G(rammy): an ode to Skagit Valley summers

by Angela Heiser

For Geneva Rouse, known by the Barnard children as G

I'll forever hold you in a sunbeam of slippery

stellar star-sent radiation

so incongruous with our mutual memories of drizzling days

in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains 

where one is always acutely grateful to be sun-drenched for a change

Skagit Valley sun dappling and freckling the tulip fields

and the ferry dock in Anacortes

in the San Juan Island days

of my youthful summers 

I spent savoring the sight of your short-clipped grey-brown curls springing

as you and I ran laps around your idyllically overgrown

and European slug-infested backyard 

while your animated little lap dogs barked in unison

and you and I both screeched in shared laughter

 just as fleeting and impermanent as those sunny days

that too often ceded to clouds

so I’ll continue holding you forever in a secret sunbeam in my mind’s sky

slipping inside stellar star-sent radiation where our laughters can collide

Angela Heiser lives near Raleigh. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Carolina Muse, The Poetry Lighthouse, The Red Mud Review and County Lines. Her poem “Cornhusker” was awarded the Poetry Genre Winner for the 2024-2025 issue of The Red Mud Review. She is an alum of Writers in Paradise and reads for Abode Press, Wildscape and Libre Lit.

Instagram: angelacheiser 

please, spring

by Diane Stone

It’s one of those perfect days: 

a thick slice of paradise 

swaying on light’s full bloom. 

Our senses need 

fair warning signs 

on days like these. 

Slow: Fireweed in bloom. 

Caution: Warblers ahead. 

Something sketched the details right 

(turning leaves, hollow bones), 

but overplayed the major theme—

who really wants to ever leave? 

This denim sky, benignly blue, 

bravely wide, hides the murky stew 

of our beginnings. 

How far we’ve come, 

from random belch to this: 

colors bursting glad intent;

more seed, please, one more chance. 

We all want that—one more chance

to bloom again, to make amends, to fly;

one more chance to live as if it mattered. 

Diane Stone, a former technical writer-editor, lives on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. Her work has been published in Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The Comstock Review, Minerva Rising, Chautaqua, and elsewhere. A book of poetry, Small Favors (Kelsay Books), was published in 2021.

birches know

by Jan Mordenski

that everything works both ways,

that sun-dried mornings lead

to moon-damp nights, that silent

snows engender songful days,

that rooting deep and latching on

is what can bring them strength,

enable them to weather

the winter’s tattering winds,

that keeping a diary

somewhere deep within

is what, years from now,

can chronicle a history, ring true,

that reaching out, stretching high,

is what can allow them to touch

the frayed fringes of the sky,

the opened palms of the stars.

Jan Mordenski is a writer and trained folklorist from Michigan who has had poems published in Canada, Ireland, England, Australia and Singapore, as well as in the U.S. in publications like Poet Lore, Comstock Review, Arete, and Worcester Review; on-line, poems can be found on Ravens Perch, Eunoia, Hamilton Stone Review and Bluebird Word. “Crochet” was also selected as part of Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.  Mordenski is also founding editor of Quadra-Project, a calendar of art and literature that is now available on-line.

long living

by Stephen Mead

Voices I know, just in from the rain, that sweet strange wet embrace, fingers on droplets, through glistening strands & mouths, eyes full, luminous, really all there is to want amid such pallor falling. Voices, I know, it’s crazy to be so enamored by the silvery, deep dusk husk of sighs, each whisper of whiskey somehow purely sensuous, an intrigue to die for. 

I want to advise you:  Don’t bother. Worship is tedious or, in any case,  the impressions made, honors won, all rather child’s play, be blasé,  have Savior-faire, though that’s the way fading queens may cover what means so much it’s sort of terrible. Yes, it’s sort of terrifying & hilarious, I know: voices, the excitable tango, that wilderness chase, hard-to-get, the passion’s hunger mark creating slave brands or partners in crime,  give’n take along nights, sonatas of wine, roses & days of comfort, vulnerable: re­quited, unrequited absorbed by all nerve endings.

