Litsa Dremousis

There Are Never Enough Napkins When Dad’s in the Hospital

Late Sunday night, my brother calls:

“Mom says Dad’s in the ICU again.

Be downstairs in ten—

Jen and I will pick you up on the way there.”

Dad’s heart has tried to kill him

more times than he’s lied about quitting

smoking.

So, I suppose it’s a little bit his

fault.

I love Dad so much

and know

that if I

             —like him—

had survived

the Nazi occupation of Greece

and its subsequent civil war

I’d pour Stoli

on my Cheerios

and crush barbecue potato chips

into my pizza

and that I’d do it

eight or nine times by Tuesday.

Really, then, what are a few cigarettes if they get him through the day?

Even if he ends up in the hospital

again

and again

and exhausts us

nearly as much

as the nicotine

exhausts his aortic valves?

Maybe I’m practicing

acceptance.

Or maybe I’m still being

a judgmental asshole.

I grab my large black purse

and stuff it

full

of the cloth napkins

Mom and Dad gave me

as a housewarming gift.

Tonight will stretch into the early

morning

and all of us will forage

in the cafeteria

for whatever’s edible

that can be carried

back to Dad’s room.

The only thing I’ve learned for sure:

There are never enough napkins

when Dad’s in the hospital.

~

“Mountains, Man”

My dog Thomas and I

are out for a walk

during the first glimmers

of Seattle April

when my phone rings

at 6:13 p.m.

Thomas barks

                        —he’s a good little dude but the phone is his sworn enemy—

and when I see

the name on my screen

I want to bark, too.

My awful doctor is calling.

He’s a misogynistic tool

and after our last appointment

I told my best friend:
I hope a nest of spiders hatches in his balls.

To the best of my knowledge

and despite my best efforts,

one did not.

A nearby Magnolia tree

is peacocking and its pink and white blossoms

seem to open and multiply

in real time

as Thomas barks louder

                                     —You shall be vanquished!—

and I reflect on its beauty

and Thomas’ perfect face

before I answer

because I know, well…

I know.

“Over here, baby!”

We sit on the credit union steps

a few sidewalked feet away

and I pick up.

Dr. Awful tells me

my biopsy results

are a shitshow

and my thyroid gland

                                      —a good friend I’d taken for granted, it seems—

must come out

immediately .

Like everything in this region

the credit union sign

has a mountain on it

and while I don’t believe in universe woo woo signs,

my best friend fell

to his death

in the mountains

and sometimes life

is as subtle 

as an ambulance siren.

“Thanks for calling!” I blather

and hang up

because there’s no template

when the human equivalent

of congealed cheese

sounds matter-of-fact saying:
It’ll probably be

Stage Three.

Thomas and I keep sitting

on the cold cement.

I place my face

on the back of his nape

and stroke his soft brown fur,

too numb

to think about

all that must come

next.

---

Litsa Dremousis (she/her) is the author of Altitude Sickness (Future Tense Books). Seattle Metropolitan Magazine named it one of the all-time “20 Books Every Seattleite Should Read.” Her story “Slipping Through the Membrane” was recently nominated for Best Small Fictions 2026, her essay "After the Fire" was selected as one of the "Most Notable Essays 2011” by Best American Essays, and The Seattle Weekly named her one of "50 Women Who Rock Seattle.” The Believer, Bright Flash Fiction Review, Esquire, Filter, Flare Lit Mag, Flash Fiction Magazine, In Parentheses, McSweeney’s, Monkeybicycle, MSN, NPR, NYMag, NYT, Pangyrus, Paper, Paste, PEN Center USA, Pictura Journal, P&W, PW, The Rumpus, Salon, Shine Poetry Quarterly, Short Beasts, Slate, WaPo, et al.

Kelly R. Samuels

Post-Exertional Malaise

When I act as if I love

all whom I say I love,

it follows. It manifests

mid-afternoon sure as the sun

regularly and with no remorse

continues to fade the one plum-

colored chair through

the large front window.

I am found lying

on the couch, nursing an ache

particular to the left temple,

and only dimly recalling

some of the capitals of each

and every state in this wide

and varied country.

Understand I cannot see to

reply in gracious, kind ways

just yet, maybe never.

Nor always embrace

upon departing. I am only

now rising past dusk

to go in search of something

I am sure I lost. I have forgone

holiday cards. Do not wait

for word.

~

Mishearing After I Work the Women’s Throws

It was before noon, the sun

hazy from northern wildfires.

He walked and talked with

another coach, making quick

time on the path leading to

where the athletes would throw

themselves onto mats, landing

square even in rain or

snow, safe in the interior

space from fine particulate

matter. I wondered in what way

he would work their throats—

if gently, loosening the knots,

or how Othello had on

the Signet Classics cover:

clasped and determined, resistant

to delay or bargaining.

I was hopped up on caffeine,

distracted by the sonic tamping

of neighboring ground, thinking

of the disused building I had

just walked through, its stairwells

and doors serving

only one way.

He might have been

muttering, too, or not one

to enunciate. Do not ignore

the consonants, she would advise

all those late afternoons I recited

Frost poems in a near-empty school

for future competitions in larger cities—

the birch tree and the lone

branch letting him down ever so

gently. Listen, she’d say.   

