David Eileen

Paracme

Internecine

---

David Eileen lives in the mountains of western Virginia. Their writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Best of the Net, among others, with more shared at www.david-eileen.com.

Jordan Cobb

In Our First Lives

My sister is telling me her plans to plant

a willow tree in the yard in the new house in Kentucky—

a state I thought we had both escaped—so, to distract myself,               

I point out the gap in the chainlink,

the dog rushing towards it.

Watch her call its name.

The dog is the ex-husband's,            

like the baby, the tax returns, the divorce.

The legal fees & split seams of her dignity.

But the fence & the beyond, the dragonfly above

the late September creek,           

none have been touched by him.

She’s out past the cemetery,

the barbershop, just over the county line

from our parents in the yellow house

with their Sunday dinners & walks down Main Street,

complaining about the new builds near the Methodist church

making traffic worse.

Nearly October, so she packs us

into the old Subaru for a ride up 65. Says there’s a farm

with a pumpkin patch ripe for picking & a barn

with an attic of antiques foraged from quieter places.

We play I-Spy, spotting butterflies as we drive.

Haven’t seen this many in years,

not since the forests out in Arkansas, the days of fairy walks

& nights of witches hunts, long before the affair

led us here. & in the middle of it, the dim light

of newborn scents, the creaking rocking chair.

Caught below the bluegrass haze

& time gets split like hairs. I want to tell her I can see her god

hanging low in the stratosphere, his tongue thick

as he licks the condensation from the water tower

until the interstate is clean.

Later, when we’re in the backyard again,

finishing up power washing the brick, we spot the bats

that live behind her shutters flying back into the black.

My sister turns to me,

asking what she should do about them—

all that darkness & wrinkled wings. 

But I don’t have an answer to what she’s looking for—

how to make this place a home.

Land’s End

Poppies, spotted from the trail;                         hummingbirds & man made stairs. 

Breeze in from the west tonight,     no salt to scent the edges. Super blue moon

two days past                          & the sky,              half open or empty.

Call it golden,       this hour, this bridge, alive in its glory,                           

& across the bay,                                     the lighthouse, the steady pulse of warning.

A short list of unnatural heartbeats I have known in my lifetime:

companies in a court of law;            

the cells that lived inside my body                    before I willed them out;                                     

the last prayer I tried           that April night–                 

cut my tongue so deep,      I can't say when I stopped the bleeding.

Can’t find the rusted knife out here.               The vodka, the twin bed.  The nightmares.

No ghosts left to hide         in their barren tableaus.

Before, there was a time I came to cliffs like this–      hurled insults onto the overpass, overhead,                  

but here, it’s passing conversations along the evening mist,     barks from the unleashed dog,

flies & old horse shit.

It doesn’t hurt in the old way anymore,

but I remember the pain the same.

I think I am in love again.

I think I am afraid again.

Sleep & death in the same breath.  

What is a soul

but the secrets I was willing to tell?

& if I never cross the bridge to the lighthouse,

or learn the names of the trees growing around me,

or the anger still living inside me?

Below, rolling fog. The coast guard, the last ship left,                beating against the waves

at the mouth of the cove.                    & I, cliffside, hands cupped to my lips

calling out for an answer,                   like screaming into snow.

---

Jordan Cobb (she/her) is a queer American poet. Based in NYC, she completed her MSc in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in The Shore, jmww, The Storms Journal, Rise Up Review, Jet Fuel Review, Camas Magazine, Outskirts Literary Journal, Cherry Tree, & Fugue Journal.

Rachel Beachy

This Is Not About Electricity

the Power has gone out. I mean, it’s turned dark.

Everywhere I look: pitch black. What else is there

to do? I keep wandering into rooms and flipping

the light switches even though nothing happens.

I don’t know when it will come back. I don’t know

if I’ll be there to see it. But if you are, if one day

the house is suddenly flooded with light, you will

know someone once believed it could. You will know

we never stopped trying.

Eight Women

There is a woman who walks around the neighborhood

singing aloud to the soundtrack of her own life. Another

who sits silently on the front porch, the echoes of girlhood

at her back. Still another who pulls weeds in the backyard

and rubs dirt on whatever hurts have been planted over the

years. There is a woman in the kitchen who calls her mother

for the family recipe only to find out nobody wrote it down.

The woman who greets him at the door and another who

pretends she didn’t hear him come in. The woman at night,

quiet but for the train of her thoughts, still but for the racing

of her pulse. Who dreams of leaving if only her bones weren’t

so heavy. And the one in the morning, who slips into her

children’s bedroom light as a bird, even though they roll their

eyes at her, even though they used to wake her in the dark

and she did not once turn away.

End of Day

When the children sleep, we sit around talking

about the water bill, the Johnsons, the gap in your teeth

when you were young, which we just were 

though we did not consider ourselves young

at the time and you did not have a gap in your teeth

then. Trust me – I stared at your mouth more

than you did the summer before you got braces

which was the same summer I got breasts in another state

but somehow, I can feel even those pieces of ourselves

in conversation, this history we did not share but have

in the years since closed with our little life, little deaths

at our own two hands, which you hold while I tell you

I would have kissed you even then and the faucet

goes on dripping in the next room.

---

Rachel Beachy is the author of Tiny Universe. Her poetry has also appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Her View From Home, Does It Have Pockets, Mulberry Literary, ONE ART, Rust & Moth, Sky Island Journal, Thread, and others. She was nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology 2025 and shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize 2026. She lives in Kentucky with her husband and children. You can find her on Instagram @rachelbeachywrites.

