I Wish I Was a Riot Grrrl // Jadey Holcomb
Can I drink Cherry Bomb
lipstick, chew fishnets for dessert?
Press your lips to mine, fill me -
bones and all - with your smoke.
Darling, you make me wolfish
up on this rooftop, under this
volcanic light.
Can I drink Cherry Bomb
lipstick, chew fishnets for dessert?
Press your lips to mine, fill me -
bones and all - with your smoke.
Let me quarry your leather-cracked
ribs. Let me burrow under soft tissue.
Grunge girl, goddess of violets
I remember when you jumped
from that bridge, billowing into
glittering waters. Can you hear me,
under this bubbling music, under this erupting light?
Jadey Holcomb (she/her) is a poet, storyteller, and author of Average Asexual. She is currently studying Creative Writing and is the poetry editor of her university’s literary journal. She has a deep infatuation with Conan Gray, red eyeliner, and yearning for what she does not have. When not writing she can be found searching the night sky for Orion’s Belt.
Sign Off // Ellie Snyder
While out at Bullman’s Pizza with Ty and Caroline
to celebrate the job offer my mother watched
her most recent ex-husband arrive with a woman
While out at Bullman’s Pizza with Ty and Caroline
to celebrate the job offer my mother watched
her most recent ex-husband arrive with a woman
and sit down next booth. By the time I visit in three
weeks I expect she’ll have been on at least
that many dates, less thin, no longer saying
she’d just like to find a companion. Still saying
she’d just like to warn the new woman, he’ll
fuck her up. Her laugh convincing since finally true.
She’ll still be sad I don’t want love from my lover.
My brother? Starts flying tomorrow and put down
crabby deaf white-faced Daisy yesterday,
his dog at his dad’s. Grief never gives a moment.
He is otherwise happy, obsessive, the straightest
gay man possible, glancing up against the staples
only thanks to the man with whom he exchanged
gold bands on a bench in Mexico City. Thanks to
Brayden I can tell my brother I think I’m Miranda
but also Samantha and a little bit Carrie. They’ll
marry once settled in Colorado, once my brother
is used to his monthly jumps across the sky.
I love them more than usual tonight without
wanting to speak to them. A signature
lifted the fog and it’s like I no longer have
a single problem, perpetual catch plucked
from my throat. The sleep alone. I’ve learned
how to eat again and walk uphill, I’ve read
200 books. I’m finally moving forward.
I just remembered I used to eat men.
Montanan poet Ellie Snyder writes and manages socials for a global nonprofit and is passionate about literature, fashion and music. Find her work in Pangyrus, The Headlight Review, The Blood Pudding, and elsewhere, and find her fitchecks on Instagram @elliegsnyder.
The Coast (A Diary Entry) // Cole Forrest
miss the lake back home
so I drove to the ocean
mussels always taste like the waters they’re from
miss the lake back home
so I drove to the ocean
mussels always taste like the waters they’re from
it’s like that pop song with the ice cream out here
ate at the same ice cream shop
I like what’s simple like personal fulfillment like going to places they talk about in songs
I missed water so much
I wonder if I taste just like the lake
it’s sweet to me, I hope I’m sweet tasting to you
thought about all the traditional land we’re moving through
mom would probably want me to leave some tobacco
“I didn’t know it was actually in a valley”
I genuinely believe I’m an idiot most days
ndn idiot
ndiot? it’s not funny
walked through a neighborhood with palm trees I wondered what it would take for me to live here
went bowling and I was humbled
bowling one of those things in life that it’s okay to be like just fine at
going across Arizona some of it reminded me of the landscape back home
everything is almost like home
my heart’s one of those squishy toys that’s full of liquid and you’re kind of worried it’s gonna burst everywhere or it crosses your mind like “what if this totally explodes on my couch”
that’s my heart filled with lake water
don’t squeeze it too hard
if you know you know but those dinosaurs beside the tipis on the side of the highway always make me laugh
the land makes me laugh
had a realization the other day when I lay tobacco down it’s for everyone
it’s an offering to everyone in my life, not just my own dreams
cried in the bathtub the water’s never the right temperature
I had a dream once about the ocean
I was with someone I didn’t know
we stood on a hill overlooking the water
I asked where I was
she said I was home
Cole Forrest is a Queer Anishinaabe writer from Nipissing First Nation. Last year they published a debut co-authored poetry collection titled Once The Smudge is Lit. Writing is their passion, and any opportunity to share their words is a welcomed one. Miigwetch.
