skater boy sighs so loudly I can hear it // kyra jee
from clear across the street. as for me, i am getting
used to calling myself insane
from clear across the street. as for me, i am getting
used to calling myself insane—it makes it
easier, actually being insane: like looking down seeing
the hole in the boat, a live salmon sticking
its notorious head into the crack before switching back
into the river, & myself realizing: oh that’s
why my ankles are wet. it’s not good
news; but if we waited to tell each other good things
then we’d never learn anything about anyone.
these days i am fuchsia with june
delusion, & only sometimes feeling
like a person. right after dinner
is usually ok, after the weather
has put itself away again. ever since it
happened, the stars have started to list & slide. jupiter’s
sprawling, saturn is spinning out—& don’t even
get me started on mars. or maybe it’s just the heat
of summer, lewd & docile in turns, that makes me
feel like less of a person. a person’s got to
work at that, i guess. so i do. on my list of things
to do this week, i have: mount the portrait
of edgar over the mantle; phone a new
dentist; figure out how cheetahs differ
from jaguars; make brownies. list
the good things that happened today.
here’s one:
after our friend comes back
from the future, the three of us sit by the pool,
surrounded on many sides by doors.
watching the new fence get put in,
as if the HOA isn’t leaving that gate open
ten hours a day just to get around the construction.
hey skater boy, what kind of sigh was that? i think
we might’ve had a few good things to say
to each other. for example, one thing i learned
this summer is that if you just stay put long
enough to count the calls of three or four
local birds in one go—sit on hot concrete with your
knees up & pluck out a pattern or two from the deluge
of war-cries & weather reports—that good feeling, it
probably won’t last all day; it’s not very durable.
but
so long as you’re sitting there, it is
a good feeling. warm, usually. unambitious,
dozing. & if you ever wanted to,
you could even be a bird yourself!
you see, it doesn’t matter how insane a bird is,
or if it does not feel very much like a bird today.
there is very little anyone can do
to make a bird stop being a bird. to make a bird
feel like less
of a bird.
Kyra Jee is a Chinese-American poet from California. Her work has been published in Orion's Belt; Harbor Review; Scribendi, for which it received the Western Regional Honors Council Award for Poetry; The Allegheny Review; and elsewhere. One of the greatest writerly decisions she has ever made (so far, at least) was serving on the editorial board of a lit mag—she hopes to do so again someday.
TWO POEMS // Z.T. CORLEY
Can we meet somewhere outside of the erotic and the pornographic,
in a homeland of the mind, at a ramshackle gas station in South Carolina
Asexual Love Poem
after Diane Seuss
Can we meet somewhere outside of the erotic and the pornographic,
in a homeland of the mind, at a ramshackle gas station in South Carolina,
in the gap between James Baldwin’s teeth, under the dead tree in the backyard,
behind an abandoned cathedral, in a nation within a nation, at the mouth
of a river, on the border between the lands of the living and the dead,
in the prologue of an unfinished novel, in the throat of a wood thrush,
in a stranger’s house where we pose nude together for Deana Lawson,
beneath a cloud of blackbirds, under the influence of longing, in a black-
and-white short film where we both die in the end, in a country of feeling,
against the trunk of a pear tree, where the Devil refuses to beat his wife?
What It’s Like to be a Black Girl in the South
after Patricia Smith
It’s hunting for tadpoles
but being afraid of frogs. It’s waking early
and wearing white and praising the Lord
in the morning dark. It’s hotcombs
sizzling on the bathroom sink
and the possibility of being burned.
It’s being a grandma’s girl.
It’s bacon in the collard greens
and eating pig’s feet. It’s blowing away
the dandelion’s white afro
and always wishing for a puppy.
It’s being blue-black and nappy-headed
and happy to be alive. It’s South Carolina
as a way of seeing*. It’s the Old Testament God
and mamas who sleep all day.
It’s being your daddy’s afterthought.
It’s always being a little girl
standing outside your mama’s closed door,
even when you’re a grown woman.
* This line is a riff on a statement British-Ghanian Lynette Yiadom-Boakye once made in an interview about her art: “Ghana is present as a way of seeing.”
