The bald kind. The rat teeth kind.
Is it sad to sleep all that much
or is it nothing?

A pretty boy in pomade forever
with a pretty girl agog?
A boy by the ocean
all Ferris wheel and hair?
No.

The black felt kind against
more black felt.
The scissors kind, the paper kind.
The kind who transports
all that dirt.
Everyone on the ship is dead,
and that's just fine with you.

Recreational, too, in a way limited to ourselves 
and to dolphins, also politicized and—trigger warning—
weaponized, criminalized, bought and sold,
begun, ended, interrupted. An olden-days 
euphemism for genitals, a girl on the playground
in the third grade whispering why she doesn’t
ever want to marry. We sent you the photos,
didn’t you get them? Workers, education, addict,
industry, guide. Suffixes: -y, -uality, -ist, -ism, 
in order of best to worst. Same, safe, hot, rough. 
Where should we begin? Two boys in a car, 

Turgid overview of the lovely, fragile, spine-snapping, political, furious, elliptical, rich poems in the issue?

Abandoned. 

In lieu, these scavenged lines serve as the DB18’s teaser. As ever, I’m humbled by the range of poems I’m privileged to read as editor, and in love with the perennial conversation and confusion about what justifies a poem.

Welcome to Nicholas Wong, our new Assistant Editor, and thanks to Andrea Henchey for her excellent work curating previous issues. And thanks, most of all, to you, readers, the most important part of Drunken Boat.