i saw a possum on my way to work

by Arlo Arctia

the sun meets heaven 

in a momentary dance –

blending breath and air,

for the bassoons chant. 

a D-minor blues,

lacrimosa in its tune,

catches the light,

now dimly lit,

of a foxtrotting man. 

his arms like bows, 

lifted as though, 

tilt him back, then sideways,

releasing an arrow. 

he’s a soloist in flight,

emotive and visceral – 

striking, like the swiftness 

of a ribbon dance. 

he stretches outwards,

rolls his shoulders again,

above the sky, to the trumpet’s 

metallic blare. 

and like a cupid 

shaded obsidian black,

his arrow comes back. 

erupts roses from his chest – 

and with a final gaze towards the light –

the showman calls forward the curtains,

and his staccato breath,

comes to a rest, 

to the sound, of running footsteps –

the sun meets heaven 

in a momentary dance –

under yellow headlights 

in a desolate dance.

Arlo Arctia (they/them) is a 22-year-old poet living in Washington DC. Through their Instagram poetry account and Substack, @arloarctia, you can find their personal works and conversations. 

extra

by Jaime Jacques

Julia wants to perform her piano piece for the school talent show, but with a blind fold. For a little extra pizzazz, she says. I’ve been drinking four cups a coffee a day instead of two, and linger a little longer each time I walk past the new bar. My massage therapist is really going for it, talks over the 528 Hz about how men can’t bother to put on clean shirts, how a watermelon costs eight dollars and nobody is willing to stand up and say anything. Like, how long are we going to take this? I say I don’t know about the men but the watermelon is still cheap in Mexico and my co-worker Grady says in 10 years we’ll all be poor so I might as well just quit my job and go. He’ll keep delivering mail though, because he likes how it lets him interact with architecture. Louis wants to climb K2 because Everest is too commercialized. Sixteen years old, he gets up at one in the morning to run 4 x 4 x 48s. Pounds the pavement under a dark cold sky. Says he likes the feeling of accomplishment. I hear: I’m terrified.  During my haircut I mean to ask for a little extra off the side but instead I say genocide. I think we should focus on what’s going on here, my stylist replies. Some people get beds and some people get tents. Rent control has really saved my ass this year. There’s a bit more money for gas. I drive to the beach after work, where whales get together to ram up boats. As if to say: The party’s been over for quite some time.  Don’t you think it’s time you went home?

Jaime Jacques currently lives in the ancestral and unceded territory of Mi'kma'ki, where she delivers mail and sometimes writes poems and always drinks too much coffee. Her poetry can be found in places like Rattle, Rogue Agent, Variant Lit and Birdcoat Quarterly. Her reporting can be found in NPR, Salon and Lonely Planet among others. She has a deep and abiding love for Central America, where she lived for several years working as a travel writer and binge eating mangoes. She is a poetry reader for PRISM International.

pyromaniac

by Maddy Sneep

The house is on fire

and you’re asleep in bed

with matchstick fingers 

and gasoline breath

burning hair like 

morning pancakes

& the smoke on your tongue

thick like syrup – 

it’s all happening now

it’s all happening now

the indelible urge to buy 

the indelible urge to make 

seared into each palm

with a cattle prod

& each passing thought 

is a shrieking alarm

give me a window

to jump out of

a rosebed below

to cushion the fall

give me an adderall 

and I’ll build Rome in a day

give me Rome and I’ll 

finally be quiet. please, 

give me something

my house is on fire

Maddy Sneep’s work has been published online and in print. She lives in Austin, TX with her two cats who inspire her to work less and lounge more.

inaka

by Kaille Kirkham

sometimes I wander, 

reading fading, peeling print off of tattered signs 

rusty shutters, boarded windows 

books, a sign assures me 

confectionaries, a shutter brags 

TOSHIBA, a boarded window promises 

I don’t know why it makes me sad, 

but that’s all they are: 

things that used to be. 

maybe that’s why I’m here too.

Kaille Kirkham is a queer American writer living in Tokyo.

ancestral

by Nina Richard

The wind whistles in patchwork.

This storm is a quilt

Stitched from my grandmother’s patterns. 

Thunder before lightning, rain before snow, 

I am a part of this earthen ritual. 

Bathed in sunlight 

On this journey to the tip of the sky

I only dip down into the sea. 

East to west. 

I move clockwise, 

Studying the clouds’ formless figures, 

So I may discover them like constellations. 

Stories told a thousand years ago

I engraved on my mother’s headstone.

Nina Richard is a queer, POC graduate student, and a writer. Living in Knoxville, Tennessee, Nina spends nights working on her craft so in the day she can take her beloved naps. Nina has a publication in orange juice and upcoming publications in Working Title and Rogue Agent.

fireflies

by Jenny Turnbull

Tucked in a corner

broken and bent

full of life.

Moonlight

finds lost memories

begging to visit.

In an instant

the years float free

like fireflies.

Moments

dissolving with time

catch sparks

electricity

in faded articles

photographs

reveal eyes

you’d forgotten

reminders

when risks were fire

a cork from a midnight

made of dreams

a dog collar still carries salt air.

Harnessed memories

call back

dreams released

realized

paths twisted

goodbyes

secrets dimmed

but still living.

The fireflies gather

content to hold the years

once again

sealing the beauty in not letting go

they make space

for the rest of the story.

So much life

in the things we keep.

Jenny Turnbull is a children’s author who also writes poetry. Her debut children’s book, Tate’s Wild Rescue, was released in June 2024 with Random House Children’s. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA she now lives seaside in Manhattan Beach, CA with her husband. Jenny’s poem “Ghost of You” was also published by boats against the current in 2022. Follow Jenny @JennyTwrites on X or @JennyTurnbull_writes on IG.

waking in the woods

by Mary Simmons

after Mary Oliver

This morning, I saw my heartache

on the backs of insects fleeing 

my body as I stirred. I woke

with only what I had been before, 

that which I could have been floating

among milkweed fluff, the grass beneath

and around shaped to some signifier

of all the versions of me.

A red-winged blackbird from a low branch

shook her little head, and I nodded. 

She took through the leaves,

and I gathered myself, padded my pockets

with dewed moss, for protection, or faith.

I stacked smooth rocks in prayer

for some unnamable lightness, for something

I could carry long after the moss crumbled

into fabric, long after the wind stopped

strumming music from the weeds.

A flurry of sparrow wings, startled

at the thought of me, and I brought my lips

to the earth, and she knew. I think she knew.

Mary Simmons (she/they) is a queer writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her poetry MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she also served as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. She has work in or forthcoming from Moon City Review, One Art, Beaver Magazine, Yalobusha Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, and others.

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