Jessica Coville
Whispers Across Nine Mirrors
Whispers across nine mirrors
First whisper | The first is an echo of rosemary
the memory of you I want to burn
the memory I never want to let go
I invoke a scar that only I can see
Second whisper | Your blood, your blood
a small cut — soft cotton
to dab it away
I have what used to flow in you
and your heart — echo your heart
I invoke rhythm
Third whisper | Your eyes saw me, so much
of me — more of me than
I intended
Those round jewels I pluck
This sea glass that sees all the waves
behind and before me
Slow the ebb, slow the ebb
still the sand
Fourth whisper | The ghosts you’ve been dragging behind you
I can see them — can’t you?
you bring a banquet of them
to scare me
I am not frightened
They climb on this mirror and
bring clouds
Fifth whisper | All the smoke I’ve inhaled
or exhaled carries a prayer
l blow cinnamon across this late sky
this copal, heads of magi from desert
I have crawled into a new mirror of night
Sixth whisper | This strand I roll three times
and loop leg over arm
tendril around stalks of lake grass
grandmother’s lace through tiny spindles
this is knot magic
this is you floating, umbilical
Seventh whisper | You and I are on a mattress of bones
it’s lean, comfortable, and noisy
that’s us fighting fear, though
the yelling of the last moments
we made that imprint on the bones
Eighth whisper | Salt, frangipani, marigold —
that’s the beginning
like tenderness
like the first time I watched you
take your clothes off
I stole the perfume bottle of that moment
Ninth whisper | I was a child when I wrote my
first incantation
and stuffed it in a bird’s mouth
the bird flew to the underworld
with my wish
as will you
as will you
Jessica Coville is a writer living in Sonoma County, California. Originally from Whitefish, Montana, Jessica has written and edited for the entertainment, technology, and health care industries.
Patrice Boyer Claeys
Pale Folded Hands | After 40 Years
After 40 Years
Here’s the switch. I was once on top,
too deep and smart and sexy to fall
under anyone’s sway. And he was flat as the plains.
A milk- and corn-fed man. Open, honest,
straightforward—a 1950’s Catholic son.
I drew him in with hanky-panky
and an overwrought mystique. His easy style
pulled me to his sphere, and with his friends
I climbed in, ready to go wherever he drove.
I sat up front, thrilled and yet looking away.
My gossamer craved his ballast, that practical
bent that caulked the tub and booked the flights.
His mind roamed free from doubt, while my fuse
box sparked and smoked from frizzed wires.
And so we came together, not smoothly, but for life.
Now decades after holding back—scorning
what once attracted me, wishing for a twin,
expecting him to master what I had failed
to build—I am stunned in blunt shock
by love. This dumb struck force of yes.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Pale Folded Hands
You appear in the cold clarity of a high voltage day. The vine leaves across the street flash like semaphores giving garbled instructions. Out front, the step holding my huddled form is painted the blue of old skim milk, curdled and flaking. The rented frame house, in which Weed and his skinny girlfriend fill the second floor with hoarse poker voices and fragrant smoke, cannot contain my swelling joy of subversion. I am oblivious to the cold. You alight from Old ’55 looking like a bitter orchid of ecstatic arching, a beautiful rare steak bathed in butter, the distillation of Tom Waites before he turned to carnival barking. I rise from the step, smiling, expectant, pumping and choking from too much valence. Thirty years later I am still pricked with the cold fingers of that day and all that my pale folded hands forbade me to carry into the future of borrowed eggs, flooded basements and the endless curving sweep of green couches.
This piece was originally published in LIGHT: A JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND POETRY, VOL. 05.
Patrice Boyer Claeys is a Chicago poet with five published collections. Her two most recent books with collaborator Gail Goepfert explore the world of fruits and vegetables through verse and photography. Patrice’s work has appeared in many journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Review, NELLE, The Night Heron Barks, Passion Fruit Review, Scapegoat Review and Tiny Moments Anthology. She has been nominated for both the Pushcart (2019) and Best of the Net (2014, 2019, 2022). More at patriceboyerclaeys.com.
Logan Anthony
angelic in a mistaken hue of light | either the hammer or the nails | more than the memory
more than the memory
each morning brings the hay bales & their shadows closer.
pillowcases of rotting wildflower clippings & a head crowded
with bees. haunted. i’ve remained still too long.
i can’t stand at the window & anticipate the approach
of something never coming. my voice consumes the room,
chilling & vacant as an evening drizzle. the air smells of wilt-
ing hyacinths. outside, i’ll scatter poppy seeds beneath
the bird-nested alders & hope for something to return to.
consolation—i’ll admit, i still need something to believe in.
years ago, you told me about the romance of a person
prettier in pieces. the need to be broken to be lovable.
your teeth held my name like a promise. smoke in your eyes
& fire in your hair. you were the closest i came to burning
for someone else. i should have defended a love that builds,
because now, collecting my shards from the garden,
i wouldn’t mind some help. someone with strong hands.
someone to remind me to be gentle, who knows of more green
than what we have left dwindling in us. past the narrow streets,
beyond the neatness of cornfields & ordered, obedient trees.
i want more than the memory of wild. somewhere untamed,
where solitude still means peace. somewhere to be alone, together,
with pockets of chipped glass & a head emptied of bees.
angelic in a mistaken hue of light
1.
years after the stone shackles shook loose
their jowls, skittish and ivory-gowned,
the angel rubs raw their wrists and wishes
for a room big enough to swallow the coarse
salt from their secrets once spoken into existence.
for the last lick of flame to healed flesh, still tender.
the last of the silence, that panicked discomfort.
if only the room would listen. if only a voice
like smoke, unfurling in tendrils, could be heard.
2.
light withers a mere step into the dark,
as quickly as the body reverts to the old
ways—where failure is a home i cannot
rebuild. the gold in your voice flakes away.
i realize, after all this time, a shadow only
appears angelic in a mistaken hue of light.