Liz DeGregorio

Magic

She tells you she danced to a Portishead song,

         the one everyone knows,

in a strip club in Alaska, bragging that no one knew

         she was still in high school at the time.

She trudges through the snow with you,

         one unseasonably wet night in the Pacific Northwest,

two pairs of soaked tights,

         trying to see the queer punk band in town.

Later, after a bad movie and a decent meal,

         she tries on dresses in the hotel room.

Black silk lace cotton

         (where to look?)

It's been decades, and try as you might,

her motives are still opaque:

just when you think you've got her figured out,

         she turns away, and

you're alone in the deep, quiet dark of that hotel room. 

Ophidiophobia

“Myths are explored, phobias cured, and mysteries revealed at this must-see Museum of the Southwest.” – The Official Website for Albuquerque, New Mexico, Tourism

I did no research before accepting a date’s offer to take me to the

Rattlesnake Museum & Gift Shop

in Albuquerque;

I pictured it like a small-scale version of the

American Museum of Natural History

in New York City:

Stuffed snakes arranged artfully in

life-sized dioramas…

perhaps some dangling from the ceiling,

looking poised and confident,

fun and carefree.

I was wrong because why would a museum

full of

stuffed

dead

snakes

exist?

The building was dark, damp for this desert city.

There were interconnected rooms full of not just

rattlers, but every other kind of snake who had leered at me

in my nightmares,

who had been present in that one episode of MacGyver,

where the most Renaissance of Men

had to overcome his own ophidiophobia

and save the day.

My date and I wandered from cage to cage.

He was no MacGyver.

I was not in or of my body as I looked into the

snakes’ eyes.

I grew numb:

creeping nearer to each glass tank,

examining the rope-like serpents;

their hisses drove into my ears,

wrapped around my brain.

Some snakes, they’d rise up,

their scales crawling up

the glass of their cages,

A nightmare come to life –

I didn’t trust the cages.

I didn’t trust the snakes.

I didn’t trust my date.

The snakes would lean back, then

THUMP,

their bodies hitting the clear glass.

I knew they wanted out,

they wanted to

eat me, devour me, consume me whole…

We went to a tea shop afterwards,

perhaps a kind of aftercare,

if you are the kind of person who views

a date to a building full of snakes

with a phobic woman as a sexual act,

and I do, I am that kind of person.

But he wouldn’t let me pick out my own tea,

and it was then that I rose up

the glass of my own cage,

rose up,

pushed out

and left the shop,

My skin sloughing off to release me -

My tongue flickering as I tasted the clean desert air.

---

Liz DeGregorio (she/her) is a poet, writer and editor whose work has appeared in Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Catapult Magazine, Bowery Gothic, Lucky Jefferson, ANMLY, SCARS Magazine, BUST, Ghouls Magazine, OyeDrum Magazine, Blink Ink, Dread Central and other publications. She's also performed at the award-winning storytelling series Stranger Stories.

Susan Grimm

Butterick

The best thing about curfew is breaking the law. The day

a dim envelope as you jump in the car. The girls who sleep

in a bra or always wear hose. Nowhere to go, that’s the trouble.

Rolling down the hill by taking off the brake. Stop

with the slams and whispers. The peter pan collars all face

the same way. Simplicity patterns bloomed from our machines.

Or Butterick. Seamless as our beauty because we misguided

the thread or it broke or snarled. Everything pinned, sharp

as teeth, and the paper see-through. The same chair and the same

door and the night outside over the long green lawns. All around

hard work and duty like lifelines or hymns without words. Parked

as if we were a car in a very safe place, the engine shuddering.

We were busy piercing our ears, deconstructing our underclothes.

You stepped over sleeping bags into the dawn, your engineered

(wedding) curls wrapped like a loaf of bread. On the edge

of the lawn, before the blackberries, the secret path to the ravine.

Shale. Rock broken like pie crust. Layers slipping like a tower

of plates. Topple, stipple, grapple, grab. Dressed all in white

with daisies. Really. The house left empty of all but dust.

Laborious

Driving to Hoboken in winter (talk about a word that’s difficult to rhyme). It wasn’t an omen 

that it snowed. It wasn’t an omen when we saw the burning truck which had slid off 

the road. Billboard. Difficult journey. Two birds gesturing like a pair of gloves. The shape

of K was being cut out of our lives. Her mattress and small tables and weighty piles

of clothes on their hangers stacked in the white van that caused B so many problems

in a parking lot with the police post-9-11. Snow shifted onto the ground like a yuletide

bakeshop scene. Fog. If I’d known the names of the trees. Robert Frost lets them ghost

as a wood, an obstacle to clear choice. I like his repetition of I. And I--/ I took the one

less traveled by but wonder about that either/or when he could have stepped down,

slipped between, ridden the rest of the way bareback. Sometimes you need an axe.

---

Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, South Dakota Review, and Field. She has had two chapbooks published. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.

Jillian Stacia

Call to the Void

I’m the type of person who can’t stand on the edge of a cliff 

and not think about jumping. Screw the view. I’m imagining

the slap of wind, the splatter of brain on the cavern below.

The masseuse says to relax, but I can’t stop picturing

her hands on my neck, the inevitable snap of bone, 

the ear-splitting crack of death. How pathetic to die in a spa, 

how boringly bourgeois. Blame it on my nervous system,

the way it stands guard against the world, a sad little sentinel

scouting out every threat, every curve of mountain. My body

has caught on, puffs out in hives to protect against 

an imaginary enemy. They call it chronically ill, but I call it

paying attention. Give it time. Everything breaks.

