wide skies & sheltered nooks

by Ben Bruges

The bird-scarer blast makes toddlers squawk 

and adults tut at the neighbour who tries

to scare gulls away from nesting on our houses.

I’m glad he fails. The roof is a perfect replica

of the cliff’s nooks and crannies, but nearer

to the wingless ones’ fast food and rubbish.

Their shrieks and chattering calls mean ‘seaside’,

and is a reason to live here, and to let them live

in peace even with the muck and chip-stealing. 

Watching gulls circle high for hours, immaculate 

with downy chest, wide wingspan, call-cawing, 

with playful twists and swoops – moments 

with no clear purpose swoop high into the sky. 

A buzzard glides over, unconcerned, it seems, 

by the gulls mobbing it, surrounding, shouting, 

working as a gang to get this dangerous predator 

away from their chicks, their nests, their airy home,

and still the hawk glides, sharp-seeing.

As one gull gang hands over to the next,

the raucous racket continues into the next valley.

Most years a near-fledged grey-brown chick

lands in our garden, having mistaken downwards

for flying, unable to get back onto roof’s safety.

Ignored by exhausted parents, who leave us 

with the vulnerable one we help onto a shed roof 

to protect from cats and foxes, hawks and scarers.

Eventually it becomes white, pure and invulnerable, 

but for now its shrill-note shee shee is relentless, 

so are reluctantly fed vomited fish bits and chip remains 

by parents who glare at us, side-eye, with cold-circled stares.

Ben Bruges works in education, is Features Editor for Hastings Independent Press and has poems published in Interpreter’s House, Banyan Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Write Under the Moon, Memoirist, Howling Owl, ‘special consideration’ for The Wee Sparrow Press’ ekphrastic competition, Creaking Kettle & Elizabeth Royal Patton Memorial Poetry Competition anthologies. He is a member of Hastings Stanza Group. Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate complimented the poems “for their density, thoughtfulness and cleverly pausing rhythms. [They] manage to make the urban city-scape resonate like a pastoral one.” 

the mundanities

by Laura Craft Hogensen

Spring catches me like an ambush 

The trees are a riot of pink and green

I raise my head and straighten my shoulders and set my eyes forward like I’m facing down an enemy volley

Lately, I’ve been shrinking from punition

Curling in upon myself

Kneeling in empty bathrooms, keening, with my face in my hands

Leaving salty puddles spattered on the floor

Grief is a season I’ve discovered

It’s a place – Eliot’s wasteland – unreal and underwater-silent

It’s where I’ve made my home

A creature of hollow cheeks and ragged nails,

I tread trackless sands, black depths

A city of woe, of sparse winter light

My bed is narrow

My meals are meager, and the taste of ash fills my mouth

Yet the vernal call reaches me, buried as I am

The sunlight, dropping down like gold coins, glimmering in dark water

Above, the earth is verdant, stirring

One day, we’ll sit in the soft sunshine and you’ll ask me what I lost

I’ll take your palm and put it to my chest

Covering up the hole that the spring breeze blows through

It was here, where your hand is now

I had it all, right here

Laura Craft Hogensen is a writer and pastry chef who lives in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on the ways that memory can shape who we are as individuals, lovers, and partners, as well as how our personal narratives influence our interpretations of past, current, and future relationships.

2 poems

by Ayad Gharbawi

my final regrets

Goodbye

Tears of life

Farewell beckons

Unto me

I think

So, I’ll say

My words

Of today

While sincerely

Despising

My yesterdays

For my structure

And spelling

Were so wrong

So often

Did I only

Listen

To words

I spoke

I’m the great pretender

Sell

Your heart

As Coldness

Killed its Passion

A Passion

That was

Fake

Ayad Gharbawi, MA, MA, Author, therapist, historian, poet, expressionist-style artist [Egon Schiele]. Lived in war and peace, poverty and riches. 

rattlesnake

by Natalie Schreyer

Sun rips 

through the triangled treetops

arched and grasping

in quiet symmetry.

its streaks

rainbow reverberations, 

streams of golden glass, 

threaded with an orange glaze, 

lit like the snap of a match 

against its insatiable twin, 

the striker an inevitable temptation 

to ritual, 

worship of the last resort, 

an ungodly calling, 

a shifting of roots and air. 