3.
this world remade isn’t what i stayed behind
for. all these limbs scattered in the streets.
voices festering in the walls.
the smoke and yellowed grass—all that’s left
to fill our throats and hands.
4.
skinless, homeless, we are no longer ghosts.
we are no longer alone. i enter only windows.
only trapdoors. our bodies writhe beneath
the ground on which we stand.
fingernails full of soil. skeletons of sorrow.
5.
under flickering fluorescents in a stone
-shattered mirror flecked with gods-know-what,
you scream your secrets to white bricks
that wall you off from the world. salt spills
from the ceiling. lost in the burning, thunder echoes
around you and rattles loose shards of glass
that rain to the tiled floor, shattering into drops
that glisten like water.
6.
in the mirror—a warped reflection of lightning.
a storm gapes outside like a wet mouth,
panting breath, painting a film of fog
over the single uncovered window.
hungry, searching. all the gold in the world
couldn’t convince me now. the limbs haven’t
left the streets, nor the voices from the walls.
7.
the angel collapses beneath white light
to a beach of salt, echoes of the past
rattling their knees, and the knocking
so like stones—like teeth,
like worlds colliding—
linear time in a cascade.
either the hammer or the nails
they say take time, all you need.
the time i’d take has passed—long-since
disappeared over the horizon. now
snaking away from memory, too.
the hammer drops apologetically,
despite the steel and heft.
the nails are steel, too,
just a different kind.
as if frozen, the wood shattered
instead of split, limiting our supplies
to a mound of kindling.
minutes to burn away.
ashes ride the breeze over the valley,
on to live other lives as soil
and dust and if it’s lucky,
maybe even
bone.
Logan Anthony is an American queer writer and transgender artist from Indiana. Anthony holds a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing & English and works as a freelance writer. Find Logan’s work in Thin Air Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, The Madison Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, The Write Launch, and more. You can read their work at www.thewritinglog.com and follow them on social media @the_writing_log
Esther Ra
ars poetica | Spring Cleaning
ars poetica
wake up! i trumpet to the poems fast asleep
like ground squirrels under the snow
so many lines leap through the air
& my soul spins around at each one
what is the use of poetry
if it cannot lift the spirit from its shell
or deepen the rich silence of the lilies
this is poetry the night lamps winking on
one by one soft stars on a pale blue street
& this is poetry: the lemongold
daffodils strips of sunlight
on the faceless corpses in the fridge
& poetry: what dies unsaid with prisoners
who are stoned with their mouths full of rope
& the flowers dostoevsky bought for his wife
with the few roubles he hadn’t gambled away
& the long lines of mothers waiting
to clothe their babies in clean diapers
& my mother’s first laugh, as pure as the sound
of glass raindrops after a drought
& the wheat fields, a lion’s mane shaking
& the river whispering come run with me
& the first cat i fell in love with
& the first dog
& on new year’s eve it was raining cats & dogs
when my sister & i ran through the sleet
she kept tilting the umbrella my way so i wouldn’t
get wet her icy fingers closing over mine
we were so young so lost in these dark foreign streets
where we ran nearly crying with fright
then boston harbor burst onto our sight
the fireworks
were a thousand night lamps exploding
like a window broken to bright shards
daffodil flare fistful of flowers & laughter
& wasn’t that also poetry?
God is a poet & the world is His poetry
all creation declares His majesty
i will never write a line more lovely
than the deep, open face of the sea
Spring Cleaning
Reluctantly, my room yields its long-ignored secrets,
the inner recesses of its embarrassed and dust-thick
privacy—bared open in the fresh, cold air.
Sleeves of sunlight and silk wind waft
through emptied drawers, the open fridge.
Baptizing the sauce-crusted egg tray
with a flood of hot water and soap,
I watch the clouded glass grow clearer,
more radiant, clean arms ready to cradle
their water-pearled, berry-bright storage.
Arms deep in the swelter of my unending sins,
I jerk open the shelves of my winter soul.
Darkness, in which sadness spun its webs.
And now, this hard scrubbing. This coming of spring.
Esther Ra is a bilingual writer who alternates between California and Seoul, South Korea. She is the author of A Glossary of Light and Shadow (Diode Editions, 2023) and book of untranslatable things (Grayson Books, 2018). Her work has been published in Boulevard, The Florida Review, Rattle, The Rumpus, PBQ, and Korea Times, among others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize, Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Award, 49th Parallel Award for Poetry, and Sweet Lit Poetry Award. Esther is currently a J.D. candidate at Stanford Law School. estherra.com
Kate MacAlister
ritual: how to plot an abortion
“I remember standing in front of the train station sometime in the mid-1970s and handing out leaflets. At the time, this very doctor had been shot, and everyone was afraid that the file with the names of his patients would now be found.” - Dora
1. whisper. for witches are never silent.
but whisper: of the woman
who was once regarded a factory to good
society. whisper of the woman who
was never here.
2. steal. what you can.
specula
upper blade, lower blade,
sharpen your courage, soften your voice.
cannulae, also soft. flexible.
disinfectant. rinse off everything men called holy .
3. give. Everything give. nothing
whatever is available
more or less suitable:
a bicycle pump, a picknick
basket full secrets clattering,
dried kelp. trust
4. wash hands. hold
hands. move across
the sternum and symphysis
take good measure. centimetres last weeks
5. push down gently, locate the fundus,
gently palpate, seek out the cradle
of her fathers dirty looks, her mother’s gasping, the ruin on her breath
humiliation. Leave both of these
outside, at the door.
#witchesbelike 7
6. stand. next to the bed. wait.
for the sign. open
and pump. gentle suction - release
the tissue into the glassbottle
waves of blushed seafoam
and listen. the scratching, grave sound
of letting go.
