Pennies
Macy Huston Adams
The cushion extended across
red pickup, rusted in glory.
My legs swung from its elevation,
too short to touch pilled floors.
It moaned as we drove,
each bump lifting me into the air.
We could take on the world—
with brazen perception, we did.
Essential mission at hand:
find a gift for Mom.
I was blissfully unaware of our financial
predicament. Elusive thrift sign summoned.
Limitless possibility racks were stacked:
Snow globes, bike parts, underwear baskets,
faux flowers, sticky candles, held together
by a structurally sound layer of dust and dirt.
Treasure amid gold, young eyes grew wide.
Foot on shelf, reaching to grasp a metallic
set of luxury. Acquired. Accomplished.
Childlike hopping and pleading led to
an early unboxing. Out of the bag,
she pulled three foil disposable baking pans.
Speechless.
I knew they were perfect, her distaste
for cleaning, passion for baking assured me.
Through the wall, through the night,
I listened to her cry.
Macy Huston Adams is a Southern writer based in Oklahoma with roots in Arkansas and Tennessee. Her poetry is greatly inspired by her upbringing with themes of identity and growth. She has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Central Oklahoma and is currently pursuing a graduate degree in poetry at Oklahoma State University.
Poetry by Anthony Alegrete
Full Body Exercise
Do __y __ ou know the color of a word’s absence?
_I_ _ c _ ouldn’t tell you, anything about a word’s a-bsence
even when you can’t__t_ discern the word
f-_f rom a shattered syllable know
it is still there, -_I don’t know the color of
an -absence but I do know that when words leave
they leave v_violently, every vowel lay laced
in ra-Azors. Know that some words carry weight and others
carry bAggage. Pronouncing heavy words is just like lifting
heavy objects. You’re aaalways supposed to breathe into the actions
that test your body’s limits, the flexibility of cheek skin is not like
the fleexiblity of muscle fibers. Growing back stiffer
isn’t always s-s-stronger_. S-Sometimes I think my tongue
will fall off from the movement but o-others
I remember, how they tell me the t-ongue
is the body’s strongest muscle.-
Etymology
The words never come when I want them to/ and I guess that’s just a part of our terms and
conditions//I guess these kinds of things are signed with the
tongue//Ineverhadasayinthematter//stuttering never allows for a say in the matter// the halls of school
of my speech therapist were always colder than the halls of my own// when you’re 11 how do you
not take that as a sign of something// that there must be a reason you’re in a public school building
practically alone//something/must be of problem//every speech therapist has a treasure box/just a
thing they do// things feel less like a problem when they're giving you presents/// my last speech
therapist threw two person ice cream “parties”///back then I collected calculators/it just made
sense to unify things//my favorite one was a yellow sun/each ray curved and bounced in silicone
confidence/and it was smooth to the touch//I liked how smooth it was//I don’t remember why
but I remember crying on the way home of my last speech therapist/staring at a park//I think I was
holding the calculator//-and my mother and I might’ve gotten out// and swung on the swing set//
Anthony Alegrete (he/him) is a Japanese American poet and writer born and raised in Western Washington, writing from Orange County, California. He has earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. His poetry has previously been published in 805 lit+art, The Santa Clara Review, and is forthcoming in The Black Fork Review. @alegrete_writes
Poetry by Adira Al-Hilo
Diaspora
Let me start with a poem about loss.
The way the crooked tree branch watches over me as I sleep
the torn bark
Mimic the lines of my fathers palms
But first, a poem about resent
the way it kept me full on a Sunday night
like hot steam in a Turkish bath house
Now a poem about childhood
That way we can get to the root of the rot
Back and forth now
we have to run back and forth across the fields the only way to catch frogs is to sneak up on them really light so that they don’t hear you
The only way to catch love is to sneak up on it really light so that it doesn’t hear you
Call us in for dinner now
one noise to feed us all
one noise to keep us safe.
Let me tell you a story about loss. But first you have to hold up your fingers. Five children. Three boys and two girls.
A father who holds war in his body.
Let me tell you a story about resentment, you leave your home land and find yourself lost in the pretense of freedom
What is freedom worth without a motherland to look upon
Let me tell you a story about my father. How his eyes sparkle emerald green, how his laugh hits you right here, where your throat closes up
How his call feels like a song to a home you’ve never been to
Let me tell you a story about me. I have no voice. I have no face. I have no country. I am transparent, I float, that’s what I do
I float.
Wild Rabbit
I wait all day for the sun to peak at its favorite spot
I catch the feeling of white light on my eyelids for only a moment
Music plays on the horizon somewhere
a bird cast out of heaven sings home
the anxious neighbor waves
And I wave back
I say hello to the wild rabbit in the grass
I daydream about what it must be like to ride a bike on Sunday without thinking about Monday
I heard somewhere on the news that a body was found in the lake
The sun peaked anyway
We know that the world isn’t what we want it to be
So we continue.
Adira Al-Hilo is an Arab American writer, she has been writing prose and poetry since 2015 and is currently working on her first novel. She has visited over 20 countries, most recently including Portugal where she was a writer in residence. Her work explores the intersection of cultural dialogue, collective consciousness, and writing as a way to frame the human experience.
Instagram: adirahilwa
Susan Alkaitis
Geodes
Above coal beds and glacial lakes,
we wade in the creek today, descending
through viscus masses of bullfrog eggs
sticking to our calves. Aaron says
he’s going to find me a poor man’s diamond
as he clears refugee mussels, digging
into the bank’s loam. It’s futile like it always is
with him, but he says the fertile soil
here means promise of a bounty.
As he bends to examine and discard rocks,
the sweat on his neck reflects just right
against the sunlight so it flashes
for a second and blinds me. Then the brightness
is gone. Of course,
it’s like time. He finds spheres
he declares to be hollow, where pockets
of air, water, minerals could have fused.
He tells me that geodes are native here.
I ask him what he thinks it means to be native
to something, as we watch two frogs,
yellow-throated and male, wrestling aggressively
to defend the silt. Occurring naturally—
meant to be here, he says. See? That’s just it.
I separate layers of shale between my fingers.
We are part air, part water, part mud
and the shale breaks easily in my hands.
Dependence on an unstable foundation,
I know, but today is just today. I want
everything to be simple before I go. I just want
to sit on the edge of the creek for now.
Susan Alkaitis has poems in current or recent issues of the Beloit Poetry Journal, Illuminations, Lakeshore, and Rattle, and recently she won the Causeway Lit Poetry Award. She was also nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in 2024. She is a writer living in Colorado.
