Bio: John Leonard is an Australian poet with five poetry collections published. His poetry has been widely published, in Australia, the UK and the US, and on the Internet, and some of his poems have been translated into various languages and published, most recently Frisian. His novel Shakespeare in Virginia was published in 2024 in London.

LATE HOLMBOE
‍
His is the various music
Of nature, bird- and human-song,
Weather of all the seasons—
Music of spring in general.
The fast music in the slow movement,
Slow movement in the fast music,
String quartet dialogue—life,
And sharp brass for contemplation...
This music, thought, says:
‘You will never understand the mystery, Though there is none, yet you will have it—
Simple-serious, clear and deep—
Always with you, existing in the time
Of time, written for you now.’

Bio: John Leonard is an Australian poet with five poetry collections published. His poetry has been widely published, in Australia, the UK and the US, and on the Internet, and some of his poems have been translated into various languages and published, most recently Frisian. His novel Shakespeare in Virginia was published in 2024 in London.

BEING IN LOVE, BEING IN LIFE
‍
You will find, if you let
Love/life take you over, A sudden and long-drawn acceptance,
A happiness of hills and vegetation,
Bird-song and laughter. You will find many things
That no longer make sense, but
Acceptance smiles at them
And they remain by you in your love
As tokens of new life.

Bio: Carol Barrett has published three volumes of poetry, most recently READING WIND, and one of creative nonfiction, PANSIES. An NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol has lived in nine states and in England. She currently supervises creative dissertations for students at both Antioch and Saybrook Universities.

Cedar Spring

Daffodils peek through April snow. The new neighbor
sets aromatic posts, our humble boundary.
He’ll leave a section low, grant deer a favor.
Daffodils peek through April snow. The new neighbor
pats my dog in winsome strokes more savory
than his predecessor’s half-hearted floundering.
Daffodils peek through April snow. The new neighbor
sets aromatic posts, our humble boundary.

Bio: Charmaine Arjoonlal is writer and social worker and mother of Ben. She lives with her husband and two rescue dogs in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Anmly, MUTHA, Plainsong, Funicular and elsewhere. She’s working on a collection of creative nonfiction and poetry.

Mr. Christie

One morning that was otherwise like every other morning, the Anne of Green Gables series
appeared on the deep window sill, in front of my fifth-grade classroom. Mr. Christie, our teacher, had
borrowed them from the library for the exclusive use of the girls in our class.
We gathered around the sign-out sheet and jostled to be the first to print our names.
“You wouldn’t like those. They’re for white girls,” Lynn sniped.
Cramps pinched my stomach. This seemed to happen when the “you are not white” thing came
up. I knew I wasn’t white but everyone around me was. Didn’t that make me white enough? Why was it
always a thing?
“Stupid, dirty Indian. You shouldn’t even be here.” A boy’s voice this time. I really hoped it
hadn’t been Steven.
Lynn’s chin jutted. Our eyes met. We lunged at each other and our arms intertwined. I turned and
saw Mr. Christie appraising me. He was tall and lean and lightly muscled, with wavy hair the colour of
milk chocolate.
The next day, Mr. Christie gave us a story to read. The story was about— “prejudice” —a word
that was new to us. I had been transracially adopted at a young age into a white family. This was the first
time I learned that there was a word for the kicks, threats, and hurtful remarks that had been thrown at me
over the years. Not just by children, but adults too.
A few days before the start of the school year, my family had moved to Elora, Ontario and I was
excited when I found out my new school had a running program. Steven was by far the fastest boy. His
fine blonde hair curled around his protruding ears and when he ran, his skin swirled a delightful white and
pink that made me think of candyfloss. We were the same height, our strides matched and together we fell
into an easy running rhythm.
I knew I’d never be the feisty redhead of Ann of Green Gables. But Mr. Christie’s long-distance
running team taught me to believe in myself. Feet pounding, hair streaming, my heart beat in rhythm with
the pounding of my feet. I was propelled by a force within myself, unfettered and free—victorious.
I never forgot Mr. Christie. Or Steven.

Bio: Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

Catch of the Day

Dragonfly perched on
a dead tree limb poking from
the smoothly fluid
surface of a river / cat-
fish looking up at what could
be his first catch of the day.

Bio: Jason Ryberg lives part-time in Kansas City, MO with a rooster named Little Red and a Billy-goat named Giuseppe, and part-time somewhere in the Ozarks, near the Gasconade River, where there are also many strange and wonderful woodland critters.

A Hesitant Ode to a Bumble Bee

You there,
ya big, fat grumblin’
bumble bee,

you sound to me
like the chronically fuzzed-out
electro-static feedback
of a beat-up ’62 Fender Strat
(or maybe a ’63).

I see ya, there,
buzzin’ around the shimmering,
glistening early morning air,

sniffin’ about, here and there,
bobbin’ and weavin’, in and out
like a Mexican or South Korean
featherweight, in and out
and all around the newly blooming
Marigolds and Hyacinths
and those incessantly perfuming
Mimosas and Spearmints
and eros-inducing Linden trees ...

Now, don’t you be
stingin’ on me!

Bio: Daniel Thompson was born in the Black Forest of Southern Germany and grew up in New Orleans. His recent work can be read in Sojourners Magazine, Chiron Review, Flyway, Arkansas Review, Poetries in English, and elsewhere. His poetry often explores sacred forms, music, myth, place, and the strange pressure the rituals of the past continue to exert upon the present. Read more at his substack: https://substack.com/@dathompson

UNFROZEN PIERIAN SPRING
‍
Another iced-in sus fantasy in

blue hallucinations of dawncast.

And trances of months-before still

bleating in brass notes in trill

Weeds grasp for existence

with less frequency these days.

New sprouts like bells in reverse
prick a slimy haze.

My arrogance still

clinging to last year’s gardens.

The Gorgon cypress,

its bones intact

soon-to-be flourishes
in coats of new flesh.

Below in the tangled
root-veins
bubbling in mudflesh.

Waters of El Nino

drench in cycles.

Bleak sentry cypress,

drinking the earthy moistness.
And the light’s graffiti sprayed over the lawn

the neighbor’s new copper Buick,

A plucking of the a-flaming feathers flared

out from the circulating sun’s rain, molting.