Natalie Schreyer is a poet in Washington D.C. 

an ode to everything I have destroyed

by Sami Shapiro

I used to burn paper to watch the embers fly 

around its crisped edges.

I would draw just for the fun of erasing.

I became addicted to the way the pulp of the eraser 

freed the paper from the harsh graphite 

I had engraved in it.

I loved to tell you how much fun it was 

to turn something into nothing.

Yet you always reminded me

I couldn’t turn something into nothing, 

just 

something else.

You would remind me of the embers and ash 

you were scared of touching, 

that I was ever so fascinated by.

Of the pulp

 mixed with graphite

 we used to rub

 in between our fingers.

And I know you love it 

when I listen to you (instead of indulging in my craving 

for destruction),

So I suppose I didn’t turn 

us into nothing,

Maybe just 

something else.

Sami Shapiro is a reader and writer based in Los Angeles. She currently runs an international literary magazine called The Modern Artists, which explores how artists are impacted by today’s cultural and technological landscape. She is deeply committed to fostering a vibrant and inclusive artistic community.

photo from LIFE

by Eugene Stevenson

An old LIFE Magazine, December issue, full-page

color photo in a double spread. It was like that: 

misty grey at dusk, colored neon lights in 

Times Square vying for attention.

High up, the hotel name, mounted in a steel grid 

of white bulbs on the roof, invites. Down below, 

rooms with curtains parted, lamps on, as ours was, 

the week you first visited.

It was like that: cold, wet, heavy snow one night. 

On another, you could not sleep. I walked, talked

in a rage of fever as you made up your mind 

whether to leave him.

Minutes after light etched the negative, the sky 

would have turned black, as it did, one year later 

when you turned off the lamp, left a magazine 

open on the table & walked out.

Eugene Stevenson, son of immigrants, father of expatriates, is author of Heart’s Code (Kelsay Books, 2024), & The Population of Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Door=Jar Literary Magazine, The Hudson Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, San Antonio Review, Washington Square Review, among others, & have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. He lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. More at eugenestevenson.com

event horizon sonnet

by Kara Schneider

In the collapse of us, even light curdles —

your absence a rogue planet warping my axis.

I scavenge the debris: a rib cracked for kindling,

a throat full of comet dust.

The math is simple —

what bends must fracture.

You left a black hole’s silhouette

stitched to my sternum. I name it silence,

practice its dialect: the gravity of maybe

dissolving to ash.

But see how the void hums —

not vacancy, but a cradle.

I burn the alphabet of your name,

let its carbon seed new constellations.

This scar? A star chart.

This marrow? Still chanting the liturgy

of supernova.

We are not lost — just orbiting

the wrong questions.

Kara Schneider (she/her) is a Midwest-born poet and star-gazer stitching galaxies from the fractures of memory. Her work, rooted in the interplay of cosmology and queer survival, has appeared in online publications and websites. When not writing, she is working on her PhD in diplomacy.

good things just keep on happening

by Theo Itchon

long after I’ve set the shovel down, and forgotten 

if I had been digging my own grave or if I was searching for treasure. 

Oh, how the light leaks through my blackout curtains,

how the phone rings even when I’ve kept it on silent. 

Unfathomable that the tides would fight me if I tried to drown myself,

how my body would kick and scream and run to extinguish the fire I’d set myself on,

how the good would fight through the grit and the silt and the rage.

Even in hospitals, life keeps bursting forth. 

There are as many people that arrive in airports as there are that leave. 

As many mornings I wake up certain today was going to be the day I killed myself,

were as many mornings I thought, 

I am going to live a beautiful life today. 

The plant in my home has learned to live with so little water for so long,

it just wouldn't die from my neglect. 