---

Kelly R. Samuels is the author of two poetry collections and six chapbooks—the most recent Oblivescence, a finalist for the Edna Meudt Poetry Book Award (Red Sweater Press, 2024), and Sisi: Re: (Whittle Micro-Press, 2026.) She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with work appearing or forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Blue Earth Review, Sixth Finch, Poetry Northwest, and The Glacier. She lives in the Upper Midwest.

Edward Lineberry

Chattanooga Moon Pie

The Moon Pie General Store clerk packed

            the bag with careful skill

like tucked kittens in the corners

            of a kitty playhouse.

"I like it when it fits just so.

            Is that sad?" the clerk asked.

It's a store, so commerce is a given.

            The clerk was there -- he got

paid to be behind the counter.

            The detritus of the New

South: trinkets and fridge magnets

            culled from institutions

of the Old South, RC Cola,

            white supremacy,

and battle flags that will return

            or retreat with the course

of commerce. Lived history

            distilled through pipes of coin.

~

Welcome, San Diego Visitors!

Family arrives like an invading army.

Two allied nations and their mercurial

representatives charm our family

room. The cat flees and hides, only buttered

rolls or fried chicken can coax her

from her guerrilla compound. The atmosphere

stretches from peace to detente, and the side

door is opened; early Spring air fills

the house, new words float in, unspoken

ideas unformed. Trauma and food preferences

are launched by the combatants, circle

like unmanned drones, strike threats

without announcement, through the silence

they hum, and we try to keep talking

try to keep filling the room with soft

consequence, enough talk, enough food,

enough drink, and we may remember

that we are all in this together,

and together is a frugal fragment of now.

---

Edward Lineberry is a writer living in Atlanta. His poetry, fiction, and criticism have appeared in Atlanta Review, January House, Third Street Review, and elsewhere. You can find him online at elineberry.com.

Laura DeHart Young

Used to Be Sundays

She exited the highway outside of Detroit,

rolling into a Pilot

on a Sunday in October.

Parked at the far end of the lot,

she watched a crowd

of truckers

gather to hear the preacher

from Truck Stop Ministries.

She didn't listen.

Thought instead about the Sundays

when a skillet sizzled

with scrambled eggs and bacon

by nine

and the aroma of coffee

met her on the stairs.

The sounds of dishes

and silverware being set.

That had been her gospel,

her answered prayer.

Now Sundays meant long-hauling

or bobtailing

to a stop

marked on her route,

no one to talk to,

just channel 19

on the CB.

Weather updates, road conditions.

Static and miles.

She sipped cold coffee

with powdered creamer,

stared at a stale cheese Danish.

Caught some sun in the passenger seat—

knees warm in the windshield’s glare.

The parking lot service ended—

not to organ music or chiming bells.

To an unheard benediction

and the scrape of boots

on blessed gravel.

~

Stacked Wood

The axe handle fit my hands—

smooth pine,

a duct-taped grip.

The blade—

sharp,

clean bevel.

Sweat in the air—

smoky resin.

A faint grunt with each hit,

the wood’s cold math.

Heart split,

tumbling aside.

Next piece to the block.

Wind kicked up; leaves skittered.

A blue jay screeched in the pines.

Just the maul,

and the fall of autumn,

the timber silent.

Heavy wood for the base:

thick pieces for the ends,

crisscrossed layers—

bark up.

Space for air, a breath—

heat from the sun.

Each log was just the next one.

The pile demanded nothing of me.

And the fire never asked who gathered it.

---

Laura DeHart Young is a queer poet and novelist living in Atlanta. Her work has appeared in Macrame Literary Journal, The Book of Matches, Does It Have Pockets, Thimble, The Loch Raven Review, Last Leaves Magazine, and elsewhere. Laura is the author of seven novels, originally published by Naiad Press. A new edition of her novel, Private Passions, will be published in 2027.

Julie A. Cox

Artifact: Dead Poets Society DVD

My brother watched the film

over and over in the months

before he died. I found him

up past midnight

replaying the scene where

the son fires a gun and falls

in the father’s home office.

My brother hunkered in the dark,

lit only by the cave light of TV,

his face reflected ice-blue

in the living room window.

I paused in the room, then

muttered good night, moved on

without another thought.

I did not join him to watch

the parents discover the son,

the father crying out,

My boy! My boy!

I got the news weeks later.

My brother knew, as I do now,

that some scenes can never be erased.

I still replay how he sat,

impassive yet rapt,

watching two fictional parents

confront the fact of their son’s death.

That dim-lit living room,

smolder of TV light, a cold fire

that never goes out.

My brother planned well,

timed things

for when our parents were away,

to leave no trace

our parents would need to face

in person. My brother knew

when he took charge

of his future, it meant—

O Captain! My Captain!—

the choice of an exit

discovered only by strangers.

~

They’ll Know You

You want the crows to be your friends.

You put out cut fruit and peanuts

for the local opossum,

place marbles in birdbaths

so sipping insects have footholds.

Now you’re tossing rancid meat

onto the garage roof

as one of your many treats

for the carrion eaters.

