directions from a seagull to its preferred Scandinavian beach

by Aurora Lee Passin

It’s the right spot

when your body folds out of flight

when your feet scrabble on scree.

It should be midday 

in August when sun fills sky like a flash that won’t end

high above old stone wall that circles the entire.

In front of you 

spread out in metal and slate

is Balticsea trembling with summerfish.

Aurora Lee Passin is a middle-aged queer poet who explores nature and her long-term chronic illness through poetry.

2 poems

by Diane Webster

stairs startled

The flight of stairs flees

upward, downward

curves left, darts right…

a maze runner

direction challenged

in a stairwell deep

within swells of walls;

bursts through the doorway

like a flock of seagulls

startled by seashore surf.

yarn chaos

Chaos, a ball of yarn

attacked by a kitten

stringing threads

behind the couch,

flinging color

over the kitchen chair,

plopping a shrinking

ball to rest in the recliner

before flipping it

across the room

to bang

into someone’s head.

Diane Webster’s work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. 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

conversations after hours

by Julia Lombardo

let me clock out before we get into this

same difference

san francisco, LA

i forgot that was her name

have you ever thought

about becoming a therapist?

my mom still calls it a phase

you know you don’t have to wait

they probably just don’t know

what else to say

isn’t it cool how tiny,

tiny snowflakes can hold

such an intricate shape?

it’s good to let it out

you should tell them goodbye

you probably don’t know what those words mean

but don’t forget to have fun

once it happens,

i’ll buy you a cake

i want to write him a note

it’s just something you shouldn’t say

i wouldn’t say no

if he ever asked me

we knew we were in love

i think it’s just the way i was raised

i want to make it home

to watch the game

this job is my way to save

i want to get better

but i don’t have him to talk to anymore

i just don’t want

my kids to feel afraid

it’s still too early to know

the future’s so far away

i won’t keep you late

i bet you’re getting cold

it’s just been hard these days

can you believe it got that busy?

i swear i’m always going to be

stuck

at this place

i’ll take the towels out on the way.

Julia Lombardo is a full-time magazine editor always finding ways to keep up with her creative writing endeavors. She has numerous poems published across Mosaic Magazine, Short Vine Journal, Hog Creek Hardin Literary Journal, and Backwards Trajectory. She enjoys reading YA fiction, going to concerts, ranking coffee shops, and walking aimlessly through wooded trails.

Ophelia

by Meghan Malachi

I’ve optioned to die towards the sky.

What I leave: a building, hot mouth. 

See it: a rose at the hem of agency. 

Tell it: We lived to bedeck the life of a hundred humdrum men.

I’m the heroine. I’m the heroine. 

I won’t be left to hold love’s screeching child.

They’ll position me somewhere between holy and unholy.

All I wanted: to flirt with mud and beauty.

Unhitch my lace from the offshoot. 

You’ve learned to break language because of me —

you owe me this much.

Meghan Malachi is a poet and educator from the South Bronx, New York. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and a 2022 Pushcart Prize Nominee. Her first chapbook, The Autodidact, was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. 

attention deficit

by Eugenia Pozas

My memory works a little like 

when you throw a pebble and it creates 

tiny, perfect ripples across the lake, 

diluting in acrylic colors across white landscapes, 

spilled mercury, and leaving at least three used coffee mugs 

in an empty room.

And maybe that’s why I love fairies,

their tempers and their schemes, so ephemeral,

so manic, so quick to forget, sweet one moment 

and malevolent the next.

The palm of the mirror returns my swirling,

awake eyes to me, and I fall, asking myself

if I’ve been here for a few seconds or more.

In the ice cream parlor, you joke, 

remember when I broke your heart?

I nod and smile to please you but my glance

is already on the sunlight pooling on the sidewalk, 

lighting my hair on fire.

I touch my golden necklace, my favorite.

A stray cat curls up on my lap.

I already forgot about you.

Eugenia Pozas is a bilingual writer based in Monterrey, Mexico. Her first poetry collection in Spanish - Náufragos (Castaways) - was published in 2022 with 42 Líneas. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry Magazine, Stone Circle Review, The Basilisk Tree, Kaleidotrope, Sontag Mag, and Crowstep Journal. You can find her on Instagram and X as @eugepozas.

the winter

by Ela Begum Kumcuoglu

Comes again, and again, again, I feel 

So inexpressible, so tiny. 