I tell the man I love to leave and he won’t. 

I will the earth to stop its cruel orbit,

curse a God I don't believe in,

and spit on the ground, a bit mad from loneliness,

and too much fluoxetine still in my bone marrow.  

Then I see the golden sun, dipping in the horizon,

and the wind blows a similar breath as the last day of my childhood. 

My mother calls me to tell me our favourite thrift shop has a sale on. 

My cat sniffs my face on a morning I thought I’d forgotten how being myself feels. 

All the good in the world,

one by one, then all at once,

in their orchestral way, sing to me:

don’t leave us just yet, sweet girl. 

all the rest are restless to meet you.

Theo Itchon is an Ilokano writer and author of The Divine Mundane (2024). Her work has appeared in several different publications such as Thimble Lit Magazine, Rat World Magazine, and fifth wheel press, among others, and her poems have been anthologized in Ligáw, a collection of poetry by queer Filipino authors. She lives in the Philippines, where she studies classic Ilokano literature. Read more at theoitchon.com.

2 poems

by Emma Grey Rose

sunday wind

rose red sun

marionberry bedside 

white lace   in the

waning pink of a 

late cherry   afternoon

ultra violet 

silver pink blue

shade   in the purple

flowers   

glistening dripping 

blooming

under a full   moon

Emma Grey Rose is a writer based in San Diego, California from Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Jasper’s Folly, Louisiana Literature, Ephemeral Elegies, A2, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook, All The Beautiful Things (Midsummer Dream House, 2024).

a map to get lost

by Andrew Furst

start where you are.

the money your pocket will take you as far as you need to go.

take a bus, or a plane, or a car.

hitch a ride, or walk as far as you can.

when you arrive,

get to the nearest holy place.

ask someone there, where they were

when they first found god.

go there.

ask god “what next?”

wait as long as you need to get the answer.

at the same time,

start a family, a career,

start a poem, or a book.

get your work done.

treat your family well.

confide in those dear to you about the map.

make changes.

avoid people who want to sell you theirs.

if age or infirmity tells you that you can’t wait any longer,

sell everything you ever bought for yourself.

use the money to go east.

go until you can go no further.

face west and pray with the sunset.

face north and offer gratitude,

face east and feel the warm rays of the sun heat your old bones.

go home.

read your poems.

read your book.

if god shows up

don’t, for a second, think you are not lost.

Andrew Furst is a poet, artist, author, photographer, musician, and a technologist.  His poetry has appeared in Sandy River Review, Backchannels Journal, Moria, and Superpresent Magazine, amongst others. His art has been featured in the Emerson Review and Mud Season Review. More about Andrew at www.andrewfurst.net 

a recipe for apple pie

by Neeraja Srinivasan

First, knead the dough with your salty palms. 

Touch is good.

Cut into two equal halves.

I feel like calling Ma. I need to be picked up. 

Roll the dough, stretch as thin as possible.

I don’t have another poem in me.

Cut neat strips and braid into a pretty lattice crust. 

I’d build you a sugary home out of this dough, 

you know that right?

with coral coloured walls and peonies in pots. 

Bake for an hour until golden crispy. 

We’ve made it this far, we try to be good. 

Love stored in the kitchen is special, they say.

Is it working?  

Glaze with syrup and crushed cinnamon. 

I add a little extra. Look. Look at this abomination. 

Look at how we do not have to love. 

Look at how we choose to. 

Neeraja Srinivasan is 22 years old and studying Literature and Creative Writing at Ashoka University. She shuffles between Chennai and Delhi, and is always chasing the sun. She loves a good mug cake, big flowers, acrylic paints and judging books by their covers. Her work has been published by the Hindustan Times, Museum of Material Memory, The Remnant Archive, Brown History, Platform Magazine and Paper Planes Magazine, amongst others.

in the drink

by Em Seely-Katz

Lilac foams under a petal

Like a scale of skin, veins of pollen, soaking 

Up the gin and as you’ll see – there I am, whining. 

