve got to create your own.
I learned from the experts:
I sat out front and watched Jack
shoot hoops in the driveway, over and over
and over till he had nineteen in a row, one
more than yesterday. Gracie and I picked
dandelion puffs and blew them into the breeze,
fingers crossed they’ll root in the grass.
Let’s fill the yard, Grandma, grow wishes
for everyone. All afternoon, we seeded
our future: yellow flowers and fluffy white
globes stretched across a wide green lawn
under a bright chrysanthemum sun.
Colleen, Say Yes
There’s always something
beckoning from the dark path.
Yesterday it was a crow—glossy,
sassy, swooped in and took
the three-day old hatchling
leaving a shredded nest
and no more doves, no more
fluttering wings under the eaves.
You can get lost in the quiet.
And yet. Orange butterflies
dazzle the yard, morning glories
twine their way through thickets
of wild rose, and the very old dog,
still here, asks for dinner.
White word puffs drift across
the afternoon sky: “Marry me,
Colleen,” and I’m hoping Colleen,
whoever she is, says yes.
