Here where we still exist

By Allie Olvera

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In the basement of my mother’s house
lives a generation of baby teeth.
Sets that once grew in her body, too,
back when we were hers.

The old bits of us live jumbled inside an Altoids tin;
bleeding molars we twisted out before they were ready,
then tucked sweetly under pillows.
I don’t know where my sisters end and I begin.

Waves tear at the sandcastle.
Relationships sour,
memories tarnish,
but our enamel sits unchanged.

These teeth will go must go somewhere
when she dies and the house is sold.
Time turned me into a
burden for a family not yet known.

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Allie Olvera is a writer and educator living in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her writing has appeared in Trash Cat Lit and other publications. Find more at allieolvera.com. @allie.olvera

grey for flowers

 By Erin Shields

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in my dream i was a
scholarship girl wearing
a perfume of tulip smoke
and pale glories and heart.
i drank boiling coffee
and thick grace and
liquid inspiration from a
thermos of moroccan pink.

out in the garden was a
circle of tea lights and a comb.
why a comb? i kept thinking this.

time turned me into a
house of hydrangea wearing
a heather hued honour ribbon
and velvet confetti and a bird —
a pulse that i could touch.
i soon lost interest in the comb
and in questions and, for the first
time, i dreamt without wanting.

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Erin Shields is a poet on the mountain. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at West Virginia University, where she also teaches first-year composition. Her poetry lives in The Hemlock Journal, Tough Poets Review, The Michigan City Review of Books, and others. @erinlshields

Soot Years

By India Moore

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There’s nobody around for miles
except the red mud writhing out back,

the live oak where the sparrow once sang
and my love pressed into my side body

Holding me with practiced tenderness
snaggletoothed charmer, angel reading

three books in one sitting
I want to tell her of the years before,

the long, dense ones that were blue
as the sea and tasted of soot

the years spent hoping for what I wanted
and getting nothing in return

when loneliness was not an ache
but a pulse that I could touch

because it lived between my bones.

If you want it, you have to ask for it she says

And it’s true, so I tell her what I want

and she gives it back to me achingly

for hours, for miles
there is no one but us

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India Moore is a lesbian poet, fiction writer, and fibre arts enthusiast from the South. She writes stories of Black girlhood, family, grief and love. India lives in Chicago and calls North Carolina home. @india.anyai