Z. T. Corley is an M.F.A. Candidate at Georgia College & State University. She is a reader for Callaloo and Sontag Mag, a recipient of the 2026 AWP Intro Journal Awards, and has been nominated for the Best New Poets Anthology. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Revolute, Callaloo, Kawandi Magazine, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a poetry collection.
one in vermilion // lindsay mcleod
I've modified the memories and
dismantled the wants who once
beckoned with heavy eyelids and
loosened the vowels in my mouth.
I've modified the memories and
dismantled the wants who once
beckoned with heavy eyelids and
loosened the vowels in my mouth.
I have tried to forget the damage
that brought my wrists unstitched
leaving time and again not nearly
enough petal to balance the thorn.
The stagger of recollection persists.
This is why, where once I was
caked in courage, I now straighten
the rearing horses from my hair.
Lindsay McLeod's poetry can be found online easily enough and appears most recently in AS IT OUGHT TO BE, BACKCHANNELS, and CACTI FUR. Lindsay lives by the Port in South Australia with his blue cattle dog, Mary.
JELLYFISH // PJ CARMICHAEL
Watching the waves crash onto the
sandy shore. A broken beach umbrella blown
over by the breeze.
Watching the waves crash onto the
sandy shore. A broken beach umbrella blown
over by the breeze. Swatting at a green-
head buzzing around our legs. Pointing out a large
piece of driftwood, the remnants of a fallen tree
shaped by the sea. A smooth, silvery cylinder with
gnarled and knotted limbs (what once were its roots
and branches). The tall dunes casting shadows
on a weathered fence made of wood slats and
wire. Scaffolding seen next to a house with big
new windows, the tags still stuck on the huge glass
panes. Seaside living. The greenhead returns; we
shoo it away again. Overheard conversations:
vacation plans, weddings, college days, and the
personalities of close friends. The sun in my
eyes as I adjust the chair. Seagulls roaming the
land for any food left behind, forgotten snacks and
unattended sandwiches. Couples carrying coolers
and blankets back to their vehicles as the sun
takes its time setting. Dipping our feet in the
water, a wall of blue building up before stretch-
ing to our toes. The warm embrace of dry sand.
Breathing in deep, salty air entering the lungs.
We walk the stretch of shoreline, our footprints
erased at regular intervals by the rising tide.
Passing by vacant towels, families resting beneath
canopies, fishing poles anchored in the ground.
Strewn along the ocean’s edge, the fleshy remains
of jellyfish - glossy, translucent, shining in the
evening light
PJ Carmichael is a writer, artist, lover, and dreamer living in the seaside town of Beverly, Massachusetts. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, biking, and time spent outdoors. PJ loves his friends, family, and the feeling of summer sunshine. His writing has appeared in the Boston Hassle, Vagabond City, and elsewhere.
ARS EROTICA OR (A CUP ON A STRING) // MILES SIMON
He makes me little scarves for my ankles
they flap at the wind like hermes’ boots
One day I asked him never to touch me again
He makes me little scarves for my ankles
they flap at the wind like hermes’ boots
One day I asked him never to touch me again
He dragged a whole pine tree upstairs
for me, sap scratched into the wall
he spent weeks processing it
sawing and chiseling,
We sit for dinner,
chicken and flowers,
I get so close to taking the whole thing back
for months
all it would take is I can hardly feel anything that isn’t you
he excuses himself and the whirring sounds resume
He cuts long winding arms out of the pine’s stomach
and soaks them in wet cloth every day
soak and bend, soak and bend
so they can curve around the hallway’s corners
running under the rug like wires
down the hallway
from his workshop to my room.
He calls me upstairs to show me his progress:
I stand in the doorway to my room while he runs into his workshop.
From that workshop (where he sleeps now)
he pulls one thing and cranks another
and those long winding pine arms
extend out from under the rug, three of them.
They crawl blindly up the door
fumble with the knob
three thumbs
constricting with all their might
they pull tight under the rug like tendons raising in a wrist
and finally, turn it!
See?! See?!
the arms slide limp against the door
unpuppeted
as a chair screeches down the hall
he runs to me
but I hear the footsteps slow outside my room
as he remembers what I’ve asked
never again
his shadow almost kisses my feet
for a while he breathes
out of sight
Before he can finish the machine, the world catches up to us.