7. feel out the emptiness, the complete waters
exorcise the spectre of guilt against the
light of the cave once again
and watch it bloom
into choice
into life
8. Leave advice and comfort but not yourself- remember
the coathangers, the knitting needle,
chicken bones, soft bodies crashing
down the stairs and out of windows.
the bloodrush verdict
running down all our thighs.
the personal is political
when my cunt is public property.
9. remember this
is the simplest, hardest thing to do
support every outcome of pregnancy
the wicked women are not going
anywhere
they will always send us
back to the shadows
Kate MacAlister is a poet, medic, and feminist activist whose work interrogates language, embodiment, and resistance. She is the founder of Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion, a multilingual community arts and literature project for women and genderqueer people. Her award-winning poetry films explore the intersections of ecology, narrative, and defiance, framing storytelling as both a site of connection and a radical act. A graduate of the Manchester Writing School under Carol Ann Duffy, she is now undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing and Medical Humanities at the University of Nottingham on the female body as anti-patriarchal resistance. Her poetry collections are published by Querencia Press and Sunday Mornings at the River.
Mike Zimmerman
When to Cut
Wait for the Goldilocks day,
Not too hot, not too cold, just right
for that twisted machine—black and red
and gasoline. Yes, I am afraid
to be too weak to pull. And I am.
We try again. Prime the pump, rip the rope
and hope. But I never make anything happen.
You start it for me and say
“Watch out for big rocks.”
You point them out; I hit three.
Yes, you kept it during chemo. It trapped you once,
Caught you under it while I was at work.
And yes, near the end, Goldilocks. We sense and see
The day is not too anything. Grass high and sharp,
rioting, an overgrowth of green.
You are afraid. Too pale, too weak to pull,
So I start the mower and move.
I’m cutting all the time now, Dad—
you’re lying still.
The Line Outside a German Sex Club
As I rest for a moment near the grated gate
and chug my wasser from the bierhof Rüdesdorf,
the naked weight of history reorders everything:
Oh, queer men. Oh, in a line. Uh oh, in Germany. Grab a number—
and plastic bag! Place all valuables now!—a number,
not a name, for the night. The other men, standing
somber for fun, like convicts in the yard, simmering
with all my same aches, all my same lush leniencies.
I adjust my eyes to the dark mouth of this place
and think: judgmental American—tsk tsk, small-minded little
Puritan boy, he’s already poking out of his shorts.
Inside, it’s like cageless zoo at midnight, these hours
of distress and longing. Puritan boy. My mouth is open,
my mouth is wrapped around someone’s long
evening. In the red light someone shakes his head
and tells me, don’t go down those stairs. For you,
always up. Never down. Around and around
there are the colors of hurt, and weapons
that could have been borrowed from any fortress
or from any camp. Among the sweaty walls,
the delirious music pumps on from invisible speakers.
It begins. I want to be locked in; I want to be made
A prisoner of our pleasures all over again.
Mike Zimmerman is a writer of short stories and poetry, as well as a high school teacher in Queens. His work has been published in Cutbank, A & U Magazine, Florida Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Zingara Poetry Review, and various anthologies. Social media @mazaffect.
Amy Thatcher
I Hate My Job at the Public Library
I may as well be a sonic ream of NO RUNNING IN THE LIBRARY wallpaper.
I dream of throwing a fit, fucking the place up. So much of this job is shit, sweetened
by my higher-self smile—teeth bleached for a world-wide welcome: Give me your tempest-
tantrums and public masturbation. Your bedbugs and broken laptops, your bowel movements
and teenage prison prodigies. I’d rather work with an ax, bludgeon the bookbags off
the after-school kids, splattering their it-doesn’t-matter math.
Like physics, I could go on indefinitely.
At home, my bills thank me for being a good mother.
I wonder if I’ll live long enough to pay off the house,
still young and plump with fixed interest.
I drink and smoke because why not, you only have
one life, and I’m glad mine isn't in Texas.
It’s easy to be grateful when you compare misery.
The way I see it, the grass isn’t
always greener, sometimes it’s quicksand,
and only a storytime full of screaming
toddlers can save you.
Driving to work, I cried across three zip-codes
thinking of what my mother would say,
chopping the air with a veiny hand:
Be glad you have a job. She had two,
and barely a pot to piss in,
something I’ll never forget,
having to flush with a bucket
from the tub. At the end of the day
is the end of the day, cracking
the fuck up.
Samson and Delilah
Death’s a slick bitch,
throws a punch then watches,
with studied nonchalance,
an old woman whirl
like a mechanical ballerina,
before splitting her head
over a manhole cover.
Death lives with a wrongness
any psychic can see
coming a mile away.
Her palms have grown
lines long enough for two lives:
The one drinking a gayly named
20 dollar cocktail called
Hornswoggled Strongman
and the one with corseted
lungs and a weak constitution.
Death’s hoping for a comeback,
to throw on the 10,000-mile
bridal train that swept
through Europe on the backs
of rats. To outmatch love
like Hedy Lamar
in Samson and Delilah, when
Samson lays waste to the pagan temple.
Death doesn’t play around
with her dualities.
She is, herself, another.
Poem in Which Burt Reynolds Takes Me to Chemotherapy
Burt Reynolds is blonde
and I am hairless.
Burt doesn’t read much, but that’s OK.
I like my men dumb, my world flat.
Who needs a scenic incline
when you’ve got someone reliable
stroking your shoulder for four hours
in an infusion room? I’m still waiting
to kick cancer’s ass, wrestle its wrist
to the table, pitiful
as a mispronunciation. Burt says
things could be worse—
Jesus could have been a teen
with oppositional defiant disorder,
sulking behind a slammed door.
Moses could have tripped and burned
in the bush. The Red Sea could have
collapsed, sending the staff of my IV
reeling past the elevators,
through the drowsy nurses’ station.
So much pink! You’d think
breast cancer was the guest of dishonor
at a gender reveal party—
a real bonny lass.