Lola Anaya
Autopsy
If you sliced me open and traced
The claw clips of my rib cage
You could snap the plastic between your fingers
And I would reach inside myself
Seeking my ancestral connections
Holding the chambers of my heart together
Soaking my fingers in the pools of blood shared by generations,
Would I feel out of place
Seeking solace within my own body?
Seeking answers from the women who held the women who held me?
Mother pulls my hair behind my face and clips it out of the way so I can eat
I imagine hers did the same
I smell the arroz con habichuelas on the stove bubbling en un caldero
Swallow down scalding rice with the hopes it will block the sensation of uncertainty
The barriers between Mother Tongue and I—
The words are somewhere within me
And maybe you could help me find them
As you whisper sweet Spanish phrases
Into my yearning ears
Break me apart by each bone, I beg,
And fill me with tangible changes
Tasting sure and sweet—
Sticky like the slice of naranja you sneak into my palm
It would ease down my throat
Trying to fill the hollow space in my chest,
Leaving my fingers with the scent of citrus longing for enlightenment
I wish I knew more than the little words I use for you,
mi amor, mi cariño, mi hermoso
I ask how my form is
As I lay there, opened up to you
Your hands grasp at the skin that remains untorn
And you can see that I am trying—
Stitching myself back together
Sticking the plastic shards back in place
Lola Anaya is a Puerto Rican poet from New York City interested in literature and art history. She has been published in Same Faces Collective, mOthertongue (UMass Amherst), Milk Press, and Emulate (Smith College). She has been a featured reader at Spoonbill & Sugartown Bookstore, the 2023 NYC Poetry Festival, and Unnameable Books in Turners Falls.
Mea Andrews
Treading Water
I have seen thighs
synchronize, quadriceps
bathed aqua
tightening, push
release
underwater arabesque,
bathing suits a unit,
uniformity I
never had
at any pool or
beachside. I envy the sharp
point of their
toes and the circles
of their hands, every
movement focused
on treading water
beautifully.
I’ve only juggled
bills, student loans, treaded
my husband, my
mother, the walk
downstairs so quiet
my hands on the wall
to support my weight
to stop the creaking. I’m wrapped
in the iron brown
waters of a river
that has spent its lifetime
eroding mineral deposits,
bare survival of simply
moving forward, no
time for chlorine
cleansing or graceful
sculling. I swim frantic, twice
a month I automatic
deposit, gulp in air
and get pulled back under.
Mea Andrews is a writer from Georgia, who currently resides in Hong Kong. She has just finished her MFA from Lindenwood University and is only recently back on the publication scene. You can find her in Gordon Square Review, Rappahannock Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, and others. She was a 2022 Pushcart prize nominee, and you can also follow her on Instagram at mea_writes or go to her website at meaandrews.com. She has two chapbooks and poetry collections available for publication, should anyone be interested.
V.A. Bettencourt
Shadow Knitting
She works in shadows cast by an ancient tree
whose rogue roots girdle half its branches and
guide others to sprout strangling shoots.
She knits moths that morph in wind
with the same artistry used by women
who watched trains from windowsills
to transpose timetables into cyphers
they encoded in scarves
scanned by soldiers to win wars.
She purls stitches created by foremothers who
designed sinuous garments in backrooms
centuries before calculus described their curves,
& coded algorithms in fiber
long before Ada Lovelace programmed them
on the first computer
seen as Charles Babbage’s brainchild.
She tailors schemas developed by women who
dodged guilds that blocked petticoats,
patched socks to secure footing
on uneven fields,
bent wooden orders that barred them
& cast off girdles with craft
so she can weave new patterns
to warp the geometry
of stunted structures
bound
by
unraveling
seams.
V. A. Bettencourt writes poetry and short prose. Selected as an International Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2023 International Poetry Competition, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Journal of Poetry, Chestnut Review, Burningword Literary Journal and SWWIM Every Day, among others. She is a reader at Palette Poetry.
AlYx Chandler
Fingers that Refuse to Core
“Plant peppers when you’re mad or they won’t grow hot” —Journal of American Folklore, also my grandmother
I don’t mean this ugly
but these here peppers aren’t hot enough to run a nose
got no zing
no mad in ‘em
aren’t fiery enough to be in no one’s mouth
on God’s green earth—
you’re safe as can be, hun
eating that jalapeno
never were a pepperhead, were you
still gotta be real careful just cause your mouth
ain’t actually on fire don’t mean your mind
won’t burn your body good
and mean and crisp
ignite it, ya know?
don’t you forget your taste buds
are where you come from
a good pepper like a mad woman
painful as can be
a homemade dish meant to
bring you to tears
let you know what you did
careful when you cut out
what’s hot in a person
you hear me? it’s not always gone
the innards got a way of stayin’
and listen, when you find out what strikes flames
in a person you best move fast
or move aside
hun, stop your crying
it can’t be that hot I been at peace for years.
Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Fellow and taught composition and poetry. Her poetry can be found in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Cordella Magazine, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Alyx can be found on Instagram @alyxabc, Facebook @Alyx Chandler, and Twitter @AlyxChandler. Her website: alyxchandler.com.
Ann Chinnis
To My Father on My 67th Birthday
I hated your decoys, the red-breasted
merganser, the blue-winged teal,
the northern pintail you jailed
on your bookshelf. I reviled you
as childish for buckling them
into our station wagon
on the opening day of hunting season,
always
on my Halloween birthday.
At bedtime, I loathed you
for softly drying their rubber
and pine, while forgetting to wish me
Happy Birthday. I loved to twist
a ballpoint pen into the red-headed
canvasback’s belly, to biopsy why
you loved it. On my eighth birthday,
I hounded you to take me hunting.
I wanted to carry your dull
Lesser White Whistling.
I wanted you to look up at the sky,
to say it was the blue of my eyes.
I wanted you to put the top down
on the Cadillac convertible
you spray-painted green and concealed
in the cornfield. I wanted to lie down
in the back seat. I wanted you
to cover me with straw. I wanted
to be one of your
decoys.
I didn’t want to slip on the muck.
I didn’t intend to fall in the river
with your lesser white whistling.
I hugged your decoy
as if it were drowning;
like a mother or father, I never let go.
You yelled: Go wait in the station wagon
until I am done huntin’, as I caught
the car keys you threw at me. I was ashamed
to unlock the car. Mom taught me not
to sit on a seat in wet clothes. I refused
to get in and to turn on the heater,
until I could no longer feel
my toes and my fingers. Even now, Dad,
on a cold day, when I hear a car lock
click open, and I inch onto a vinyl seat—
it feels like losing everything.