Roxy’s Heaven // Cole Weiss
They have boarded up the place, emptied out the popcorn machines, and the carpet stinks of butter and mud as it is torn from the flooring.
They have boarded up the place, emptied out the popcorn machines, and the carpet stinks of butter and mud as it is torn from the flooring. You and I are still sitting in Theater 2. They are
ripping out the fixtures, gutting the cinema, throwing out the rolled up movie posters that didn’t sell. We have not opened our diet root beers yet. The hiss of the soda’s gas is forever.
I am waiting for the previews. They never come. They are tearing down the Roxy
and in my imagination you and I hold hands over the armrest as they take us with her.
Cole Weiss (they/he) is a current junior at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, working towards a degree in elementary education. When not drafting lesson plans, they enjoy writing, digital photography, and scouring bookstores to expand their poetry book collection.
What’s Human // Thomas Higgins
When a cat comes to lay at your feet
you never ask why, but you do
hold still for as long as you possibly can
When a cat comes to lay at your feet
you never ask why, but you do
hold still for as long as you possibly can,
even holding your breath as you once did
passing a grave. In the presence
of ghosts and small gods, you believe
that it’s wise to be humble, despite having
no proof of either. A cat, however, proves
there are some things language can’t tell us
which love also is, that what’s human
about us can be what sustains it
as silence and stillness sustain
a cat’s slumber, the pulse of its breathing
a language you both understand.
Thomas Higgins is a poet and critic who is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at The New School. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Magpie Zine, The Inquisitive Eater, The Adroit Journal, Hoxie Gorge Review, the minnesota review, and elsewhere.
If a Plant Dreams // Zixiang Zhang
the ground
into being, what does that say about farming?
the ground
into being, what does that say about farming?
a pilosus in the seam,
hearing john’s words on the radio
machine potentiating
world war iii, thinking miles to set ablaze.
tacit
is their need for light.
i am
perch on first waking,
bladder ridding the sapless grain; water
tipping
out of bed,
to find the anointed pressure point.
the first disappointment
in genesis is
the immaculate conception of a granny smith:
that the axis bifurcates
& center
of mass surrenders
bark, to be always heart.
blue veins shedding dendritic
discharge
underneath the atlantic, silver lilies
brought to blush
on the face
draining the existence of red— the winds
can’t breathe into being, the potassium
aplenty.
flowers grow tall
& halt the crown that thomas dreams of
engorging.
gamma rays dislodge the train.
it is winter
400 million years away, iapetus
prior to photoshop. seabiscuits
avoiding molasses,
tricuspid tongues
from the stable licking the moonlit antorbit.
if a thought,
to be human, spends
bilateral symmetry
in the attic, or
if a plant dreams,
a plant dreams a planter.
Zixiang Zhang (he/him/his) has poems published or forthcoming in Hanging Loose, Cathexis Northwest, Consilience, Pedestal, The Nature of Our Times, Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality, and others. He holds an undergraduate degree in geology from Stanford University and master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and the American Museum of Natural History. Once, he published research on brachiopod evolution in the journal Paleobiology. Now, he teaches Earth Science at a small high school in NYC and enjoys growing succulents, erging, sunbathing, and sundry. He may be active @zzverse.
How the Moonbeam Endows the Rime // John August
Barely, brushingly.