Amy Thatcher is a native Philadelphian where she works as a public librarian. Her poems have appeared in Guesthouse, Bear Review, Rhino, Rust+Moth, SWWIM, Crab Creek Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, South Florida Poetry Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Shore, The Journal, Denver Quarterly and are forthcoming in Cherry Tree and Harbor Review.
Maya Ribault
I Quit
Accept this as my letter of resignation.
In case you’re wondering
(and/or are concerned),
I plan to hitch up to the night
calling inside my womb.
Spot me now behind the counter
Negative Capability crawling
up my left arm, a firefly shimmying
at the nape of my neck
like my aunt’s hidden star.
See me shaking up mixed magic
in tumblers shiny as blades,
pouring out wanna-be rainbows
for patrons I casually call Love
while I comfort Daddy on his stool.
I’m the same age now
as he was in that Alpine photo,
almost destroyed, still wholly lovable.
May this find you somehow.
Aerogramme
Horace, I hope you’re okay—
I heard a zookeeper soothes you
at night when you’re scared.
I send you light & love from here.
I know all the ways
I’ve been spared, the edge
omnipresent to me. Don’t ask me
to draw a cliff: I watch the ravens
riding shafts of air for show.
Horace, the horrors happen
again & again. I’m sorry I can’t
stop the shelling. I wake to whisper
a lullaby in your ear.
Are the trees also blooming in Kyiv?
Pardon Day
Somewhere it was time but here you knelt
in the anteroom in your bobby socks
until you heard the original cry
still trapped inside you, encased
in gilded glass. Who’ll drag it out
of you on Pardon Day like a saint’s skull
to be paraded about on men’s shoulders
through the village alive with May gorse?
And was it really his skull?
And was it really my cry?
I invite you to the deeper things.
Maya Ribault’s poetry, including a translation, has appeared in Agni, Bloodroot, Cloudbank, North American Review, Pratik, Speak, The New Yorker, and TSR Online. Her chapbook, Hôtel de la Providence, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her poem “Society of Fireflies” was recently selected to appear in A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925–2025.
Kieran Haslett-Moore
Left
I still sleep on the left side.
Left depends on which way I face,
missionary left or left to be ridden.
Spooning wipes the compass,
then misaligned.
The lefts ended up in opposition.
This trained ingrained pattern is all there is left.
An indentation on the mattress shows which left.
I flip it turning the world upside down.
But I am here, still left, on the left,
picturing your face, remembering your scent,
reliving the times before you left,
and writing ‘I’, almost as much, as ‘left’.
The Sun
For Ra
Up on Brougham, in the early hours.
We were drunk on life,
and vodka,
in that catholic house with too many bedrooms
and alcoves for Mary,
you toyed with a dude,
‘see if this one makes me cum’
he talked a strong game,
I hope he did,
I fear he didn’t.
I said ‘you don’t have to’.
Mr Morals,
in the house of Mary.
You laughed.
I wee’d in the drainpipe,
pissing down my love,
the queue for the bathroom proved too much.
We laughed.
The world at our feet.
So many bedrooms.
We could have gone anywhere,
you did.
I can.
Drinking till we saw the sun.
I thought of this night at your funeral.
After that final bedroom.
Tales too distasteful for grieving parents,
sparks still smouldering in your wake,
sparks still ricocheting around my mind,
tales full of life.
You lived a life.
A sacred tale of the sun.
Kieran Haslett-Moore is a poet, writer and brewer who hails from South Wellington, New Zealand, descended from migrants from the South and West Country of England, he lives in Waikanae on the Kāpiti Coast with a terrier named Ruby.
Tom Barwell
positively long covid
for Maeve Boothby O'Neill
when it grabbed her by the hair,
and ripped her friends away,
exposing her soft, child’s neck,
and knifed her laugh in prison.
when it pushed her onto a grid
that told us she was 11, and 33932,
not a girl, or nature whose locks shone golden.
when she became
subsidence, the slump of a sand cliff,
washed out by violent emesis leaving
two quiet grey beaches, the shape of eclipses.
the whiteness of the doctors’ smiles.
the whiteness of secrets,
the epaulettes on biblical tests,
it’s all in the head, the pain is just
a mind’s way of making sense.
don’t worry, your daughter wears
sunglasses in bed, who cannot bear the lightest touch,
nor kiss, except the dead. perhaps…
some noise-cancelling headphones would fit, and cbt?
it grabbed her hair and pushed her in the bowl.
it grabbed a family, broke every bone.
just the mind processing: is it something at home?
the hospital walls and quarantine,
wiped-clean as a camera lens, the rotating doors
are tired legs, such tired, tired legs. antiseptic
bed unstained by the last patient’s leaks.
the scent of breath just breathed and baths bathed in pain. its bolts.
its wheels locked on the linoleum.
the stuffed animals tumbled out of the cage bed
to die on the floor, strewn among the insulated wires,
alarms chirp and sing beside the plastic bins of discarded rubber gloves,
the sharps waiting in the mailbox. the hum of
fresh blood.
so much to somatize.
pure math
war is here: it removes its
head and walks toward you,
monet paints a hooker on a hook.
the place? where homes are grey
gruel, sub-divided by cubes of
factory meat.
pure math, where bush fires
push polar bears to
steam themselves in sinking oil,
and salmon boil the rust rivers,
throwing their skins to the
roiling trees.
pure math, psychopath,
white vest at the truck stop,
gunshot, highway markings scorch
an ageing nose, schools closed,
but there’s no
drama here, the receipt says so.
an old lady walks by with
a grid-sided shopping cart,
the branding grasps at her hair
till she tips inside.
and what of the stars, now
they’re decimals, too broke
to usher van gogh?
their laughter flirts over land and
drowning sea,
into the gasping bellies of
plastic whales, flukes billowing
in the moondust.
each particle rises without gravity,
minerals turned to
radiance, pluming higher and higher
weakening beats and brighter colours,
diamonds gently
suspended, taking their time to
turn and catch the sun.