They’ll memorize your face, I tease.

The crows arrive, stand there—

not the way, with an aerosol of caws,

they encircled a crow carcass in the alley,

but scattered, silent as dusky monks

as they peck the meat.

They’ll memorize your face

as other crows learned the face of the scientist

who tagged their young in the nest—

how they harangued the guy

from tree to tree as he walked by.

As those crows knew him,

our crows will know you, only kindly.

Try twisting at the waist to see them

upside down—watch them react,

swivel their heads like obsidian door knobs.

You, the non-dog-owning giver of dog food

(a treat crows love! you read). They’ll know you.

---

Julie A. Cox (she/her) received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota, where she was an Edelstein-Keller poetry fellow. A finalist for the Loft Mentorship Series and Writers@Work competition, she has poems published in Cream City Review, En-Trance Journal, Failbetter, Grist, Juke Joint, Rust+Moth, Salamander, and elsewhere.

Veronica Tucker

Autocorrect Changes My Mother’s Name

I type Jacqueline.

The phone suggests

jacket.

I correct it.

Months later

it suggests

January.

I leave it.

January loved cardinals.

January never liked
driving at night.

At the pharmacy
they ask for
an emergency contact.

My thumb stops
over the old message thread.

The last text says

Home now.

Call when you can.

I type her name again.

The phone offers

available.

I lock the screen.

~

Return to Sender

Nine days after my mother's funeral,

an envelope arrives
with her handwriting
crossing the front.

Not the address.

The return address.

She had addressed it to herself
months earlier,

stamped it,

left it unsealed
beside the checkbook.

Someone found it,
sealed it,
mailed it.

Across the front,
a fluorescent label.

RETURN TO SENDER

NOT DELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED

The address is correct.

The mailbox is correct.

The maple tree
still leans over the driveway
the way it always has.

Inside,

one folded sheet.

Nothing written.

Only her name
at the top,

waiting

for the letter
she never got around to writing.

I turn the envelope over.

The adhesive
has yellowed.

The stamp
is still good.

The post office
has carried it home
exactly as instructed.

---

Veronica Tucker is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, writer, and mother of three in New England. Her work has appeared in The Offing, ONE ART, and American Poetry Journal, among others. Her writing has been recognized by Best Microfiction 2026 and has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Her debut poetry chapbook, The House as Witness, was published by Quillkeepers Press in 2026.

Chris Bridgen

Carpenters Use Language Better

Carpenters use language better.

How they consider the least twice,

state once. Meaning snug against

joists. Rain, soil, time, trunk

created every shape -- there

remains only need of softer angles.

We remain unpainted shelves jutting out

from high thick walls of fresh jails. A

choice made in dark, on rickety tables.

Edges sharp, nowhere you dare feel.

Erasing excess space perfects a man

or swaddled baby. Michelangelo chose slow

marble. We cut outsized egos from cigarettes.

purple microdot, and raw dogs.

All this art we share: your dreams

pure theory in mute earth. My endless why

blueprint of well-hewed forever. Others

remain a soft brainy people, shelving

uncomfortable truths out back of no matter.

~

Do or do not

A man, deciding, builds a cabin where woods breathe easier. In this telling, man's

nature overcomes nature. Branches out, includes axes. Cedar and steel and no games.

Proudly offgasses two dozen trunks of carbon. Leaves roof to forest canopy. Returns

to earthly pleasures fuller clearer eyed, bent sharper heart to squared.

He fails mentioning most logs found

sawed by strange winds. Bootstraps

hauling jugs of fresh water. Gaps

in this story filled by wild moss

babied in moist rock bassinets.

Solid ground bearing his ego.

Is he a loner, I ask.

She strokes what stems of greying

hair remains and considers silence.

Every tree remains calm if nothing

useful stirs their shapely leaves.

Fresh sprung antennae green a wood,

reach for whatever skies renewing.

Outside a $380 double-glazed window,

nightfall chuckles away.

---

Chris Bridgen (he/him) lives in Ottawa Canada, a cold capital city that flirts relentlessly with boredom. Scotch helps, as does poetry and cats seeking a cold lap. He’s been published in Flo, Poetry Pause, Arc, Delicate Emissions, and others.

Marc Harshman

Folio for a Morning With Thunderstorm and Squirrels

The bitter tea is almost enough to suffice

for a dose of reality.

Somewhere someone is playing a saw, its sweet melancholy

hesitating on a flight of stairs long enough

to become perfection itself.

I’ve issued an invitation to two squirrels to come into my studio,

have cranked open the window, hinted there is a cache

of butternuts I’m willing to share.

Religion grows in the crevices

where tears and senseless good fortune mingle.

Sometimes sour-grass, sometimes a single violet

arise as testament.

An avian choir has assembled

under the dripping eaves of the morning storm.

Somewhere in the basement the plumbing provides

accompaniment for them, for me.

Serendipity remains the most important linguistic contribution

to my life since 1969.

Far off the bellows in a lab of forgotten meteorologists are working

at the embers of mystery:

I hear their moans, I see

them light the sky

with an arcane foolscap of light.