His mother leaves her famous chicken noodle soup
on medium overnight
to ash
somehow,
she chases away the fire department in her nightgown
but she can’t live alone anymore
so she moves in with us
a sheet goes over the machine,
even I forget about it for a while,
though each morning I step a little higher
than I’d need to
to not trip over the arms under the hallway rug.
He gets sick, as she dies.
Then she dies, and he’s still sick.
He makes it through work
gets home and just lays there
propped up in front of the tv
breathing through his oxygen mask
To save us
my addition to the machine isn’t nearly as
craftsmanly
I take thirty feet of string
(run it under my door and his door)
attach my end to a cup
and attach his end to the cup he’s already wearing around his mouth,
the oxygen mask,
and when I hold my cup to my ear
I hear hi darling and breathing
breathing
hear his throat peeling away,
that night I fall asleep to his workshop whirring
for the first time in so long
I’m reading,
feet tucked between the couch cushions,
wiggling them cozy
when I hear lips buzzing
the cup I rigged in the living room
come it’s done to your room it’s done
so I get into bed and wait.
I open my eyes to the door creaking open
dark
the machine ducks under the door frame
and the room fills with architecture
it walks now
stilted on the nubs of its pine arms
knees and elbows—dozens of them
it trails string behind it like a wedding veil
a wooden arm burrows into the gap between
my neck and the pillow,
And goes down my spine like a rolling pin
tenderly, like he can feel through it,
like he can collect
the sound
knocked from each vertebrae
in a cup at the end of a string
put it to his ear
and drink
when one rolling pin arm gets to my shoulders
another sneaks behind my head
rolls the same path
another, another
and by the time the first one rolls down to my calves
I am being lifted
the sheets slide down off me,
silk hangs from my feet
until I curl my toes and the sheets drop
in a deflating pile on the bed beneath me
higher I rise
as the conveyor belt of rolling pins continues their rhythm
down my back
The machine positions itself over me like a canopy
places four legs at the corners of the bed
something cranks
ker-chunk
and a cup on a string drops from a compartment above me
dangling,
I’ve heard oxygen masks will do that
on frightened airplanes.
I take the cup to my ear:
he asks me to help him
with my clothes.
No other words come through the cup
but one hand keeps it to my ear
to hear his breathing
as my other hand braces against
the leg of the machine I’ve decided to use
as a headboard
something to push against
as I make myself naked
I look up at the asymmetry of the machine
compartments droop
heavy with years of ideas
of how to touch me
martyr me
A compartment opens and
tiny whittled figurines jump out
they rappel down their strings
to land on my bare chest
One trips on a rib, and another points and laughs
(he does little nonsense voices for
them through the cup in my ear)
The ridiculed figurine sulks off down my stomach
it takes out a tiny wooden block and begins to read
her toes are just notches in her feet
she tucks those feet
into my bellybutton
the way I’ve tucked mine
into the couch cushions
for years.
she wiggles her toes cozy
that unique umbilical feeling
I am a lover no more
I am a stage
I am gaia
The figures bow, and
pull back into their compartment
I release the cup from my ear,
swaying on its string next to my head
I would hear if he spoke, but
no
there’s only breath from both of us
he leaves me to my silence
A wheel cranks, and squeaks
and through the door
carried into reach:
half a glass of water
with a smudge
Miles Simon is a writer based in Philly.
colophon // will cordeiro
I perch in a swayback chair
out on my porch, beaming
at the smear of stars above.
I perch in a swayback chair
out on my porch, beaming
at the smear of stars above.
They burn a void into my eyes.
A crookedness not in the air
but in the very grain of me,
anxiety I churn like butter.
Little riots back the brain.
I don’t know one damn thing.
Aimlessly I seek to understand
these words I’m rearranging,
an offering to otherness. No
end of secrets in the dark
woods. Match flare, lightning
bug—little spitfire suffering
its fug, its fleeting lit-up flicker
of consciousness. Brash spark.
A chorus of obscurer moods
descends. Soon, April blossoms
in its shapeless fecundation.
