The Stonewood mall in the late-1980s had been a site of several aspirational misfires to fit in, be seen.

At the end of our fourth date, Amy and I have our first kiss. SEVENTEEN’s “Left / & Right” autoplays on YouTube in the background.

You can believe it or not, all of this / heartbreaking / drag

All she wanted was to look like all the other brown girls. They were everywhere, versions of the girl she’d prayed to look like in high school. Girls whose bodies and faces she craved. Girls she wished she could be. Girls her mom hated that she resembled.

On the eve of Phoenix’ 23rd birthday, we sing, all the / furniture pushed up against the balloon-adorned walls of / their living room, the New York kind, compact, quaint a / broker might say when he is trying to sell this fantasy.

I vaguely knew about Dua Lipa before I saw her in concert: pop star, Albanian, that hit single with Da Baby. Mostly I’d come to associate her with my friend Isaiah.

Singing always ended with a death in this house.

Love is an improbable / shaking / of hips / on a dancefloor called Nevertheless,

beneath the night’s embroidery, / hold me.

She worked in a supermarket before Showing women the way to the leeks, soaking the mop, affixing stickers to the cheeks of apples

a man gives just enough / to thunderous applause / and we made a statue/ of it.

Online Exclusive Poetry from Fargo Nissim Tbakhi

He left the door unlocked, in case I arrived before he got back from teaching. I thought I’d timed the drive from Durham to ensure an appearance well after school let out, but he didn’t answer when I knocked and it was quiet and dim in the apartment.

In Delaware Water Gap, I met a stranger I’d been looking for since Georgia. We both stayed the night in town, at a donation-based hostel in the basement of a church.

i open my hands & eat the bird inside the ball of light, the song of the bird of the devil burns a hole in my body & out of it a streak of feathers

His beard uncombed / as starlight. His crime couldn’t sing / without a tongue

I dream that Hoseok is my bus driver. We hightail a heist at the British Museum, returning stolen art to their rightful owners.

Miami Beach burns with the insatiable / ego of a galaxy, bright enough to refuse / admittance to any stars in the night sky.

Memoirist, editor extraordinaire, and dedicated literary citizen, it’s hard to miss Lilly Dancyger either out in the world or across the internet’s literary platforms

Not fossil not decay unfurls / A shining ladder and makes / Rescue all. In movies / Lets loose, tears off

I thought I was undesirable. Unlovable, sounding / Just like a Bachelor lead, with way less privilege, not / Kissing generically gorgeous ladies in Forever 21 gowns.