Ann Chinnis has been an Emergency Physician for 40 years, as well as a healthcare leadership coach, and studies at The Writers Studio Master Class under Philip Schultz. Her poetry has been published in The Speckled Trout Review, Drunk Monkeys, Around the World: Landscapes & Cityscapes, Mocking Owl Roost, Sky Island Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig and Nostos, among others. Her first chapbook “Poppet, My Poppet” was recently published by Finishing Line Press. Ann lives with her wife in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Elinor Clark
The crows returned to the other tree
And I fit my things into cupboards full of other people’s lives,
mismatched mugs, mixed herbs
expired five years ago.
Still, I want to leave my mark, not think of who this room
belonged to before me.
Across the road a crow glares from a rooftop and I wonder
where its tree went. When I was five
I planted a tree in our garden
and called it mine.
That summer, all the trees on our street
were marked for slaughter,
ribbons tied around their waists.
A company said they planted a thousand trees
for every thousand burnt.
But crows plant more trees than us.
I wonder who owns a tree
conceived by accident.
I learn to make my space around the clutter.
I thank the crow.
Outside my flat is a tree.
On my way home, I untie its ribbon.
Place it in the cupboard
for the next owner.
Elinor Clark lives in the North East of England. Her work has appeared in journals including AMBIT, Poetry Ireland, New Welsh Review, The London Magazine and Lighthouse Journal. She is co-editor of Briefly Zine.
Quintin Collins
Self-Care
I place the cup to my lips;
some bourbon escapes
to split the bathwater.
I ran this bath to relax.
I sip this whiskey
because it is expensive
for my salary. I deserve
occasional luxuries
like the organic bath bomb
dissolving blue. Death cares not
for my economics or what softness
I gift my skin, what smoothness
liquor cascades over uvula.
I don’t ponder drowning, God,
or purpose, the crags of existence
I cannot soak away, only the bourbon
wasted in the water. Bath gone cold,
bubbles dissipated, whiskey done,
my nakedness floats with seaweed,
moisturizing oil, flecks of glitter,
but when I rise from the tub,
I don’t shimmer as I had hoped.
Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, Solstice MFA assistant director, and a poetry editor for Salamander. His work appears in various publications, and his first poetry collection is The Dandelion Speaks of Survival. His second collection is Claim Tickets for Stolen People, winner of the Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Instagram: @qcollinswriter
Prairie Moon Dalton
Amalgam
I don’t talk to my mother
but when I do she tells me not to
eat canned fish for every meal.
She can practically see
the mercury levels rising
in my bloodstream, molars
and premolars cradled
forever in tin and silver.
I need to change lenses, renew
my registration, salt fruit and wash it
twice, see the dentist and never leave
a water bottle in a hot car. It’s bad
enough, she says, those pins holding
your jaw together won’t ever dissolve,
will be with you longer than I ever can,
will set off every alarm and you’ll have to
say it was you. Worst of all,
when you’re cremated you won’t burn
up, you’ll just melt down.
Prairie Moon Dalton is an Appalachian poet born and raised in Western North Carolina. A 2020 Bucknell fellow and 2022 Neil Postman award winner, her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Rattle, Sprung Formal, The Quarter(ly), and elsewhere. Prairie Moon is currently pursuing her MFA at NC State University.
Poetry by Sophie Farthing
Cobbler
In scorched July
beneath trumpet vines
on the bank above the barn road,
we pick blackberries.
We wade knee-deep in poison ivy,
bobbing and weaving between spiderwebs,
sweating through long-sleeved shirts.
My cat stalks smugly through thickets
we can't reach.
The wind drops. The chickens
open parched beaks to pant, horses
stamp at flies, and Queen Anne's Lace
hangs heavy, crowned heads.
We clutch pails still seedy
from April's strawberry-picking.
Our fingers are purple, prickered.
Like elephants, we lift first one leg,
then the other, considering each step.
We call out in whispers, afraid
to wake the wasps.
I can taste the sun as it ripens
the Better Boys and Early Girls up the hill.
I blink away sweat,
and suddenly, a fat hornet
hovers over my hand
raising the fine hairs on my wrist
with the softest kiss of wings.
My heart beats in my neck.
I stand perfectly still.
I do not breathe.
I do not think.
My tongue swells, my mouth
dries out. Empty of sound,
my ears prickle and chill,
and I hate the sweet-sharp tang
of every berry I have ever picked.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
for the things I did. Please
forgive me, and help me to do better,
and please help me to love and serve
you, in Jesus' Name—
The hornet passes over my arms,
clips my shoulder,
hums away.
The earth settles on its haunches.
The crickets take up their old song.
This hornet did not mistake paralysis
for disrespect. This hornet thirsts
for blackberries,
not for fear, but I am too young
to know the difference
when it wears my father's eyes.
I shudder. Ants crawl across my feet.
In the garden on the hill,
a bumblebee careens unkempt
into the heart of a zinnia.
Queenie
I never kissed your full lips. My hands
never wandered. I was sixteen, seventeen,
dazed and confused, watching your breasts swing
as you danced along the stone wall, telling myself
you were ugly. Too much body,
too much woman. Daddy liked thin girls.
I wanted to shrink myself so small
no one could see me standing sideways.
We dreamed chiffon dreams.
In the meadow, home-sewn skirts
tugged over our knees,
we watched the sun fillet the sky
in orange and blue. I held your rough hand,
scholar's shoulders hunched in thrift store cap sleeves,
I gazed into your eyes. We lived like
rabbits in lettuces, lapping each other up with thirsty,
thick tongues. I never kissed your full lips. You gave me
the dolphin beads and the shells,
the lace I never wore. Say it.
Say it! The nest we built us was
too small to settle in. Still I remember my thumb
on the fine skin below your forefinger,
how you cried on my bed against the wall,
how my mother watched me with a strange,
embarrassed face, and how
you pulled your hand away. I'm sorry.
I remember the cricks in our necks.
The one hundred strokes you used to
brush your hair. Stumbling awake before dawn,
bras and toothbrushes and tampons,
molasses in my teeth.
When I surprised you on the landing
at our first meeting, you lifted me and spun me in your arms,
and it had been building in me for a long time,
years and years, but you swung me out of orbit.
My arrows have not flown straight since.
And it never was,
and we never did,
and we never will.
Sophie Farthing (she/her) is a queer writer living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in outlets including Right Hand Pointing, Beyond Queer Words, Impossible Archetype, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her poetry is also featured in the horror anthology it always finds me from Querencia Press. She is the 2024 recipient of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry from the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Website: http://sophiemfarthing.carrd.co
Lee Fenyes
Inherit
Sooner or later houses will start to
betray you:
the leaky sink,
the suspicious, fuzzy spot on the back wall.