Things capable of quickening
thickening the plot until it veers
off course. I’ll take whatever
I scavenge from the bargain bins.
Each tidbit in this backlot of
mockups destined to be chewed
over and tossed aside. Existence
toggles, squirms, as more profuse
than the boxes we’d stuff it in.
Order’s the borders you make up,
putting labels on the rot and guff,
abducing theorems from each shard.
The world beyond this one’s not
a myth. It’s right beside—inside
you, if only you were able to see
its sharp eviscerating splendor bare,
or feel its texture wreck you, hard.
One fair sunset might just end you.
Only assorted fables will endure.
You live today, another day, a day
tipped over, then the produce
hits the cutting board.
Will Cordeiro has work published in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Pleiades, Quarterly West, and The Threepenny Review. Will is the author of Trap Street (Able Muse, 2021) and Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024), as well as coauthor of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024) and, forthcoming, The New Foundations of Creative Writing (Bloomsbury, 2027). Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.
WHAT PRISON CHANGES // ACE BOGGESS
When I went in, women I knew were cat people;
at my release, each of them owned a dog.
When I went in, women I knew were cat people;
at my release, each of them owned a dog.
Before: video stores—a Blockbuster on every corner.
After: silent films among empty shelves.
As the deputy clasped shackles on my wrists,
I had a wife, a house, a city. No one
would publish my books without a rap sheet;
now, my list of crimes earns invitations.
I can’t get over the thing about cats & dogs.
The best friend of my best friend remains an enemy.
What happened to all the cats?
In five years, in that interim, an extinction.
Ace Boggess is author of eight books of poetry, most recently Tell Us How to Live (Fernwood Press, 2025), and the short-story collection Always One Mistake (Running Wild Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes, watches Criterion films, and tries to stay out of trouble.
a ballad for my best friend // Hayden Armos
deranged, I asked if you would come
with me into the pink abyss.
you said, it doesn’t matter what color the abyss is.
instead, let's say the abyss was a tunnel.
from judge Todd Robinson: “a ballad for my best friend” cartwheels on a knife’s edge for forty sublime lines, innocence grappling with experience, sense with sensibility, delight with torment. It’s such a nimble and inviting poem, rich in charms and vexed with harms. The sound and sense here! Each verb a plosion, the momentum relentless as the tenderness. I would give much to write a poem this sweet and salty, this luminous and lonely. The poet constantly swerves, yet strikes their target with an unerring eye. This is serious play; this is joyful work.
for M
1.
deranged, I asked if you would come
with me into the pink abyss.
you said, it doesn’t matter what color the abyss is.
instead, let's say the abyss was a tunnel.
train tracks lined the tunnel—the downward pitch of it.
graffiti swarmed the walls. laughing, you said,
let's race, and you threw off your shoes.
together, we somersaulted down
that hysterical kaleidoscope of nonautonomy.
afterward, like little kids,
we made up stories about what we saw.
for you it was: shame, shame, shame.
I said, me too.
2.
and, because you had me feeling sentimental,
I also told you about the horse I met—how at first
she was shy inside her luminous coat.
from the edge, she observed me falling
and burning, all meteorite-like
and ablated.
what I had become: a bright red ache.
the horse came to me then,
and as she unteased me from the wreckage,
the song of my heartbeat
against her bones was full and sweet.
you see, I had just one thing
left to give the horse.
I gave her rivers and rivers of it.
3.
one day, when I am old and gone,
you will remind me of the California poppies
waving us on with their caution orange,
the rolling hills flashing
green in our teeth. and I will tell you
of the anadromous fish—
how, against all odds, an alewife
swims ten miles upstream
to die in the same place it was born.
you will say, that's so me, and
I will nod, strumming my June guitar,
watching as fireflies punctuate
the black sky with their light.