She whispers, snuggles in. 

All the bright and beautiful things are asleep. 

The year shrivels up and sheds. 

Geese flock in time, drawing new winds

To their pinions. On a fresher morning

There is even snow, thick enough to cover it all. 

Ela Begum Kumcuoglu is a Turkish writer and student living in London, published or soon to be published in Wildscape Literary; Obsessed with Pipework; the Genre Society; and Moonday Magazine.

survival is at the end of most things

by Alina Kalontarov

The Big Bang is for the believers. 

I’ve swirled around in nothingness long enough

to know that change comes for you

in small, imperceptible increments.

Our hearts made a fragile clatter when they met,

like two sets of creped butterfly wings 

pinned against the wall, 

a willful abandon of flight.  

I used to study your hands 

and wonder on what mountain 

those rivered veins were forged,

into what ocean would they empty.

You used to watch my mouth when I spoke,

lips like feral peonies

curling in convulsions of poetry.

You didn’t know it then,

how stale the language gets

beneath the tongue. 

How even happiness can curdle

when left out too long.

We didn’t know that romance was

a coward’s enterprise,

that it takes nothing to blush a loin

into submission. 

All that, and along came a wind,

laughing at our convictions.

We set down all our minor risks

like discarded parables on a green street bench. 

It’s true. Even soft things can grow scales in the dark.

Even the past moves on without you. 

Even so, I wonder where you are. 

I’m still here, wintering in the violet sun,

returning my body to its sadness. 

Everything feels over,

and there’s so much living left to do.

Alina Kalontarov is a Humanities teacher in New York City. Poetry and photography have always been a way for her to rummage through the unspoken and unseen spaces in the world. Some of her work lives in Sky Island Journal, Thimble Literary Magazine, and in a forthcoming anthology, Words Apart: A Globe of Literature.

poem in which I’m not sorry

by Julia Enns

The eggshells that I used to walk on 

Have been shredded down to a fine powder

Something of sand that I will sink my toes in

With ease, I will no longer apologize

For things that I intended

Like saying my name

In that volume

In that way 

Out loud

To the mirror 

To your face

Those things will not cut me anymore

Into an existence of hypervigilance

They are seashells, not shards

And when I bring them to my ears

I no longer hear complaints of shame

I hear waves crashing

Bringing me back to shore

Julia Enns is a 22-year-old poet from Montreal. She studies anthropology, rock climbs and has trouble giving titles to her work.

the siphon era

by KG Newman

Our house with creaking butterfly doors

and what can’t be fixed with a wrench.

Mummies smiling behind the cloth.

Floats of us punctured on the one

streetlight that doesn’t flicker. Field 

of abandoned silos to which only

unlost birds return in winter.

CapriSun straw wrappers scattered

everywhere we step. Remember how

we had something to pray for.

We’d sit around the nicked kitchen table

saying the names of flowers we know.

Daisy. Chrysanthemum. Dahlia to

remind us of when charred forests 

braved storms, and we built stadiums

we didn’t need nor could afford,

just to sit in premium seats and

watch fireflies resurrect themselves.

KG Newman is a sportswriter for The Denver Post. His first five poetry collections are available on Amazon and he has been published in scores of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He is the poetry editor of Hidden Peak Press and he lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and three kids.

dinner’s tough tonight

by Ashley Kirkland

The younger one asks 

if war will happen 

here & if we’ll get old, 

spaghetti sauce smeared 

on his cheeks. He means here

as in Ohio & it’s hard to say

what he means by old. My husband

takes the first question, answers

with something about being 

in the middle, something

like, who would bother? I take 

the second.We all get old, I say 

and it makes me sad to lie 

more, knowing it’s not true: not 

everyone gets to grow old. 

We all get old? he says, and I say it 

again with resolution: We all 

get old. I try to picture him 

then as an old man, even though

he’s so small right now, 

and me, long gone. I run 

my hand over his peach 

of a noggin – a baby-soft, 

summer buzz. I want him to live 

until he’s old, and then 

some, but also, to never know 

life without me, the sadness 

of being motherless, like 

losing a limb. I cut

a meatball in half and slide

it to the side, mouth 

a piece of gristle to the tip 

of my tongue. 

