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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
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      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
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      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
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      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
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      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
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      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
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      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
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      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
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      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
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    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
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    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025

Matthew DeMarco & Faizan Syed

The Colonizer's Delusion


The meadow craves the sweet scent of skin where the morning
smolders, edging back as smoke carves the sun in two like an arrow.

I laid in wait for you. There was no need for weaponry. Only the hush
of snow protected you. But your vivid coat, the arch of your back speckled

with white, the gleam of your eye’s refracted light caressed my vision
as a pang of hunger stabbed my stomach. She, too, laid in wait:

Hard beads of sweat lined her forehead, drenched her blankets.
She asked me only for this, only to find you, whether on a meadow

grazing on the remnants of seeds scattered by unsoiled hands
or on a street frozen in awe & drunk on sweet heady light.

We scanned over every unctuous bubbling roiling your pots carefully.
Eagerly she devours - coarse fat, timid meat, gleaming gristle.

​

Metatherapy 


Somewhere in the ocean,
the water parts; a hole
spreads. And the tip
of a missile pushes
its way into the sky.

Somewhere in the gut
of the world, a bubble
pops; a shockwave
rattles core and crust.
And we tremble. We rock.

Somewhere behind
the ribs, a bubble
spreads; the blood
pops. And the face
of the father falls off.

Somewhere in the past
a boy turns off
the TV; the door
slams. His breath
reeks. And he punts
a body against the walls.

Somewhere in the needle
lies clots dislodged
by froth & bubbles. Pain
escapes. And a body
lies punted against the walls.

Somewhere in a rehab
a man takes off
his father’s face; eyes
unravel. A silence
settles. And a wall
lies still against punted bodies. 

​

​The Other Tongue 


This story starts with our girlhood
in summer. Mason jars and forests.
Bicycles and shotguns slung over
cartoon shoulders. Chewed straw,
sticky lips and sweat. Gibbous
moon hung; candle wax dried
over scales dyed in rainwater.
I watched her out the corner
stalk pitted streets before
she jumped the chainlink fence, skirt
flapping like moth wings. She found
me carving faces into wood, a weary fedora
framing wrinkled skin and gouged-
out eyeglasses, a pair of mouths
searching for eyes, a fish, a match-
box brimming with hooks.
My sense of humor was a bullet.
My apology was the same length
as my calico skirt. I could have held
her soft head with wool socks while
the fever flushed through her throat.
I should have shared her name, fused it
to my thighs, but where was the fun
in that? Better to foul our food.
Better to churn the butter of my body
into a creamy violet paste. Better
to make me crave loose vinegar, she said.
I watched an ocean of oil eat sparks
underneath the light of stars long dead
and engulf the silence the way candles
swallow darkness, islands of white flame
growing like newborn suns, my hands
& throat turning to smoke. A sweet
iguana’s tongue snuck between
the pebbles that lined our punch-drunk
makeshift road where it bled into
the beachhead. The soft glow of fireflies
crept into the night sky like dust
dancing in the last quiet light of a closing
crypt. I found her body anchored
by the tide. Reminiscences glittered: small
scraps of moon cleaving away the fog
as jagged metal corkscrewed through her tongue.







--
Matthew DeMarco lives in Chicago. His work has appeared on Poets.org and in Ghost City Review, Landfill, Sporklet, and elsewhere. Additional work is forthcoming from Glass and The Swamp. Poems that he wrote with Faizan Syed have appeared in Dogbird and They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing from Black Lawrence Press. He tweets sporadically from @M_DeMarco_Words. 
​
Faizan Syed, MD is a poet and psychiatrist based in Queens. He was awarded the Folger Adams Jr. Prize and the Graduating Poet’s Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Faizan's work has appeared in Montage Literary Arts Journal, MACE, Newtown Literary, & Empty Mirror, and is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Ave. One can find him on Instagram @drfaizansdreamery.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025