Daniel Yasko was born in rural Michigan before moving to Pittsburgh, PA at the age of 6. While bouncing around from state to state during his teenage years, he began to write to document his experiences. In his poetry he tells his story of homelessness, drug abuse, sex, falling in love, stints in rehabs and state run psych wards, loss, adventure and friendship. Drawing upon raw emotion, he explores the mixture of tragedy, elation and humor found in life’s less than clear path. He is currently working on his first book, “Dyings Not That Bad I Tried it Once in Pittsburgh.” Reach him via email for questions, comments or just a random conversation at danielpicklepoetry@gmail.
Cameron Barnett holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, and teaches middle school at Falk Laboratory School in Oakland. He’s an editor for Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, and a board member for The Bridge Series. His recent work has appeared in The Florida Review, The Minnesota Review, Rattle, and IDK Magazine. His first collection, The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water (Autumn House Press) was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Cameron’s work explores the complexity of race and the body for a black man in today’s America. Find out more about him at cameronbarnett.net…
As I sit here
Writing you my friend
Its storming
With the ferocity
Of an Old Testament god
Oh how it’s storming!
The air has a chill to it
That reminds me of home
So I’m missing those dirty streets
And our aimless wandering
To find the next thing
That made us feel alive
I’m missing the days we spent
Where our only goal
Wa…
I’ve been feeling less canvas and more easel. It’s been
so hard to feel full of anything anymore. I eat only
to realize I am being eaten. I am guilty on thirty-two counts
of teeth collecting nothing but welfare and plaque. First
my bite, then my bark, so tell me what now have you
come for? I wish for you a misdemeanor of memories
so arresting the clench of wrists behind back stops
your heart. But you keep on beating. You keep on—
you keep on keeping space for space’s sake, or
birthright, and I’ve been feeling like a clock of bones
clacking beneath the dirt; I’ve been feeling like lumber
fish-scaled from fire; I’ve been feeling like fire as
I watch you drop cream into coffee to cut its strength
and grin me down into the blackest grounds. I wish
that was the end of it. I wish for you a toilet with no
drain, or a fuck-you-poem that keeps fucking you
up the way a lie fills a body with heli…



Sketches + Paintings by Emma Eaton
View more of her work @gba412
This building is known
As Dagget Street
It’s where we call home
It’s where we smoke crack
And sing along to old punk records
Until we wake the homeless
Sleeping in the stairwells
Its where the pitbulls
Are barely held back by their chains
Snapping as we walk by
Its where the graffiti writers
Have come and gone
Leaving their mark for us to find
It’s where they find b…
Molecular Flux
Lovers with soft lips
exit without warning
washed away in summer rain
But their passions
are organic
alive within us
until the final
breath
Honored Voices
I came up on welfare
so I write for the poor
the drywallers
the retail clerks
the ditch diggers
The voices
no one hears
are heard…




Sketches + Paintings by Emma Eaton
View more of her work @gba412
I’m the degenerate you love to hate,
the unclean sinner who won’t toe the line.
You ridicule my independence at dinner parties,
among similarly dressed cronies,
the institutionalized prisoners
of prestige.
Hate us all, the degenerates.
Scorn the indie musician on the sidewalk.
He colors the dull march of the khakis.
Despise the painter in welfare housing.
She strokes thick lines of anguish
onto uncomfortable canvases.
Taunt the quiet poet at the…