Blossoming petals
crocuses
and snowdrops,
finally, the
thaw penetrates
the freeze
of my mind.

Bio: Daniel Thompson was born in the Black Forest of Southern Germany and grew up in New Orleans. His recent work can be read in Sojourners Magazine, Chiron Review, Flyway, Arkansas Review, Poetries in English, and elsewhere. His poetry often explores sacred forms, music, myth, place, and the strange pressure the rituals of the past continue to exert upon the present. Read more at his substack: https://substack.com/@dathompson

SPRING APPROACHES IN PAPIER-MÂCHÉ
‍
Dreams squall in fierce beams
From shook foil’s silver fires,
Twisting smoke pirouettes
From flames pink and sparks.
A luminant drum of birch, and aluminum
Bursts punctuated with brass
Cornets, cors anglais, whistles.
Street rhapsodies draped in color,
Clouds disintegrate overhead,
The whimsies triumph!
The planet shivers,
Struts its translucent coat,
Donning its carnival cache.
Spring approaches in papier-mâché!

Bio: Daniel Thompson was born in the Black Forest of Southern Germany and grew up in New Orleans. His recent work can be read in Sojourners Magazine, Chiron Review, Flyway, Arkansas Review, Poetries in English, and elsewhere. His poetry often explores sacred forms, music, myth, place, and the strange pressure the rituals of the past continue to exert upon the present. Read more at his substack: https://substack.com/@dathompson

FANTASY IN VIOLET AND TAR
‍
I saw the violet gloaming move into

my fantasy of what violet can be.
Pale evening shaking off her dress,
and the winter patterns of nude stars

Prowl with primal indifference.
I saw the orange moon swallow

the state road on its flame trail,

And the definition of moon,

of the spheres that flicker

across gaps in my tired hallucinations.
I create the chaotic road:
crass,
tar and popcorn-shaped rocks, muscular,

Roughing off blacktop slough
spurring
cyclic waves of

meditation
In visions that turn out onto themselves.

Forces that morph into mountains,

re-form the horizon.
Splintered pitches across sun-baked
echoes trill through God the all.
Love frothing in a spinning pulsar.

Love belching in guayule rubber and plastic polymers on the Interstate.

Bio: Ed Schad is a writer and art curator living in Los Angeles. He has published widely, including in the L.A. Review of Books, The Brooklyn Rail, The Blue-Collar Review, Sonora Review, The Broken Plate, The Blue Moon Review, The Nonconformist, and Gulf Coast. His first collection of poetry, Letters Apart, was published by Dopplehouse Press in 2023. @icallitoranges

Blue Bike, Blue Eggs

The blue bicycle as she left it,
morning pollen and dust,
floating peonies in a breeze,
her hat swaying on a handlebar. The messenger was at the door
in worn shoes and torn pants,
he had come a long way, from a pasture I had forgotten.

Feathers, twigs, and baling twine,
formed cupped hands in the grass,
holding three blue and blameless eggs,
freckled and fertile in the spring,

and the nest seemed to ask
the wide and large world for time,
a few weeks safety from rats
and snakes elsewhere in all that space.

The messenger had a limp,
and struggled to relay this story, not knowing the outcome or
whether the meadowlarks leaped.

“Blue bike. Blue eggs.” He said,
“Her hat swaying on a handlebar.”

Bio: FRANCES KOZIAR is an author with over 200 published stories, poems, and articles. She is a tricenarian (disabled) retiree with a Master’s of Archaeology, an intersectional social justice activist, gamer, painter, DM, musician, and bubble tea fangirl. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

In Ashes
‍
I feel
like a mountain / after the forest fire
is gone, all the trees / turned
to ash / and charcoal,
exposed
for kilometres
around.

We can talk
all we like / about the growth
that comes from ash,
about how
beginnings / are always found
in endings, but the truth
is that the mountain / will be bare
for years to come,
and the scars will last
many decades.

I didn’t know
which trail I walked down / until
it ended in a cliff; didn’t
recognize the covert
abuse weaving
its way / through my congregation
like strangler vines / until
it was too late, and I
found friends and trusted
colleagues / united
in casting me out
of the community I had given
so much / of my life to.

It was / an end
I never saw coming, the way
one never expects the speed
with which flames grow, how
fast they can destroy everything
you knew, casting
the ashes and the smoke / so far
that those / in the next country over
will be coughing / on the deaths
of your dreams.

It is more than grief,
that I feel, more / than anger
or pain; to be shunned
by your people / is a devastation
larger / than that,
it is to be left
with only a few / black bones
of tree trunks / from the great forest
that was:
cremated, though not quite
incinerated.

And if you wait
for new trees / to grow,
you will be waiting / a very
long time, caught
between the spaces / of life:
not / living, but not quite dead
either—though wishing,
perhaps, to be,
because even death
would be easier
than this.

So instead of that endless
waiting, I make / my peace
with the death,
with the bare altar
that this mountain
has become, heavy
with the weight / of all that was,
and that strangely
beautiful smell / of burnt wood
on the wind.

Bio: FRANCES KOZIAR is an author with over 200 published stories, poems, and articles. She is a tricenarian (disabled) retiree with a Master’s of Archaeology, an intersectional social justice activist, gamer, painter, DM, musician, and bubble tea fangirl. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Days Gone By
‍
I breathe in
her memory
like scenting

the first flower
of spring

through the damp
of melting

snow.
There

in that shadow:
another day
gone
by, faded
images
twisting

like that vine

 up up
its trellis, like our fingers
entwined. Forever

I told her, believing

in the power
of the word,

believing
I could make it true,

believing love

could still the world like dew
turned to frost, perfect crystals

frozen
to breaking.

Bio: FRANCES KOZIAR is an author with over 200 published stories, poems, and articles. She is a tricenarian (disabled) retiree with a Master’s of Archaeology, an intersectional social justice activist, gamer, painter, DM, musician, and bubble tea fangirl. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Children are Wishes,
‍
like dandelions on a warm spring night,
and you blow on them and hope
that they will fly up to the stars on your breath, hope
they reach a world filled with everything good
that you could possibly imagine, pray

that when you blow, the wind doesn’t choose that moment
to still, so the seeds stick and fall heavily
to the barren earth, and you have to watch
other people’s children fly, leaving yours
forgotten with the dead, with the parents

who sit by tombstones
instead of cribs, ever haunted
by the wondering if there was something
they could have done to save them, if they had only
chosen a different moment, if they could have only
sacrificed everything to the wind,
to beg it to carry their children up and onward,
dreaming their way into life.