I like to think an hourglass is a sentient being that, stood before me,

is witness to both gravitas and whimsy: 

what’s gone is gone

and what’s lost

can be turned

on its head

if not now, well, then . . .

And sometimes that ellipsis simply represents

the circle around which

I meet myself coming in from the rain

to a happy house

filled with squirrels and birdsong,

with carpenters and music

and a kind of cryptic lighting

with which I see, ancient

as the first birthday of time,

the truth of everything.

and begin then to think

the playwright of this world

didn’t do as badly as I’d thought. 

Yes, there’s the butcher’s bill to be paid but

I have an hourglass 

and know how to use it.

~

Dedication

To be sure, it was a holy ceremony

with redwoods, rocks, and a sprinkling

of Latin from a concordance of fools,

after which the baby sprouted,

and began to thrive,

spreading its roots and opening windows

every time we blinked.

Mother slept through it all.

Taxis barked below with their horns.

The parade departed hours ago

marching south with live ammo.

We became fixated on this

news reel from beyond,

and worried.

Look:  the dinosaurs fighting their way

through the blizzards,

the plastic cave men lifting their little sticks,

the distant factories of the sun

pounding hydrogen into helium.

Still, the Red Sea was again rolled back like a carpet

worth more gold than any army of men.

And, although there are spooks winking at us from within the byzantine

warren of our suburb’s familiar streets,

double agents who know and carry our future toward us,

they do so without rancor or judgment.

And then there’s this new god, at play in the crib of chrysanthemums,

testing each word before blossoming.

It seems it may yet work out.

The windows are all open now.

And despite our exhaustion—entertaining

this little scamp has been real work—

we intend to soon lay down our fiddles and drums,

and hope we, too, will get to dance

over Bergman’s black and white mountain, as we smell the hay,

listen to the birds,

feel that kiss

on our cheek

like a baby’s breath.

---

Harshman’s collections of poetry include Green-Silver and Silent [Bottom Dog], Woman in Red Anorak [Lynx House], winner of the Blue Lynx Prize, Believe What You Can [WVU], winner of the Weatherford Award, Following the Silence [Press 53] and Dispatch from the Mountain State from WVU Press in 2025. He was named Appalachian Heritage Writer for 2024 by Shepherd University. He is also the author of fourteen nationally acclaimed children’s books including The Storm, a Smithsonian Notable Book.

Travis Stephens

July 4th at Suicide Lake

the heat arrived

after June’s mild outlook

& April’s laziness, July

bit the sun that fed it.

if a rocket flies over,

it is tempted to torch

a landscape of

dirt like eczema

flowers dust dried

amid brittle leaves

of midday angst,

too tough for caterpillars

& too dry for aphids

so only the black 

beetle biters persist.

no birds.

everything smells of

gunpowder &

flinches.

~

“let the wicked fall into their own nets”

Psalm 141:10

the mermaid plays coy,

flicks her long hair,

a shrug, a come hither,

while the rest of the fish

spill from the seine.

the wind is backing,

smites me with a gust of rain.

my feet are wet.

i have not slept in three days.

the sail slats like an overgrown

puppy tugging at the leash.

keep a hand on the sheet, always,

i’ve been trained, but this flax

sail was woven by my daughter

and there will never be another.

my hand stings and despite

the woven chain on my wrist

i can feel the solt blisters open.

this is the first good day

since the season opened.

the buyer boat has a

list of expenses owed:

tarred marline

needle

pound of coffee

an orange.

the mermaid surfaces

just out of reach.

i have a gaff hook.

i have a grapnel.

she regards me as the

whale regards a tanker.

swirl and

gone.

---

Travis Stephens is a tugboat captain and writer living with his family in California. His work has recently appeared in Word’s Faire, Washington Square Review, and Red Ogre Review.

Kristina Percy

My son wants to know why he can't say fuck

Because someone uncountable lifetimes ago decided 

it was rude. Because my mother, who hasn’t even lived

one lifetime yet, still thinks it is a little rude. Because 

your teachers will think I am a terrible parent, 

letting you swear at your age. Maybe 

if I let my son say fuck as a child it will grow 

into any other word: wrinkle or bushwhack or apricot. 

What word will he use when his first love leaves him 

to work on a sailboat? When they come back? Sluice. 

Carbonated. When his skin sings jumping 

into a December lake? Tailgate. What is the word 

for when your mother forgets your birthday, 

can no longer lift her mug of mint tea? Mom, 

what do you mean you were at the hospital? 

Why didn't you tell me? I would have come,

I could have helped. Mom, what the fridge?

~

Career aspirations, age six

Our neighbour, the dive instructor, tells us

one of her students is now a sewer diver 

making a hundred grand working half a year 

clearing our pipes of all the shit that isn’t shit: 

tampons & baby wipes & huge rotting tangles 

of hair. Who doesn’t know you’re not supposed to flush 

tampons? I scoff (as if I also knew you’re not supposed 

to flush hair). Later, my daughter insists she wants 

to be a sewer diver when she grows up. I nod, 

like maybe I think this is an excellent career choice; 

or maybe I am just enjoying the angelhair 

pasta she requested for dinner. I don’t say so, 

but when she grows up I hope 

we won’t even need sewer divers because no one 

will put anything in the toilet that doesn’t belong there. 