We once had a toilet lift right out of the floor—
the plumbers stared down into the hole,
muttering shit in Greek.
It’s a bit like bodies.
People warn me that I’m getting to that age
as if I haven’t seen already
the catheters and bags of fluid,
and caskets turning friends into earth.
Once you’ve been around,
a lot of things start to look like death, even
a walk in the park or a lunch date.
I can turn most things into tragedies.
My mother tells me,
Just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to say it.
She also says, You’re haunted,
and it’s true.
My body is an attic full of leftover survival skills:
tense muscles, rapid heartbeat.
My ears swivel at the touch of movement.
I recognize myself in photos older than time:
a birthright of eyes staring out from bone.
As I get older,
memories click into place.
Fogs lift, like the one that had me
panicked in showers, on public buses.
I teach my muscles to soften.
I tattoo myself with branches,
tree limbs reaching across my ribs
instead of sky.
Lee Fenyes studied poetry and English Language & Literature at the University of Michigan, where they received the Emerging Writers Award and the Virginia Voss Award for Academic Writing. Lee's writing, which centers on nature, memory, and identity, has been published in Lavender Review and Ouch! Collective.
Liam H. Flake
tonight the dionysian mysteries percolate from the ceiling of the brothers bar
(or: an ode to self-destruction)
Liam H. Flake is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and is currently working towards his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. His writing frequently ties in both ekphrastic and geographical elements. Flake has previously been published in Meniscus and Gypsophilia. He can be reached at liamflake1@hotmail.com
EliSa A. Garza
How to Become an American Poet
First, understand that poetry
is not for you, little brown girl.
Poetry is written in proper English,
not that border slang you speak.
Second, poems are serious:
love and nature, death,
wars, nation building. You know
nothing of such things, and later,
when you have learned about war,
nations, loved, seen death,
visited nature, you will realize:
your pretty words do not build
our knowledge. If only you
were a man. A man, at least
can see beyond the ordinary.
Third, if you must write,
do not write about women,
or their sphere. Serious poems
ignore domestic life:
no new knowledge in the house.
Fourth, no one will publish
your writing under that name,
so foreign and female. If you
do manage to write in proper English,
seriously, like a man, you must
be anonymous to readers, your name
ordinary, interchangeable, unremembered.
Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and former writing and literature teacher. Her full-length collection, Regalos (Lamar University Literary Press), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her chapbook, Between the Light / entre la claridad (Mouthfeel Press), is now in its second edition. Her poems have recently appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Rogue Agent, and Huizache.
Alexander Gast
Buckshot
i learned to be a man when you blew smoke
in her face and said your glass
was getting close to empty.
when you
bit the head off my barbie—swallowed
it whole and shat platinum blond corn silk
for three days.
men, you taught me,
draw pistols to shoot the breeze. we arm-wrestle
thorn bushes. crunch shrapnel
like big league chew. fuck coors cans
and cum buckshot.
i watched you
wear beehives for sneakers to prove pain
was a fiction of the body. watched you
flip through pictures of your father
and shudder. ran my fingers over the edges
of the hole you punched in the
drywall
/
of the hole you punched in the
cinderblock. saw you chop down a weeping
cherry because crying is weakness.
rip off
your right ear ‘cause you thought it was
the gay one. heard you cry in the shower
after the funeral
/
after the wedding.
Alexander Gast is twenty years old and lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. More of his poems can be found in the Ghost City Review, Shooter Literary Magazine, and crumpled into frustrated balls in his nightstand drawer. His instagram is @alex.gast
Nadaa Hussein
just another war poem
“I refuse to despair because despairing is refusing life. One must keep the faith.” — Aime Cesaire
loss and grief are the most disingenuous words in the English language.
bastardized Indo-European roots
transform and destroy decades
fail to capture a fraction
of the emotional annihilation.
they caused and do cause and will cause
and still.
it does.
what can I say?
the potential seductiveness of language is dangerous[1]
how it eviscerates and self-flagellates,
it’s disgusting, and
I’d bleed to death to write a memorable line.
am I not the quintessential little poet?
take my bones and
make something better out of them.
I can’t keep my faith.
it’s called a war
when it is a slaughter.
what can I say when all that has been, has been torn from me?
say life, and keep the faith
that we will all die in a war over a period and a thimbleful of water?
the bible can be read in a thousand different ways and
there is no neutral, the universal, a farce—
say despair—
I could decimate this language by atom,
can it hold the toll of the rage that lies above the sadness?
the earth still moves.
say, I name it.
there is nothing left.
please.
flex your poetic muscles and feel something true for once.
what was the war poem I wanted to write?
I saw life extinguished, one atom fracturing,
space, it gives. even the air—
it bends—love in
death,
a small mercy.
It’s all terrible.
say life,
one must.
feel something
true.
[1] Bla_K: Essays and Interviews by M. NourbeSe Philip.
Nadaa is a writer, instructor and sometimes barista who focuses on documenting pop-culture, diasporic aesthetics and current socio-political cultural politics with rapid-fire detail and urgency. Her current project is a work-in-progress manuscript, centered on studying and creating multi-disciplinary hybrid and experimental poetry and prose pieces. She attended UC Davis for an MFA in Creative Writing and lives in Northern California.
Ben Hyland
Lunch with the Ex
I’d build her a home if
I were a handy man
with a fat credit limit,
two bed, two bath,
Grand Cayman, North Shore,
where we’d work on our tans forever—
string-bikini old folks
dark as the rocks
supporting our shellacked deck.
I’d go fish, if I could fish, and bring her
blue tang, snapper, sergeant major,
kiss her callused feet even though
I hate feet,
gag at the sight,
but if she walked another day with me,
I wouldn’t care. I’d find her—
Sand-blown dress, flowers in her hair—
and run: A child first sees the ocean.
I’d be honest. If she told me
somewhere on Seven Mile Beach
there were a princess-cut
and she’d lick me all over if I found it,
I wouldn’t just comb,
I’d sift every square inch,
swim out for miles and dive, dive, dive,
come up with nothing, gasping, and be so happy.
Ben Hyland’s poetry is collected in four chapbooks—most recently, Shelter in Place (Moonstone Press, 2022)—and has been featured in multiple publications, including Beloit Poetry Review, Hawai'i-Pacific Review, and Delta Poetry Review. As a career coach, Ben has helped hundreds of jobseekers find employment, even throughout the pandemic. Readers can connect with him and follow his work at www.benhylandlives.com.