I’ll stop long enough to destroy a word, 

Gumming the sound like a true pervert. 

It is true. I, against everything, let myself hope: 

Against the dead beetle in my windowsill, 

Against the neighbor that watches me undress and crouch naked like a villain, 

Against counting just to three, 

Against the non-words mumbled out of the restroom to the next person in line, 

I live pressed up against a hard love. 

Em Seely-Katz is the creator of the fashion blog Esque, the News Editor of HALOSCOPE, and a writer, stylist, and anime-watcher about town. You can usually find them writing copy for niche perfume houses or making awful collages at @that.esque on Instagram.

grandfather’s song

by Jered Mabaquiao

How quickly favors turn into fevers. 

I am one-fourth his age, he sits shotgun.

Our culture thinks I’m a nonachiever. 

Medicine takes spotlight. Art, the margin. 

My eyes forward facing, his in rear-view. 

Macular degeneration steals sight. 

“Laughable, that field. There’s time to undo.” 

Words equip, lolo. There’s evil to smite.

I’ll take the most unfamiliar route. 

Generational trauma follows us. 

I partake of this old forbidden fruit,

that I could finally ease all the fuss. 

Wounds that were inherited were not mine 

And words revealed, help me to realign.

Jered Mabaquiao (he/him) is a Filipino American creative writer and English graduate teaching assistant. Jered teaches rhetoric and composition at the University of Texas at Arlington as well as creative writing and literature courses. Jered also serves as executive board member for the Dallas Asian American Historical Society which seeks to build and preserve cultural narratives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

2 poems

by Robyn Schroeder

for both our sakes (rose)

At my great aunt’s funeral

I was given a metaphor

that only bloomed once

every three years

and needed so much care

that I couldn’t possibly

slake its thirst with my tear-stained heart

and it inevitably died

from lack of windowsill

nutrients

soil

so I cleaned out the pot

and I planted a new metaphor

a little less delicate

for both our sakes

soft linen

How we are trouble in soft linen, 

the Tigress, the Lioness, and 

Sin.

We find the stars to be 

guilty of fascination 

and fortune-telling.

So we paint constellations 

and stars,

divine the meaning of

Freckles and Pigment and

Scars. 

There is none, but

what we give them,

Ancient and Woven and

Skin.

For a moment we are more magic

than sisters.

Robyn Schroeder is a graduate of Truman State University. She enjoys making an adventure out of anything. Her work has been published in Prairie Margins.

the sale

by Wheeler Light

If between us were a pen 

and one of us were to pick up the pen

and beneath the pen, a piece of paper

blank and waiting to become a contract –

if one of us were to write our name

or both of us in tandem 

our names twisting together 

rhizomatic in the forest of desire –

if the names we wrote 

were ones we were given or ones we chose –

if what we sign could be a choice

and identify us as ourselves more thoroughly

like a leaf does a tree whose bark 

looks like every tree –

if your smile looks like every smile

after the dotted line is signed

which is a smile stained with an orange dot

meaning it will be cut down in days to come 

once you realize what you have signed

also wanted to be more than it was –

if the paper was made from old growth

or in a nursery for only this purpose 

the purpose being to be kept forever

in a safe full of other desires 

attached to other names signed 

with other pens on other days –

whatever forest I came out of 

when I found this perfect leaf last autumn –

it was still a forest 

and this dust was still a leaf. 

Wheeler Light (he/him) received his MFA from the University of Virginia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in poetry.online, Rattle, Pretty Owl Poetry, and Broadsided, among other publications. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2017) and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk 2018). You can find his work at www.wheelerlight.net.

nightly ritual

by Eva Allison

goodnight to the lost leaves. goodnight to the

expired makeup leeching in my bathroom drawer.

goodnight to the broken glass, the fruit dying,

empty water bottles. goodnight to my face in the toilet

water. goodnight to the memories laced within my teeth,

cavities burning – my dentist told me to stop rinsing 

with ghosts. goodnight to the pale sounds of my cat wanting

me, but I can’t reach the door. goodnight to the crumbles of 

my name. goodnight to mirrors of black frames. 

the truth is, i see myself in the back of my mind, dancing,

the gooeyness of herself gone.

i reach for her as my eyes go to sleep.

i almost touch her. always about to touch her. 

