typo

by Nicholas Barnes

god, poetry is embarrassing. this electron microscope shows every pore, each curling scar. and jesus, how humiliating. this brittle life of decay. this rhino skin i’m in. i wake in a fevered sweat in the middle of the night. flipping through the waterlogged photo album in my head. the frames are overexposed. everybody’s heat lamp eyes are lab rat red. the night wasps pay me a wellness check. forcing my head into the horse trough of remembrance. my shadow halves tango through turbid pools like charcoal seahorses. unveiling the flawed misfit parts that make me gallop. the mechanisms that keep my stupid heart bloody. the corroding cogs that keep my greedy veins full. but a throbbing aorta is not a flaw. a baby face is not a flaw, crow’s feet either. they’re the pitch that salves the bitten bark. some mornings i open my eyes and think i’d be better off joining the dead. then i realize how boring they are. they don’t have anything left to say. so it’s one sunrise, then two, then three reminding me i’m here again. another day picking myself apart. wishing i could be smaller. small enough to be invisible to the eye. another set of embargoes on the peace and love i insist for others. all i grant myself are these words in purple ink. these sheaves of loose freckled paper. the evidence i was here. that i tried to live as something more than just a mistake.

The Wilderness

by Irakli Mirzashvili

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Nicholas Barnes is a poet living in Portland, Oregon, whose work has appeared in over seventy publications, including trampset, Juked, and Cola Literary Review. His debut chapbook, Restland, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025.

Irakli Mirzashvili grew up in a family of visual artists in Tbilisi, country of Georgia, and enjoys working in oil pastels, creating collages, and photography. His artwork has been exhibited in the United States and Georgia. His art has been published in The Adroit Journal, Camas Magazine, New Delta Review, Ponder Review, Sheepshead Review, Peatsmoke Journal, and Phoebe, and it is upcoming in The Writer’s Foundry Review. After living in rural Alaska, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and the great plains of Kansas, Irakli resides in the Austin, Texas, area. He earned degrees in political science and law.