Hayden Armos (he/they) originally hails from an island in the heart of the Pacific Northwest's Puget Sound. After graduating from college, he settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently lives with his ex-roommates’ two cats and works at a youth services nonprofit. His poetry explores intimacy, attention, wonder, and grief. You can read more in Gigantic Sequins, Salt Hill Journal, Press Pause Press, and Lost Pilots Lit. Instagram: @harmosarmos
Pretend // Tricia Knoll
Let’s play spaceship in this generously decorated refrigerator box which pretends to guard against heat, meteors, and news flashes about dead friends.
from judge Todd Robinson: “Pretend” is as capacious and possibility-dazzled as the decorated refrigerator box it describes. The warmth of its invitation lowers a reader’s defenses, hurtles them through imaginal realms and hallucinatory terrain rich in visual sweets and psychic threats. In the wobble of space, the wonder of world-grit, the necessary palliative of friendship, this poem expertly braids possibility with reality, deft details with lightsome rhymes. Read it and be renewed.
Let’s play spaceship in this generously decorated refrigerator box, which pretends to guard against heat, meteors, and news flashes about dead friends. We crave escape. You wear your green frog hat; I drape my shoulders in my cape of Haida design. Let’s paint our fingernails black and sit cross-legged on purple pillows. Leave Earth singing wheels on the bus as if we are children. Fortify our lunch box with poppy-seed cake for a coffee break. Let me captain our ship for the first leg, where we jettison the thruster rocket of my obsession with today’s disheveled floods and fires and your dismay at your family’s betrayal. You take over when we wave to the moon, view earth war-torn, swirling with hyperstorms, a green of promise, blue of forgiveness. I don’t know how long it takes until we decide to turn back. We can’t be gone forever. My head rests on your shoulder, along with cake crumbs on your shirt. You hold my thumb until you guide our glide home, release the parachute for a soft landing in a heaving sea. To reawaken to wind on our skin. A pretend that mends. With the help of a friend.
Tricia Knoll’s The Unknown Daughter was a finalist in the 2025 New England Poetry Club chapbook contest. More than 300 of her poems appear in journals and and nine collections, full-length or chapbook. Wild Apples (Fernwood Press) details downsizing and moving 3,000 miles from Oregon to Vermont. After 18 years of working with free verse, she is now writing mostly prose poems. Fernwood Press will publish her full-length poetry book, Gathering Marbles, in July 2027. Knoll serves as a Contributing Editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com
Homespun // Molly Quinn
“They’ve done it again, those bastards,”
I grumble to him of the greed growing in our small town,
choking out the loveliness that used to flourish here.
“They’ve done it again, those bastards,”
I grumble to him of the greed growing in our small town,
choking out the loveliness that used to flourish here.
He listens and slices a tomato to the rhythm of my rant,
red and ripe and freshly plucked from someone else’s garden
(a neighbor or a friend from work, perhaps).
His careful fingers plate the uneven pieces
then sprinkle them with pepper and salt.
He thoughtfully places the dish between us
without a word.
I look at him and he gives a nod—
a final beat to my tirade.
We feast in silence on the summer fruit
as if we were gods devouring ambrosia.
Such a small gesture to share a
simple plate of sliced tomato, homespun
hints of earth and sun within
its tender flesh, yet in this quiet moment
the whole world, all of it, is a tomato–
garden grown and given to me
Molly Quinn is a poet and incurable romantic. She lives in a town snuggled within the Ozark Mountains, where she works as a librarian. In her off time, she enjoys reading, writing, and finding meaning in the mundane.
The Shoemaker Finch That Does Not Exist // Les Bares
The serrated edge of a leaf on a beech tree
saws holes in the breeze, spins whirlpools
of air from its pointed tip.
It seems to be trying to tell me something
as it goes about its business being a leaf.
The serrated edge of a leaf on a beech tree
saws holes in the breeze, spins whirlpools
of air from its pointed tip.
It seems to be trying to tell me something
as it goes about its business being a leaf.
I populate the tree with a shoemaker finch,
a bird with hints of orange under its wing joint.
A bird I have apparently invented
as the internet tells me there is no such thing.
This cobbler bird hatched somewhere
in my fantasy flits invisible on wind currents
stirred by the knifelike edge of a leaf.
The tree itself is real, or I hope it still is
there on the shore of Lake Ontario.
I remember it, grand, with all its proclamations
of love carved into its silver bark.
The shoemaker finch, which does not exist,
warbles its buzzy slur, blessing young lovers
kissing beneath the beech tree. Their ardor
going extinct before it can be engraved
in the bark, before it too can ever be named.