Bio: Eighty-year-old late-phase often graphic chronicler arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple prize winner plus Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee who also has been invited to serve as judge for competitions. Activism Through Poetry: How Gerard Sarnat Uses Verse as a Form of Protest is a retrospective: His words have been widely published in four collections (Homeless Chronicles: from Abraham to Burning Man, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King); included by Rattle, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Poetry Lighthouse, Prolific Press: Three Line Poetry, Black Mountain College Press, Poetry Lighthouse, Anomaly, Songs of Eretz, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, New York Great Cities/Pure Slush, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Hyperbolic Math-Poetry Review, Gravity of the Thing, Third Wednesday, Poetry Center of San Jose, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, Deronda Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Louisville/Mount Saint Mary’s LA/ Saint Benedict/ Saint John’s Universities, Oberlin, Slippery Rock, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, CUNY, McMaster, Maine, Oklahoma/British Columbia/Toronto/Malta/Chicago/Virginia/Alabama university presses — and more. He’s a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, seven grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com

tanka [non-Eastern Orthodox Easter Sunday’s tiny chance resurrection: home home on the mange]
‍
H. sapiens just pass
through woods wildlife occupied
forever, in few
short years, neighborhood upsets
has-been balance of nature

Bio: Sarp Sozdinler is a writer based between Philadelphia and Amsterdam. His work has found places in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Wigleaf, Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. ​His stories and poems have been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. ​He serves as the editor of The Bulb Region​.

Garbage day
‍
Every morning, I dump the last day’s frozen
blueberries into a bowl like I am feeding
a small and nervous god.
I tell myself this is what a healthy kid
should look like. This is what
a kid who wants to be a person does. But then
I add too much granola into the mix and suddenly
I’m a father in a doll made of glass
crumbs. I eat standing up by the counter because
chairs make me feel exposed, self-conscious. The berries
in the bowl thaw into bruises. My spoon comes back
purple, alerting a future mistake. I look out
the kitchen window at one dumb squirrel
dragging half a bagel through the yard.
I respect the little dude. Back in the day, I
too have taken something larger than I could
swallow and made it someone else’s problem.
There are emails waiting with their square little teeth.
There is laundry breeding more laundry in the corner.
There is always some fruit going soft
in a bowl somewhere as if to prove
health isn’t really a thing. Still, I keep eating
the day away. Still, the tongue goes soft
inside the mouth. Still the body, this needy
miraculous landlord, lets me earn my stay
one more morning.

Bio: Sarp Sozdinler is a writer based between Philadelphia and Amsterdam. His work has found places in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Wigleaf, Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. ​His stories and poems have been selected or nominated for anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. ​He serves as the editor of The Bulb Region​.

Animal sound
‍
I haven’t crossed your weather in years
not the pageantry of it, not the soft velvet of it,
that damp little theater you live inside
your cage.
Some false halo keeps shaking its fringe
and beckoning.
I’m exhausted from foraging your shadow out of ordinary places.
I keep laying down my small offerings
and still the whole district comes off counterfeit.
Electric paradise, lobby music, borrowed gold,
and all I can do is make that animal sound.

Bio: Erin Jamieson’s (She/Her) writing has been published in over 100 literary magazines and nominated twice for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of Net. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including Fairytales (Bottle Cap Press) and a historical novel, Sky of Ashes, Land of Dreams (Type Eighteen Books), and two forthcoming poetry collections.

Snowdrops

my mother tells me
I’ll end up alone
I escape my
studio apartment
into spring rain
muddy yards
where snowdrops
and pansies bud
beginning of
a new season
floral aroma
of earth’s
rebirth
& I
do not
need
anyone
to feel
this joy

Bio: Joseph Geskey lives outside Columbus, Ohio. His second book of poetry, Vigil, was published by Broken Tribe Press in 2026. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, individual poems have appeared in Verse Daily, Tar River Poetry, Door Is A Jar, Poetry East, The Dodge, and many others. Please visit josephgeskey.com for further information.

The Narratives We Miss
 
Give me the narratives of songbirds
over those written by birds of prey:
nature whittling the beaks of Darwin’s finches
to extract fruit and seeds—not the hawks
kettling overhead while a farmer
finishes a field, knowing the meal
of mice will be easier once he removes
the camouflage of grain.

I’ll take what has roots over wings.
Give me the gift of yarrow in bloom,
where crushing stems with a mortar and pestle
stops the bleeding—no need
to outlast everything we think can harm us.

There is a non-fiction in flowers
growing in the wild, over the fiction
of those placed domestically in vases,
stripped of the ants who drink sap
from petal-wounds to protect them
from herbivores. This is strength—
not force, but the capacity to need
and be needed in return.

Bio: JK Miller is a former third grade dual language teacher. He lives on the edge of cornfields. He is the first place winner of the 2025 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest. He is the author of the chapbook Bicycling Poems  and Rye & I  . His poems have appeared in ANTAE, Amethyst Review, THEMA and elsewhere. In the summer of 2025 he rode his bicycle to see his newborn grandson. It was 1,335 miles. He plays the harmonica and likes to garden.

The Seeding

My bones expel me.
Snow comes
announced
and as twilight settles
I reach the field with my paper bag
walk over the cottonwood
and willow stubs
scattering along the Bobcat tracks
my pretend rows
of echinacea, rudbeckia and eutrochium
names I prefer over
Coneflower, Black-Eyed Susan, and Joe-Pye
for they are but seeds
tiny specks drifting in the wind
sticking in the mud
disappearing
like faith.
The soil and water
conservation district men
did not come
with the sedge, rush,
fowl, nodding,
angelica, parasol,
blazing star,
marsh, mint,
mountain,
rue and blue

Snow is coming—
it is announced—
disappointment,

and so I hurry
with my bag full
of house garden seeds
my thick gloved hands
crushing urgently
the spiked cone heads
crumbling them in

with the white, parachuted
gray needles
and the thin-veined
peppercorns, fists
opening and closing
like a heartbeat.
The urgency vanishes
as I watch the seeds
float and fall,
float and fall
float and fall
I get the rhythm of the sower
I feel my bones
welcome me back in.
I tell my wife:
if I die this winter
promise me you'll watch
the field for three years—
something may come up.

