epilogue

by Liz Pino Sparks

The silence 

you can hear, 

the kind that 

rings, the kind 

that buzzes, the 

kind that presses 

in from the outside, 

into the spaces where 

the noise hasn't died down, 

where all the things already 

said are said again and again, 

pressing out, against the silence 

you can hear, where, together they hum 

against one another, like a microphone left 

plugged in.

Liz Pino Sparks is a parent of five, a teacher, a legal scholar, a singer-songwriter under the name Liz Capra, and multi-genre writer. They hold a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and an MFA in Fiction from San Diego State University. Their poems have been featured in Hayden's Ferry Review and Boats Against the Current Magazine. Their recent chapbook, Generic American Household, is now available as part of the boats against the current inaugural chapbook series.

fragments from a distant sky

by Ling Yuan

a shard of sunlight

pieces through grey clouds

my shattered thoughts 

flowers in bottle

I dab on skin

to draw lovers 

magpies weep 

even stars in love 

have to part

Ling Yuan lives and writes in Singapore. She is a Chautauqua Janus Prize finalist and a Kinsman Quarterly Iridescence Award semi-finalist. She has attended fiction workshops at the Asia Creative Writing Programme and presented at the Singapore Writers Festival.

belly up

by Mattingly Gleason

In the beginning, there was  

Darkness – 

a pinpoint of bright orange light, 

a mingling of silent, greedy bodies. 

I remember my first words, 

the first night I brought tears 

to my father’s eyes because 

despite this blanket-wrapped flesh, 

death was a shhh, it’s ok away. 

I remember the music of moonlight,

dancing in daisy fields – 

the beginning 

of a welcomed end. 

Loneliness a child can squeeze 

like a ragged doll, 

the sun laying its head among a sorbet sky,  

the pungent smell of a lake flipped 

belly up like a rotten fish. 

Mattingly Gleason is a visual artist and poet from Eugene, Oregon, and is as rare to find in the wild as Bigfoot herself. Her work appears in The Raven Review, Stone Pacific Zine, and L’Esprit Literary Review, among others.

elsewhere

by Annie Williams

One of these days the theater burns down, but not today. 

Let me rephrase: I want the flat sound of this place, 

its murky groan. I carve shadows from streets. I stutter 

through the wall between me & that life. Once I learned 

transgression I could never stay warm. Forgiveness 

an indent released. In the humid relief of memory, 

the tape unsticks. Rusty old waterpark on the edge of the frame. 

The laundromat rain-warped. Baseball field crowded with snow.

Houses swimming in light, wire-crossed, lethargic. 

No hills here to act as jaws, land corn-rough and bruised. 

Forgiveness shoved in an unmarked envelope. I bare 

my sins. I bear this name, the one we share. One of these days 

the swamp, blackened, will swallow us whole. 

Imagine everything made wild again: massacre turned jubilee. 

The lake’s tide lush & unmapped. Brackish unmanageable shapes. 

This wound open for business. Carcassed. Too much sinew, 

chewed tough. Wildflowers writhing on the plane. 

Let me rephrase: the ten at night swell, panic-laden.

When the phone call arrived and the glass shattered —

I’ll admit it, I went bone dry, muzzled, my teeth the only thing 

still unmarred. Confession delivered right to my doorstep. 

I saw the wishbone split but managed to coax out the unshed years.

Afterwards, passenger seat always plaited with your timbre, 

never any static on the short drive over, no ash to swallow.

For now: the mangled mornings, havoc a compulsion,

the dream blistering beneath this starving sky. 

We stretch out enough for our limbs to hit the asphalt, run until 

the ache creeps further behind our spines. The only lie I ever told 

was that I could ever really escape.

Annie Williams is a writer and photographer based in the Midwest. In her free time, she enjoys street photography, attempting to listen to every album ever released, and playing Geoguessr.

spider-sense

by Rosalind Shoopmann

“Spider-Man is able to sense danger lurking near, the warning signal coming as a pain in his head that varies with the intensity of the threat. Spiders can detect danger coming their way with an early-warning system called eyes.”

—“Spider-Man vs the Real Deal,” The National Wildlife Federation Blog 

I have never seen a film 

by Roberto Rossellini, and

I have never seen a submarine

in real life, only ever images.

And I have never seen a dog.

And I have never seen northern California’s

gigantic prehistoric trees. And I have

never seen the inside of an ambulance.

And I have never seen anything good

in the little free library by my house. And I have never seen 

a serious physical altercation.

And I have never seen somebody pass

away. And I have never seen a football game.