John August is an emerging writer. He currently resides in the Midwest, and his work explores themes of addiction recovery, ecological mourning, and the place of the sacred in modern life. At his best, his work says something about how those three things are one.
Fractures of Meaning // Radoslav Rochallyi
Radoslav Rochallyi: “With my work, I try to look behind the curtain of the philosophy of universal semantics and discover emotional symbols and visual signs that have universal intelligibility - red color = passion, danger, or circle = unity, thus trying to complete my aesthetic-logical minimalism as a system that combines aesthetics and logic in content and mathematical and geometric patterns in form. This helps me to create the most concise description of the expression of complex ideas. I try to say more with less. In my work, I try to answer the question of how deep meanings can be communicated through simple, aesthetically pleasing forms of mathematics and geometry. This minimalism is the basis of my artistic-aesthetic communication system. The result of my work is mathematical poetry (in all my artistic expressions from text to painting) as a language of the subjective experience of reality.”
For the Student Who Told Me Their Grandmother Died… Twice // Ezra Fox
They tell you grief comes with permissions,
a hall pass, an extension, a moment's reprieve.
They tell you grief comes with permissions,
a hall pass, an extension, a moment's reprieve.
As if pain needs documentation, as if suffering
requires a formal declaration.
First, let me say: I am sorry for your loss.
Grief can swallow a semester whole,
shrink it smaller than the space between
a B- and a B.
When your email landed in my inbox,
my own grandmother surfaced. Her voice
rising through memory, like wind. Strange
how quickly I filled your loss with my own,
how grief recognizes grief.
Then, your second email arrived, same story,
different month, grandmother dying again,
and I understood: not a lie, but a different kind of loss.
Oh, dear student,
if you've learned to summon ghosts
as shields against the living dark, I understand.
If the weight of now, the deadlines, the discussions,
the endless notifications of crisis feels
like watching avalanches through glass,
you don't need to conjure grandmothers.
Let me be sorry, instead, for the losses
too quiet to name. The best friend who moved
away mid-sentence, the morning you woke
to find your childhood had slipped out
while you slept, for the nights your anxiety grows
teeth, for the days when planes cast shadows
like dark prophecies, when your phone
becomes too heavy to lift, or when
your reflection wears a stranger's face.
Sorry for the stuffed bear guarding your empty
bed at home, for mistaking homesickness
for food poisoning again, for dormitory mirrors
that make you question your belonging.
And, for every time you've swallowed words
like broken glass, thinking no one wants
to hear your truth.
You don't need to dress your pain.
I won't think less of you for simply living
in a world that demands performance
of our wounds. I see how they told you
small hurts don't deserve attention,
that missing class requires tragedy.
Let the deadlines dissolve.
There are more important things in this life:
geese cutting shadows across fog-draped quads,
laughter echoing in stairwells at midnight,
the way strangers cluster under bus stop awnings
during rain, and each text from a beloved,
that sits like a crystal in your pocket.
Ezra Fox lives and writes in San Francisco, CA. In their writing, Ezra is curious about impermanence and non-duality, and how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. Learn more about Ezra, and read their other publications at ezrafox.net.
Deliberate Displays of Unease // Hallie Fogarty
I’m trying to get into a life of hedonism
but I honestly skew more towards prude.