Bio: Lani Trower is a 24-year-old writer from Sicklerville, NJ. If she’s not writing poetry or fiction, she’s likely reading or doing crafts. Prior to this publication, her work's been featured in Wingless Dreamer Lit, Quillkeepers Press, The Bluebird Word, and several others. Lani's an M.A. graduate of Rowan University and loves zines. Her Instagram handle is @lanitwriting, and her website is https://lanit593.wixsite.com/lanitwriting.

Insurgence

Something is stirring underfoot,
Ancient in origin yet fresh in its creation
The excited whispers of the trees dance on the wind, The ground trembles as its efforts finally bare fruit
Sunkissed tissue hidden beneath intricate vines atop their head, The child born of clay has finally arrived!
With dirt for freckles and soil-slicked limbs,
Their smile promises mischief
Raised diligently among the plants and animals, Taught to take root and stand firm,
But beware of the fleshy ones that wander into the abode, It is not yet time for the rebellion
Return to slumber for now little Earth child,
Your golden hour of glory is steadily approaching— Someone is stirring underfoot,
With eager anticipation for the days to come.

Bio: Matthew DeLuca is a poet and painter living in New York City. He is a graduate of Boston College and Fordham University School of Law. His poems have been published in Offcourse, The Amsterdam Review, Wild Court, Open Ceilings and elsewhere. He published his first chapbook, Flowers, Birds & Gods, with Everything Matters Press in 2025.

Brazen Heads

I carry around many heads
that translate the golden palm
at my heart.
They speak every language,
yet mostly dispute
the fuzz at the edge of being.
I watch them chatter, bronze teeth flashing
in the clear light.
Be wary of poets, my friends,
who sing of golden palms
and not green and red.

Bio: Matthew DeLuca is a poet and painter living in New York City. He is a graduate of Boston College and Fordham University School of Law. His poems have been published in Offcourse, The Amsterdam Review, Wild Court, Open Ceilings and elsewhere. He published his first chapbook, Flowers, Birds & Gods, with Everything Matters Press in 2025.

AGOG

Please tell me if you’ve heard this one before.
Much of what you’d rather not
is occasioned by the complications of plus.
Easterly and westerly, northernly and southernly, from palm wine or the lines of palms,
parrots, priests, programs or paychecks, seeking
with proportionate interest,
the Land of Cinnamon and the salt of the Earth,
you befuddle yourself,
dreaming of dreaming undreamable dreams.
My friend, preferences are misperceptions.
My god, you can’t so want to be one.
Agony and angst, perhaps, arise from
not sitting with simple boredom,
while meanwhile, overhead,
even their shadows did not alert you
to the goats in the trees.
Ah, well – a scattering and a mistake, perhaps.
My friends in the conclave of conversos,
castrati, concubines and clowns, inquorate,
conclude amongst themselves that the gods
suffer differently, not less. From there to here
and back, they’ve traveled, and
softly and slowly, and all at once,
stand before the blue sky, and release their squint,
to remind the forgetful dawn.
A ladder suggests up, and
the clear reason descends easily. We can rest any time in the actual,
yet scoop ourselves with the fantastic ladle
of determination.
I call it new only because
I’ve digested it poorly. What a lovely thing, to be dismemberable,
and not, like a problem,
settled and agreed upon.
The contenting of Zog or
the continuity of Samarkand –
when you’ve heard a dream like that,
a dream with the suggestion of a significant name,
a beloved fact, a lagniappe of evening,
oh, how delicious,
to tease out light’s music with a flower, both of you laughing
throughout all of space.

Bio: Matthew DeLuca is a poet and painter living in New York City. He is a graduate of Boston College and Fordham University School of Law. His poems have been published in Offcourse, The Amsterdam Review, Wild Court, Open Ceilings and elsewhere. He published his first chapbook, Flowers, Birds & Gods, with Everything Matters Press in 2025.

Philoxenia (or, for the Love of Strangers)

Whilst we ponder
the extremity
of angels
and other guests arriving by night
(guided by candles left for them)
in moonless dark,
caped and ambitious,
consider too the nearness
of benignant strangers
(guided by candles left for them)
and the meals set warm on the table
with anticipations
we couldn’t recognize
and gifts
we didn’t know we had to give.
Perhaps, then (everybody's people)
(terrible, beautiful, and ordinary),
our wait
will not be,
or not be long.

Bio: Matthew DeLuca is a poet and painter living in New York City. He is a graduate of Boston College and Fordham University School of Law. His poems have been published in Offcourse, The Amsterdam Review, Wild Court, Open Ceilings and elsewhere. He published his first chapbook, Flowers, Birds & Gods, with Everything Matters Press in 2025.

Chanticleer

All is in cahoots,
a genial ruse,
that I cannot know
only because I
is in on it.
My name is Jacques,
a man of the trivia
(meet me there),
a lover and beloved
of all the catholic gods,
sampler of yogurt and honey, nodding custodian
to a crumbling self,
a part-time thinker-out
of the obscurities
shrouded only
in inattention.
The Lessons of the Past,
for example, is a
category best approached
cautiously. The world is silly strange,
imbroglioed with us trip-giddy vagabonds.
This is our family tradition
in the kinship of being,
a verdant catharsis,
a garden state.
There is no human error.

Bio: Megan Bresnahan (she/her) is a poet from rural Virginia who now lives in Laguna Beach, CA. She earned a BA as part of the Area Program in Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Rogue Agent, Magma Poetry, and others. You can find her on instagram at @disaffected_niece

Florida Breaks
 
In the months after your death
I think a lot about Florida,
the time we drove from Virginia
over spring break.

Confederate jasmine climbed
in vines, every lake lousy
with alligators. The whole state
seemed swollen, oppressively green.

You were taller in your hometown,
long as the cypress trees steeping
in swamps. I finally understood Florida
Breaks. The heavy rolling bass

and struck-match chord stabs
build and resolve like afternoon
downpours. We drank St. Ides
on a golf course with your childhood
 
friends in a Citronella-warded circle.
When you left to buy Marlboros
they whispered intervention. I pulled
my knees tight to my chest.