It’s hard to feel safe when you’ve never seen peace up close.

I remember breast-feeding my son, the bloom of milk 

each time I heard a high-pitched cry. Now I see a cliff

and my muscles clench. A miracle, really. All the things 

we do to protect ourselves. The way we’re built to stay alive. 

“Dinah Won’t You Blow Your Horn?”

In my Mother-In-Law’s retirement home, an elderly

woman sings “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”

and I want to laugh and cry and die right there 

on the polyester red carpet before I myself am sent 

to a rickety old house filled with nurses and Clorox 

and strawberry Jello topped with sugar-free Cool Whip, 

before an emergency button is glued to my door, 

before my teeth fall out eating corn on the cob,

before my back is hunched and humped and my ass

cannot be wiped without assistance from a nurse 

named Marge who is just trying to put her two sons 

through community college, but would really like 

to touch less butts if it’s okay with management.

Before my kids resent me and leave me to rot, 

and my husband divorces me for a younger woman,

and my liver fails from all that wine. Before all that, 

please just let me die right here and now while I’m still 

youngish and dewyish and punch drunk on the wildness 

of the world. Forget staying alive all the live-long day.

Let me out of this life while I still love it.

---

Jillian is the author of the upcoming poetry collection, Set the Bone, published by Arcana Poetry Press. She was selected as an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize and short-listed for the 2026 Central Avenue Poetry Prize. She has been nominated for several awards, including 2025 Best of Net and the 2025 Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has been featured in several literary magazines and anthologies. Find her online @jillianstacia to read more of her work.

Carrie Conners

Keep Your Chin Up

To the person who put up the letters on the VFW sign advertising

CHICKEN PARM

& ASTA

dinner on Thursday night: nice work. You made the right call.

This Is Me Now

My eyes blinked from neon pink

when I opened the box of new running shoes,

not the modest burgundy I ordered,

a throwback to my preschool maroon

velcro Roos with the hidden pocket to stash

a quarter for candy at the Marshall Dairy.

These were a shade darker than highlighter pink,

enough to make you reach for sunglasses.

My husband, confused, “You picked those out?”

Even my dog seemed suspicious,

though she can’t see pink. It was the year

of Barbie, so I thought I’d give them a shot.

Maybe they’ll be safer. Get drivers’ attention

as I chug around the neighborhood at dusk.

Honestly, I just didn’t have the energy

for customer service. The pink seemed more

florescent against my normal jogging clothes,

blacks, deep purples and blues, like a bruise.

The effect was immediate. People gawked.

Made eye contact. Talked to me more, Nice day

for a jog. A car honked. I flipped the bird.

Hot pink’s an extrovert’s color. I’m not

cut out for it. I stare down at the concrete

or up at tree leaves to avoid anyone’s gaze.

But I still feel it. Flush pink as I bound down

the sidewalk. And, I swear to you, I run faster.    

---

Carrie Conners, originally from Moundsville, West Virginia, lives in Queens, New York and is an English professor at LaGuardia Community College-CUNY. Her first poetry collection, Luscious Struggle (BrickHouse Books, 2019), was a 2020 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. Her second collection, Species of Least Concern, was published by Main Street Rag in 2022. Her poetry has appeared in Barrelhouse, Kestrel, Split Rock Review, Killing the Buddha, and RHINO, among others. She is also the author of the book, Laugh Lines: Humor, Genre, and Political Critique in Late Twentieth-Century American Poetry (UP Mississippi, 2022).

Samuel Day Wharton

After the Big Bang

at 2am

         lying awake

I imagine disaster

         a plane crash

an assassination

         bombs under bridges

(our sun too young to collapse / the universe expanding

         at speeds too fast to imagine

none of it comforts me as much

         as your hand at my side

your breath at my neck

         dogs at our feet)

as helicopters swirl in the night sky

What’s Your First Bird of the Day?

someone asks      & I look

immediately, though it’s mid-

day, out the windows

at the house-finch

it’s roseate likeness hanging

off the evening primrose

seeding the ground

around the fig tree. I look

with all my eyes      the ones

fully covered by salt-

moss & the ones my niece

gave me in hopes of clearer

weather. Inches away, steady-

handed D. takes a blade

to the straggling morning

glory in my hair. The furthest

I’ve been in this memory

is dawn      & there they are

every morning: the mourning

doves in pairs, there pecking

through the redwood mulch

---

Samuel Day Wharton makes wine & writes poems in Sacramento CA. Recent work has appeared (or will appear) in Stone Circle Review, the engine(idling, The Shore, Some Words, & Poetry Is Currency. You can find him on Bluesky here: @fakeourway.bsky.social

Lucas Wildner

Representations

Stacy,

baking was my escape

that first pandemic December.

Seattle’s Pacific Standard gloom

and isolation summoned

sentimental visions

of the Advent Jause

I was missing.

Every Sunday a candlelit wreath

on the coffee table,

joined by steaming mugs of frütchetee,

a platter of Vanillekipferl,

Husarenkrapfen, Lebkuchen,

Rumkugeln—all homemade

by my father, transformed

from the man who saved foil

in a drawer for a second or third use

into a baker in need

of another stick of butter,

another tin for the latest batch.

Nostalgic,

I was a good consumer.

The night the hand mixer arrived

my boyfriend and I

ate Husarenkrapfen on the couch.

They tasted like my father was about

to return from the kitchen

with a refilled platter,

like practice for the inevitable after.

They didn’t last a week. 

*

You bought a kettle

to boil water the Austrian way.

A chopper

to chop onions Austrianly.

For an Erdäpfelsalat, I assume.