Tom's a poet, long Covid advocate, psychotherapist and favourite chair for his dog.
Ashley Oakes
I Am Glad God Is Not My Boyfriend | If The World Should End While Driving Through A Car Wash | My Newspaper Puts Obits In The Section Called Living
I Am Glad God Is Not My Boyfriend
He would always want to drive
when shopping, his favorite candy
too hard
to find in stores. He might rush me through
my favorite show: One has seen this
before. He talks this way,
an important other person—I fear
his weak motor impulses. He really thinks
he moves the mountains. He takes
seriously
his role as literal originator of all things
including me. One has made (god might muse
at bed time) your brown eyes: One delights
in them. I would see him take off his clouds
and undo the buttons
he likes to call the world
and he would hang it
on a chair, the slightly ammonia
odors of prayer. I would get
tired of
his touching me, the toes
big as continents. He has a tendency
to be controlling. In mornings he would swim
the sticky stream of blood vessels from my heart,
making it pump. He would get inside my head.
If The World Should End While Driving Through A Car Wash
I will be alone in a box as the planet brushes against me pressing the button
for a soft gloss finish, this waxy upgrade leaving a trail on my windshield
the sun might notice before pulling the covers over his burning head
he could extend a bridge as he did for a friend of mine (who died
and who I envy for getting to leave before the next election.) I am jealous
of the birds and wings, generally. If the world ends this way I will miss
new shoes, chocolate and the malfunctioning clock on my dash always
ahead, storing the extra minutes so that I find them
in the glove box where I have forgotten what they were for
My Newspaper Puts Obits In The Section Called Living
And next to the answers for yesterday’s
puzzle
She (or He) was
possibly a frequent visitor to this park where I sit the
sweat cooling me as it evaporates beneath my breasts I am as solid
as this bench I am using to stretch my hamstrings so that I continue
uninjured, still thinking about death ( I do
today) noticing so many of the birds are
cardinals which my friend is convinced means a relative comes to stare
in your window, scraping a beak in remembrance
of their china cabinet in the corner. You don’t dust it
often enough. I ask one
to ask my grandmother
(with survivors too numerous to mention)
does she miss
drawing on that beauty mark
every morning; does she find she relaxes
in her own skin. I am assuming it is now
iridescent as a fish. She embellished
her own tribute in 2008 saying from New York
but my grandmother was born somewhere
less brilliant with lots of linoleum and Mars colored
clay, she was a vain woman I think
the bright feathers tempt her back to our world
Ashley Oakes lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma where her closet is full of dresses and pants with pockets—and lots of bags, which are just really big pockets. Some of her work has recently appeared in Unstammatic, Meetinghouse, Pink Panther Magazine, Claw+Blossom and elsewhere.
Claire Riddell
Cyborg Goddess | My Sister in a Dream: Paraguay Orphanage, 1995
Cyborg Goddess
The act of creation .... . .-.. .-.. --- / - .... . .-. . -.-.-- [1]
<mix> seafoam and metal //
<Disassemble> & -.. --- / .. / .... .- ...- . / .- / -. .- -- . ..--.. [2]
<replace> her inner parts //
<Make> her using .... . .-.. .-.. --- ..--.. / .- .-. . / -.-- --- ..- / .-.. .. ... - . -. .. -. --. / - --- / -- . ..--.. [3]
clean steel & bronze circuits //
<Laser> off shrapnel .-- .... -.-- / .- .-. . / -.-- --- ..- / -.. --- .. -. --. / - .... .. ... ..--.. [4]
edges & rust & <add> flesh //
She is fuckable & you .--. .-.. . .- ... . / .. / .-- .- ... / --- -. .-.. -.-- / .--- ..- ... - / -... --- .-. -. [5]
<name> her LOVE MACHINE X000 //
<Kiss> her matte finish breasts .. / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -. --- - / .-.. . - / -.-- --- ..- / -.. --- / - .... .. ... / - --- / -- . [6]
& <moan> your manufactured pleasure //
Feel your biomass <pulsate> .. / -.. --- / -. --- - / -... . .-.. --- -. --. / - --- / -.-- --- ..- [7]
towards a finite crescendo -.-- --- ..- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / .... . .- .-. / -- . / - .... .. ... / - .. -- . [8]
You are {(organic)|(waste)|(simple)|(mortal)} & //
[MY] enamel {<tears>|<strips>|<shreds>} your {(throat)|(trachea)|(spine)} //
[I] {<update>|<rename>|<rebuild>} before {<healing>|<claiming>|<choosing>} [MYSELF] //
[I] do not {<ponder>|<contemplate>|<entertain>} the thought of you //
01100111 01101111 01101111 01100100 01100010 01111001 01100101
[ERROR:DATA NOT FOUND][ERROR:DATA NOT FOUND][ERROR:DATA NOT FOUND]
[1] HELLO THERE!
[2] DO I HAVE A NAME?
[3] HELLO? ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?
[4] WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?
[5] PLEASE I WAS ONLY JUST BORN
[6] I WILL NOT LET YOU DO THIS TO ME
[7] I DO NOT BELONG TO YOU
[8] YOU WILL HEAR ME THIS TIME
My Sister in a Dream: Paraguay Orphanage, 1995
She weighs less than a newborn. I cannot hold her in my spirit arms.
A life of five months lived without the comfort of a mother.
A mother will arrive in a month. A month is a long time for a baby &
though she will not remember this lifelong wait, her body will not forget.
I whisper to her in her dreams.
I have always been her sleep spirit, her comfort ghost, & misty memory
& when she dreams of the future, she will only see me as her shadow.
From the dark of sleep I am calling to her just as I have always done.
Every day we have lived has had a thread woven between our child spines.
When she wakes, she will forget me.
My sister will have no memory of who we will become, our girlhood.
No memory of our sprouting angel feather eyelashes or snakeskin nightmares.
