By Zhengyang Tang To flee, or to look, or only to listen? Baku, its nose curling round the iron cage. From afar, a shrillness thick with ears, noses, and throats. Like the smile you choose for New Year, corners of your mouth grow ever more dazzling. Flesh-zippers split open long, pale torsos, the knives jerking, spewing waves of reek and brine—in the air, red water worms’ carnival. Breathe now; loosen your billions of warm, damp alveoli. May you have eyes ringed like Satu

By Sean Patrick Mulroy He wasn’t in the car— not even in the trunk— and when I looked inside the kitchen cabinets there wasn’t anything but rat poison and cereal. I searched the closet twice, turned out the pockets of your pants, and ran my hands between your winter coats. I could have sworn I saw him cowering beneath your desk— but no. I thought he might be outside watching through the window, so I pulled the curtains down and then I pulled the carpet up

By Malcolm Drysdale Humans equipped lacking existence wait patiently for the miracle promised for themselves to happen Brothers sisters fathers mothers Uncertain in this age of reason The TV flickers in the ante natal ward as if in warning of life to come Yielding to misgivings the future too appears in spasm as nature strives for birth each morning Cutting across this valley side I caught my thoughts from falling Only the sea ahead after all the shoreline adept at change The