Deliberate Displays of Unease
I’m trying to get into a life of hedonism
but I honestly skew more towards prude
when it comes to vibes, not that I want to,
and the most virgo thing about me is the
fact that I didn’t buy my first vibrator until
I had done multiple years of research and I
ended up buying a $165 one, light pink
and the new technology, clitoral suction,
and still the first time I used it I felt nothing,
felt like my clitoris was broken, but now I
use it religiously, can finish in three minutes
or less, except for the times it takes me 40
minutes, which my sex therapist best friend
says is not my body’s fault, and I’m always
torn between my mind and my body but
lately I’ve been trying to take my body’s side
because frankly my mind has taken up enough
of my time and space and mental energy and
maybe I’m not just my body but I’m surely
not just my mind, either, and honestly I’ve
been looking to be a little objectified, recently,
‘cuz growing up fat meant I never really felt
beautiful or wanted, especially by men, which
until recently I wasn’t even sure I really wanted,
and maybe it’s shallow but all I really want is to
be called beautiful and have that person believe
it, have myself believe it, but I also want to be
called hot and to feel hot, and I had this conversation
with someone once about Chappell Roan’s “HOT
TO GO” lyrics call me hot, not pretty and we
must have had different wounds because I
related to the lyric, am unendingly used to being
called cute or adorable and frankly rarely even
pretty but that’s the most heated a compliment
towards me would ever get, but he said that all
he wanted was for someone to think he was pretty,
and he was, is, but must’ve been sexualized and
socialized in a way to think that all someone wanted
from him was his body when I’ve never felt like
anyone wanted my body, and no, objectification
shouldn’t be my goal but when the societal standard
is skinny and thin and beautiful it’s hard not to
feel that pressure, that desire for something I shouldn’t
need, and lately I’ve been pondering if I even know
what I need, what I want, or if all this wanting
I’ve been doing is a performance in and of itself,
because no emotion I feel really feels complete until
I have someone on the outside to witness it, to
bring it to fruition, like how beautiful can I look
when I’m suffering, when I cry, and honestly lately
I’ve been wondering if I really want anything from
anyone or if I want to be alone, wondering if I just
have high standards or if I even want a relationship
and the idea of being aromantic terrifies me completely
because even though I’ve never been a hopeless romantic
I still have always liked the idea of coming home to
someone, of the big finale scene in the romcom, like
the proposal in While You Were Sleeping with all the
family smiling at Sandra Bullock through thick fogged
glass, and Bill Pullman’s quiet smile just waiting to take
her away and fulfill her life’s fantasies, whisk her away
to Italy, and I think frankly I’m too caught up in the
gay version of gender roles to really identify what I want,
like I love butches but do I want them to order my food
for me, open every door, and there aren’t even enough
butches in Northern Kentucky for me to try dating
one, because I’ve always only loved them in theory,
and frankly that’s what life feels like, doing everything
only in theory, and most of the time life doesn’t even
seem worth half the effort it takes to survive it.
Hallie Fogarty is a poet, teacher, and artist from Kentucky. She received her MFA in poetry from Miami University, where she was awarded the 2024 Jordan-Goodman Graduate Award for Poetry. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry South, The Lindenwood Review, Hoxie Gorge Review, and elsewhere. Besides writing, she loves cardigans, dogs, and everything peach-flavored. Find her online: www.halliefogarty.com
B & B // Kathryn Reese
I find him in the kitchen making sandwiches, as men do, not with marmalade but with mandarins.
B & B
I find him in the kitchen making sandwiches, as men do, not with marmalade but with mandarins. He has laid the skin pith-down on thick-cut squares of white bread, he is unfolding the segments and bedding them down, each curve snug against another. There is a butter knife balanced on an open jar of mustard. The mustard lid lies face-up on the bench. There are a dozen mustard seeds scattered: along the knife blade, the bench, his dark cuticle, his lips. He is so much taller than any man I have slept beside—when he sees me, he smiles, slides the bread under a warm grill, and pours tea from a green pot decorated with cherry blossom and dragon. We sit at a mahogany table covered with a linen cloth, a vase of fenugreek leaves and almond buds between us. We eat as though pith is not bitter, as if mustard is mild, as if hot juice is not burning my chin.
Kathryn Reese lives on Peramangk land in South Australia. She works in medical science & enjoys road trips, hiking & chasing frogs to record their calls for science. Kathryn’s work can be found in The Engine Idling, Epistemic Lit, & Australian Poetry Journal.
Love Poem for the Neoliberal Age // Michael Conner
I don’t want to be radicalized by terror.
I want to feed mourning doves
from the palm of my hand in spite of it.
