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POETRY

& I Cringe Every Time I Hear the Word ‘Womb’

Megan Neville

To yearn is the sharpest feeling, or is it

to hope? Either way, he fucks as though

he’s trying to climb inside my body. To hide

there like he never wanted to be in his

own in the first place, like he wants

to get back to his mother. I have always

been suspicious of men who cup assured

hands on my belly, willing it to swell with

what’s theirs. I can’t mate in captivity.

My hands sting & itch. With forehead to

glass I remember three floors is enough

to kill you, but eight is survivable if you have

your mother’s flesh to absorb the force.

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Weston Frazor is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art historical reference and appropriation to examine and recontextualize the use of visual narrative in art.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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Issue 17

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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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MY GRANDMOTHER AFTER KOREA

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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