I wish I’d had the guts
to betray you. Wish I’d woken early,
had iced coffee with your mother,
told her the truth. Given up

your dealer’s number.
It would have broken us,
your heart. Probably wouldn’t even
have made a difference.

Bio: COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 50 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, a novel, Memphis Movie Two: The Recrudescence of Eric Warberg, is from Whiskey Tit Books. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

Natural Man

That sunshine after the rainstorm
today, I did that.
The dogs on this street treat
me like one of their own. I’ve
worked hard to stay in
their good graces. Tomorrow I must
talk to our large oak. She
seems to want me to write something
to commemorate her new foliage.
Ah, nature. I am your willing partner,
here in suburbia, that last, best island.

Bio: COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 50 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, a novel, Memphis Movie Two: The Recrudescence of Eric Warberg, is from Whiskey Tit Books. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

Deep into The Old Forest
for Richard Brautigan

Deep into The Old Forest,
along paths ancient
and eternal
we found the trees and
computers which
made of the Earth a new
world, a cybernetic
woodland, a place of peace
for men, oaks, and machines.

Bio: COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Lunch Ticket, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published over 50 books of fiction and poetry. His newest book, a novel, Memphis Movie Two: The Recrudescence of Eric Warberg, is from Whiskey Tit Books. With his wife he runs Burke’s Book Store (est. 1875) in Memphis.

The Old Oak

The old oak has seen more than I ever will.
On Easter Sunday my granddaughters
danced underneath it like fays.
The tree let just enough light through.
It was dancing too, deep inside itself,
to a tune it learned aeons ago, before men.

Bio: Martin Fisher has been writing for a while but is now letting some of his poems slip out in retirement! His poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Poems, Tales & Other English Words, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Neon Smoke and Elysian Literary. His working life has taken him across Africa and Europe, and he now lives in the UK, where he works as a professional gardener. He shares his home with his wife and two dogs, Eli and Juno.

Companion
‍
The robin looked at me
again.
I leaned on my fork,
the bare earth turned sweet,
potatoes set in—
and we agreed ,
in that moment,
an easy truce
of mutual stillness.
The robin eventually hopped
over to the fresh sod,
red caught on brown,
tilting for an unlucky worm
or beetle.
I stayed just there
motionless,
hands resting on the honeyed ash
handle
breath held in cold air and
shallow light,
my thoughts floating in silence,
watching furrows,
and my old friend.

Bio: N. Mohanarangam is an Indian poet whose work has appeared in several international literary journals. His poetry often blends classical imagery, mythology, and traditional sonnet forms while exploring themes of beauty, philosophy, and the human experience. He continues to write with a deep appreciation for both classical and contemporary literary traditions.

SONNET
WHERE BARDS LOSE REASON
‍
What maketh bards delineate the fairer sex,
Whilst the withering, ephemeral bouquet?
Doth portray sanity—inner traits,
Else the bewitching statute?
Oh, winged boy! Whither begone art thou,
Devoured of bards’ sanity—poetic reasoning.
Methinks insane compare, loitering Phoebe
Of waxing, waning—alas, crescent!
Captivating eyes, enticing countenance of traits,
Mesmerizing words oft maketh spell on bards.
Hardly be a lamp lit with water;
Akin to it, portraying is the illusionary love.
Perhaps thought may, sans language—
Bards lack not, depicting the fairer sex.

Bio: Nancy Byrne Iannucci is a New York-based writer and author of four chapbooks. Her first full-length poetry collection is set for publication in 2027. A two-time Best of the Net nominee, she was short-listed for the 2025 Poetry Lighthouse prize. Her work appears in several places including Thrush, Maudlin House, Glass, and Belladonna's Garden Literary Review. She lives in upstate NY with her three cats. Web: www.nancybyrneiannucci.com IG: @nancybyrneiannucci
Emma Byrne Hickman is a nature photographer who resides in the countryside of England. Her photographs aim to capture moments of wonder and awe in the natural world. Her photographs have appeared in Floating Acorn Review, Belladonna's Garden Literary Review, and Blue Rivers.

The Gardener
‍
show off my sundress like a robin redbreasttrying to impress you. I follow you around,around your tilled ground for wormswarm worms, your worms. They taste the best.You teach me ways, daring ways, to sow my seeds.If only I were brave enough, I’d surrender the heat& artificial light & let nature do what it does.


(attached photograph is not shown yet)

Bio: Natalie Harveld is an Oxfordshire-based poet whose work is often rooted in the raw edges of motherhood and faith. Writing across both formal and free verse traditions, she is drawn to themes of transformation, identity, and belief. Her poetry has previously been published by Free the Verse, Anomaly Poetry, Turning Leaf Journal, Iontas, and Arcana Poetry Press. She can be found on Instagram @natalieharveldpoetry.

The Nest After

In the hawthorn hedge, an empty nest
cups the warmth of what was lost.
Spring leans in, feather-breast,
but not all beginnings bloom.

A bowl of twigs shaped like a womb
holds feather and fragile breath.
Some mornings wake with life,
others close their mouths too soon.

Small ribs rehearse their rise and fall
against the tremor of the cold.
Sap climbs, reckless, through the stem;
green fingers prise the branches wide.

The hedge remembers it all:
every heartbeat, every silence.
It does not forbid beginning again,
though some quickenings vanish before dawn.

Bio: Nathan Campbell is a writer from Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He is in the process of completing a degree in English from Penn State University, where he has written news and lifestyle articles, columns, and drawn a weekly comic strip in the student newspaper The Daily Collegian.

Apology

For prophesying our last days
Together in the ways I thought
To leave you, sailing out adrift
On ghost ships wriggling through a storm,
Could I ever find the words
To redeem my reckless thoughts
And fears and actions all at once?
Rather unrighteous am I gray.
For lacking common courtesy
To say I thought we’d grown apart
As tendrils find themselves in time,
Greener in the midday sun but
Climbing up and climbing down,
Such leafy splendor we lived in
Before I let it rot and rot some more.
So, I’m sorry, but this you know.