I’m stalling

because I don’t want to say

how I learned your name:

the Notice of settlement email

a year after you became

Class Representative

for all who believed in Mueller’s

Austrian Representations,

the red-white-red,

umlauted distractions

that allowed the company

to overcharge us

for European quality.

Suffering,

the attorneys called it—

the cooks and bakers tricked

by Chinese-made products,

who needed Austrian quality,

Old World magic in the kitchen.

I never told him. I knew

he would have scolded me—

it hadn’t been on sale.

But news of the settlement

almost made me reconsider. 

$7.50 to make me whole.

It would have made his day.

Another Fraction

There were

                   years pretending

to read his birthday wishes,

handwriting as inscrutable as the German.

Silently you would count to eight

then Danke, Papa interrupted your smile.

The party could move on. 

Didn’t need much German            

to be grateful.

Decades later,

                        a first: in a card for Easter

addressed to you and your boyfriend,

you find your parents transformed,

twin territories held together

by boundary: Papa/Günter Mom/Mary.

That he can’t or won’t write Dad—

a joke possibly only to you,

one you feel guilty enjoying, but

isn’t this

               what you wanted, a boyfriend

and a relationship with your parents

that don’t get in each other’s way?

Part of it is how he sounds in English,

I hope that a visit in Seattle is on my travel plans.

Part of it is the retreat, again, from German.

Another fraction subtracted. 

You agree, the card is nice.

An attempt at gratitude.

Don’t need much at all.

Radetzky, Grant and Swan

Late night errand for conveniences

at the 24-hour pharmacy. I park

and my parents are waltzing again,

memories of Neujahrskonzert broadcasts

in the living room that fade

as soon as I step out of the car,

startled by the outdoor speakers

management has armed

with Classical, enough decibels

to discourage loitering,

provide an un-unhoused shopping experience.

A hostile hospitality

already half-forgotten

by the time I drive off

with my electrolyte packs.

Turning to the audience

the conductor lifts his baton.

The imperial capital claps along.

Victory, victory. In their hands

a sting sharpening.

---

Lucas Wildner (he/him) lives in Seattle. He is repairing his relationships to German and English and.... Ghost City Review published his debut chapbook Fluency in June 2022 and his chapbook [eyes emoji] was published by Hot Mess House in 2024. He can be found.

Laura DeHart Young

Truck Stop Prayer

Bless the smell of cinnamon buns,

burnt coffee, wet gravel after a

sudden rain.

Cigarette smoke and truck exhaust,

engine oil, garbage stench, and grit.

Bless finding a truck stop just in time.

Bless a strong woman

who studies the horizon,

doesn't bend or bow.

Weighs her words—

a fire in her silence

revealed through dusky eyes.

Like the woman at the next pump,

directing the flow of fuel

into a black pickup—

her glance straying

from the shimmering horizon

to my wrestling

with a jammed gas cap.

Bless the arm that reaches across

and twists it open

with a calloused hand.

A hand you want around

to open dill pickle jars

and strawberry jam.

“Where you headed?” she asks,

cowboy hat flapping in the breeze.

Maybe it’s a blessing I don't own

a western hat—just passing through

these foreign plains

where footsteps shed grief

and forward motion dulls pain.

I am good at running away—

from discomfort,

reckoning.

Shattered stoneware

flying past my head

in nightly dreams.

Bless glances that say just enough—

this woman leaning

against the pump,

asking with concern: “You hungry?”

Sunlight burns her shoulders,

streaks of gold woven

through brunette hair.

She must have noticed

the bruised cheekbone, stitches.

Bless the gravel crunching

under our boots

past license plates from states

I’ve never visited.

We order Buc-ee’s brisket sandwiches,

eat in the bed of her truck—

closeness I no longer remember.

Bless the wide felt brim

casting shadows across her face—

hiding softness,

voice quiet, but deliberate.

She owns a small dairy farm off 80 East

outside Lincoln—

runs it with her brother,

barely breaking even.

Her forehead is lined with hard work,

face tanned, shoulders sculpted.

She lifts me down—

presses a number into my hand.

“Call me,” she says.

Bless that.

What I Couldn’t Fix

There wasn't much visible

under the sink.

Laced boots and an inch of jeans.

Your muffled voice,

asking for the crescent wrench.

I study the same tool

in a hardware store off Route 66—

balance its weight on two fingers,

cold in my palm as I adjust it.

Imagine your hand reaching,

pipes clanking years ago.

The screen door slams for the tenth time,

never fully closing.

The store a dinosaur of time—

stuffy, organized chaos

with an inch of desert dust,

sharp smell of grease, and

tang of WD-40.

A lone fan spinning overhead

accomplishes nothing.

I return the wrench

to a faded pegboard

where it's likely been dangling

for a decade—

step over a golden retriever

sprawled in the next aisle.

Locate tire pressure gauges—

what I really need—

piled high in a plastic bin.

I remember using one on your Datsun—

you standing, hands on hips,

asking, “What is that thing?”

The same woman who could

fix a sink

was car clueless.

I pick up a handful,

let them slip back

through my fingers into the barrel

like I’m sifting

through old memories.

Kneeling on snow-covered ground,

testing tires—pressure low.

Explaining the readings to

a blank stare.

At the counter, a man in a stained apron,

informs me, “Cash only.”

Punches an old-time register,

indicator window displaying the price.

Bells chime, the drawer flings open.

I forgot what a penny looked like.

I leave this museum of spare parts,

each one built to repair something—

except what’s gone.

No tool has ever existed

to fix what happened to us.

