“If they murder you,
it’s personal.
You fist back with
emotions, reasoning and strategy.

If they murder a group of you,
it’s impersonal. They thirst for
resources. You carry secrets from the deepest
cabinet,
metaphor in blood and

moonlighting.”

“Originally, the zoo was built to remind us
of our separation from nature.

There was no animal in the cage, just earth.

This reminds me
of Tony’s mom’s suburban lawn
in Madison, Wisconsin

overflowing with
native prairie grass
and signs from the city that read
’I am not insane.’”

“I had faith in people

the way Earth has Moon

the way a cat’s named Kitty

the way god trusts me to know sin

and self-punish 

perhaps the limits of my erotic imagination are boring and predictable

but I will die grateful

for the adolescence I got to have offline

that pines sometimes obscured the view 

was entirely the point”

*
Tyler Brewington is from Boise, Idaho. You can reach him at bylertrewington@gmail.com.

“9:25 AM and the sky is a Grape Long Drink
on ice and all the pollinators are dead

hand in hand with me. I’m allergic
to everything that happens. What will I

put on now, what pulses in the temples,
the wrists? I clench myself beside my fist

but nothing is as hard as
the world, not really.”

***

Tytti Heikkinen is a Finnish poet. She is the author of three poetry collections in Finland and a collection in the USA, The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal (Action Books 2010, translated by Niina Pollari). Her work has been featured in literary magazines in France, Italy, Canada, the USA, and Finland, where she has received literary prizes for her short stories, among others. In 2023, she was awarded the second prize in the 9th international Singapore Poetry Contest, judged by poet Jim Pascual Agustin.

Niina Pollari is a poet and Finnish translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Path of Totality (Soft Skull 2022) and Dead Horse (Birds, LLC 2015), as well as the co-author of the split chapbook Total Mood Killer (Tiger Bee Press 2017).

“I don’t care about beautiful sentences. I don’t care about
beauty for beauty’s sake. I don’t care about surface, or
affect. I don’t care about talent. When I was an artist, all I
wanted was a website.”

***

Molly Ledbetter lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in Changes Press, b l u s h lit, and Iterant. FLOUNDER is her first chapbook.

“Someone’s left a sunflower sticking out
of the drain of the sink so broken even
the junkyard’s rejected it outside the fences

I am beautiful though I know it only rarely”

***

Chase Berggrun is a trans woman poet and educator and the author of R E D (Birds, LLC, 2018). Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New York City. 

A series of 7 limited edition chapbooks, with titles from Chase Berggrun, Tyler Brewington, Chia-Lun Chang, Tytti Heikkinen (translated by Niina Pollari), Harmony Holiday, Molly Ledbetter, and Chessy Normile. All 7 are available for $50, or chapbooks may be purchased individually for $10 each.