Jeron Jennings
Sun enters Aquarius
Jeron Jennings is a poet and social worker; he lives in Missoula, Montana with his partner and their child. His work seeks to explore a space where language loses its utility to create new meaning.
Mickie Kennedy
The Gay Disease
The first time she said it, I flinched
inside, where she couldn’t
see it, not really. She picked at her salad,
while a sour-faced waiter forced more tea
into my already-filled glass.
I wanted to interrupt her, to correct her,
but who was I—a gay son
who took a wife and burrowed inside
a two-story colonial.
Four bedrooms, a bar in the basement.
I could never tell her how much
I missed being touched.
Never share the names of the men
whose slow deaths
I couldn’t bear to watch.
So when she said it,
spearing a crouton with her fork, I let her
say it, lifting my drink—a toast
to my silence.
Mickie Kennedy (he/him) is a gay, neurodivergent writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland with his family and a shy cat that lives under his son's bed. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Threepenny Review, POETRY, The Southern Review, Gulf Coast, Foglifter, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. A finalist for the 2023 Pablo Neruda Prize, he earned an MFA from George Mason University. Follow him on Twitter/X @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.
Louise Kim
dreaming city
Louise Kim is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Their Pushcart Prize—and Best of the Net—nominated writing has been published in a number of publications, including Frontier Poetry, Chautauqua Journal, and Panoply Zine. Her debut poetry collection, Wonder is the Word, was published in May 2023. You can find them on Instagram at @loukim0107.
Hilary King
Aftertaste
Maybe it was not the apple
that tempted Adam or even
the bare, brown arm of Eve
extended towards him,
red orb in cupped fingers
that broke Adam’s God-given reserve.
Maybe it was Eve’s mouth,
How it tasted after a bite
of crisp, cold fruit:
like a room newly painted,
a house newly built,
or a garden just before harvest.
He could go there too, Adam
realized, leave this yard with its snakes
and overlords and stench
of rotting fruit and everywhere
dandelions which He swears are edible
but never flood the mouth
with sweetness and promise.
Hilary King was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. After spending over twenty years in Atlanta, she moved with her family to the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, TAB, Salamander, MER, Fourth River, SWIMM, and other publications. Also a playwright, she is the author of the book of poems, The Maid’s Car. She lives with her husband, dog, and two cats. She loves hiking and ribbon. Find her at www.hilarykingwriting.com and on Twitter/X at @hrk299.
Jemma Leech
Arriving in a new place is better than departing the old
The day I was born was the day I died for the first time. With no breath inside
Or out, I flatlined my way into the world. Beneath the surface of warm familiarity
Lay cold, bare dread of eternal nothingness. By the time the flat life line warped
Into lively lumpy chaos, the bruise was spreading, the tissue corrupted,
The narrow pathways blocked like days-old milk-straws left in the sun.
By the time I learned to speak, I couldn’t learn to speak. And I learned to walk
From the comfort of my chair. There’s something to be said for it,
I suppose, no ankles sprained on the court or the piste,
No faux pas in polite company, no f-bombs to scare the horses.
No cleats or prom heels, no hikes in bear country or sheer-drop snowy peaks
No sneaking off at midnight to hang out, or shoot up, or send birds flying at cop cars.
No broken wrists or curfews or promises or heart,
Yet much warm praise simply for turning up. Being team mascot, below eye-level,
Not team member and in view, has its benefits too. It’s hard to disappoint someone
If they expect nothing of you. It’s hard to fail, if you make no attempt to win.
It’s hard to take on the world, if the world can’t see you,
Or chooses not to. But, you know, the sun still shines and the flowers
Still smell, and the rivers still tumble over rocks and sand. The red kites still spin
And the painted dogs still croon to the mosaic of the harvest moon.
The horizon lies flat and distant. I was there, once upon a time,
On the day I died for the first time.
But not today. Today, I’m still here.
Jemma Leech is a silent poet with a loud voice. She is a British/Texan poet and essayist who lives in Houston. While she speaks from the perspective of someone with cerebral palsy and a wheelchair user, she also celebrates nature, reflects on history, and observes the intimacy of human relationships. Her work has appeared in the Gulf Coast Literary Journal, the Houston Chronicle, The Times, the Times Educational Supplement, and on ABC News. She has given readings of her work through Inprint, the Houston Public Library, and Public Poetry Houston. www.jemmaleech.com
Carlos Martin
I Did What a Child Does
After Li-Young Lee
So that she could take a job,
after my father left with the waitress,
my mother teaches me to cook us dinner.
1. Chop the onions finely,
they will muddle into the sauce.
The pressure cooker’s explosive
reputation terrifies me.
She teases, nothing but a rumor.
2. Bathe it in cold water.
3. The sound of steam is a warning.
I ask about my father.
The sound of steam is a warning.
Beware, a meal can become a curse tablet.
4. You must first fry and brown the beef in olive oil
to give it color.
She dances from stove to sink to steak,
she’s always dancing.
She dances like we’re not clinging to the
walls of that small townhouse kitchen,
the survivors of our shipwrecked family.
5. Take the beef out and fry the sofrito.
The frying onions excuse
the release of suppressed tears.
A meal can be a curse tablet.
We eat in silence.
My daughter giggles when I mimic the percussive pressure cooker.
shique-shique-shique-shique-shique-shique-shique
She repeats:
1. Simmer rice 15 minutes, steam rice 15 more.
I ask her how we chop the onions.
2. Chop them small, Papa.
My daughter Elena never met her namesake
Maria Elena Sanchez,
gone to glory before Elena was born.
She eats the stew we made,
her grandmother’s gift to us.
She laughs and she says,
Papa, you’re dancing.
Carlos Francisco Martin is a graduate student in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Florida International University. His poems can be found in the South Florida Poetry Journal and were selected at O Miami's Underline Urban Haiku contest. Carlos lives with his wife and two daughters in Miami, Florida where he is a practicing lawyer.
Akash MattupalLi
Shootings in America
We were talking about Death at the dinner table,
lightning and the stormy thunder buzzing faintly outside.
I was eating their zucchini bread with spread butter,
“Did you know that you could buy guns at Walmart?”
I thought I heard their dog whine behind us.
I was a military recruit when I first shot an assault rifle,
bullets in the magazine clanging like bells in Hindu temples,
I took in a deep breath and looked through the scope.
The target was moving, I was calm as a feather,
I pressed the trigger and the recoil nudged my shoulder.
I had hit the target, I became a marksman.
Why would they ever put guns in the hands of teenagers?
My friends told me of their suburban American schools,
the active school shooting drills they had to do,
hidden in corners of classrooms in the dark,
under chairs or tables, becoming roly-poly bugs.