---

Laura DeHart Young is a queer poet and novelist whose work explores memory, resilience, and the emotional terrain of relationships. Her poems have appeared in The Eunoia Review, Last Leaves Magazine, The Ravens Perch, The Bluebird Word, Book of Matches, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Burnt Toast and Benedictions, was published in October 2025. She is the author of seven novels from Bella Blooks.

JR Walsh

Celebrating our cheese anniversary

Here is a maze.

I drew the maze.          

Begin at start.                    Trace a line (use this pencil) straight forward until you are blocked. You are  

blocked?                             The maze is defective. I drew the maze badly. I authorize you to jump that

blockade.                          Here let me–                 Give me–                I used pen or I would erase the

blockage.                          Look here.             Go again.             Take back the pencil. Go until you are

stopped. You are stopped again?                                                                         Go back the other way.

The way you just came from.      There.       It’s boxed in a sideways L with some pencil scratches in it.

Start. I know those are yours. How can you see your next move with all that back and forth scribbling?

Here. I’ve crossed out that barrier.          Pretend it’s a pond. To wade through.             Drag the pencil

through.        Get your mouse to the cheese. I should’ve told you, you’re a mouse.

We’re mice. In the middle, that’s cheese.                   Swiss.                  See the holes?                    Those

are holes. I think we                                                                                                mice can swim.  

Swim the shallow puddle. A puddle from a much-needed rain. A puddle of our mistakes. Just go again.   

             Start from here.           You’re almost there. Give me the–                Look–

If you can’t–                 Give me–      You just jump these walls and you’re in the cheese. I know I know.

The pencil is dull now.                      Sharpeners are not in our budget.

Our bags were packed for us 

Everyone asked, Why don't you move

away again?

They were sad that we were missing out

on the experiences everyone enjoyed so much.

The vibrating noise! The specific smells!

& not necessarily in this order.

Every fun example free from our loss.

We didn't wish to be swayed by public opinion,

so we only half-considered moving again.

But you can't only half-

move even if you think it will be

at least or

at most half-

fun.

We moved to take a vote.

It was unanimous.

Fun didn't move us one bit.

The Semester Always Flees

Special thanks to Feiga Khutoretsky

“Happy Friday of Mondays!”

Collective shrug.

“Something I'm trying out. Tell the people.”

Near-collective mystification.

“Only two more classes are left, so today's our last Monday!”

Student asks, “Will Wednesday be the Friday of Wednesdays?”

“Absolutely.”

“When's the Wednesday of Fridays?”

Calculating. “About seven weeks ago.”

Unison mumble. “Would’ve been nice to know.”

Four days later, “Happy Friday of Fridays!”

The instructors face falls off, suddenly sullen.

Tepid faces. Fidgeting.

“Remember those first days, when I couldn’t remember your names?”

It’s different now, the instructor doesn’t say.

“You want a medal?” nobody says, not out loud anyway.

“You promised cake.”

The podium spotlight flickers.

Nothing new, but rather,

consistent like slow blinks

or iambs Chaucer dreamed of before death.

---

JR Walsh teaches creative writing at SUNY Oswego. He is the Online Editor for The Citron Review. His writing is in beloved publications such as The Greensboro Review, New World Writing, Switch, Litro, The Hong Kong Review, FRiGG, Bull, Flash the Court, HAD, Fractured Literary, 50-word Stories, 3rd Wednesday, Taco Bell Quarterly, and Esquire. More: itsjrwalsh.com.

Mark Jackley

Some Nights

my head’s

a jar of

fireflies,

more the

jar, not

the desperate

light, a gift

trying

to reach

the world

Kenny, Almost Heaven

survived

the wrecks

but walked away

from all twelve steps

whose turnips

taste like

cancer like

crumbled

mountaintop

so hungry

no one sees him

only

deer heads

in the taverns

staring through

the dimness

as he hunts himself

Cul de Sac Morning

I was sizing up last night’s dream.

But never mind the handcuffs,

the hacksaw, and the kiss.

Its remnants won’t exceed 

the size of tarnished keys 

to getaway cars that don’t.

I will stick them in my pocket,

I will jingle them all day.

---

Mark Jackley lives in Richmond, Virginia. Recently retired, his back aches from volunteering at a nearby community farm. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, The Cape Rock, Tampa Review, and Does It Have Pockets.

Rebecca Michels

Moon Phase

Before I knew it

was the lunar eclipse,

I caught the reflection

in my kitchen window:

low and yellow. I was

searching for an email—

a discount for a lymphatic

facial brush; could I really

brush the burgeoning

wrinkles from my forehead,

lift my cheeks back up

where they belong—

I searched the words

I remembered, sorry late.

Instead, a missed reply

from my long-ago ex.

I hope you’re safe was all

I’d written. He’d survived the fires,

but, he went on, a week later

his brother killed himself.

I knew his brother—his brother

was a complicated asshole.

Years later, I’d write about him.

Years ago, he’d written about me;

a song about the hike

my ex and I took

on the tallest mountain in Maine.

On top of the razor’s edge,

I was terrified. He called it Loon.

I downloaded the attachment,

and he sang out my name,

sang about us pulling through

—we didn’t pull through.

His voice was tender, alive,

and the moon was high and

crystal-clear in the black sky.

Women’s Work

I know women have a lot to do,

says the woman in the next seat

as she holds mine down

so it won’t snap up. I’m overloaded

with the kids’ jackets and programs.

We’re here to see a musical

about the Suffragist movement

and half-way through I’m ashamed

to admit I learn a lot, like how

the leaders were force-fed in prison.