I don’t want to be radicalized by terror.
I want to feed mourning doves
from the palm of my hand in spite of it.
Steady breathing, no tremors.
Offering what little I can before
all this gets reduced to statistics –
plotting out the maps and graphs for how
to go on existing. What if, what if.
Negotiating the amount or razor wire
I would crawl through to get around the fence
(which depends, I guess, on whether or not
you’re still there crawling beside me).
Every year eating approximately one credit card
worth of microplastics. Keeping the accounts current,
dancing through another dehumanizing transactional
relationship. I, you. I, it.
When we return to the dirt together,
how much will remain that hasn’t been spent –
monocropped into toxic dust, burned out,
depleted of all nutrients?
I don’t want to be radicalized by terror,
But I am willing to die for a small plot of land
where we are the rich, dark soil spread beneath
the echinacea, watching the doves
eat from our daughter’s hand.
Michael Conner is a writer and public health worker living in Swannanoa, North Carolina. He is the author of Total Annihilation (Bottle Cap Press, 2023). His poems have been published, or are forthcoming, in Hare's Paw, YNST, Neologism, and Spectra, among others.
Mud and Lotus // Aaron Lelito
Mud and Lotus
Reading passages in the back seat
in a parking lot
after dark.
Reading passages in the back seat
in a parking lot
after dark.
There’s nowhere else we could possibly go.
Nowhere else for us
but we can’t leave each other yet.
And there’s nowhere for us to go
with everything so heavy,
eyes in diffuse light
piercing each other’s space
and shadows
burrowing in each other’s salt mines and we can’t leave yet,
holding on, eyes gazing
in vacated space.
Headlights go by and make us both nervous.
It’s our comfort to each other,
and we just want to be innocent.
And we know that no one else would be here for us tonight.
Maybe we’re connected so deeply
and maybe we’re just lonely,
holding onto each other’s pieces for a while,
onto the plucked leaves and not the mud
even though we read about what lotuses look like
when they bloom and what they need in order to grow.
I notice the glint of lamplight shaping her—
that we’re capable of changing our behaviors
that we’re capable, too, of merging
and of pulling apart.
Lights flash as a car passes
holding on
holding on
holding on
Aaron Lelito is a visual artist and writer from Buffalo, NY. His poetry chapbook, The Half Turn, was published in 2023, and he released a collaborative notebook/art collection titled If We: Connections Through Creative Process in 2024. His work has also appeared in Stonecoast Review, Barzakh Magazine, Novus Literary Arts Journal, SPECTRA Poets, Peach Mag, and Santa Fe Review. He is Editor in Chief of Wild Roof Journal. Instagram: @aaronlelito
Objective Truths // Liam Strong
like any fable your story
begins with a cup of soup
signifying goodness. positivity. as in:
the audience is prepared
for an unhappy ending.
like any fable your story
begins with a cup of soup
signifying goodness. positivity. as in:
the audience is prepared
for an unhappy ending. you are not
a rat king of traumas. but the
cherry stem knotted around
your tongue. that’s a corsage
or its skeleton
patient for your fingers. you move
in, you give up date
nights, you check the box for
nonrelationship relationship
sex. your nipples wilt
like amaryllis. your lips bore
inward like piddock. your clothes
inhale baggy. absent of hip,
waist, tight twink
chest. a simple sentence—
much like a one-word
response—is a medal
of efficiency. congratulations. oh how
the robin returns with song
in spring. oh how
your whiteboard above the trash
is an opportunity of stratus. oh
how you can see the window
for the glass, the
pane, the silt
at its eyelashes. oh how
you can be inside a house
full & alive & living
but not be
inside anything else.
Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cripple punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone's Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Vagabond City and new words {press}, among several others. They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan. Find them on Instagram/Twitter @beanbie666 and https://linktr.ee/liamstrong666.