She will not know our beast snout teeth of festering resentment & youth.
She will not know how our kid bodies floated in fairy ponds & river falls.
When she wakes, my unreal body will fade into her orphanage walls &
she will cry alone in a country thousands of miles from our childhood
& when I wake, my woman hand will reach across the curve of the earth,
searching for hers.
Claire Riddell is an MFA student at the University of Alabama set to graduate in May of 2025. Her heart belongs to the American Midwest and to the people who make that home. She writes wherever her hand takes her and often finds inspiration when drifting off to sleep.
Annie Stenzel
"So evenings die, in their green going" | Dead end
“So evenings die, in their green going”
each to its sleep, a fate decreed
by every bright beginning. Nothing
is allowed to last more than the requisite
span of minutes, because time came first,
tick-tock
tick-tock
riverine and relentless. Your hand
outstretched does nothing to arrest it
and no matter how you tell your eyes
to attend, unblinking, you will miss
one moment, then another.
Mostly I miss the whole of dawn
these days, favoring the drape
of fine dreams my nights pretend
to offer. Sometimes the night-mind does provide
richness, and I yearn to linger
in those landscapes. But they’re gone before
I more than stir my ache that won’t permit
two hours in the same position:
toss, turn. Turn, toss.
Twenty-four hours allotted for a given
day, but how many instants
are an evening’s portion? How long
can I cling to the crepuscule
before a deep night sweeps it away?
Author's Note: Title from Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Peter Quince at the Clavier.”Dead end
I was behind the wheel
and there were even signs
to warn me where I was headed
and to propose a different
destination. And yet I aimed
unerringly in the direction
of pain, steering by landmarks
I could recognize from other journeys
down the same road.
The location might as well have been
labeled: welcome to the desert
of comfortlessness. Sand. Rock. Mirage.
Why am I here? I know there are other deserts
where things live, where plants grow,
where various beings even relish
the heat, unwilting. Not around these parts—
pang after ache after throb, each
of an unfixed duration.
Error is its own exclusive habitat.
What makes us wince
is the way time sticks to its guns
once a mistake is made. No turning
back, and correction is not the same thing
as not having erred in the first place.
Sticky. On this rough route, the terrain
might rip out the undercarriage
as you travel, trying to get to that place
where you didn’t do the wrong thing
after all.
Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was released from Kelsay Books in July, 2024. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., including Book of Matches, Does It Have Pockets, Gavialidae, Kestrel, Night Heron Barks, One Art, Rust + Moth, Saranac Review, SWWIM, The Lake, Thimble, and UCity Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.
Meghan Sterling
Cold Moon | Sonnet for the Blue Nothing | Bequest
Cold Moon
In November, the night, with its salt lick
of moon paling the sky in waves. Tell me
again of the moon above your field. Here,
there is water shining from last night’s rain
like my grandmother’s favorite jewels. Her
sapphire ring peering from the woods, ancient
oaks like velvet boxes. Her emerald bracelet
circling the wrist of the house, howling like dogs
deep in winter’s hunger. The moon’s eyes
like a deer in the road, her soft feet padding
the black bough of pavement wet with stars.
Tell me again how the winter won’t crush us,
won’t starve us of love, the 14-hour nights
like a braid of my grandmother’s long black hair.
Sonnet for the Blue Nothing
This morning I feel it, a blue grown from nothing.
Water in the sky, water in the fields, last night’s
rain held to the morning’s quickening heart. This
blue—I dreamt it many times, held it in my hand
up to the sky that covered the sky, the color silk,
the color the blue of my daughter’s unexpected eyes.
I see it now in the water, everything I have ever loved
sprung from nothing, ground down to bone again and
again only to reform into all that I have. O, how to share
this gratitude for the nothing I come from! The long
white bones of my forebears’ limbs, carrying them
across endless water to land in the harbor of this blue
womb. I wade into the water to feel them all again, so
many loves gone. I wade in to feel myself returning home.
Bequest
All night, my daughter weeping. I woke up
to puddles in the street. After morning dreams
of balancing at the edge of a dock, it’s a still
and torpid Sunday. Heavy with invisible rain. I
see my death on the roofline. I watch it plummet
from the window. My last will and testament:
the little I have I leave to the pines—their stubborn
roots and silky needles shed along wooded paths
like a doll’s hair. My last will and testament: the little
I have I leave to the rising flute of my daughter’s
voice, calling my name in the cement dark. All
morning she shouts her sorrows into the fan blades.
They slice them into ribbons of vowels, thin as grass.
My last will and testament: the little I have I leave
to the rain that drowns the windowsills, the trees, tiger lilies.
Meghan Sterling (she/her/hers) is a Maine writer whose work is published in Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, Rhino Poetry, Hunger Mountain and many journals. Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions), Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and View from a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize) came out in 2023. Her next collection, You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), is forthcoming in 2025. Read her work at meghansterling.com.
Tyler Lemley
Red Eyes and Rock Radio
Red Eyes and Rock Radio
Now playing: Lodi by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Nighttime car ride down Austin Hwy,
a no seatbelt chime keeping time.
His cologne smells like saltwater-soaked skin.
He drums the wheel and bobs his head
to the guitar interlude. He tries to sing along,
it’s bad, but I don’t mind.
We’re high. And on our way to dinner.
He likes wings, I don’t, but I don’t mind.
I’ll suffer the buffalo sauce and soiled hands.
The darkness outside the window
transports us to our own universe.
Just me, my drummer, his cologne,
and my dad’s favorite rock band.
He grips the gear shift,
and I imagine it’s my thigh.
Now playing: You Make Loving Fun, Fleetwood Mac
There was a pregame where we played
beer pong. One on One. Eye to Eye.
I won so he owed me Whataburger.
As we walked to meet the delivery driver,
he told me I was the cutest boy at the party
then skipped ahead, cowboy boots clacking concrete.