The washing machine breaks down

at my parents’ place while we’re visiting;

I wash heavy jeans and sweatshirts,

small cotton underpants in the tub.

Leaning over the edge, I move

the way I’m sure my grandmother did

with her washboard in the basement.

Are you a project manager? 

asks the plumber. Yes.

I make the kids’ breakfast, pick

white pith off mandarin segments.

Good luck, my mom says as she does

when I’m on my way out. I’m picking up

my shoes at the shoemaker.

He shows me my shoes, half-soled,

You didn’t tell me to do the heels.

I recognize the character actor in front of me

with her daughters, tap her shoulder,

I’m a longtime fan of your work.

She says, That means a lot to me.

I’m here with my kids too, I say, and

sit back down for the second act.

---

Rebecca Michels is a poet and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin. Her recent work appears in Plume and Midway Journal, and is forthcoming in UCity Review and Grand Journal.

John Cullen

Seeking

I’m finding hope in strange places.

When I kayak, I paddle close to shore, the desert

of lily pads, the hilarious hair of young waterfowl

and the suicidal courage of an enraged swan.

Last week, I witnessed a Saguaro cactus

near Adam’s Motel outside Tempe, Arizona.

An elf owl peaked from a woodpecker hole.

Thunder rumored.  I understand now

old mystics who fingered innards

and washed the mandrake’s weeping

thighs with wine and incense

to discover in the red flow

the raisin of hope. 

On Your Knees

Watch a mouse negotiate

into grass after you shroud

him with a tea towel

and release, or deliver mail

to the nursing home and discuss

slippers with a failing patient

who wet his pants but calmly

awaits a nurse, or forget you will die

and feel the buzz reverberating

bones as you touch the power grid.

Renewed, you understand

forgiveness isn’t necessary

or yours to give.  But if it makes you

feel better, go ahead

and forgive yourself.

Bended knees is not about knees

but about levelling eye to eye

with mouse, diaper, and death.

Limon Libertab!

Bees on the butterfly bush clog

a stumbling foreplay to recreate

the world, pollen and nectar

pellets in saddle bags, each centimeter

the right direction.  Staring

out the kitchen window,

you too plan to stash and drink

sweet tears as a reward.

Behind your back, huddled

lemons in a bowl discover courage.

They felt the breeze sing,

and cry “Limon Libertab!”

A lemon’s cry is like a fly’s curse,

and yet there is a possibility

they will parachute onto the lawn.

because when you read those lines,

aloud at Starbucks or mumbled

in the dusk of your eye, you danced

with the bee and wed shy fruit.

This happens for the same reason

compelling anyone to stare

into an open manhole.

---

John Cullen graduated from SUNY Geneseo and worked in the entertainment business booking rock bands, a clown troupe, and an R-rated magician. Recently he has published in American Journal of Poetry, The MacGuffin, Harpur Palate, North Dakota Quarterly, Cleaver, Pembroke Magazine, and New York Quarterly. His chapbook, Town Crazy, is available from Slipstream Press, and Bass Clef Books will release the chapbook Observation of Basic Matter in 2025.

Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice

Roar of All Septembers

She stood on stage, class president,

red boa round her neck, sparkly

tiara: raised her hand, and the party began.

Opening trumpets of Earth, Wind, and Fire—

and seniors burst like victorious fans

through double doors behind

teachers who lurked in back

for quick get-away, drank

forbidden coffee, fidgeted

with phones. Kids streamed

down aisles in slow motion,

spinning, striking disco poses,

progressing arm in arm,

a parade bugled forth

under the bars of September,

of life that can’t see

its end. Do you recall

summoning our memories,

faculty on our feet, pulled

into the aisles, too, reliving

ancient pep rallies in wooden bleachers,

roar of all Septembers, young bodies,

beads tossing hair pumping

palms bumping sweets flying,                       

tuba trombone flash of brass—

scrim lift and fall, we celebrated

the beginning of our end.

Trying to Transfer the Weight

1.

Fourth position, practiced at the barre, preparation

for center work. Shifting in plié, from back foot

to front, anchors the arabesque’s rise.

Travel in triplets across the floor, one-two-three,

waltz of the modern dancer, down-up-down,

cover swaths of sprung floor, launch

into a partner’s hands, which grip below hipbones,

rutch tights pulled over a black leotard.

When a man lifts a partner, she must

pull abdominal muscles tight, as if tethering

them to her spine’s inside, careful

not to give him all

her dead weight.

2.

My wife’s working air traffic again

in her nightmares, radar down, pushing tin,

no one answering her hand-off phone calls

from Atlanta Center to a faceless guy

in another underground bunker

in Tulsa or maybe Charlotte,

to hand off control of a plane

to a new airspace. Burden

of 200 souls on her back,

pulling her neck, already straining,                           

until she wakes up, wrenching covers

tight like locked seatbelts and

screams. I touch her arm, sweat

cold, press my palm

between her breasts. She

sits up, turns on the light.

3.

Knees pulled tight under chin,

arms hugging shins, a student

will sit close by, looking

at anything but me.

So, how are you?

And the stories inch in,

sit around us, fat full caterpillars

on the classroom floor, stories—

pills taken

or that should have been

an uncle staying

down the carpeted hall

from her bedroom

a sidewalk soaked

with a cousin’s blood

a fall down stairs

to take care of it

Today, my student leans

forward in a sage-green chair, sinks

back, eyes on a carpet square,

wants to tell me, but wants

me not to tell. I can’t

not tell. I’ll be fine, I’m fine—

She unfolds each leg, pulls denim

purse to her chest, shoulders

her blue nylon pack, book

corners jutting like fetal

elbows into her back.