But I have flown over Hudson Bay

in the winter, and when I looked down

I saw the vast fields of ice,

punctuated by enormous fissures. 

Rosalind Shoopmann currently lives in San Diego, where she recently completed an MA in English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State. Her work has previously appeared in The Bicoastal Review, Bullshit Lit, and at the Crisis Carnival Arts Festival.

to prevent accidental death

by Zoe Davis

I bathe these tired bones in rice

it will take the worst of me to

drain soul to higher function

baptise brow with single grain

all I have left this scrap I wrote 

four letters claimed and placed 

inside a necklace, name myself twice

collared introspection

look, if you squint 

you can see me                 

here.

Zoe Davis is an emerging writer from Sheffield, England. A quality engineer in advanced manufacturing by day, she spends her evenings and weekends writing poetry and prose, and especially enjoys exploring the interaction between the fantastical and the mundane. You can follow her on X @MeanerHarker.

the sunbird

by Carol Mascarenhas

Trills against cool wind circles

twirls and tiptoes

-long the sill curiously

           A hundred comforts glint by until a rushed farewell

                      Smile

my sunlit child.

Carol Mascarenhas lives in Mumbai. A poet by night, ‘Writer's blood’ is a shade of ink found more on her hands than paper. She is working to (re)discover what she's made of.

the garden weaver

by Christiana Doucette

She floats between the trees

sifting evening air

for firefly stars to twinkle

on her dream catcher.

She swings a silk trapeze

and dangles upside-down,

The lacemaker-extraordinaire

sews each its own nightgown.

See her balance spindle-legged

at her weaving duties

spinning moonlight into silk

above the sleeping beauties.

Christiana Doucette spends summer bent over her cosmos and zinnias in the garden, because beauty flourishes when given space to grow. She approaches poetry in a similar way, weeding excess from lines, refining image, and distilling aural essence.

the railway, 1873

by Sara Potocsny

The color is a modern blue. The sea in 2024 alone. 

A cosmopolitan blue but chillier, which happens 

when the sea warms. Things do blue when they die, 

you know. What’s hard about ekphrasis is that 

what is there is obvious, but to describe only 

what the players in a piece of art endure is to 

color a decent memory with only my pink feelings. 

But the train is so mighty. The day is so small 

compared to its rue and its might. I wonder where 

it might go. To the top of a hill! There, it will stop.

The engine will run cold. The conductor will take 

a long drag of his pipe, and, looking out over the fields 

of corn and grass think, “I wonder where it will go. 

I wonder where all of it will go.”

Sara Potocsny is a writer in Brooklyn, NY. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She is the author of Dozer from Bull City Press! She has work in or forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, Maudlin House, The Offing, Juked, Hobart, Radar, HAD, The Racket, Rejection Letters, and others. You can find her on twitter at @sarapotocsny and IG at @spotocsny. 

flocks

by Anya Jane Perez

the ego reminds you 

if you don’t have a family you are worthless 

even without promotion 

you see this in your kitchen 

the once place to visually confront it 

is staring at yourself in the mirror 

so the table lessens the blow 

more hot tea and a tear or two 

but i’m truly just 

watching the history of the table 

the meetings held here 

appearing as different places on earth 

we all have a hand placed down 

facing one another other 

the only good thing about summers at the table 

is wearing less clothes for myself 

then i lift my hand to move my hair behind my ears 

removing my heart but not my trace 

as the visits gradually overlap 

by continent 

you can hear a rock crack in the distance 

after a meeting

Anya Jane Perez is a 23-year-old multi-media artist from Washington State. She is a transgender woman who specializes in poetry while partaking in visual art, voice work, and fiction writing often pertaining to the interests of queerness and the material world.

a small life

by Ophelia Monet

lie down and

look up

tell me,

do you 

see the hands

of gods

as they cast 

flames 

across the

darkened sky?

I heard 

they’re fighting

under the guise

of shooting stars

I heard

you’re dying

under the guise

of barely 

living 

Ophelia Monet (she/her) is an educator, mother, and storm chaser, living in Kentucky with her husband and their son. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Free Verse Revolution, Maudlin House, Loud Coffee Press, Heimat Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Inflectionist Review, and more.

march is still winter

by Devon Neal

she reminds me every year

as I go out to wake the bear

of the lawnmower – the hiss

of air pumping into old tires,

the stomach pump of an oil quart,

the deep star scent of old gasoline.