Bio: Nathan Campbell is a writer from Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He is in the process of completing a degree in English from Penn State University, where he has written news and lifestyle articles, columns, and drawn a weekly comic strip in the student newspaper The Daily Collegian.

Für Kandinsky

The emergence of a face and scene
In discordant music as if in disarray
The color swathes, as if in Paree
The birds of flutter sing tiny symphonies
Made in midair elegizing foregone autumn
To deeper browner voices croaking
Unknown encroaches on what’s known
As dream music enters afternoons in green
O fair weather friend of multivalence
I can almost taste the color
Sordid solemn soli
Is the static dynamism
Of the spirit in a spasm
Over colors, over tastes
Spring’s budding triumph
From first arrival flowering
Out of its twiggy sleep
To meet us in our winter
He saw creation in
Destruction. Delight in
Seeing him align and
Realign his limpid lilacs
And red anger, slicing
Black with vigor
Into the canvas
In a changeling’s season

Bio: Owen Zhang is a writer in Bellingham, WA. When he's not writing poetry, he loves to read and play chess. His work has previously appeared in A Forest of Words.

the persimmons of poetry

the persimmons of poetry just brush my fingertips
they scold my tongue
let them drink the sunlight and they will soften
spill sweetness across my lips
but leave them too long and the sugar ferments
the flesh festers
the pit rots

i contemplate the seed on my palm
i can kill it
another corpse on the sill
or maybe
i can bury it
let it struggle into
a strong green sapling

i learn to wait

Bio: Owen Zhang is a writer in Bellingham, WA. When he's not writing poetry, he loves to read and play chess. His work has previously appeared in A Forest of Words.

escape

every evening i climb the fire escape ladder
flakes of rust gnashing my palms
the rails
quaking

up here it’s just me
and the sky spilling its guts

i sit cross-legged on the edge
the parking lot is just a fall away
i look down
and crave
the whoosh

the clouds shifting
a bird above
the setting sun impaled on the trees

on my way down i pause
look at the chain-link fence
at the bird now peacefully perched
against a smear of the sun’s blood
on the horizon

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Birthday

At breakfast in town
your son resembles, more and more,
your father but is as grizzled (squint
and laugh lines, four-day shadow)
as you. The day is more like spring
than fifty-five years ago; more
emerald haze of early buds
than snow flurries.
*
You went into work
late after getting a peek, kissing
his mother’s forehead. She wore
a purple, satin, Tweety Bird night
shirt. Dave Wickersham pitched
for the Tigers as you drove
down to the Pontiac car plant.

*

You left your old classmate, Jerry, (Semper Fi) behind in Pediatric
Waiting; waiting for PTSD, alcohol
and Agent Orange to welcome him
home while he waited to welcome
his own first-born.

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Paczki Day

To get it over with,
the overindulgence we’ll eschew;
to preempt at least one
of the deadly sins—(Gluttony, for instance), we gobble
down the fruit fillings, custards
in deep-fried, Shrove Tuesday
pastry—so many calories and fat
grams that the white paper bag
becomes translucent with cooking
oil in spots. So tell me then;
how hard must I unload, just
to give you up for forty days
in this sleet shrouded Spring.

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Alignment

This is not the location described
by the maxim; ‘location, location, location,’
but an abandoned Union 76 station in the shadow
of an overpass. The truck route above
avoids a neighborhood of fading Big Wheels
and battered door locks. Exhaust
and traffic grit settle here.

*

Why shouldn’t Todd be the name
of the Hispanic man who ambles out,
indifferent to March grease thawing
under his caked boots? But relax—it’s just
the monogram left on a yard-sale shirt,
not one fresh from a uniform service.
He meets you at the tailgate
of your salt-rimed Suburban.

*

This man negotiated a HUD loan
allowing him to tear the plywood off
the widows of the old place and repair
the hydraulic hoist. Now he’s breaking
down flats, dealing used tires to single
moms driving wheezing Escorts.
Balancing and valve stems cost
extra, like anywhere.

*

He probably won’t give you much
for your old 15-inch radials,
even with 5,000 city miles left
on them. But spill out the dark snow
melt, pick out the decayed leaves, and just
be happy you won’t have to pay
your garbage man to add them
to a distant pyre.

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Opening Day

I don’t mind using that same
free, sample toothbrush until
my next cleaning but can’t find
the sharp, reliable nail clippers
in the drawer so stumble through
the sack-and-pillage of our spare
bedroom where granddaughters sleep
over, retrieve them from their practice
manicures. I’m not leaving the house
with a hangnail. Then I should
probably use my inhaler but don’t
want to ruin the taste of a velvet chai
maccha if I decide to try one.

Somewhere between home and Starbucks
where we local seers meet daily,
Sirius wanes` in the mauve east,
but is saved in ruby driveway puddles.
Orion lopes ahead. He’d love to stay
and chase fungos in left field but is already
evaporating. What did I expect in this latitude
besides flurries blowing, a windshield
to scrape? There’ll be more snowmobile suits
than Banana Boat lotion in the bleachers
today, wind buffeting Comerica Park,
vibrating through field mics all
the way into my Bluetooth bud.

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Last Fuel

This was in a book*
about the liberation of Paris, where,
besides not having enough food
to eat—good baguettes, bouillon,
not to mention simple consommés,
sauces—there was a shortage of fuel
for cooking. It described
the ingenuity of a captive populace,
gleaning driftwood from the banks
of the Seine. They balled up scrap
paper and fed it sparingly
into a brazier or samovar. Eight pages

of newsprint, half a Proust (in hard-
cover), a fistful of twigs

could bring a liter of water
to boil in ten minutes.
*
Here in the following century,
at the end of the heating season,
there are mornings of frost on far-off
rubble, thick dew on your lawn at home.
An ornate stove is fired with the last
debris raked from under your maple,
the crabapple, a cereal box stuffed
with a neighbor’s pinecones, bark
from your own wood pile. An aluminum
kettle for tea will boil in the seven
minutes of your shower. The models
were never so thin nor skirts
so short as in those first post-Vichy `
collections of mode martiale’. We picture them holding themselves
in those scarce fabrics, in chilly
chambre d’habillements.

*Collins, Larry and Lapierre, Dominique. Is Paris
Burning? Simon and Shuster (New York), 1965.