Listen, I know that’s not realistic (you’re how old

& don’t pretend you knew hair was on that list).

I know of all the things that need our attention, this one 

can probably wait. Will you let me have it anyways? 

Let me imagine my daughter in some distant 

future where we are all exquisitely careful. 

In this future she is telling her own child, 

my granddaughter, When I was a kid

it was someone’s job to swim in shit

because everyone flushed things down the toilet 

they shouldn’t have. Let me laugh 

at the improbability of such a thing: 

a granddaughter, a future.

~

Fairy Griefmother

You have the wrong address, I said. I don’t know 

you. Shifted the groceries between my hips, shut 

the door tight, like I meant it. I cried when the baby cried 

& named it rage. When my son laughed

without breathing; when he grabbed my fingers 

& wouldn’t sleep; ate only plums & learned

to say No; all those years, I would not take her calls. 

You are mistaken, I insisted, any time she tricked me 

into picking up. Finally, she snuck into the kitchen 

while we were out walking nowhere at all. I could smell her, 

thick like a green river, as the sun chased us

back inside. Why don't you help someone 

who actually needs it! I shouted, desperate

to convince all of us that I didn't. Can’t you see 

that no one is dead here? I waved both hands at my living,

screaming child. She looked hard at me but said nothing 

as she lifted the sponge from its sinkwater & began 

to wash out last week's noodles. I wanted her so badly 

to be a stranger. She made a pot of peppermint tea,
refilled the soap in every bathroom. I never told her

where anything was & she didn’t ask. She just moved

through the house, silently, like she already knew.

---

Kristina Percy (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, BC in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her debut collection, Both True, was a runner up in the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest & while most of Kristina's work lives in her Gmail drafts, you can also find her on Instagram @__kpwrites.

Scott Kenimond

Virginia Woolf Goes to Ikea

I had meant only to buy a bookshelf, and yet the thing

expanded around me, as certain places do, until it

seemed I had entered not a store but a method of

thinking. The arrows directed me onward with an

authority I found both comforting and faintly absurd,

and I followed them through kitchens already inhabited

by invisible breakfasts, through bedrooms in which no

one had slept and yet which appeared to remember

sleep. Everywhere there were objects waiting for

attachment: lamps waiting to illuminate a reader, tables

waiting to collect letters, bowls waiting to receive fruit.

I found myself wondering whether we choose these

things or whether they choose us, arranging themselves

quietly in the background of our lives until one day we

mistake them for necessity. A woman examined curtains

with great seriousness. A child disappeared behind a

tower of flat-packed boxes. Somewhere above us a

voice made an announcement that dissolved before I

could understand it. And all the while I drifted onward

beneath the white lights, thinking how strange it was

that so much effort should be devoted to the

construction of domestic happiness, as though

happiness might be assembled from diagrams and small

metal screws. Yet I could not entirely resist it. There was s

omething moving in the sight of these unfinished

rooms, these provisional lives displayed so confidently

before us. By the time I reached the warehouse, where

shelves rose in orderly ranks toward the ceiling, I had

forgotten the bookshelf altogether and was occupied

instead by the curious sensation that I had been

wandering through the visible architecture of other

people's expectations, carrying my own among them.

~

Cold Section of Myself

The ceiling fan keeps mispronouncing my name as a

bowl of peaches sweat through the windowsill. I keep

waiting for a sentence with enough gravity to ruin my

life in the right direction. Something of quality with

antlers made of lightning. Something that climbs out of

a notebook dragging my career through a flooded

parking lot. My friends are here. Their voices gather in

the room like folded maps. I touch the edge of every

laugh and still end up standing in the cold section of

myself. The jukebox is full of wet leaves and I am really

fucking horny. The new moon knows this already,

watching me mistake a weathervane for prophecy. Will

I ever meet someone to date? Not that random bodies

aren’t beautiful — it just gets tiring carrying home

another constellation that forgets my name by morning.

I want to write a poem called splooge. The title arrived

first like a shopping cart rolling across a field. Maybe

this is it? Dirty words excite me. I hide them in coat

pockets. I tuck them beneath receipts in a shoebox

where I keep old leather. I stare at people’s footwear.

Shoes know things like departure times carrying entire

biographies as feet turn to walk away afterwards.

Afterwards feels like a deer standing in a pharmacy

waiting on Xanax. That man’s pants are very high, or

the river is very shallow. He is sexy as fuck. I need to

stop thinking with my dick. The church bell falls into a

puddle dripping from the motel ice machine — singing

little silver songs so tiring. I wish he would text me

back. Inside, his silence hangs in the air like a ladder to

nowhere. Outside, the evening folds itself into smaller

evenings and the peaches have gone bruised. I want

people to come hang out with me more often. I want a

porch light bright enough for returning. I want a room

that keeps becoming a room even after everyone leaves.

---

Scott Kenimond is a graduate student and TA in his third year of the NEOMFA at The University of Akron. He writes poetry, flash and micro fiction, creative nonfiction, and even dabbles in photography. His work has appeared in AshBelt, Villain Era Lit, and CrayfishMag. He believes one day he will be as big as his idol Madonna—if not already.