I urge her toward the new decor

of sunflowers big as cantaloupes,

signs jagged with flower spears,

the catalogue of new annuals

we’ll find new homes for. It still gets cold,

she reminds me, and every year,

she’s right. Even now, the early dogwoods,

eager blooms so early in March air,

collect snowflakes on their new fingers,

swelling like crystal beehives

in the stubborn winter morning.

Devon Neal (he/him) is a Kentucky-based poet whose work has appeared in many publications, including HAD, Stanchion, Stone Circle Review, Livina Press, and The Storms, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He currently lives in Bardstown, KY with his wife and three children.

poem by the river

by Hazel J. Hall

I don’t want to write about the river / that can’t smooth stones / nor the bird drawing he gave me / on Valentine’s Day /

I don’t want to write / about the poems I put down / the poems I ran out of words for / the poems I buried / in the river /

I don’t want to write about how my grandma / loved birds and how I / inherited her hobbies as a stone is thrown against clear water / how it skips for a while / then stillness /

I don’t want to write about the Valentine’s Day I looked into the river and it / looked into me /

I don’t want to remember the poem where I drowned / where something settled in my lungs / where I settled / for this life / 

No, I don’t want to write about my grandmother or / my family or / this inherited body – the gift I was given some Valentine’s Day / the “gift” I was given as if I were a crayon drawing / as if I am loved like a painting / as if I have not written poems on stones / skipping words like skipping stones / trying to make the edges come out smooth /

No / I don’t want to write about coming out / about my second life / about her as family because it just wasn’t meant to be, okay? She was a painting and I was a stone / a rejected Valentine's Day love poem / a drowning / a reaching for the bird / on the horizon line / 

 No / I do not want to write about these things / so instead I think I might sit here / by the river /

I will sit and / wait / for the stone / my grandmother said she would use / to beat me to my senses with / to finally   hit. / 

Hazel J. Hall is a writer and poet powered by caffeine and insulin. Right now, she is pursuing an English degree while working on her first novel. More of Hazel's work can be found in Bending Genres, Vocivia Magazine, and CLOVES Literary, with other pieces forthcoming or visible at her site, hazeljhall.com.

this poem was originally published in boats against the current issue II

since

by Britta Adams

Late Summer: I don’t know how I am doing [since]

In fact, I haven’t done a single thing [since]

I can’t get out of bed. I know I’m hurt [since]

my bones hum and ache, and I am angry [since]

I still clench my jaw. But I’m not sure what I feel [since] 

Emptiness, a lack of something [since] 

It happened, and I’ve only shivered numb [since]

There is a persistent static [since] 

And I’m tracing the hole [since] 

she left. The cavity. And it feels hushed [since]

her silence. Hushed and immense.

Britta Adams is a poet living in Orem, Utah, with a passion for binging documentaries, playing video games, and baking delicious treats. She has previously published work in Last Leaves Magazine, Exponent II, and Soft Union Literature.

this poem originally appeared in boats against the current issue II

try to live

by E.W. Sparks

Without home or homing

It isn’t possible.

To this day, every patch of green in Los Angeles is a waiting bed and I stare hard for signs of habitation by the stolen carts of department stores

Occupied.  

So many occupied stretches between the corners and underpasses.  It defies definitions of home by breaking the city open as a shared dwelling.  Los Angeles is comfortable and safe for those who can see it, feel it, and wear it

Comfortable in its own discarded carts dotting tent cities and parking garages.  

So build it yourself – 

The safety and rooms

Take those hands and use driftwood and wet mud and measure twice.

Arrange the moment of home with care and purpose and try to remember –

The asking for help from a rolled down window. 

E. W. Sparks is a graduate of the UCSD writer’s graduate program, a graduate of the USC Rossier School of Education, and a public school teacher practicing inclusive and activist methodologies of teaching.  They are a father of five, a published poet and musician, and a survivor of homelessness spanning the cityscapes of Los Angeles, CA, Cleveland, OH, and Phoenix, AZ.  Their writing focuses on the human diasporic moment of separation from safety in personal and collective apocalypses, on the injection of love as decolonizing affect into education, and on the personal growth that surviving traumas inspires.

duplex, for a dead sailor

by Candice M. Kelsey

A eulogy is the convergence of cold water and warm. 

It is the Polar Front between here and there.

This low pressure zone a grief from here to despair:

My late father sailed the SSBN Robert E. Lee.

A Lt. Commander, he sailed the Lee into Holy Loch,

A sub base deemed unnecessary after the Cold War.

Cold and deemed warlike, I am base, unnecessary

Watching soldiers carry my father’s coffin, heavy.