---

Jennifer Hyde Dracos-Tice (she/her) has poems in Witness, Psaltery & Lyre, SWWIM, Literary Mama, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Lodged in the Belly, was published in 2024 by Main Street Rag. A long-time high school English teacher with literature degrees from Brown and Indiana-Bloomington, she lives with her wife in Florida. Learn more at her website: jhdracostice.com/

Colleen Harris

Funeral Shoes

for Shara

Your dress is black—dark, plain, cut

below the knee for the modesty

expected in a Southern church,

covering most of your tattoos.

Standing barefoot before the closet,

one more absurd decision to make.

You would go barefoot, you would go

naked if you could, the way she walked

out of the shower, unabashed,

toward the dresser with less care

than when you stood over each other

in fraternity house basement bathrooms,

safely pissing by turns and checking

that the rum hadn’t smudged your red lips.

The closet looms. Fifty-two pairs

to choose from: sedate Mary Janes

somber in black, platform hooker-heels

refusing all reality in purple and green,

sneakers, mules in classic brown leather,

ballet flats in a pink delicate as new skin.

Blue, red, leopard print, colors wheel

before your eyes, they blur like lights,

like central Kentucky college party nights.

Finally you choose—dusty purple

and yellow, with black leather bows

and witch-point toes, a muted whimsy

her contrary spirit would have loved,

would have stolen at the first chance.

The drive to Louisville takes years.

The casket is closed. There is an easel,

a poster-sized photo of her smiling face,

still alive, she could walk in any moment.

You walk to an open pew in low heels—

click clack, come back, click clack.

Hobbyhopper

First it was Red Heart yarn, when her mother taught

her to crochet. Hours walking craft aisles, choosing

colors, shades of olive, blues, and plums, she sought

every hue along the haunted spectrum of bruising.

After that, quilting. Ignoring fiscal sense, she bought

a Singer sewing machine, carry-case, sharp notions,

fat quarters of fabric in red, gold, and grey. She ought

to start small, stick to one hobby, but once set in motion

she is a menace, a fanatic, a woman demon-possessed

to find something—anything—to bring her mind rest.

Christmas Cake

Pine Knot, Kentucky

When the cake tin tipped

landing icing-side down

on the Tahoe carpet,

I ducked my head,

waited for my father’s rage

to spill from your lips.

Instead, you laughed,

said it would make the dogs happy,

and brought the hounds out

to sup on the sweet mess.

I knew then you would ask,

that I would say yes.

We arrived late, small

store-bought cake in hand,

sugar still on our shoes,

laughter like champagne

rising from our throats.

---

Colleen S. Harris holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and works as a university library dean in Texas. Author of four poetry books and four chapbooks, her most recent collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, 2025), Toothache in the Bone (boats against the current, 2025), The Girl and the Gifts (Bottlecap, 2025), and These Terrible Sacraments (Doubleback 2019; Bellowing Ark, 2010). Her poems appear in Berkeley Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and more than 80 others. Follow her writing at https://colleensharris.com

Haley DiRenzo

Mother

A string of sharp barks rang

round the fogged canyon

before the dog was upon us.

Daggered teeth bared at our ankles,

muscles beneath taught skin

rippling in the morning glow.

Her pups huddled across the road

a mass of miniature bodies.

We kept moving but did not run.

Heads down, breaths whistled shallow.

Finally, she receded, watching

as we escaped around another curve,

no longer a threat. I do not know

what it is to be a mother

but I think it must be something

like a wild thing, capable of carnage

but offering mercy.

Your Blood and Mine

The first boy I ever kissed got bloody noses. Sudden viscous

red dripping down his face as our legs dangled

off playgrounds where we met. Something romantic

in his head tilting back toward my hands, then pressing

tissue to catch this part of him that overflowed.

Scraped knees rushing home as the streetlights

turned on – the way we kept time without phones

in a neighborhood you could roam in

before dark. I picked that wrinkled flesh

over and over, watched fresh blood rush

to the surface, turn to knitted scar cross my skin.

Jealous of my friends’ becoming, I snuck

to bathrooms to check my underwear constantly

looking for that crimson stain of belonging

only for it to show up dingy and brown, so unlike

what I expected I had to ask my mother what it was.

Now I have spent hours rinsing blood

from garments and sheets. It always seems

at first it will never fade but gives up easily

running pink through my hands to the porcelain.

Now my husband slices his finger cooking dinner —

a wet chunk of it left behind stuck

to the knife. I sit him down, wrap a clean cloth

around the wound, watch his face turn white.

---

Haley DiRenzo is a Colorado writer and attorney specializing in eviction defense. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barely South, Thimble, Gone Lawn, and Ink in Thirds, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. Outside of work and writing, you can find her browsing book stores, brewing tea, and watching movies and live performance in the theater.

Ben Starr

raised by skunks

Zeus, that bruising philanderer, was raised by a goat.

Amalthea suckling him with her powerful milk, 

Zeus’s prematurely muscled hands brushing 

the profitable underside of her soft creamed coat.

The Dog was raised by man. Beautiful, imperfect, 

flatulent, man. Stealing leftovers like a bindle-carrying 

vagabond. Quickly begging forgiveness with drooping 

eyes, a pair of melting coins. The Dog did meet 

a skunk once, in his youth, But he didn’t suckle.

And what he received was certainly not milk.

So he smells. Like brimstone belched from the force 

of two inclement planets colliding. But

when illness gnawed at the soft talc of my child’s 

bones, he lay by her side, like Patroclus and Achilles. 