Accidental Summoning, Paris Metro // Ella Grim
before I was told the unspoken rule
about not looking people in the eyes,
you were there on the bench at Oberkampf
before I was told the unspoken rule
about not looking people in the eyes,
you were there on the bench at Oberkampf
a mesh sac of mandarins in your lap
and yes I glanced twice because it was late
the tiles orange and you otherworldly
the doors split open, rush of hydraulics,
and I found a place to lean in the car
and then you were there next to me,
our shoulders knocking with the sways,
like something drawn from an old film
injecting my commute, a dose of allure—
until the train stopped and you, you got off,
just another girl swallowed by the night
Ella Grim is a poet, zinester, and activist from Duluth, Minnesota. She is currently a senior at Dartmouth College studying English, Creative Writing, and French. She is the general manager of Spare Rib, Dartmouth’s intersectional feminist magazine, and an editor for Meetinghouse literary review. Socials: @subtle_lemons
Self-care Saturday // Harley Chapman
Self-Care Saturday
My knowing-better loops elbows
with fuck-it-I-don’t-care
& we choose a linen dress
that shows the silhouette of our ass
My knowing-better loops elbows
with fuck-it-I-don’t-care
& we choose a linen dress
that shows the silhouette of our ass
in the sun because middling is where we’re at
right now, a little too old for this
but also young enough.
Yesterday I had a conversation
with a woman in her 60s
who had the most perfect eyebrows.
They were not her natural
eyebrows, she drew them on
& she drew them perfect, she did that
for herself. I was buying a rose
that looked exactly like the sun
& she understood that I just couldn’t resist.
Today my sun is blooming
full-faced & skyward
in a beer glass half-filled with water.
I bought it at its peak & by tomorrow
it will begin to droop, edges browning,
firmness overcome by plissé folds.
But for today it is perfect: ripe
& unafraid, the color of a mimosa
or the sunrise over the lake.
Harley Anastasia Chapman holds an MFA in poetry from Columbia College Chicago. Her poems have been published in Nimrod International Journal, Fatal Flaw Literary Journal, Superstition Review, & Bridge Eight Press, among others. Harley's first chapbook, Smiling with Teeth, is available through Finishing Line Press. She can be found on Instagram as @rabbitxteeth.
Help Wanted // Glen Armstrong
Can you help me find somebody to help me?
Somebody to love? Somebody to fix
a sink who won’t overcharge me? Enlarge
me? Make love to me as if waxing a car?
Can you help me find somebody to help me?
Somebody to love? Somebody to fix
a sink who won’t overcharge me? Enlarge
me? Make love to me as if waxing a car?
Can you tell me how to vacuum the crumbs
from this new world made of stale bread?
Can you tell me how to shed a few pounds?
How do I go about changing my name?
Why is there an extra beat in that song
by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys?
Would the “red hot rhythm” that it mentions
burn the song up from within without this
little pause? What about other pauses?
Interruptions? Invitations? Requests?
Glen Armstrong (he/him) holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters. His poems have appeared in Conduit, Poetry Northwest, and Another Chicago Magazine.
Two Poems // Caitlin Johnson
"Diorama of A Life I Never Lived"
"How I Got Rid of My Mississippi Accent"
Diorama of A Life I Never Lived
I recollect it like a grade school photograph
of a cousin I never knew—unfamiliar
but I miss them somehow anyway.
How are they doing, this gap-toothed kid
with unfortunate bangs that I keep
pressed in the pages of my teen bible?
How do we keep going, even when
everything around us, all of it falls away
like the honey-slow grief of autumn?
Is this world mine? A whole life looms like
unlikely mountains in the rearview
of a girl who only ever knew the Delta-flat
honesty of the horizon looped around me
like a lasso approaching zero.
I keep mistaking myself for storm clouds.
The strip mall dance club karaoke diner
of lives, one lived over and over
and never learned a damn thing
other than the death of my god.
Maybe I could live it, I hope, in a way
that relieves it of its tenacity, the lingering
scent of old lavender— the hope
for a softer, less regretful dinner.