All the while, the turbulence of a beech leaf
is sawing holes in what never existed,
or what is invisible to the naked eye.
Les Bares lives in Richmond, Virginia. He was the winner of the University of Virginia 2023 Meridian Journal Short Prose Prize and the 2018 Princemere Poetry Prize. His work has or will appear in The Midwest Review, The New York Quarterly, Spillway, the Irish Journal Southword, the English Magazine Stand, and other journals.
The Sundered Seams // Michael McIrvin
The man, considering without cease
how his world will soon be split to atoms, takes
the hand of his boy, who just asked if God
is in this gold-lit meadow among seedheads
heavy and swaying
For Eli and Jesse
Suffering is alchemy, change is God...
- Marilyn Chin
The man, considering without cease
how his world will soon be split to atoms, takes
the hand of his boy, who just asked if God
is in this gold-lit meadow among seedheads
heavy and swaying, insects turning light
to sound as aspen leaves shimmy, birds
singing under blue and intangible white, the day
turning down through every shade of heaven.
The child reaches to be carried and is asleep
before his head hits the man’s shoulder.
The child who will one day ask that his world
be mended, every wounded atom sewn
back together by a magical seamstress,
her thread made of sunlight and bee buzz
and the slightest breeze.
The child whose younger brother, not yet old
enough for these mountains, will someday ask
the same question after waking from a dream-
rescue of younger children assaulted by storm:
the dream hero who will himself, when grown,
pray to be saved from yet another terrible rending.
These children, who have not heard talk of God
and yet can read the name as it is written
on the dying page of a late August afternoon,
in fly dance and lark flight and every turn of leaf
and flower and stem, who can hear the name
shouted in a dream tempest that will become life.
The child in a far town, someday-dreamer-of-God-
in-a-fearsome-wind; the child cradled
in the man’s arms, sleeping soundly
as if any universe could ever be less than whole.
The man, as he walks this two-track road, whispers
lessons of care and grief for his sons, whose lessons
for him, the divine nearly shouting in their small voices,
are of beauty beyond measure. Not just in love’s
every breath but in the sundered seams, in the sky,
faltering blue or black-and-spinning. Within
the inevitably failing light between
whereby we all are transformed.
Michael McIrvin is the author of several poetry collections, including Optimism Blues: Poems Selected and New and Hearing Voices (Fearful Symmetry, 2020). His most recent novel is The Blue Man Dreams the End of Time. Michael lives on the High Plains of Wyoming.
Wrapped in a Banana Leaf // J. Rodriguez
wrapped in a banana leaf, // i float in the sea. // i smell like earth. // i am still green. // and when the soldiers come to get me, dressed // in their sunday killing best, // i will raise my arms // up towards the sun // and i will put up no fight.
wrapped in a banana leaf, // i float in the sea. // i smell like earth. // i am still green. // and when the soldiers come to get me, dressed // in their sunday killing best, // i will raise my arms // up towards the sun // and i will put up no fight.
... in boston, tío pedro is wrapped in ashes // and
spread across the world. // in some other version of our lives, // he is laughing in the kitchen // and the hospital room is far, // far away. // in another version, // he is given a proper burial. // in this one, // he is just a stone in my shoe // that rolls around and around, // and my mom keeps his photo // on the shelf by the television. // it is a ghost that haunts me. // now, he is a day in the calendar year, // and christmas passes like a ticker // counting up and up. // in this version, grief // is an unwound clock, // and i am waiting still // for the soldiers to come and get me.
Born in New York and growing up all around the United States, J. Rodriguez has called Minnesota their home since 2019, and has been writing for as long as they can remember. They have previously published poetry in Chanter and Spaces, two student publications at their alma mater, Macalester College. Now, they spend most of their time taking pictures around Minneapolis and regularly updating their Letterboxd profile. They are mother to one child, a tabby cat named Howl the Destroyer.
Trespassing // David B. Prather
The first time I saw a jack-in-the-pulpit,
it was an accident,
or is that by accident? Trees scattered
shadows, and
a freshwater spring wept from the side
of a hill. Or was that me?
The first time I saw a jack-in-the-pulpit,
it was an accident,
or is that by accident? Trees scattered
shadows, and
a freshwater spring wept from the side
of a hill. Or was that me?