Tresha Faye Haefner

In the Beginning There was the Internet

And the Face of the light moved over the monitor. And the God of ones and zeros was monitoring all of us. And the government was listening. And we came, we that were not of the internet, but sent to use the internet. And the web browsers locked us out. And the encrypted messages remained encrypted. And we were sent emails to unlock our messages. And we were sent secret codes to unlock our accounts. And yay, we wept at the sight of the monitor grown dead as the eye of a behemoth slain at the bottom of the sea. And we did struggle. We did wander. We did disembark the arc of our airplane and wander through the airport and there was light and shadow, and macchiatos and foam neck pillows. And there were people from everywhere crossing in front of us, carrying suitcases full of chargers and gee-gaws and they were leaving baggage claim to take ride shares to hotel rooms, far from the crowds, far from cars, far from their homelands, listening to strangers on television. And they were turning to one another saying “verily, verily” we have arrived as they searched for an outlet, and plugged in an electric toothbrush, and put on their night ointments and fell asleep under paintings of ships setting sail on the ocean, luminous and nailed against the wall.

~

My Sister Gave Birth to a Fox

They think it’s some kind of miracle,

like women haven’t been giving birth

To foxes for centuries now.

It’s orange tail. Its bright, unexpected ears.

She spends all her time with him now,

Bathing him, quilting him into the landscape.

When I get a chance to steal him,

I take him to the place

Where the lawn meets the forest.

I tell the fox I too was an animal once.

I might want to be an animal again.

The fox touches my mouth with his fingers.

He’s searching for my fangs, my incisors. 

When he pulls his hands away

They are pink with the smell of civilization.

We spend the rest of the day picking flowers,

Pawing the dirt. Biting each other’s haunches

To tear away the fleas. 

---

Tresha Faye Haefner’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming in several journals and magazines, most notably Blood Lotus, Blue Mesa Review, The Cincinnati Review, Five South, Hunger Mountain, Mid-America Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, Radar, Rattle, TinderBox, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her work has garnered several accolades, including the 2011 Robert and Adele Schiff Poetry Prize, and a 2012, 2020, and 2021 nomination for a Pushcart. Her first manuscript, Pleasures of the Bear was a finalist for prizes from both Moon City Press and Glass Lyre Press. It was published by Pine Row Press under the title When the Moon Had Antlers in 2023. Find her at www.thepoetrysalonstack.substack.com.

Gregory O’Neill

Longevity

The universe is humped

open between oblique

and oblivion. The insistent

carpet of a shaggy sky,

the unspooling energies

of the earth, a meringue

of whipped air. Science

eats up the wonder

while reclining on its

leather cushion. Some

morning we’ll all be toast.

Secure or not we

dwell in persuasion.

It is something more

like the recognition that

some things matter

enough to absorb a cost

that cannot be fully

calculated in advance.

Whatever came before

is the same as

whatever came after.

The distance

conducts its enormity,

its wonder of whatever was.

And ever since.

~

Corridors

It’s the oldest guilty secret,

the way life spools on, tromps

along, hardening each upturned

face it trails across and sets

a blister there. We swap them

for aches, then callouses. Our

eyes, possessed entirely by

the sky, to a minus quantity.

An atmosphere of clues, a pool

one might fall headlong into—

indigo, cloud, black and light

speckled by night. A quotidian

object lesson in the brutally

distant, the squeamishly close,

and the complicated dance of

siphoning power among a

succession of multitudes

spiraling like fish, toward a

distant unperceived surface

of nothing but reflection.

Advancing equally into the past,

empty spaces so crowded

they push you into the corner,

take your lunch money, turn

and move on.

---

Gregory O’Neill, from Seattle, writes that readers might feel less alone in their ambiguity, more whole in their partial truths. Recent poems appear in The Laurel Review, Mantis Literary Journal, Sagebrush Review, San Antonio Review, Opiate Magazine, Route 7, whimperbang, Midsummer Dream House, Route 7 Review, Relief Quarterly, Cathexis, Eunoia, Litbop, Jackdaw, Quasar, Last Leaves, Zoetic, Jake, Bristol Noir, The Words Faire, Half and One, New Feathers Anthology, TrashLight, Wordrunner eChapbooks, Four Tulips, Gabby & Min’s, Larina’s Lit, Closed Eye Open, Journal of Undiscovered Poets, and others.

William Teets

Now and Forever

Hiding in the daybreak

of the back row pew,

no one recognizes me out of disguise

I should’ve burned

the whole building down a long time ago,

back before even when God was born

I hold my piece, vow

to remain silent forever

Slip out the side vestibule

before bells ring

your glorious announcement

that no man can tear asunder

Some primal rant roils deep within,

and I wish I had said goodbye

I search for a street savior

to parlay my pain

into a spectacular supremacy of joy

and sacramental goodness

Riding the local to Queens,

I fail to laminate my misery

against the Great Sadness

Rain streaks the tempered graffitied glass,

and I wonder if just one last time

you’ll come and see about me 

~

Hard Candy

Reflected raindrops scatter prism beads on pavement, and I promise I’ll love you forever. But you only see multi-shades of moldy-brown, an easter egg dipped in too many dyes at once. Not wicked in your denial, you still haven’t heard the street news that the days of jacking Peter to pay Paul ended in a shootout on the West Fourth courts—say you need to get to Staten Island by morning, and the ferry is always late. When you walk to the corner to flag a cab to the Battery, the colors beneath your heavy heels break apart like hard candy. Over the disorderly street serenade, music pouring out from the bar, all I hear is the taxi door slam shut. I turn, trip, and fall over broken hues of indigo and violet and blue.     