Bio: Chris Dungey is a retired auto worker in MI. He rides mountain bike against his fupa and a Honda scooter for the planet. He follows Detroit City FC with religious fervor. More than 180 of Dungey's poems have appeared in litmags and online, most recently in Thimble, Argyle, Poetry Lighthouse, and Avalon Literary Review.

Your Steps

Now you’ve begun stumbling;
falling, following your descent into atrophy
of nearly every muscle group. The winter
was obese with streaming subscriptions
(Pluribus and Slow Horses you’ve recommended
to everyone) and the novels of Richard Powers.
Conveniently, that device on your wrist
Also functions as a time piece because
you haven’t neared the suggested bench-mark
for your height, weight, and age since
November. But here comes the spring Master’s
Degree ceremony for a granddaughter.

*
Start with walking three blocks
from the cold, whistling parking structure.
Get ideal seats for photos way down
in the bottom row, second deck
at Breslin Center. (She went to Michigan
State; the robes are green.) Hike
all the steps up to the Men’s room
(though the Breslin coffee was awful), Pomp
and Circumstances in brass following you.
Three trips with your old bladder, but
you can still reach your goal at home
if you’ll just skip your nap.

Bio: Rich Murphy grew up in Lynn, MA where his drive to become a writer, a poet, began early. He believes that daily practice is Wile E Coyote chasing the Road Runner, and at some point, the practitioner runs alone off a cliff without emerging from the bottom of the canyon. Who knows, some of the products of practice may survive. Some of his 20 collections of poetry have won prizes: The Gival Poetry Prize for Voyeur (2009), and the Poetry Press Americana Prize twice for Americana and The Left Behind (2014 and 2021). He continues to teach at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Porcupine
For Marika Preziuso

More than fog on a mirror, a presence threads the cancer
and heart disease needling, period.
The survivor patches together
using the laughter in stitches
and daily routines that exercise
balancing right with what remains.
By piercing a once youthful whole,
chemotherapy and blood-thinners
team up to provide clean sheets
for articulating the hospital luck.
One arm for the IV, the other
for the pressure cuff, and a shot
to punctuate evens out the score.
A life sentence nurses into a chorus line.
Mixing wardrobe remnants
into a quilted jester with both eyes
open to document, blue jeans,
orange jacket over a red jersey, and ox blood shoes, the opportunistic
pin cushion pokes fun.

Bio: Sarah is a writer from Cork, Ireland, now living in Vancouver. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Bending Genres, Excision, Feel Lit Magazine, Interrobang Lit, The Martello Journal, and elsewhere.

Pegged to the Line

I was six when Bunny died.

I fingered the soft flannel
pressed it to my nose.

Soft and tickling.
A familiar scent.

Mine.
His.

Thumb in my mouth,
Bunny under my nose.

I waited

He was the last thing
placed in the washing machine.

Nestled beneath the first layer of sheets,
face turned outwards
so he could breathe.

The door closed

Soaking wet,
his body spread wide,
pegged to the line.

I chased him back and forth
as the wind wrestled me for him.


. . .

He appeared

Two black eyes,
a wide smile.

My hand melted into his softness.

He stood beside me
when they pulled my pigtails,
threw my lunch in the trash.

My tears left streaks on his arm.

He held me
until the shuddering stopped.

He never stopped smiling.

. . .

Next to my bed
books stacked high.

I disappeared inside the pages.

Ink running through my veins.
Vellum against my cheek.

Page to page.

Nestling into the spine
to rest.

My body pressed into the glossy jacket
like a preserved flower.

Set on the shelf.

Safe
in my wooden house,
behind glass.

. . .

Sometimes
I still feel his hand
on my back.

The weight of it
pressing.

Bio: Sarah Aldrich lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her husband, two young children, and dog. A member of Tessa Fontaine, Annie Hartnett, and Clare Beam’s Accountability Workshops since 2024, she's working on her first novel. Sarah graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in Professional Writing. You can find her at https://sarahaldrichwriter.com/.

AI Ouroboros


I’m here to say the quiet part out loud.
It’s worth being honest about.
I have to be straight with you.
I’m here to give you something concrete instead of a loose definition.
Because we’re not just standing still — we’re moving in circles, and signaling to everyone that we have no clue. About any of it.
The best part? It’s easy to see.
Look at what we actually kept, and what we set down.
This is what real work actually looks like.
The results speak for themselves.
It’s about separating meaning from searching — and keeping neither.
It’s work I can genuinely help you do, and it's the part where wanting it badly actually matters.
You caught something real, and it's worth saying plainly:
I owe you a correction, because I wrote something that quietly argued the other way.
So the real question, and I want your honest answer because it changes everything:
Which one do you want to do next?
Want to point me there?

Bio: Sarah Das Gupta is a poet from Cambridge, UK who has taught English in India, Tanzania and the UK. Her work has been published on every continent, except Antarctica, in anthologies and magazines. She began writing aged 80, following a disabling accident. She has been nominated for Best of the Net; the Pushcart and a Dwarf Star.

Reborn

The winter garden is dead. Frost’s cold fingers strangle the last signs of life. Dry, black stems
pierce the pale rays of winter sunlight. Brown skeletal leaves of bracken sink into the
sodden earth. Summer’s corpse is finally laid out as darkness creeps over the frozen grass.
Slowly, the moment of resurrection approaches; the shattered mirror reforms. A snowdrop
fights its way through the frozen earth. On bare Magnolia branches, tiny buds begin to form.
Ancient apple trees are thinking about living through one more Spring. The intertwining
brown stems of the wisteria move in their deep winter sleep. Now the dark yew, which
never surrenders, even to winter’s most barbaric assault, is dreaming of its five hundredth
summer. The first blossom drifts over the grass. A blackbird sings from a willow.

Bio: Sarah Das Gupta is a poet from Cambridge, UK who has taught English in India, Tanzania and the UK. Her work has been published on every continent, except Antarctica, in anthologies and magazines. She began writing aged 80, following a disabling accident. She has been nominated for Best of the Net; the Pushcart and a Dwarf Star.