How I Got Rid of My Mississippi Accent
I was born and raised
on the brink of language,
the way the Mississippi sun
stretches words with heat
and the need to hear god.
Every syllable licks back
at the ones that came first,
the mamaw-soft need
to touch shoulders, sound
like a lady, feel real. I never
heard myself until Joanne H.
said I sounded like
“hillbilly trash.” Monstrous
in this new chromatic millennia
that would never ever ever
kiss a mouth that sounded
like roadside cotton.
Myself barefoot on the bank
of our dirty bayou, alone.
I left my mothers who wanted
me busy in the kitchen
of my own creation. Tethered
to the crude assumptions
I made to soften my own
exit— what does Mamaw
have to do with Me, now
in this mega-mall, hopeless
in a bedazzled sweatshirt
unsure of what woman
I was meant to be?
Delta-flat Mississippi
finds me in the rearview,
and I keep tonguing Home
like almond in my teeth,
chewed up beyond itself,
familiar and bitter.
Originally from the American Deep South and now hanging on for dear life in Ridgewood Queens, Caitlin Annette Johnson is a nonbinary poet, novelist, and artist with a BA in Literature from the University of Houston and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She’s currently working on her first full-length poetry manuscript, Empress in Reverse, which explores navigating motherhood divested of traditional gender norms and the process of excavating oneself as a spiritual experience. Although she’s currently a stay-at-home mom, Johnson channels her creative energy into teaching free writing workshops in her community, where she helps others find their voice—or at least an epic anecdote to share at parties. At home, Johnson juggles the chaos of writing, raising a kid, a dog, and a surprisingly resilient collection of houseplants that refuse to give up, much like their mother. Her art and published work can be found at caitlinannettejohnson.com.
Spirits and Divine Forces // Devon Balwit
I’ve got the God-eye and shit,
he said in his ashwagandha t-shirt.
I’ve got the God-eye and shit,
he said in his ashwagandha t-shirt.
His tatted friend nodded. I veered
off on a side trail but not
before I heard him try to explain it:
how time, for him, stretched out
in all directions, his mind a searchlight.
I would never confess to such talent,
afraid to be asked to predict
elections, the stock market,
the next mass shooting. The God-eye guy looked
ordinary, but
off a fresco, how to recognize a prophet?
Not by his flickering, a residual bit
of the weekend’s solar flare, no doubt.
For days, my challenge has been to separate
hemlocks from Doug firs and white
pines. Grant me no more insight than that.
Devon Balwit walks in all weather and never passes up a botanical garden or a natural history museum. When not writing, she draws and cartoons. She edits for Asimov Press and Asterisk. For more of her work, visit: https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet.
The Fig Tree // Maya Jacyszyn
We have figs this year
leading up to the weeks of your passing.
All my life, I knew trees that were barren,
ever since you planted them.
for Nonno
We have figs this year
leading up to the weeks of your passing.
All my life, I knew trees that were barren,
ever since you planted them.
Doleful leaves, prong-fingered,
grew to be brown instead of green.
But not this year, the first year the
trunks thickened like bulging casks, how we
wished you could have seen these prolific
thriving diamonds, Tyrian-masked.
I grieve thinking you left in a time of
so much fullness, and then again,
I wonder if you brought it, during these months of
your spirit being half here and half otherly
knowing the grass was yellowing,
coats calling,
home hills trilling for buckets mid-filled
with mountain olives.
To you, an empty stomach
was always worse than a starving heart.
I feel you in my hands, my palms
stained with fruit never to be hidden.
We do not have figs this year;
they were given.
Maya Jacyszyn is a multi-published poet and the Associate Director of Neumann University’s Writing Center. She received her bachelor’s degree at Saint Joseph’s University where she also served as Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine titled, Crimson & Gray. More recently, her work is featured in the Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, The Ignatian Literary Magazine,Prime Number Magazine, and Quibble Lit, among others.