The sun tried to part the leaves
for a better look,
and a breeze crept low in the weeds,
chasing mice and grasshoppers,
or it may have been searching a place to rest.
I thought the plant rare,
and my father told me if I were careless,
I could be punished,
or was it admonished? I was afraid
to touch those leaves,
sure they were toxic as poison ivy, sure
there would be a sermon
in mist and shade. I was alone, or was I lonely?
Sometimes, I can’t tell
the difference. There had to be birdsong,
and surely wild animals,
though I don’t remember either. I could
take you to that place,
but we’d have to secure the gate behind us
to make it appear
we were never there.
David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and Bending Light with Bare Hands: A Journal of Poems (Fernwood Press, 2025). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, Cutleaf, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com
A Plain Old Man // William Doreski
Being a plain old man stuck
in a savage village, I take the wind
as personally as a bar brawl.
Trees consider touching their toes.
Being a plain old man stuck
in a savage village, I take the wind
as personally as a bar brawl.
Trees consider touching their toes.
A copper weathervane goes south.
Wood smoke flattens and obscures
the innocence of the winter sky.
I read only quarrelsome books,
especially Plato. His version
of Socrates addles the young men
flaunting their marble torsos.
His arguments squeeze their brains
like oranges shipped from Egypt.
The village hunkers down and grins
that bestial grin I first saw
in the Forest Park Zoo when
my mother crushed my hand in fear
of great apes mocking their jailors.
The wind today could topple
a tree and render me homeless,
but I strain my elementary Greek
and believe everything I read.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (2024). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.
Self Portrait as the Last Kumquat // Annie Diamond
We cool our feet in the oldest pool in Santa Ana,
built 1929. I am 29, inelegant save for swimming.
Remembering how to breathe among wisteria
and lilies, Easter. Is the Eiffel Tower the most
famous thing in the world?
We cool our feet in the oldest pool in Santa Ana,
built 1929. I am 29, inelegant save for swimming.
Remembering how to breathe among wisteria
and lilies, Easter. Is the Eiffel Tower the most
famous thing in the world? Took a boat
on the Douro under Gustave Eiffel Bridge,
eat the last kumquat off its tree, share one pitcher
of gin cocktail. California a conundrum. Sunlight
psalmic, smells of ocean. For so long I wanted
to be beautiful, and then I found I was. Novato
we ate Peruvian food and drank pisco cocktails,
hiked Cathedral Grove, Muir Woods: devotional.
For dappled things. Lemon trees so casual.
Once I thought I knew the size and shape of
this heart; I was 17, arrogant. Muscular
where I have not been before. Last week
a stranger in an elevator told me
I was radiating happiness, I think
the best compliment I have ever received. Once I
misread sunbathe as unbathe, preferred the mistake.
Annie Diamond is an Ashkenazi Jewish poet and recovering academic who has made her home in Chicago. She has been awarded fellowships by MacDowell, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, The Lighthouse Works, and Boston University, where she earned her MFA in 2018. Her poems appear and are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, No Tokens Journal, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She is currently trying to place her first poetry manuscript.
Strauss’s Last Songs // Sandra Kolankiewicz
Later, I sought solitude, sure being
alone was not the same as loneliness,
till I started to recall and, in the
remembering, understood the broken
glass, the hand moving faster than I could
see.
Later, I sought solitude, sure being
alone was not the same as loneliness,
till I started to recall and, in the
remembering, understood the broken
glass, the hand moving faster than I could
see. On my wrist the scar’s now visible
only in summer, my skin browner.
Unwanted thoughts, determined memories
intrude on my view of the river in
the midst of one of Strauss’s last songs,
composed for his wife when he was ninety,
an urgent celebration of love and
ecstasy, his bliss vying with my past
despair. Did she adore without losing
herself, embrace for a lifetime without
being caught up in his arms, find her breath
if wrapped too tightly, struggle to break free?
Sandra J. Kolankiewicz’s poems and stories have appeared widely over the decades, most recently in New World Writing, The Write Launch, and Courtship of Winds. Her most recent chapbook is Even the Cracks, published by Finishing Line Press. Read more from this author.