All nerve endings absorb voices, journeys, I know, sentimental, searing, I remember a maxim: never think being full is not a blessing for so many mouths have died in real oppression, war, famine, have died not knowing what spirits may grow empty without, the savored bliss of lips starving even in the thick of necessities, meals well-prepared, well, so that’s the story:  voices, I know, at least we’ve had ours.

Resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, Stephen Mead is a retiree whom, throughout all his pretty non-glamorous jobs still found time for writing poetry/essays and creating art.  Occasionally he even got paid for this. Currently, he is trying to sell his 40-year backlog of unsold art before he pops his cogs: https://www.artworkarchive.com/profile/stephen-mead

ridge rust & late summer

by Diane Webster

ridge rust

Ragged ridge of rust

spews particles

like molten rock

from a volcanic eruption –

a lava graduation party

leaden in confetti deluge

caught in a moment

of photography.

late summer

Grasshoppers clack

as I wander

through a wonder

of purple fireweed.

Voices of fishermen

drift up from the lake.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Diane has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart. She was a featured writer in Macrame Literary Journal and WestWard Quarterly. Her website is: www.dianewebster.com

blue skies across the delta

by Victoria Richard

I have not yet curled the obituary into my console. 

The man next to me asks about my week. 

My morning. 

My year. 

How do I tell him that bridges fall 

And strawberries rot and that 

Under my eyes is still the 

Mascara from two days past.

I was wearing jeans

Making mac and cheese 

Reveling some stolen moments alone – 

Now I am the support in gray – a concrete pillar that 

Cannot change. 

Against the coffin, the earth sags – opening her folds and 

Waiting. 

Now I am the bridesmaid in black,

Pulling a widow’s train to the side – 

Flashing headlights and leading sisters 

To the center of a tear heavy circle. 

Victoria Richard is a writer, gardener, and aspiring curator originally from Progress, Mississippi. In 2019, Victoria came to Jackson to study at Millsaps College - and never left. Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, Victoria was involved in a high control religious group. This experience has provided her with a passion for bringing stories of hidden abuse to light. Victoria now shares her personal journey of trauma and healing on her Substack, Angels Over Presley Boulevard. Versions of her story have also appeared online in i got out and Tears of Eden. Her work to reconnect to her father's Louisiana heritage is forthcoming in Deep South Magazine. Whenever she isn't researching cults and interviewing survivors, she works to highlight local talent at the Mississippi Museum of Art.

2 poems

by Laurinda Lind

freelance

a word i wrote

on my c.v. as if

it was a stick to hold stories

& where they landed

maybe as i made lists of astrological symbols

& wrote my poems in shorthand in

that private way to budget the lies

by people arranged in rooms,

plus lay it down fast then

write it out an hour eight dollars,

like a row of crows taking off

from a stone wall & their feathers as they fell

sifting down black as ink.

how lovers are like starfish

Or are lovers like starfish

or where do they stick,

ashore would they find 

more of what they wanted 

from a sea or one another,

call it available space if 

atoms rearrange and agree 

to go again, and if what went 

missing mouths the words in

a chorus of rebecoming.

Laurinda Lind lives in New York’s North Country, close to Canada. Some of her poems are in Blue Earth Review, Josephine Quarterly, and The Inflectionist Review. Her first chapbook, Trials by Water, was released in summer 2024 (Orchard Street Press).

unbound

by Brian Christopher Giddens

I performed emergency surgery today on a long-forsaken houseplant. It sits in shade, unnoticed, like fading wallpaper. You see it, but you don’t. The dirt is parched, compacted, the leaves withered. I jab a kitchen knife into the soil-it barely gives. I jab harder, dig the plant out. The root ball tangled like a ball of knotted string. Using the knife, I wrestle roots apart, slash shriveled ends. I transplant what’s left to a new pot, tamping fresh dirt down around the base. I place it near a window where it will wake to morning sun. I imagine the plant’s surprised sigh as it drinks in a cool glass of water.