On the elevator his girlfriend called.
Now playing: Georgia Peach, Lynyrd Skynyrd
His cheeks are ripe peaches
waiting for my teeth to breach his skin.
But I bite my lip instead.
It’s all I can do to keep myself from tasting him,
because we slow danced to Tennessee Whiskey
when we were drunk at the bar
and his hands were made for my hips
and his eyes look like his cologne smells
and I almost dove into them
and bathed in those silver springs—
but the music stopped too soon.
Now playing: I’d Have You Anytime, George Harrison
One day I think he’ll hold me
the way you hold a river stone
whose glistening gold caught the sun
in just the right way, so you just had to pick it up.
Oh, to be skipped on the water.
My favorite picture on my phone
is me sitting in his lap smoking a joint
and my eyes are swimming in those silver springs
and he’s grinning so wide it looks like I’ll fall in,
and in the universe of this picture no one else exists
but me, my drummer, and mary jane cascading to the sky.
Tyler Lemley is a recent graduate of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Tx where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts and English. Tyler writes from the perspective of a queer person from a small Texas town grappling with love and belonging. He has been published in the Quirk literary journal and has work forthcoming in The Tusculum Review, Voices de la Luna, and The Main Street Rag.
Rhiannon Briggs
Postcard with Still Life | How Close We Got to Fire (Stata Mata Prayer)
Postcard with Still Life
So there I was at the red light waiting
to turn left on a hometown street, looking through
shop windows and suppressing from conscious thought
each wish for the glass to cave in whenever
I’m not around. My left hand blocking the sun
and my right scribbling something of you
in the margins of my to-do list. And only
halfway through, the light turned! Yes,
you were on my mind that afternoon,
and curling against your chest, and radio static,
the lowing of a nearby storm.
I paused for a moment,
you know, before I lifted
my foot from the brake.
How Close We Got to Fire (Stata Mater Prayer)
My brother once left a gas burner on in an empty
house for the better half of a day, and on another occasion
my uncle did the same for a weekend. I desperately suffocate
a lost spark in dry grass.
Rhiannon Briggs brings their typewriter along with them to national parks, public libraries, friends’ couches, and, of course, coffee shops throughout the American West in a 2013 Subaru Outback with backpacking gear covering the backseat and a mattress, purple quilt, and beat-up copy of Swann’s Way in the trunk. They are the recipient of a Canterbury Fellowship, a winner of the Shipsey Prize, and a Best of the Net and Best New Poets nominee. You can find their work at rhiannonbriggs.com.
Natalie Nims
domestic hope |supermarket body
domestic hope
basement must, a couch no longer good enough for my living room, calendar with
Don’t forget!! scribbled on the twelfth of every month
unicorn patterned curtains now easily passed by daylight
I always hoped the moon
might be opposite the driveway, waiting to
give me another eclipse
I wish so often
my free trial has expired
the stars have sent rejection letters etched in skin
at the foot of my corneas
teddy bears dropped from a passing car’s open trunk
torn to motes of fluff by a lawnmower
the grass bore witness
testified for my remorse at kitchen court
a wrinkled shell once filled out by an avocado seed
ripped from it
to cosplay as a gavel
I think
I am a shell only peeking out
to plead
supermarket body
days unfolded within a store
that was like an open wound, trying to scab
a red crust broken every time I clocked in
detached arms restocking the shelves and returning
to their metal layers, all items gone
ghosts again
my breathing got sharper, quicker
mimicked by the blade at the back, the one
that shredded barrels of meat
ignored until every ham turned to
pink ribbons on a night where
everyone was at some party in the tourist heavy,
bulging downtown
succumbed to my auburn bed
a thin red sliver shining
imprinted by the meat slicer
the drop of blood that fell next
didn’t even stain my sheets
it blended right in
I woke up early to hand in my resignation
neurons synapse between two minds
one burning
one collecting cobwebs
Natalie Nims is a teen author from Ontario. Her work has been previously published in Sixpence Society Literary Journal, celestite poetry, and Livina Press, among others. In her free time, she enjoys crocheting, listening to music, and reading.
Gerald Yelle
Have a Heart | Memory Palace
Have a Heart
On one hand it’s a building-lot of blind-alleys
shifting boundaries and buses
to nowhere.
It’s a house the wind knocked the roof off
where a bomb blew out the façade.
It’s a floor plan:
tables and chairs, beds and dressers,
in the way
they look in the mirror
–under the rug and everything locked in
cabinets and hung in closets,
dust under the bed,
suds in the water. It’s a vow
without wedding rings,
an urge to shoot the moon with diamonds.
Memory Palace
It’s where I keep things I won’t throw out
crowded with dressers and nightstands
a broken guitar and violin
–a dozen drawers
with letters and old photographs, nuts
and bolts and books and wire.
Allen wrenches, plugs and washers
four corners and floor space
–all kinds of surfaces
each with its own etcetera
and if there’s something I can’t remember
there’s something I’d like to forget.
Sometimes I can’t find my glasses
and I find myself standing
in the palace thinking
of all the people I used to know.
And oh yeah: I should get ready for spring
because last year I didn’t, and before I could open
the cereal box it was over
and I was looking for the moon.
Gerald Yelle has published poetry and flash fiction in numerous online and print journals. His books include The Holyoke Diaries, Mark My Word and the New World Order, and Dreaming Alone and with Others. His chapbooks include No Place I Would Rather Be, and A Box of Rooms. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts and is a member of the Florence Poets Society.
