Selected Poems

STARFISH
Allen Brafman

FEMALE IMPERSONATOR
(for Sean Penn)
Karl Tierney

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ISSUE NUMBER FIVE

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ISSUE NUMBER SIX

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ISSUE NUMBER SEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER EIGHT

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ISSUE NUMBER NINE

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ISSUE NUMBER TEN

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ISSUE NUMBER ELEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER TWELVE

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ISSUE NUMBER THIRTEEN

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FUCK YOU

fuck your big brown eyes

fuck your long lashes, their soft flutter against my cheek

fuck the way you took my fingers into your mouth, your tongue’s
caress, the slightest touch kissing hot jolts up my arm

fuck you for holding me close when I whispered what I need,
how to touch me, so hard to say the words and I cried

fuck your broken life, your father crazy cross-eyed sleeping
it off in the shelter, your mother, her suicide heavy
on everything you do and I do

fuck you for your lies, your withholding information
so not to__hurt__ me

fuck you those nights you were busy, not saying her name

fuck you for rolling away into instant snores, knowing
I hadn’t come__fuck you, fuck you, for knowing, for knowing
for calculating for saying it was your way of__distancing

fuck your apologies and your tears and I took it in and I took
it in and I took it in

fuck you for Emily, for Julia, for Jessica, for Amanda

fuck you for leaving me taking your dick still warm from my body
and putting it into hers

fuck you for not telling me and the hurt, searing pain, the hurt,
sobs shaking my body into fetal positions, fuck you, fuck you,
fuck you, and the pain, and the poison, I’m not good enough, not
pretty enough, not smart enough, not hip enough__not__enough

fuck you

Hilary Melton