Where is the unseen hand to rip me out of place? To cut away my shriveled roots, separate my endless tangles? To slough off the dry, dusty clots impeding growth? To resettle me in fresh soil, reawakening my senses? I may not survive the shock, but better that, than this laborious decline.

Brian Christopher Giddens writes fiction and poetry from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, and Jasper the dog. Brian’s writing has been featured in the New York Times (Tiny Love Stories), Sequestrum, Litro, Raven’s Perch, Bluebird Word, Hyacinth Review, Rue Scribe, Corvus Review, Roi Faineant, Glass Gates Collective, Flash Fiction Magazine, Glimpse and Evening Street Review. His work can be found on https://www.brianchristophergiddens.com/

downriver

by Cynthia Pitman

Thickets of palmetto trees

clench the riverbanks.

Water oaks rise,

dripping tangled curls

of Spanish moss.

My oars cut the water

as if it were sweet syrup.

Barely a sound – just a quiet splash

as each oar dips in then emerges

from the dark depths.

The canoe moves slowly,

sliding smoothly downriver.

Waiting somewhere there

is the respite I seek

from the metal and mortar

and crowds and heat

that surround me daily

as I pretend to live my concrete life.

All of its hard solidity

pinches me in on myself,

squeezing my breath from me

as I sweat away any hope of peace.

Only downriver will I find

cool water that reflects

with clarity the greenery

that embraces me.

When I arrive there and breathe air

that is fresh and free,

newborn life will stir again within.

Cynthia Pitman, author of The White Room, Blood Orange, and Breathe (Kelsay Books), has been published in Bright Flash, Amethyst, Ekphrastic, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm (Pushcart Prize nominee), and others, and in anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, and What is All This Sweet Work? 

rest cure

by Jessica Holland

I am sick 

upon a seaside cliff; 

or so I am told. 

The sea creeps and calls

 to me 

from my 

bedside window. I long for 

its jagged crest 

to sink 

its teeth 

into 

the roof. 

To be 

buried 

beneath 

the sand.

Jessica Holland is a recent University of Iowa grad and has been published in New Moon and New Horizons magazines. They are an Iowa based poet and writer with a passion for the weird and speculative. You can find them in a hammock somewhere in the woods.

mining calm

by Amy Barone

For the nonstop bad news of every day,

I’d like to erect a blockade to soften 

each virtual brush with a brutal death

or assault or theft. 

And protected as a grove of aspen trees 

joined at the root, I’ll cultivate a space 

of sunny reveries and warm rain 

guarded by a circle of angels 

that can’t erase life’s rich presence. 

Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, Defying Extinction, was published by Broadstone Books in 2022. New York Quarterly Books released her collection, We Became Summer, in 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing). Barone’s poetry has appeared in The Café Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, New Verse News, The Ocotillo Review and Paterson Literary Review, among other publications. She belongs to the brevitas online poetry community. From Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, she lives in New York City and Haverford, PA. X: @AmyBBarone

whale tale

by Ursula Shepherd

It was like that growing up: sunlight 

glinting through picture windows

curtains fluttering on the breeze, new wood

-paneled station wagon parked in the driveway, 

as if 

everything were all right, as if life 

were ordinary and we like everybody else

but 

that whale lay between us, decaying

in the living room. No one spoke of it –

I noticed it, first, I think,  

when I was three: the arctic space 

between them sunlight couldn’t warm, hands 

that never touched, stark silence,

no fighting, just that whale trapped 

in web-net, this family held hostage

by my unintended birth.

Ursula Shepherd lives in the Pacific Northwest with her Australian Cattle Dog mix and husband. She used to be an ecologist, and writes to stay sane in this chaotic world. Her poetry has appeared in, among others, Big Wing Review, Passionfruit, Unbroken, Sheila-Na-Gig, Minnow, Grim and Gilded, Ekphrastic Review, and The Orchards.