---

William Teets, born in Peekskill, New York, has recently relocated to Southeast Michigan. He misses New York pizza, corner stores, and the Hudson River. Mr. Teets’ work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Argyle, Underbelly Press, The Engine (Idling, San Pedro River Review, Ink in Thirds, and Ariel Chart. He is the author of two poetry books, After the Fall (2023) and Babylon Redux (2025), both published by Cajun Mutt Press.

Emily Dressler

Truncated Duolingo Lesson: English - Basics (Is this what you call survival?)

Topic: Choices and Finding Meaning While Trying to Seem Easygoing

1. Translation Exercise

Translate to Find Any Meaning:

“Is this what you thought your breakfasts would be like?”

Your answer:
 [“Have I trapped someone into domesticity? Are you sure we live here together? Why is it that every man I’ve ever loved says they never saw themselves getting married?” ]

2. Multiple Choice

Select the correct translation for “I feel alone in a crowded room”:

a) I am good at observation, and I am fine with the personality I’ve cultivated.

b) I might have chosen differently if I had known what any of it would feel like.

c) Doesn’t everyone feel this way sometimes?

d) Someone should have fought harder for their desired outcome.

e) Is this why you love me?

Your answer:
 [ e) “Is this why you love me?” This is the right answer, it’s true. ]

~

We Deserve This

If we were on a cruise ship,

you’d be the greasy little shit who kills

his family and stuffs them into suitcases

thinking that nothing matters

when you’re unmoored.

I’ll give you a nametag that reads

“greasy little shit” so everyone knows

what kind of baggage you’re holding.

My daughter still finds wonder—still!—in the musicians

who kept playing as the

Titanic sank. It was their only chance

to accompany an iceberg—the most diverse

range in chamber music—

and an elegiac effort not to live

without art.

And now?

Who will be the one to keep the cruise ship

Wi-Fi signal strong so the toneless

muzak of Katy Perry or Ed Sheeran

ushers our falling bodies

into the depthless sea, the black of night

like a cup upturned? 

---

Emily Dressler lives in Northeast Ohio. She works as a proofreader at a global advertising agency. Her fiction, flash fiction, and poetry has appeared in Villain Era Lit, the Citron Review, Okay Donkey, and a small smattering of others.

Chris Dolan

Slushy Pie

this morning it snowed

and I thought of you

across town, lingering

on the path behind

our neighborhood where

wild-seeming dogs

herded themselves into packs

cocksure in their number

like you and I rushing

into a mortgage

or that marathon

we never trained for

or like the snowflakes

counting on each other

to insulate against dawn

scraping the car becomes therapeutic

removing something

without destroying it

I turn onto our street and stop

using both arms, I gather the snow

from the roof of the car and plop it

onto yours

~

My Life Goes Ta-Da

My life feels like pulling your boots off,

and the socks go with them.

Once, my socks pulled off while

you snuck around the corner,

and I pelted you with the left.

Eyes glittering and feral

as you closed the distance.

You were like a magic trick.

It worked when I believed.

Misdirection from the hallway,

and I’m left wondering if you

were ever fully here.

I like to believe.

Just last week I freed a sock

from the cushions’ depths.

I held it up like a rabbit

dangling from its ears.

---

Chris Dolan is the founding editor of One Fall Review. He is angry about the nitrate levels in Iowa’s drinking water. Chris’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Maudlin House, The Bowery Review, and others.

Matt Zambito

To Green

—to twig equal-signs of meaning photosynthesized between

the unofficial first sprout sprung in spring; and a house

spruced up with a cereus cactus; and frogs about to lose

their version of sinless virginity on a lily pad; and fronds

Palm Sunday congregations hold and hosanna; and a spear

of asparagus envious of a Christmas tree; and reveries

after just enough viridescent absinthe, cannabis, and spicy

guacamole; and barium ending jaded when engulfed by

flame; and a firefly’s bioluminescent bottom floating up

from the grass as it says Hello, as it says Don’t harm me,

as it says I’m horny; and pastures the Shepherd maketh

the psalmist lie down in; and a single resplendent quetzal

swimming through air with wing-flaps; and the feeling

of pining for a lush field of forty-four-leaf-clover luck.

~

That Cheapskate Justin Bieber

Please tell that cheapskate Justin Bieber

he still owes me gas money for the time

I drove him home from the airport.

I can write that on the Internet.

That basically makes it mainly true

as the untrue conviction that apex

artificial intelligence is intelligent

to invent. Please tell Justin Bieber

I like the way his music seems

like something that isn’t actually

blah, meh, ugh, feh. I seem like that

when I listen to his manicured music.