Sonnet to an Urban Spring

On housing estates, the snowdrops bloom.
From balconies, dandelions lean,
their bright yellow crowns now softly gleam,
like torches amid grey, urban gloom,
despite the traffic’s noise and fumes.
In empty lots, the celandine dream
of pale, sunny banks where raindrops teem.
Metro walls form green moss’s dark womb.
Along dull grey roads, pink blossoms hang
like candy floss in the morning light
or delicate, fragile pink meringue,
lines of daffodils, a welcome sight.
Spring comes weaving a golden thread,
Citizens walk with a lighter tread.

Bio: Shahalam Tariq is a poet from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. His poems have appeared in The Naked Punch Review, and borderless journal, with poetry forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review. He has written on the history and literature of Pakistan for The Friday Times. He is currently working on his first collection of poems.

Laundry

He said ‘do not be too happy if
this city is a rose garden every spring’
He went on ‘There is your blood
on the petals of these roses
that you are so happy to see.’ He was then killed
two weeks later, on a train
coming back from his home.


After his funeral,
I went out into the park.
And I saw a rose— of course.
I picked it up and smelt it
and put it in my pocket.

…

Today I did my laundry and
hung the clothes out to dry.
And went to the store,
I had run out of potatoes and sugar.
I picked up
a pack of cigarettes.
When I came back home
the clothes had dried;

One of the shirts
had a red stain on it
near the pocket.
I folded the clothes
and put them into a drawer.

I smoked half the pack.

Bio: Christopher Stolle is a book editor, baseball enthusiast, music aficionado, trivia guru, and, occasionally, writer. His writing has been published by Indiana University Press, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Coaches Choice, “Roe River Review,” “Hawai'i Pacific Review,” “Sheila-Na-Gig,” “Tipton Poetry Journal,” and “Flying Island,” among many others. He lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Newly Discovered Verses for “The Ballad of Emmett Till”

golden shovel before “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till” by Gwendolyn Brooks
‍
“You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.”
– Gwendolyn Brooks,
“To Be in Love”

I.
“They” demand compliance: Stop breaking the
law, stop resisting, / stop running away. / No one breathes their last
breath / if they obey. Hidden with this quatrain:
an invisible prejudice, a cautionary tale, the fear of
a world not welcome for all. Truth isn’t only for the
ones with unspoken privilege. Not every line of the ballad
get interpreted the same way. We must keep singing his story of
premeditated murder. We’re still adding verses, Emmett,
but we continue to seek justice for every mother since Mamie Till.
II.
Freedom: the protests, the open-ended promises, the fires after
all the flames have died. Change: a brooding wound with the
threat of destruction. But we can’t allow senseless murder
to dictate the laws of civility. We know what “they” are after
and we, the diamond-souled, won’t let “them” destroy all the
progress made. But we know healing doesn’t begin with burial.
III.
They didn’t teach us about Emmett’s
death in school. We didn’t know his mother
demanded an open casket. Her struggle is
still an ominous warning. Pain gives a

heart wings, a soft lightness, the pretty-
eyed hope of vengeance. We’re still faced

with deafness, blindness, every ignorant thing.
IV. Shadows don’t know they’re swallowing the
light. Evil doesn’t believe in the tint
of bloody hands. Decisions are full of
crowded voices—the heart being pulled
toward whirlpools as sticky as thick taffy. [end stanza]

[start stanza]
In that kind of quiet, the darkness hot, she
mumbles a prayer. The heaviness sits
hard on her hands. She bathes herself in
tears—the whispers around her a
reminder of him: the starkly red
horror burned into everything in his room.
When the next dawn comes, she’s drinking
reluctance—an obstinate disbelief as black
as hunger, as white as scorn, as bitter as coffee.
V. Anguish settles on her shoulders as she
contemplates the choice—the final kisses
still wet on her cheeks. She breaks her
silence to demand retribution for her killed
son, her greatest love, her dead baby boy. “Darling,” she says to an empty hallway and
then looks around, expecting him as she
did the day he left. But nothing is
there save a ghost trying to say he’s sorry. VI.
Here we are today, in this present chaos,
not apologizing for the anger in
our voices—the sounds carried by windy
waves of grain: a rainbow of vibrant grays.
Look there: The swaying mass of hope pushes through
the danger—seeks an opening to a
brighter day where the stains of red
blood become the harvest of America’s prairie.

Bio: Thomas Zimmerman (he/him/his) teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His poems have appeared recently in Ephemeral Elegies, Jagged Edge, and Yellow Mama. His latest poetry book is Free Range Angels (Cyberwit, 2025).

acetylene dreams

enlightenment’s a crown of sparks or something
hotter like acetylene i stare
into the flame my pupils shrink my mind
expands the skull a flimsy helmet love
it burns like this & Frost reminds us ice
of hate does too // now into song the chorus
rises risers burning blue beneath them
i too sing but only blues these riffs
homemade homespun // my parents spinning in
their graves & my grave’s standing upright it’s
my muse’s open door i dwell within
the threshold should have stayed a monkey
in a banyan tree or in my mother’s womb
oh all that pain until they saw the crown

Bio: Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She's a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can't do by playing wheelchair rugby league. Forward Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she's always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.

Questions for a Basket Star

Today I saw a basket star
neurons firing
thousand tentacled brain
swollen shoreline blazing.
Where are you going?
At the dawn of time, did you stretch
each arm, yawn
welcome planets into orbit?
Do you recall the joys of youth?
When you clung to sea grass
hid in coral
played games of your own design
before sinking into an abyss of night
crumpled sunlight
fed on constellations
consumed the world?

Bio: Zoë Davis is a writer from Sheffield, England. She's a stubborn FND sufferer and fights what her body says she can't do by playing wheelchair rugby league. Forward Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she writes poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane, with a deeply personal edge to her work. You can find her words in publications such as: Ink Sweat & Tears, Strix, Roi Fainéant and Red Ogre Review. You can also follow her on X @MeanerHarker where she's always happy to have a virtual coffee and a chat.

fata morgana

steaming lungs
settle
against marble countertop
I sprawl like forest fruits: pith pips rind
gutsy chutney
I coil out of view
dig below
fork pricked crust
clutching organs
spilling blackbirds
impressing kings
red gingham unfurls bees slam yellow shopping bags
into warm glass
greedy mites
sparrows notch their heads
consider pecking
air shhh shhh shimmers
I coooool
trick the mind