Nudging her chin upwards with nothing more than 

his benevolent nose, cold as death’s curved blade.

how to make eggs

if you know someone 

who hasn’t slept with your ex-girlfriend

who happens to have access to a chicken, 

get the chicken. steal it if you have to.

Don’t be rude, just make it clear, 

be a shame if something happened to those eggs.

next, get out your record player. it is well 

known that chickens love philadelphia soul.

spin some hall and oates for her, maybe some 

b-side from voices or abandoned luncheonette

once you’ve got that white boy 

soul music cranking

that bird will drop eggs like 

nickels at a slot machine

when you get home, make a mimosa, 

you deserve it. then crack those embryos 

in one of the Tiffany’s champagne flutes

your wife neglected to take 

when she moved in with Craig, 

and suck those babies down like coca-cola

---

Ben lives in Los Angeles with his wife, a high school teacher, and three extremely powerful little girls. Ben studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Eclectica, Talon Review, Club Plum and other journals

Sarah Scarberry

Body Like a Wishing Well

I like when the night comes early

like joy came easy to my grandad

Last night I saw a cowboy drink

a glass of red wine

that matched his lady’s and he smiled

She took their picture

I thought of music then

I thought of grandpa

and that every new song

I learn is a handmade wish

I make over and over

into the pressed flesh groove

of my fingertips

Through the slick stream memories

I ride a liferaft lullaby

cast out from the ghost ship

of all the versions of myself

that could not carry me

I set sail drifting towards the cosmos

containing the constellation

of his version of me

that dimmed as he died

And I watched it flicker

And maybe I see in the distance

A whorling of all of the wishes I have ever made

The lullaby beneath my body

My body this wishing well

tells me to take my time

but even now I am rushing

My fingers tremble speeding

across the keyboard

to cast this out like a fishing line

like we used to cast out into the still

simmer pond

Wishing for a catch to pull

reeling like I reel my

spirit bucket up

from the bottom of my gut

Whispering please please

Let this be the way.

Spirit Like a Seam Ripper

I know I soften the spirit of a room

              When I sink into the plush vulnerability

                            That rests between my clavicle bones

Or more that I mend easily the rips at the spirits

              Of those ragged strangers, friends, lovers, people 

                            Like forgotten teddy bears so worn with/by love

I find myself surprised at the texture that plumps

              Stuffed companions, the wadding that scratches 

                            Unexpected, the touch when opened, scrunched out

My sister had a stuffed rabbit named Emily once

              She didn’t know any Emilys or at least not well

                            Still she carried the rabbit with her everywhere

One day Emily’s love worn paw took an accidental dip

              Into my sister’s cereal bowl and hardened to milk crust

                            Bereft, my sister found she could no longer love her

I suppose there’s no mending a dunk into or way to know

              What disgusts us until it does with no easy way to return

                            And repair the thin veil between our love and our distaste

But the mending tires my finger bones sometimes

              But not enough to stop me from ripping at the seams

                            Of the tenuous thread we’ve stitched between each other

To dip the metal tip of such a tool made for breaking

              Into the soft fabric looking for what once bound us

                            To pull that binding up forcefully and quick, to rip

Afraid I stitched us together wrong, false, and crooked

              Afraid something stronger will come along and do it

                            Afraid, afraid, afraid of myself and my indelicate ways

But I’m sorry I got distracted, nearby there are babies making friends

              And it would be a crime to not to watch them totter toward and smile

                            At each other, a quick tie, good enough, a tiny bond between tiny souls

New.

---

Sarah Scarberry grew up in Appalachian Ohio, and their work is deeply rooted in Appalachian mythos, cadence and values. They currently reside in Colorado with their partner and rescue pup. They've worked in public libraries for a decade, dedicating their life to intellectual curiosity and the love of a good story.

Merie Kirby

The selkie refuses to look at the sea

She already knows all its stories, the forms

it takes, how between moments it changes

from grey-blue to that icy green

she painted her kitchen last spring.

She spent the last year swimming

in pandemic seas, her house as much a safe

skin as the seal suit ever was. Striking out on first legs

as thrillingly terrifying as a first trip into

a restaurant with a naked face.

Years ago she moved inland, promising

it was only for a few years.

You know this story.

Sometimes she flies back to visit, tears

like grains of sand scraping her throat

as they climb to her eyes, pit of her stomach

always washing back out to sea with the waves.

The waves hurt the most, the way they can

change, reject each shape as insufficient for the next

moment, no regret, no hope, no gaming the future

in search of big happiness.

Once she lived there. Once she too

whispered the present, the present, the present.

The selkie considers what to pack

Coming ashore she brought only her skin and all

it could hold. She would not call it light. This life

on land is a life of collection, a life spent placing things

on shelves and in boxes. Tidy containment. Nothing

drifting free, no tendrils of seaweed moved by currents

to wrap an unsuspecting leg. Or so she thought.

I keep thinking about all my mistakes, the old man said.

I have to get all that shit in little boxes so I can forget.

An ocean of memory and no container watertight.

When she drove towards the center of the continent,

the truck bed packed tight with boxes, she saw

the wind moving long grasses in green billows.

---

Merie Kirby grew up in California, between the beach and the Eastern Sierras. She now lives in Grand Forks, ND and teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, The Orange Blossom Review, Strange Horizons, FERAL, and other journals. She also writes opera libretti and art songs in collaboration with composers. You can find her hanging out with her family, reading, writing, playing board games, and watching sci-fi movies. She’s online at www.meriekirby.com.