Be There or Be Square // Frederick Pollack
Clark in his book on Modernism
goes on and on about the green
half of the canvas above David’s dead
Marat. To which one intuitively adds
Malevich’s Black Square.
Clark in his book on Modernism
goes on and on about the green
half of the canvas above David’s dead
Marat. To which one intuitively adds
Malevich’s Black Square. They are images
of the Other World – at least an other world,
which is not, admittedly, inviting,
but also not, in a strict sense,
unattractive. A choice is required,
the kind you don’t make;
someone makes it for you. Meanwhile
lunch, the sky brightens,
the world outside is distances (unlike
the other, which cosmologists say,
although unreachable, is next door),
and several cars from the neighborhood leave
for a party. It’s been so long
since you were invited anywhere ... Though
it’s true that almost everyone
you know has died or otherwise dissolved,
you still regard your quarrel as with space, not time.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). Many other poems in print and online journals. Poetics: neither navelgazing mainstream nor academic pseudo-avant-garde. Website: frederickpollack.com
Horoscope / Affirmation / Promise /Prayer // Haylee Shull
May will break your heart, but not for the reason you expect.
You will know hunger. You can interpret this however you choose.
On the other side of your grief is (I’m so sorry to tell you) more grief. What I’m saying is, you will hear the wind through the leaves and it will sound like rain.
New Year’s Day, 2025
Already the days grow longer a few seconds at a time.
Already the light traces a path along the wall.
The old years burrow and harden like swallowed stones
stuck deep in your gut. You will carry them with you.
There will be dancing and sparkly cocktails. There will be
footprints in stiff snow and cat hair on all your sweaters.
May will break your heart, but not for the reason you expect.
You will know hunger. You can interpret this however you choose.
On the other side of your grief is (I’m so sorry to tell you) more grief.
What I’m saying is, you will hear the wind through the leaves
and it will sound like rain. You will keep looking up.
You will keep waiting for the drops to hit your skin.
How long will you hold on to your dread? What I’m telling you
is that the moon will fall from the sky. The ground will swallow
you up along with everything you have ever loved. Then what?
Aren’t you listening? July is only July. A poem is only a poem and
a fortune is only a wish. Kiss someone before it’s too late.
Tally up your losses. Stand in the middle of the street and wail at the sky
until your sobs catch in your throat. Drop to your knees shouting,
why why why!, and fuck you, stars!, and fuck you, fate! Run
until you can’t feel your legs and then strip down and kiss
every part of your body that you can reach—bare and clammy
and yours and you. You’re alive and then you’re not. Alone, and then
you’re not. Teeth bared and then not. Don’t mistake self-awareness for
control. You will get sunburnt. You will pick at your wounds.
You will wake up every morning and want and want and want
and want. All these things will happen. You will swim. Sweat. Swear.
Break the skin. Bite your nails. Coax. Confess. Float. Forget.
Some days it will make you cry. Some days the light breaks through
the window and that’s all there is.
Haylee Shull is a writer, artist, and Libra from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Her work has appeared in Swim Press. She has two cats and owns a super small, super gay art business with her sister.
old daze // Thomas Zimmerman
Venetian blinds moonlit your belly sliced
like bread // before though kisses traded rassling
in the weedy lot behind the Beef Days
Ferris wheel
Venetian blinds moonlit your belly sliced
like bread // before though kisses traded rassling
in the weedy lot behind the Beef Days
Ferris wheel // we bummed a ride back home
Cheap Trick Bob Seger playing loud inside
the F-10 cab yes we were stacked in back
with tarps scrap metal sparking when we tossed it
on the highway singing “I Fought the Law”
// then homeward you & i my arm slung cross
your shoulders drunken broken orphic such
was my delusion // notebook out i scribbled lines
a sonnet “College Daze” you poured the drinks
bikini line the border guarded no
i met you at the great divide alive
Thomas Zimmerman (he/him/his) teaches English, directs the Writing Center, and edits The Big Windows Review at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Ablanatha, Cold Signal, and Lowlife Lit. His latest poetry book is My Night to Cook (Cyberwit, 2024). Website: thomaszimmerman.wordpress.com/