Eva Allison is a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, having received a B.A. in English and Psychology. She is the 2024 recipient of the Ada L.F. Snell Poetry Prize from the college. You can find her writing in recent or upcoming publications of Voices & Visions Journal, The Agapanthus Collective, and Sardines Press. In her free time, you can find her reading and searching for that long-lost crochet hook.

salt

by Julia Duerig

god forbid you want somebody to siphon the salt

from your ocean. you exist only to shrink from

the sands and shiver under the unforgiving sky

that holds the sway of your hunger. 

the moon pulls you to worship its light and you

swallow it all. introduces you to the sun. god forbid 

you look for warmth that will sate the roar in your

darkest trenches. something vile whimpers in you. 

swim until you can dig your toes in the sand,

abandon your salt stained skin on the shore like 

the invertebrate creature you are, when they find you 

in the morning you will be cold and helpless. 

and do not dream of ships on the horizon. 

the emptiness cannot be moved. the salt still burns

your eyes and nose and throat. god forbid you drink

from a cup that has not broken. 

Julia is a previously unpublished author who works as a microbiologist. They live in Virginia with their elderly cat and spend most of their free time reading and writing. 

touch

by Carissa Ma

She feels it as a slight glow against her skin – 

a small mercy, vermilion.

Touch forgives

before sight, before speech;

it is the first, the last,

and truthful to a fault,

like unpainted wood, raw salt.

She renders herself up, is erased;

enters the dark amnesia

of her own body, loses her name;

brackets oblivion, like a pair

of empty parentheses – at once immolated

and made clear, however briefly

existing

without boundaries.

Carissa Ma is an Assistant Professor of Anglophone Literature at Florida Atlantic University. Outside of teaching and researching postcolonial speculative fiction, she enjoys hunting for vintage finds at thrift shops. She’s currently attempting to master surfing (with varying levels of grace), all while being on a lifelong quest to find the best secondhand treasure in South Florida.

Maggie Johnson

by ​​​E.C. Gannon

RB

On the day we met, she told me she saw 

right through my pretend swagger, told me 

that I was making her nervous, and then 

asked if I would drive her to the ice cream 

parlor down the street because it felt like 

a strawberry kinda night, and that was the only 

place in town that flavored their soft serve. 

She said she’d buy me whatever I wanted. 

We sat in the corner booth, and she looked out 

the window as the cars slid through the rain 

and twirled her spoon in her cup until 

the ice cream slushed. She said she thought 

if she and Grover Cleveland were the last two

people on Earth, she’d have to kill herself. 

When I asked why, she shrugged and told me 

I wouldn’t understand. I licked my cone

and watched out the window as a sedan 

swerved into the oncoming lane. There was 

no one else around, though, so it corrected 

itself and continued forward unscathed.

​​​E.C. Gannon’s work has appeared in Peatsmoke Journal, Assignment Magazine, SoFloPoJo, Olit, and elsewhere. Raised in New Hampshire, she holds a degree from Florida State University and is pursuing another at the University of New Mexico.

awkward movie night

by CJ The Tall Poet

Amplifying warm applause for no benefit 

My breaths filled a sand-hill crane’s nest

Corrugated cardboard rested upon sand

Pools in a lap style outreach its influence 

Stepping stones weren’t visible until noon

Today isn’t the greatest 

Zero is what I expected to see 

From a sentimental perspective and journey 

CJ The Tall Poet is a poet, digital artist, and author based in Chula Vista, California, who’s currently attending Cal State University San Marcos for a degree in Literature & Writing. Their writing has appeared in The Drabble, Shortkidstories.com, Bardics-Anonymous, Dadakuku, Coalition-works, Journal of Expressive Writing, and redrosethorns.