Gnashing Teeth Publishing

| words that get in your teeth

Unspooling by Kelli Lage

silk skirts can be sown with red blood of frayed edges / kitchens can be clean but oranges in ceramic fruit bowls rot / wallpaper melts and stains hands / carpal bones slit closets / I’m waiting for this house to howl / but it only blinks at the dark / no matter how much medicine coats my tongue / living rooms are always boiling over / decorate a for sale sign with dead ladybugs / crack headstone shaped windows open / park coffee in an urn / and shape ruins into a still from an 80s cult classic

Bio: Kelli Lage is a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine and Best of the Net nominated poet. Her debut full-length poetry collection, Early Cuts, is forthcoming summer 2023 with Kelsay Books. Her poetry chapbook, I’m Glad We Did This, is forthcoming fall 2023 with Prolific Pulse Press. Lage’s work has appeared in Stanchion Zine, Maudlin House, The Lumiere Review, Welter Journal, and elsewhere. Website: www.KelliLage.com.

Goodnight, Taj Mahal by Andre Peltier

Deep below earth, clay and sand, deep below roots and aquifers, it lies in wait. Like that silent coyote stalking her white-tailed deer through the brush, it waits patiently and

contain by Megan Cartwright

verb past tense: contained; past participle: contained 1. have or hold (someone or something) within. Similar: hold carry To have and to hold in our own microcosm, constructed of hope.

Listening to Words by Mona Mehas

Listening to words out of touch cross lily pads, one to the next my rules, a tiny picture frame debt of honor, repay the gift. Headlights illuminate the path listening

Blooming by Elizabeth Gade

Some days are easy and some days are exhausting the days you have to dig through the muck inside take more hits than a heavyweight prize fighter cling to life

Pomegranate Rose by Laura Peña

I want to feed this delicacy To my concubine A tiny spoonful at a time I want to watch the luscious sorbet Linger on the tip of her tongue Melt

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