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POETRY

After All, I Promised to Read St. Augustine

Megan Neville

True nuns infuse their pious infidelity into
kettles of abortion tea for anyone in need.
My father set out to raise a strong (but not

too strong) girl & by now I’ve scrubbed the enamel
from my teeth. It’s all in the elbow, you see? For closure
I need to ask a friend if we ever opened each other up,

but I don’t want to rend muscles in his chest again.
Most subway dust is human skin, specks of us crammed
in crevices like the togetherness everyone craves

but few will inconvenience themselves with. Alone
before her curtainless window my neighbor watches
Wheel of Fortune & disrobes to pose for nudes.

I’m confusing concupiscence & cornucopia again &
might as well indulge. I’ve thieved at least
a dozen pears but none have led to any god.

Artwork by Weston Frazor

Weston Frazor is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art historical reference and appropriation to examine and recontextualize the use of visual narrative in art. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. You can find his work on his website: www.westonfrazor.com.
Megan Neville (she/her) is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), Cherry Tree, West Branch, Pleiades, Wildness, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. Her full-length poetry collection The Fallow will be published by Trio House Press in 2022. She is an editorial assistant for Split Lip Magazine, and you can find her on Twitter @MegNev.

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Michaela Brown is a Midwest transplant currently teaching English in Vigo, Spain. She is the first place recipient of the 2020 Marjorie Stover Short Story Prize and has previously been published in Unstamatic Magazine, Gone Lawn, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @mikienbrown.

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Originally from the DC area, Matthew Moniz has poems appearing in or forthcoming from The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Crab Orchard Review, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, and minnesota review. His work has been awarded Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest prize and the SCMLA Poetry Prize.

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Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai’i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025) and Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2025). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Arah edits at Surging Tide Magazine and is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.

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Emily Light is a poet, educator, and mother living in northern New Jersey. Her poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Salt Hill, Cherry Tree, Cumberland River Review, and RHINO, among others.

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