by Megan McDermott

You agonize over the list
of my must-haves: sex,
relationship, rings, the end
of weekly succession of birth control
patches smoothed onto body parts
(abdomen, butt cheek, upper arm,
back of shoulder), a point
in career conducive to maternity
leave, a home, a plan, a decision
to befriend things that can’t
be resolved, like fears
for a country or a planet.

Already there are so many dooms
you’d rather your hypothetical
children never know but no doom
defines like the prospect you
might only ever be a wisp
in a soul busied with other identities.
You’ve doomed me, you accuse.
To reside in the theoretical;
to mother longing instead of flesh;
to mother metaphors; to be one.

You beg: At least freeze
your eggs, do something.
And I tell you we have time,
cite my mother eight years
older at the time of our birth
than we are right now, though
at thirty-eight she’d already
had one child and sixteen years
if marriage. Still, I tell you
a lot can change in eight years.

Or nothing changes.
I’m sorry I wish more than plan.

In my own way, I am generous
if I keep you from your dream.
I’ll stay the one who loses while
you are kept safe from stakes
much higher than the grief
of what-ifs.

Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Western Massachusetts. Her first full-length poetry collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, came out this year from Fernwood Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks: Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel). Connect with her on Twitter @megmcdermott92 or at meganmcdermottpoet.com.

by Rodd Whelpley

Let’s destroy the children and drive the neighbors
nuts. Let’s falsify no subtlety. Consume
each other’s anger. Try every hobby,
eat keto, and when that doesn’t work,
let’s drink too much and laugh at common foes.
Let’s buy the season tickets, but never see
the stage. Skip all the anniversaries,
the birthdays, and the like. And for God’s sake
let’s stop smoking. Again. And yet again.
Quit haggling over a divorce like stylish
couples do. Let’s claim we’re always good, and lie
in church, and lie in bed and never parse
the difference. Let’s fight fair for what is love.
Let’s argue, so not one of us can win.

Drawn from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138 and Sondheim’s “The Little Things You Do Together”

Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have been nominated for The Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbooks include Catch as Kitsch Can (2018), The Last Bridge is Home (2021), and Whoever Said Love (2022). Blood Moon, Backyard Mountain (2023) is his first full-length collection. Find his work at RoddWhelpley.com. He is sheepishly still on twitter at @Roddwhelpley and on Facebook.

by Sara Aultman

You left the keys to my apartment next to
that spinal clementine rind, so

twisted in its amputated waltz by
fingers of someone else’s hunger and

abandoned the moment this
sharp citrus bit pink beneath the nail white, a

perfect spiral of the same glowing that
sunsets wore, but peeled thin—to acidic whispers.

Sara Aultman is a Seattle-based poet of liminal things whose work has been featured in The Fiery Scribe Review, Fahmidan Journal, Olney Magazine, HAD, as well as in the anthologies Black Stone / White Stone (Making the Machines that Destroy Us) and HELL IS REAL: A Midwest Gothic Anthology. She can be found on Twitter @TheSaraAult.

by Court Ludwick

CW: Bodily objectification and violence in a performance art setting.

I ask if you ever heard about that artist
who gave strangers a table filled with
love and violence, who without a cry or
twitch of muscle let men cut her hair
and skin for six hours, who let women weep
at the thought of a gun placed in her hand, who
made women cry only because they saw a victim
of violence bearing some slight resemblance
to their own dark hair and deep-set eyes and now
they fear the men they toss a leg over when it’s cold
at night. I ask if you ever heard about the woman
who gave strangers a table filled with warmth
and a flower that was wilting but lovely still,
who gave strangers a gun and let them curl
her own finger around the trigger, who trembled
not at the click that was coming but who flinched at the thought
of an untouched daisy.

You think, not long, say no.

Note: This poem references Serbian artist Marina Abramović’s Rhythm 0, a six-hour work of performance art which overtly dealt with themes related to consent, objectification of the body, and violence directed toward women.

Court Ludwick is a writer, artist, teacher, and PhD student at USD. She is the author of THESE STRANGE BODIES, a hybrid collection of essays, poems, and experimental works, forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2024. She is an associate poetry editor at South Dakota Review, as well as the founder and editor-in-chief of Broken Antler Magazine. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in West Trade Review, Full House Literary, New Note Poetry, Necessary Fiction, Jet Fuel Review, Oxford Magazine, Watershed Review, Sweet Tooth, and elsewhere. More of Court’s writing and art can be found on Instagram and Twitter @courtludwick, and on courtlud.com.