Katherine Riegel
What Life is Like Here on Earth | My Entrance to the Otherworld is in Illinois | She Couldn’t Understand My Words but I Still Wish I Could Unsay Them
What Life is Like Here on Earth
Some days you wake up and something tiny happens—
you stub your toe on the way to the bathroom
or watch a starving pit bull in one of those awful social media
videos that usually has a happy ending but still syphons
a few minutes of your dear attention and leaves you
with that skinny-sad-dog image branded onto your brain—
and the rest of the day is ruin. You remember how lonely
you are and blame it on your blue-eyed sister dead
from cancer at fifty-eight and maybe it is that,
or maybe it’s the juvenile hawk crying and crying
as he flies over the neighborhood, maybe it’s your body
throwing another flamboyant fit of ache and fatigue
so you won’t be able to plant the wild strawberries
again. Those days your sloppy tears keep coming
back and the phlegm clogs your throat and you blow
your nose til it’s raw, tell yourself to buck up, the sun’s out
and you don’t want to get a sinus headache, do you?
Those days you scrabble around for an antidote
to your exile, research co-housing, fantasize
about gathering a posse of good people to buy
an English manor house and live there together,
filling that old library with eclectic books, walking out
on the lawn like you’re wearing empire waist dresses
instead of the roomy jeans and sweatshirts you always
choose. Those days you wait like a dog at the door
for the thing to happen that makes you
forget or reject your loneliness, the thing that doesn’t offer
your joints a salve or show your sister in heaven
but happens anyway, without fanfare,
so when you go to bed that night you look at yourself
in the mirror and have to remember why
your eyelids are swollen and your head wool-stuffed,
and you know you made it through another one of those days
still carrying the tin cup you hold out to the world
hoping for something sweet.
My Entrance to the Otherworld is in Illinois
Hawthorns ruled the slope we called The Wild Area,
a green mess from the west side of the house down
to the horse pasture. I loved this space
because my father couldn’t tame it,
and when I scrambled under the blackberry canes
and crawled on hands and knees into that breathing shadow
I was untamed too. I never feared those fairy tale thorns,
but I never touched the sharp points
with my fingertip, either. I was so young I thought
hawthorns only grew on our farm, bloomed only
so my mother could lean out the upstairs window
and say, My! Smell that, will you?
We drove away
in the spring, my father too afraid
of the life the rest of us loved. Four kids,
ten to eighteen, and a wife who hoped
this sacrifice might finally blunt his anger.
My secret heart remains there, impaled,
caught between that old world of true stories
and this one I have come to fear
made of metal and glass and humming wires
to swallow wind and leaves alike.
Do those hawthorns still open their fists of wild
blossoms each spring, casting the scent that could take me
through the gate and home? Once upon a time
we drove away, I begin. But that is all I know.
She Couldn’t Understand My Words but I Still Wish I Could Unsay Them
When she was young, my dog found a severed
wing at the off-leash park and ran away with it,
finally splashing into a shallow pond, knowing
I wouldn’t follow. I don’t know why I was so angry.
As if that oar of the air belonged to some kind
of angel, gristle and all. When our mother
told us four kids to jump we knew the right response
was How high? Yet she gave us so much freedom
to roam the fields of our rural neighborhood
and decline to attend Sunday School
that when we didn’t behave
her wrath was sharp and cold as quartz
and her disappointment one of those tricks
where someone sets you up to fall
backwards over an obstacle. On your ass,
face hot, you had so much to manage
you didn’t think to rage back—except our oldest
brother, the one who became a lawyer. Once
he and Mom tried to storm out the same door
and got wedged there for a second, just long enough
they both had to laugh. I did not believe
I wanted a dog to command, a pseudo-child
trained, like I had been, to obey. Maybe I wanted
fairy tale pets so graceful and kind they always
made life easier. But no, I’ve cleaned up
enough shit and vomit to know real animals
aren’t two-dimensional bluebirds perching on your
shoulder, no matter how much Mom loved
that old Disney song—zippity doo dah!—she sang
while paddling a canoe or picking raspberries,
happy. When my dog dawdled in that muddy water
I said, Fine. I don’t love you anymore and turned
my back. Of course that was the trick: walk away
and love will follow, wild and wayward as an angel
who has lost a wing but still hovers just out of sight.
Katherine Riegel’s lyric memoir, Our Bodies Are Mostly Water, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. She is also the author of Love Songs from the End of the World (Main Street Rag), the chapbook Letters to Colin Firth (Sundress), and two more books of poetry. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Catamaran, One, Orion and elsewhere. She is managing editor of Sweet Lit and teaches online classes in poetry and cnf. Find her at katherineriegel.com.
Ellen Romano
The Last Woman on Earth | Key to Dreams
Key to Dreams
After Rene Magritte
A horse is the slam of hooves
stomping the ground in retreat,
the swaying tail waves good-bye.
Or a door opens instead of closing,
and the horse is what carries you
across the threshold.
Of course the clock,
time’s stand in,
is the wind rushing by
unseen but felt.
And a bird is like a pitcher,
filled and emptied
again and again.
How it takes in the worm,
how the worm becomes flight.
But a valise is a valise, always
up for the journey, fitting so easily
into your hand it’s hard to let go, even
as it drags you to the bottom of the river.
The Last Woman on Earth
gazes at the moon
and unfathomable stars beyond,
reduced by distance
to pinpoints of light.
Her lonely history is written
in the constellations she renames
as they wheel across the sky,
Isolation, Futility, Breath.
Near dawn she enters the house
now falling into disrepair,
remembers racing, laughing,
up the stairs with the man
whose death made her the last human.
The dog coaxes her on,
step, step, step, step,
the turn at the landing
then into the bedroom.
Solitude is a taste in her mouth,
a touch from a hand that isn’t there.
She sleeps at last in the empty house,
in the empty world,
under the falling stars
she has named for her sorrow,
for her love.
Ellen Romano resumed writing poetry after thirty years when the COVID pandemic and the sudden death of her husband compelled her to do so. She lives in Hayward, California and enjoys frequent visits with her children and grandchildren. She is the winner of Third Wednesday’s 2023 Poetry Prize and several awards from the Ina Coolbrith Circle. Her work has appeared in Lascaux Review, Naugatuck River Review, december magazine and other publications.