COMFORT FOODS // Sik Fan – Kimi Canete

In my earliest memories, I am eating Chinese food. My great-aunt’s house in the suburbs outside Boston is split-level and her mother, my great-grandmother, lives in the lower level. You enter through the front door onto a landing between the two halves of the house, and if you walk downstairs, her kitchen will be directly in front of you.

TWO POEMS – Chloe Hanks

I remember the shape of the word rainbow
on her puckered mouth, how we sounded
it out from my bedroom window.

ONE POEM – John Dorroh

How did a barrel-chested man learn
this magic? Softened like golden butter
in a dizzy aftermath, he did too many wars perhaps.

ONE POEM – Morgan Boyer

Rain upon me your turbulent tales of locker-side loves,
the gossip of girls whose braces still encase their molars

ONE POEM – Alex Stolis

because there’s no way he would ever find it,
being interested only in dinner/work/breakfast
/work/sex on demand/sleep/work.

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Seven

So next time you feel so anxious that you can hardly unlock the door,
remember that the world holds your feet

TWO POEMS – KG Newman

First day of the World Series,
autumn hanging on, each tree
seeing who can keep from
being a skeleton the longest

ONE POEM – Emilie Delcourt

one bright red strawberry on the strawberry plant

mist still low, tangled in the branches of olive trees

the way the pomegranates hang low
with the burden of their own weight