Ophelia’s soliloquy after a depressive relapse

by Celinda Olive

i am back here again, fourteen years later 

at the river’s edge that i did not journey to willingly

but       more of a slow sink      bare feet sleeping steps on grass 

clouds gathering in the mind like layered gauze 

the   sun        a distant memory 

my center    bottomed-out                  my      peace      gone

but i stand quickly, help and light so close now 

i back away, look up the stairs behind me

and take one step, then another, backward 

but really – forward

Celinda Olive is a poet from the Minneapolis area and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She’s a clumsy steward of beauty and just wants to walk in fields of moss and soak in the present moment. 

song

by Sara Burant

suppose rain is playing our song in the theater

of my skin though we don’t have a song

& i don’t even know you yet i want the rain’s

red velvet mini-dress its kinky over-the-knee boots

the way it keeps taking off my clothes i want 

you to ride out from the painted backdrop

on a white horse to fix my flat tire in the rain

parading down & down & down my spine

the rain’s supreme wetness insists time’s an urgent

matter i’m up to knees in its trumpets & suds

dished out having ridden the rails of a series 

of mishaps i prefer not to disclose though i will 

say the omens paved the way for my own 

Nicodemus fish-like to rise     I am only of water 

& flesh see i pour myself out & sound my own depths    

a lake, he means   a lake    let us ride into it 

on a horse a kingdom a bike going pianissimo 

making only a splash on the canvas to indicate 

we were ever here

Sara Burant lives with her dog Penn in a converted garage in Eugene, Oregon. Her poems, collaborative translations, and reviews have appeared in journals such as Canary, One Art, periodicities, Ruminate, The Denver Quarterly, and omniverse. Her work has been honored with a fellowship from Oregon Literary Arts and a residency at Playa. She’s the author of a chapbook, Verge.

afterthought

by Lesley Warren

I think I’ve made the world an afterthought

this improbable place that I call home.

It’s just a stage and I’m the show that’s playing

my life wound tight around me just like wool

and so I close my ears to outer crises

or at least the ones that have no human face.

And I haven’t worn my winter jumpers yet

(nice weather for November) 

And there’s places that I’ll go someday 

no hurry

they’ll still be there –

forests oceans beaches glades 

immovable as my childhood Welsh mountains –

glaciers coral reefs volcanoes

waiting for me 

until one day

they’re

not.

A translator by trade, Lesley Warren lives for language. Born to Welsh and Filipino parents and now resident in Germany, she writes extensively on themes of “otherness,” displacement, and identity. 

what do you want to be when you grow up?

by Ashley Marie Johnson

Please answer below in one paragraph;

include your goals for the next ten years:

Maybe my sister and I

want to be the wind –

scattered and loud – escaping

high above the beetles

with their shingle-wings,

crawling up and burrowing

into the mountainside, keeping

their shelters and warmth

tucked into themselves.

Maybe she wants to be the field 

fawns once nestled down in –

mice hiding between wobbly legs

from hawks hovering above –

where tree roots were ripped away,

arteries once filled with earth,

leaves once filled with sky,

now filled with gravel and rust.

Maybe I want to be a raven,

a collector, caught in eddies,

watching, searching, but not for silver,

for words, so that when the time comes

I can arrange them, 

plant them into pavement, 

for a friend in an emptying parking lot:

You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.

Change will not take 

and take and –

maybe I just want to be a sister.

Maybe I just want 

to be a home for you and me. 

Maybe that is enough.

I ask:

isn’t this enough?

Ashley Marie Johnson resides among the Wasatch Mountains of northern Utah where she often stares into space (and occasionally daydreams) in the company of her two cats. Her work has appeared in Apricot Press, Sublunary Review and Touchstones Literary Journal. She is also currently working on her first poetry chapbook. 

when grief comes

by Gail Vallance Barrington

When grief comes, a vagrant,

unsteady, wall-eyed, leaning in

with graveyard breath,

you lurch back. 

The flood rises.

Your vision blurs.

“Get away,” you stammer. 

“I have nothing for you.”