“Does this happen in other countries?” one of them asked
me, my fear in middle school was about not fitting in,
not about being shot.
Mother says she’s terrified of going outside on her own.
“These crazy idiots with guns, they’ll shoot you,”
at times, it seems more likely to end up in a car crash
on Beltway 8, Houston’s reputation for bad drivers
being louder than the Lone Star Flag.
In this odd game of Russian roulette
do people bleed in Red, White, and Blue?
Terms like filibusters or caucuses or clotures or recesses
are thrown around as the shell casings of bullets fall.
The only time a white supremacist used the metric system
was before they squeezed the trigger.
Currently working in semiconductors with a mechanical engineering background, Akash started to write at 15 to understand his identity. Now living in the US, he has also lived in India, Singapore, England, Saudi Arabia, and Spain. Through his work, he hopes to reflect on the intersection of the immigrant Indian identity and the environments that he has lived in.
Joan Mazza
Blue Zones Fare
Call me gullible again. I fell for the claims
of longevity with health, bought the pricey book
with stunning photos of foods I never heard of,
went on to buy miso, dashi, seaweed, and tofu,
watched the YouTube videos on how to prepare
and store them. This book is nearly vegan
with portions sized for petite five-year-olds.
No fish or shellfish, not even for Sardinia
and Okinawa, where the sea offers its buffet.
Listen, I hate to confess how easily I’ve been
bamboozled by pretty pictures and promises
that I might live to 100, remain vibrant.
Let’s face it, I’m not climbing up and down
the mountainside with a sack of turnips
or digging potatoes with only hand tools.
I never have and never will. It’s too late
to grow muscular and athletic at seventy-two.
But please, don’t lie to me about ingredients.
Don’t sell me books with untested recipes
whose baking times and quantities are out
of whack. Don’t tell me I need to buy
breadfruit, chan seeds, mirin, purple sweet
potatoes, and one large, hairy tiquisque.
The joke’s on me. I’m still a mark for magic.
Joan Mazza worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops nationally on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Italian Americana, The Comstock Review, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Slant, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia.
Poetry by Ma. Jhayle Meer
“Imagine if this was another country, not nowhere,”
not weaving, not crisis,
not defiled, not child
in house desert,
not dreamlike
not found
truth: your skirt
of fate, your thigh,
a faithless touch
incurring scar
I am afraid to lay
on you the weight
of my own
hand.
“I have a past. But I am here.”
Said my mother once, folding her sadness
Into a tight bun. She hung the photos of her grandparents
Courting in Intramuros, a cochero and Spanish maiden, Indio and salvaged.
How did I get here? Skirt lifted to the knees, ankles crossing
Clear shallow water. I woke on another island
Making music out of violent silence
The dogs hated my arrival, though they cowered and
Lowered their eyes—they thought I was just as broken
Framed and forgotten once I married
Or perhaps reborn? As survived and justified—
Ferried from a set of perils where finally, I am
Muttered into the light, seen plainly for who I am
Languageless and safe: why do I imagine another country? my country
As another? This imagined, dreamlike country
Exists only in my head.
I made you write it down.
Why you left: bored of the task that is upon
Everyone: to escape the poverty of their lives.
To abandon word and tradition, the slow climb
Of generations toward some kind of meaning.
In reality, breaking back to eat supper. Watch:
No one ever truly knew what was up with the
Final supper, it was another image we have let
Organize our lives. Your mother saying, so what?
If we only knew ourselves mirrored in religious figures
At once archaic and real. You will not do it anyway
What was entrusted to you by the family, to wash
The feet of the common folk.
Ma. Jhayle Meer is Filipina poet and filmmaker who lives in a sleepy town called Marikina with her spouse and two pets. She teaches high school creative writing. She has a BA in Film and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of the Philippines.
Patricia Heisser métoyer
lift every voice
patricia a. heisser métoyer is completing an International MFA in creative writing and holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology. She is an award-winning essayist and recipient of The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Fellowship and The American Film Institute Fellowship. She is a Ms. Magazine Feminist Scholar. patricia has published writing on multiple platforms. She is currently seeking representation for her first book of cross-genre narrative fiction and nonfiction on African American and African Diaspora Literature and Art. She is a member of the Author’s Guild, the American Psychological Association.
Madison Newman
The Third Dead Orchid
I called my mother to tell her
I tried to rescue another one of you
from the neglectful cold of the grocery store,
but you are dead
again
I buried you in a shoebox
in the backyard like a dead pet,
packing the corners with scraps of satin pillowcase
and fertilizer, your pot a hospice
and a refusal
from the time I unwrapped you from the stained cellophane
I strung your stem spine up with little white pearls,
made you offerings of eggshells
and ice cubes in vain attempts at revival.
It is my fault
for believing I can always play savior.
Your quick descent lasted only two and a half weeks—
two and a half weeks of your cloud-purple heads raised
in prayer, then your color fading like that prayer
Unanswered. Your stem drooped down
like an old woman’s brow,
roots sickling
and pressing their gnarled and tired mouths
to the moist soil.
Finally,
the end
was a self-guillotining:
your withered heads
. rolling away
Madison Newman (she/her) is a student, grant writer, and lover of words. When not writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, spending time with her cat, and caring for a copious amount of houseplants.
Molly O’Dell
At the Buffet
Her royal blue blouse shimmies
in a shaft of light
while she talks with her husband
who throws back his head to laugh.
Her hands shake symmetrically,
uncontrollably. Left hand holds her plate
while the right one scoops pickled
beets then lifts the top off the stewpot.
As they sit and talk I watch
her eat her soup. Each spoonful’s
kinetically delivered with a quivery
hand that spills more soup
as the tremor’s rate and range
increases the closer the spoon
moves towards her mouth. The thing is,
she never winces or whines
and her husband doesn’t take his eyes
off hers, try to help or say he’s sorry.
Molly lives in southwest Virginia and loves being outdoors. She received an MFA from University of Nebraska and her published collections include Off the Chart, a chapbook, Care is A Four Letter Verb, a multi-genre collection and Unsolicited: 96 Saws and Quips from the Wake of the Pandemic, written for her public health colleagues and anyone else tired of SARS Co-V2. Molly can be found online on Instagram @mollyodell1787, Facebook @Molly O’Dell, and her website www.doctormolly.net.