I can write that on the Internet

even if it’s conclusively true I’m more

like that whenever I lie on the Internet

about Justin Bieber owing me dough.

He does owe me the time I’ve wasted

enjoying his bubblegum-pop hits

to just barely tolerate my daily drives

through all manner of traffic, bopping

my noggin down to the upbeats,

lip-synching off-key, ignoring

the potential dread of tomorrow.

Please believe me when I write that

I love more than what I’ve lost

to time’s ever-increasing speed.

Whatever that means, it now means

something on whatever becomes of

the Internet to future music historians

and professors of ancient poetry

(at least until high tech ends autonomies

on the low note of singularity)

feeling owed an instant answer to

their search for “What’s the best poem

about Justin Bieber?” (if anything past

matters, then nothing matters more,

nothing less) and arriving at this.

---

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. His poetry and prose are forthcoming in swamp pink, The Adroit Journal, The MacGuffin, Melange: A Journal of Prose Poetry and the Arts, Great Lakes Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.

Isabel Galupo

Open House

Picture me frothing

at the farmhouse sink

baseboards so crisp

I become better

moldings crowning me good

What else can Tracy Do

for me? Finish my novel

unfuck my left hip

give me a skylight above the toilet

a lemon balcony

~

The goddess Mayari is blind in one eye

for Alex

The animal kingdom teaches us

that the loss of one sense

naturally enhances the others.

Recently I’m less interested in sharpening

and more about giving up. I lost myself

on the way back from the bathroom

again last night. Luckily, my husband

a beacon in the swamp.

When I reached the hot nest of blankets

he guided my hand to his ass and said

This is my face

In the dark any lobster can be a wolf,

any woman can fall asleep laughing.

---

Isabel Galupo is an Emmy-nominated TV writer, picture book author, and poet who splits her time between Los Angeles and Louisville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pegasus: The Literary Journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society, Pine Hills Review, and Luna Luna Magazine.

William Faller

Ohio turnpike

Throwback Ohio doldrums

in yellow November fields

Where time goes to do long division

stack old newspapers and

erect personalized water

towers that throw shadows

over the scars of irrigation ditches

Dwellings spaced out so far

that two souls caught in a

single frame form a blessed union

Peeling black retread rubber

smoke filled dog bone cavities

along the elongated ribbon

cinched across the muffin

topped midsection of

America this afternoon

until I wonder where they go

home to for Thanksgiving

because it can’t be Toledo

‍

~

my mother boiled hot dogs

my mother boiled hot dogs

for supper while my father

chopped wood behind the

house and later when they

were sure I was asleep one

night I pushed through the

cigarette smoke that folded

onto itself in blue curtains

thinning down until I was

invisible and crawled under

the table where the grown-ups

sat drinking and playing

cards and talked in their

real voices at last

born when people were

forged from cast iron

my grandmother’s voice

was breaking concrete

she once told me not to

bother brushing my teeth

they’d twist them out like

bottle caps and give me dentures

I’d be able to eat corn again

now when I think back

through all that smoke

to my choice of vantage

points under the table

obscured in the totality

of the oblong eclipse

I can’t see their faces at all

and it hurts so bad that

I consider boiling hot dogs

but I don’t

---

William is a Navy veteran from Pennsylvania living in Perry County along the Appalachian Trail. His poems have appeared in various journals and are forthcoming in Rawhead and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Trail name, Wilhelm Fink.

Mark Dunbar

House fire

We wanted to scream

Go back to your mothers! Drop dead!

at the large men in oxygen

masks and helmets and the hoses

they dragged in, the tromping boots

and the seared black

of what I swear

was a kitchen,

but we’d called them,

unlike the neighbors we’d never

see again standing like a chorus

struck dumb on the grass—

neighbors I’d never ask

about the ravishments of glinting

axe heads and sirens fading

into the strange magnificat

of breaking glass.

I only stood back

minting what currency I could

from ruin

and found in its place

my father, who looked at me

in utter astonishment

and laughed.

‍

~

Food train

My sister stood on the pier and said

that a turtle had bitten her—there, on the toe,

and she cried when I said that she was lucky

it hadn’t eaten her complete, that

all of the other animals would eat her too—

the fish and the snakes

and probably even our dog

because that’s how creatures behave.

It was natural and there was a name for it—

the food chain,

and she ran and cried some more

at what she’d heard

and said that she didn’t want

to be on that train,

and I ran too but too late shouting

but you’re the queen, the shining queen

of the train, but she was gone.

She jumped or fell and fingers pointed

and there were shouts as she flailed—

get her you on the pier,

but sun spray blinded me—it pinned me

to the moment as the day

hailed itself from far away

and someone else saved it.

No one likes to talk about

how that tumble became your calling,

how death caught your eye,

no one standing by, queen,

to keep you from stepping out 

with that oaf.  

The old pier has collapsed. The tide runs out.

Somewhere a train strips the night

to an echo, no figurehead blind

on its dirty snout

to fall into the waves.

---

Mark Dunbar lives in Brookfield, Il. His work has appeared in Red Rock Review, Spellbinder, Sky Island Journal, Neologism Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, and the Ekphrastic Review, among others. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, he attended Kenyon college where he won the American Academy of Poetry prize.