Soldiers folding his flag so useless, heavy to carry

Like the sight of my mother folding over again.

Exactly like my mother folding in half, her body

A thousand mile line where polar air meets tropical.

The living meet the dead through a thousand words — air.

A eulogy is the convergence of cold water and warm. 

Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in both Los Angeles and Georgia. A finalist for Best Microfiction 2023 and longlisted by Wigleaf's Top 50 Short Fiction in 2024, she is the author of seven books; her latest chapbook POSTCARDS from the MASTHEAD has just been released with boats against the current. She mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.

generic american household

by Liz Pino Sparks

By the time I had given birth to

our third child, we had two dogs,

two cats, a dead dog, two houses,

three apartments, one really good

stock pot, a french press, a few

sharp knives, many cars of many

kinds, a poltergeist in the attic, tied

up with string, a drunken mother-

in-law, not tied up with string, a

door at the top of the stairs, 

that kept smoke downstairs and 

ghosts upstairs, a scent – dahlias, 

they said – like all generic, American 

households, like our marriage, like 

our vows, like our car stereo, before

the neighborhood boys ripped it out, 

along with the center console of our 

beat up Ford Taurus. By the time 

I had lost our fourth child, we had 

two more cats, an automatic 

coffee maker with a timer, a garden 

with mint that took over the yard, 

spilling over the perimeter walls, a 

neighbor who shared his weed on the 

wind on Saturday nights, another 

neighbor who took in young boys with 

nowhere to go, in a world that would 

otherwise waste them, a broken foot 

from falling down on falling down 

stairs – jagged, you said – like all 

crumbling, American Victorians, like 

our plans for our future, like our skin 

before the smile lines stayed,  well 

after the smiles themselves had faded.

Liz Pino Sparks is a parent of five, a teacher, a legal scholar, a singer-songwriter under the name Liz Capra, and a multi-genre writer. They hold a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and an MFA in Fiction from San Diego State University. Their poems have been featured in Hayden's Ferry Review and Boats Against the Current Magazine. Their recent chapbook, Generic American Household, is now available as part of the boats against the current inaugural chapbook series.

walking through the cincinnati nature center

by Ashley Kirkland

My husband says he’ll be the first 

to go. I’d be so lonely. I don’t say it,

but I hope I get to see him again

when our bodies quit. We named

our kids on walks like this – early 

morning searching the clear air

for words and names, full of hope

for everything beginning inside 

me. Now we walk, discussing death

in a year where we lost so much

and all we can come up with is 

that nothing happens when we die. 

Should I bring my boots 

or let my feet stay bare?

Ashley Kirkland is a poet from Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in HAD, Major7thMagazine, The Citron Review, English Journal, and Cordella Press, among others. Her chapbook, Bruised Mother, is available through boats against the current. 

ophelia pulled back from the water

by Celinda Olive

I sat on the floor of my parents’ living room,

staring through strands

of my own wet hair.

Darkness hovered above,

a black webbing that threatened

to penetrate all my living space —

but through the clear ring of a voice

on the other end of the phone

I heard truth for the first time

in a very, very, long time.

You  have  depression,

my aunt, a former counselor, said,

everything stilled, as I strained

to focus, and understand —

and the dark webbed mass above me

shifted minutely. A single light beamed

through a tiny pinhole

in my sky.

Celinda Olive is a poet residing in the Minneapolis area, and has her MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She's had words previously in boats against the current, Fathom Mag, Pomme Journal, Rock & Sling, and more. When she's not laboring over her words, she's growing her brood of houseplants, searching for new K-dramas to devour, or exploring new places in the Twin Cities area.

out amongst the plunge divers

by Sarah Wallis

mad weather, stinging rain and squall

the gannets are out plunge diving the plenty,

flash of white back and black tipped wings,

like one of Degas’ ballerinas,

all in pirouette, they skim and back dive

the water with angel’s grace, ‘til,

sword faces first they break through

the surface, devil faced for chick feed,

with an ice driven focus, arrowing

to target and fish gulp, white horses splash,

the feathered folk dive

God and the Weather you know you’re alive

prizes sought and won, they’re back

to spiralling, a float

of angel’s ink, shadowtipped for home,

as we all are,

dipped in the water and thinking of home

Sarah Wallis is a writer living on the East Coast of Scotland, UK. Her chapbook, Poet Seabird Island, is available from boats against the current and you can hear her read from it @EattheStorms May podcast. Poems this year have appeared at Propel, Full Mood Mag, Dust, and The Winged Moon.