LeeAnn Olivier
Bright Star
When the anesthesia wanes I claw through cuffed
wrists, my glutted throat a moat of gravel, tubes
sprawling from my veins like the roots of a black
gum tree until I’m pulled back under, and I take a night
train to a half-world half a world away, a serenade
of cyanide on the bedside, a red star carved at the edge
of the Black Sea. The whittled rattle of spokes on tracks,
maps and gestures little reliquaries, a stranger’s mouth
on mine, an utter hush washed over us as the lacquered
leaves of her eyes gleam greengold and my pulse rustles
like a hiss of waves. I’m dreaming my liver donor’s
dreams. What lags behind flickers and hums, his
mythologies nestled deep as a swell of bees in my ribs.
Raised in Louisiana on new-wave music, horror films, and Grimm fairy tales, LeeAnn Olivier is a neo-Southern Gothic poet and writing professor. Her poetry has appeared in dozens of journals, including The Missouri Review, NOVUS, and Exposed Brick Lit. As a survivor of domestic violence, breast cancer, and an emergency liver transplant, Olivier hopes to help her students navigate their traumas through creative expression.
Dominique Parris
A Part
Some things know about letting go
about how and when,
and how much.
My knife rocks around the circumference of an avocado pit
and two halves cleave with ease—
though that’s not the wonder of it.
Slicing the length into quarters
reveals twin bruises, grey and sunken.
No matter.
I coax the stippled peel backwards, yielding
whorls of purple velvet underbelly,
I watch the flesh of the fruit
as she relinquishes her blemish
to the retracting peel—
jagged half moon
perfectly excised.
Another clean leaving.
Dominique Parris (she/her) is a poet and social justice practitioner. She holds a Masters of Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College. Originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia. She is a queer, multi-racial, mother of three living with her spouse and children in Washington, DC. www.linkedin.com/in/dominiqueparris/
Bleah Patterson
I don’t know if I’ve ever been in love or if I just love the beginning and end of something
Bleah Patterson (she/her) is a southern, queer writer born in Texas. She has been a SAFTA and BAC resident, and her various genres of work are featured or forthcoming in Barely South, Write or Die, Phoebe Literature, Milk Press, Beaver Magazine, Across the Margins, Electric Literature, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere.
Poetry by Tina Posner
All I wanted were white go-go boots
to wear with my purple, crushed-velvet skirt
that laced up the front with a thin chain.
I was in love with the frugging teens
in Pop-Pop’s brief paint-by-numbers art.
The deep blue walls and blue carpet gave
my room an undersea hue, and I’d float
on my bedspread–a floral riot of violet
and red—daydreaming of girlfriends
who’d be more like sisters, teaching
me dance moves for boy-girl parties.
I’d unhinge the laminate desktop and
write out invitations, lift the heavy lid
of the vanity to reveal cheap jewelry,
bright shadows, and bubblegum gloss.
This is my future, I’d whisper to prints
of sad-eyed girls with sad-eyed cats,
listening to my heartthrob name new
feelings on my close-and-play.
Pot of Fire
Buffalo lake-effect snow dumped
a frozen flood waist-high. Sidewalk
glaciers refusing to recede until
long after spring break. Cold, dark
months puddled, warping the inlaid
parquet floors, soaking our socks,
and leaving chalk outlines of salt.
Looking for ways to kill time, one of us
suggested we make chicken wings.
Not me. I couldn’t imagine anything
more redundant than the town’s trademark
served in every restaurant, every bar.
And the bars were only outnumbered
by the churches. But half-crazed with
sky-gray boredom and bong hits,
we couldn’t agree on anything else.
Wings, flour, spices, all ready to fry.
But the oil in the pot combusted.
We saw the smoke, the fire, and froze.
I don’t know who broke the spell
first. Maybe it was VB, ever precise,
who noted the unsafe absence
of an extinguisher. Maybe it was K,
sober and shy, who pointed out
the obvious: It was a grease fire.
Since our pots had no lids, K soaked
a washcloth we kept in the kitchen
as a potholder. The fire swallowed it
whole. With only a shaker full of salt
to sprinkle, I improvised with flour.
The grateful flames whooshed
to the ceiling. VB noted accurately,
ex post facto, that flour is flammable.
Then the one we called Momma,
for her size, yelled that the gas stove
would blow, so we fled the kitchen,
waddling into the street, single-file
on a thin path carved in waist-high snow,
just as we were, in slippers, jacketless.
I half-dug and half-swam in a panic
to the neighbors’ door, my frozen fists
pounding, Call 911—big fire!!!
The orange dance in the windows
suggested utter destruction within.
VB, near tears, mourned her new
contact lenses, Momma her books,
me my poems. I don’t know what
K mourned—she never said.
Four fire trucks whined to the curb.
Brave souls in their fireproof gear
who dared to enter our humble inferno.
Then from out of the hot maw flew
the smoldering pot. Here’s your fire,
ladies, a gloved finger pointing
as it sank, hissing in the snow like
a witch undone by water. I argued
to keep the charred pot on the lawn—
its stink an ever-funny punchline;
like laughter trapped in amber.
I wonder if they ever tell this story
to their friends. I wonder why we,
once so close, drifted like snow.
My past is full of such numb spots,
and I can’t recall any reasons.
With no one to ask, I’ll never know
what happened to those raw wings.
Tina Posner has published poems in Ocean State Review, EcoTheo Review, Autofocus, Switchgrass Review, Ashes to Stardust (Sybaritic Press, 2023), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017). She has published over a dozen books of nonfiction and poetry for classroom use. An NYC expat, she lives in Austin, TX.
Elisabeth Preston-Hsu
In Songkhla, Thailand
Do not sleep towards the west, a Thai friend said.
The dead face that direction. It’s bad luck.
I looked everywhere but west that year, for a lottery ticket,
a comfortable pair of jeans, for an avocado perfectly
ripened. I found nothing. I never knew which direction
I faced when asleep in Thailand. Where my nightmares
found the dead walking through me, above me, next
to you, restless. Mudslides striped the north after days
of rain in December. So many pieces carried to washout and slip
in the south. Chickens suffocated by mud in the east. Cinder blocks
scraped wounds into the hills. But these were not the bad luck.
It was that I did not look west to you, and reach. A coolness
in all that rain’s potential. Next day’s morning on the beach,
ghost crabs scurried west, sun pulled forward by claws
and shadows. Unraveled the air, snipped the breeze, carried
the night's heaviness away. An attempt in a year so small
it felt like half a breath. A breath so short, I forgot how hard
the rain had hurt. How I pooled at the hill’s base and found
a gentle shoreline, its lip of waves closing the wound.
Find Elisabeth Preston-Hsu’s work in the Bellevue Literary Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, CALYX, The Sun, MacQueen’s Quinterly, North American Review, and elsewhere. She’s a physician in Atlanta, Georgia. Follow her on Instagram @writers.eatery.