But it does not move.

“I want nothing,” it says.

“You are the one who wants.”

Gail Vallance Barrington has published short stories in Intangience: The Lighter Side of Weird, WayWords Literary Journal, and an anthology on kindness by Wising Up Press. Each story explores the concept of redemption or renewal with the help of a little magic. Her poetry has appeared in The Rumen and the Regrets Anthology published by Beyond Words: A Different Literary Magazine. Gail is currently working on several fiction projects, including some fun pop-up stories available on her website. https://gailbarrington.ca/creative-writing/

between the river and the trees

by Joanna Sit

They told me you died in May, the season of peonies

that bloomed in every well –

tended cemetery – their heads too petal heavy

for their stems to bear, sinking into spring mud

The blank space that I entered into – Brooklyn, Queens

came as a bland surprise. I would not believe that was all

there was and kept waiting day by day. As I waited too 

for the water to rise and the trees to drown 

I waited for the sudden rain that hovered all summer to come

and the sea to rush the river when it did. Perhaps the apocalypse

had already come and gone, and the pain of loss had been let go

without my knowing – surely without yours. Even. Perhaps. After all, these years

seeped away, spent beyond everything we could afford. The account

long closed. 

I would not tell or count 

the deficit I held out to you 

until the weight broke me

the pieces I spent more years 

putting back the total cost of  unscrolling

and rescrolling until your image blurred

then not even a ghost in that landscape

a blinking sparkle on the river

a browning blemish on the white

leaf of the raintree, under which I am

standing now, looking across to Ridgewood, 

where you died.

And I still think you are on every ferry

speeding by, and I still turn my head

and look up at where you might still see me 

even as I can’t see you 

because in this life, one of us lived 

fuller than the other and for that

one of us will never fully die. 

Joanna Sit was born in China and grew up in New York City, where she lives with her family. She studied poetry with Allen Ginsberg and Susan Fromberg Schaeffer at Brooklyn College and now teaches Creative Writing at Medgar Evers College, City University of New York. She is the author of My Last Century (2012), In Thailand with the Apostles (2014),  and most recently, Track Works. Her poem "Timescape: The Age of Oz" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2016. She is working on an ethnographic narrative called The Reincarnation of Red and another book of poems called Fantastic Voyage.

god is

by Brian Mosher

this blank page.

God is 

the knife at your throat 

when you thought there was no new thing 

left. 

God is 

never right

but who’s gonna tell her.

God is

the space between 

you and whoever’s still standing 

after all the truths have been told.

God is 

the gravity 

tethering you 

to those you love.

God is, again, 

the next blank page.

Brian Mosher’s work has appeared in Literary Underground, Tidings, Blue Villa, Nixes Mate, eMerge, Books and Pieces, Confetti, Coneflower Cafe, Esoterica, among others. He has self-published 3 books: “One Bad Day Deserves Another” (short stories) and “Moon Shine and Lemon Twists” (poetry), both in 2016; and “The Broken Mosaic” (poetry and prose), in 2021. His forthcoming poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press is slated for January 2026 release. Mosher’s most recent book is a collection of poems and song lyrics from Metaphysical Fox Press titled, “A Muster of Melodious Musings” (2025). He also maintains a poetry blog, Phlubbermatic: (www.phlubbermatic.blogspot.com).

five spring haiku

by James Roderick Burns

Downpour –

even the potholes

have potholes

*

Through the haar

a late-morning fox

zigs and zags

*

Blackbirds

lengthening –

late afternoon

*

In the window

of the abandoned store

a film about gulls

*

Dusky spire –

next door’s cat

answers his name

James Roderick Burns is the author of one flash fiction collection, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and five collections of short-form poetry, most recently Crows at Dusk (Red Moon Press, 2023).  His stories have twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he serves as Staff Reader in Poetry for Ploughshares.  He can be found on Twitter @JamesRoderickB and his newsletter ‘A Bunch of Fives’ offers one free, published story a fortnight (abunchoffives.substack.com).