Poetry by J.B. Rouse
Of Territories & Offenses: 1869
IN CASTORS AND CHINCHILLAS
a few Christian men have accomplished wonders
orderly and law-biding
THE SCIENCE OF LIFE mere canvas
But Among these savages
squalid poverty knavish remnants
fearful shrieks of the hopeless heathen
From the Episcopal chapel
OXY-HYDROGEN LIGHT
cheerful and prosperous
horses and wagons, coats and trousers
SILK FACINGS AND VELVET COLLARS
Of Territories & Offenses: 1975
SLASHER MURDER EAR TO EAR
AMERICA’S PRIZE PACKAGE
100,000 pounds of federal meat
Armed with rifles and shotguns
3:00 THE ASCENT OF MAN
tear gas canisters about 8:45
a curfew declared
10:30 LOVE OF LIFE
hammered out all-night
to prevent it from spoiling
Of Territories & Offenses: 1988
PLEASE ACCEPT OUR SINCERE
THANKS FOR GIVING
so-called peace pipes
(Your) EVAPORATIVE FRATERNAL BENEFITS
(They say) The great deity could commune through smoke
warclub bric-a-brac
EASY-TO-MAINTAIN AND EASY-TO-LOVE
I’m seeing the sacred at rummage sales
Dr. Jeremy Rouse is an educator, musician, and writer currently living in Washington state. His creative output includes albums, zines, short fiction, and poetry, often featuring found poems. Much of Rouse's work is informed by his Yankton Sioux identity. Often utilizing abstract language and imagery, he hopes to invite audiences into a collaborative journey of interpretation and meaning-making.
Roscoe Saunders
Tetris and Questions of Infinity
Oh, Tetromino, can we spin a while longer?
This lemniscate dance is dangerous, I know,
but slipping on ice is far preferable
to whatever awaits above.
I am set at ease by your presence, so please,
tell me: is there an indefinite strategy?
We grow closer to the tetrion ceiling,
the gaps we left below so out of reach––
and the skewed pieces grow engulfing in their tide.
I no longer ask if we can spin forever,
because this is no way to live, back against the wall.
But hold on to me, please. I’m afraid of topping out.
Tetromino, tell me there is beauty in the end,
like four lines flitting into nonexistence,
a meteoric straight piece at its side.
I’m full of fear that the Overbalanced Wheel won’t turn,
or the monkey won’t typewrite Macbeth word for word,
or the sun will explode, if bombs don’t end things first.
Tetris, give me clarity, focus, the time to set things
in the right place. I’ve dug myself out of holes before,
filled the gaps I needed to, but I’ve never avoided the end,
never escaped a malexecuted T-spin or a misplaced piece.
Tetromino, nobody can do the impossible, right?
Roscoe Saunders is an emerging, neurodivergent poet, born and raised in St. Augustine, Florida. He graduated from Flagler College in 2024. He is a lover of video games, tabletop roleplaying games, and the stories that are told in both mediums. He finds inspiration in often unexpected topics, but tends towards the concepts of place, environmental issues, and identity.
Sameen Shakya
The Sewer Rat
We rain dogs huddle together
under the awning of some bar door
passing around a single cigarette
among the five of us and my eyes dart,
at L, who lights and takes the first puff,
singing compliments about this girl he met
yesterday at some library, god knows
he’s got clean enough clothes that they won’t throw him out.
She was reading a book on chemistry, and he
asked if she could see some between them.
It worked. M laughs the first and I eye
as the cigarette passes to his lips. A says,
“Well, is there?” and they all laugh. I just
want the goddamn cigarette passed to me.
O asks me when did I last eat. “You’ve got
this look on your eyes” as A takes his puff.
The seconds pass without a sense of urgency.
Finally, it gets to O then me. I can taste it.
The smoke filling my lungs. I’m gonna savor it, but
as O passes the dying cigarette to me
the rain fueled wind blows it away,
and it lands on a puddle to be bulleted by rain.
They stand silent as I walk off.
O calls for me but my hoodie drowns him out.
I slink into an alley as a rat in a sewer
to be drowned. Maybe I will too.
I just wanted a goddamn cigarette.
Sameen Shakya’s poems have been published in Alternate Route, Cosmic Daffodil, Hearth and Coffin, Roi Faineant and Thin Veil Press, to name a few. Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, he moved to the USA in 2015 to pursue writing. He earned an Undergraduate Degree in Creative Writing from St Cloud State University and traveled the country for a couple of years to gain a more informal education. He returned to Kathmandu in 2022 and is currently based there.
Bethany Tap
“Life lies not in what is inherited”
from Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics
Bethany Tap (she/her) is a queer writer living in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her wife and four kids. Her work has been published in Emerge Literary Journal, Third Wednesday, and Yellow Arrow Journal, among others. You can find more of her work at bethanytap.com, Facebook @bethany.tap, and Instagram @bjtaP.
Emma Wynn
At the Jewish Deli
Bowls of pickled vegetables in every booth
not just cucumbers but green tomatoes
like hunks of jade, the bone china vases
of pearl onions and rinds of humble cabbage
flecked with dill, sometimes even a beet
trailing pink plasma like a star
that’s how you know this is no tourist trap
this bowl of mysteries
Papa Joe with his rabbi’s beard
forking out whole cloves of garlic
for my father and me
our eyebrows thick, noses majestic
as the prows of ocean liners crossing the Atlantic
from Romania to Brooklyn
how aching the flood behind my teeth
as it rises dripping from the brine
the translucent fruit of some far garden
thrown scalded into the tight darkness
to be made this sharp, this nourishing
as imperishable as we are
Emma Wynn (they/them) teaches Philosophy, LGBTQI+ U.S. History, and Psychology at a boarding high school in CT. They have been published in multiple magazines and journals and nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. Their first full-length book, “The World is Our Anchor,” was published in 2023 by FutureCycle Press. You can find more of their work at emmawynnpoetry.com and on Instagram at #ewynnpoet.
Ellen Roberts Young
Those Who Stayed
Santa Clara Valley, California
Everywhere else peaches are sold
unripe, apricots are inedible.
Aunts and uncles sit on the porch
and remember prunes. The orchards
have filled with houses: this is old news.
The aunts and uncles are old
and keep retelling the way
they used to go up to the City.
Their young have packed and gone
to other cities not worthy
to be called the City. The old folks
read the papers and lose their
passwords. The young are out
of reach, waiting for rides
to some ash grove where they hope
to find “inspiration.” The uncles
and aunts remember that longing.
They dared not yield to it
when prune orchards filled
the valley and paid the bills.