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, boats against the current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirkland.bsky.social and lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.

airless satellite

by Robin Elise Hamilton

Blackstrap sad tortoiseshell rover

me and me walking alone

No sun at night and moreover

no one for me in me phone

No one gone sing out a glad tune

left their love far behind me

Slog the daft side of the mad moon

me and me melancholy

Memory me cannot forget

burning so deep in this sand

Bailing with bucket of regret

ash of last wave of your hand

Robin Elise Hamilton (she/her) is a recently-septuagenarian, recently-out queer trans woman recently-returned to writing poetry after a half-century offstage in live performance.

harebell

by Simon Ravenscroft

Find me under a pile of old leaves then

pretending not to feel this

or pretending there could be a way

to have you as if in parentheses

within the sentences of life

you would be a flowering or something

and when you look at me with that globe look

and hesitate on the edge

and all is washed bare

we would be free briefly as the breeze

making its way around the crust 

of this whole earth

in its chalk whiteness

a sudden blueness

sans thorn

Simon Ravenscroft lives in Cambridge, England. His work has recently been published in Meniscus, Trampoline, Red Ogre Review, The Alchemy Spoon, Swifts & Slows, JAKE, Ink Sweat & Tears, and other places. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

first frost

by John T. Howard

On the radio Among the stars some 

one said to think of this earth we call

home: a planet bound by fire & fury.

My planet is small these days: dank

steps down to a basement apartment

with mornings in & mornings out

before sunrise. The old dog ash-eyed

& blind sleeps alone, moves on hinges 

tender, limping. So that I now wonder 

which death I will have to summon

strength for soonest: that of the dog

or for the loss of one of my parents.

My father ages & refuses to speak

on the subject of death. My mother

without her teeth in seems skeletal.

The sky cold & clear & full of small

stabbings. Blanket of night punctured

by a full moon as close to the earth

as the earth will allow. The shrubs

glisten with a frosted-over white caul

of frozen dew. It is now mid-October.

In a few weeks November. Someone

will win an election. Others will not.

The dog may be dead. A parent too.

This body falls farther into age along

side a daughter whose smallness now

grows larger. With this worries surge.

Winter will come & go. Then come

& go again & again & again & again.

A first frost is not a first. It never is.

John T. Howard is a Colombian American writer, translator, and educator. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Wellspring House Retreat and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. His poetry can be found at Salamander, Notre Dame Review, PANK Magazine, The South Carolina Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere; he was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry found in Posit. His creative nonfiction is published with The Cincinnati Review. He resides in the greater Boston area with his daughter and teaches writing at Tufts University.

instructions for becoming a captain

by Vevna Forrow

twizzler tie your black sea hair back

tuck in a weather balloon sweater cap

helicopter pencil on a cookie cutter moustache

swap your foam beer for whoopie cushion water 

[concealed in a sunchoked crumpler paper lunch bag]

wear an XL denim jacket  & 9 ½ Nordvik boots

net laugh with the guys [net laugh at the guys]

even when the sinking crabby patty jokes make zero stinking sense

paspatou steer the wheel [blindfolded]

pluto pretend you’re the only one in a fish suit onboard

and voyager whisper to yourself aloud:

this is my deep down jellyfish jam dream

i will sail towards every sky constellation 

i will sail with my heart on the elysium edge

without boy blue boy fear

Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur) is an experimental visual designer and queer poet originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but resides in Southern Nevada. Work of hers appears in the Lothlorien Journal, Kindergarten Mag, diacritics – DVAN, Phantom Kangaroo, and Oddball Magazine. 

ink

by Jackie Hollowell

Childhood / is only a cage / that widens

from “Dear Peter” by Ocean Vuong

Of my childhood,

I want to give you 

the parts I like to 

remember. 

I’ll write down 

as much as I can 

before god catches up. 

He was there for a while—

in my sister’s room,

my mother’s garden.

In my grandmother calling my name

while she still knew it.

The ink only falls 

on the previous page 

but I keep turning it 

anyway. I think, 

maybe the leaf can return 

to the branch 

and it does, 

if you write long enough. 

If you live long enough. 

Back when I was a girl 

I wasn't yet a girl, 

just an abjuration 

of moss 

being pulled 

from stone. 

Please don't take 

my hands from the soil; 

I want to go home. 

The ink is running out but 

I still have so much childhood left 

before I’m turned to salt.

Jackie Hollowell is an extremely queer poet originally from the Pacific Northwest but now lives in Vietnam. She has a love/hate relationship with capital letters and an all-hate relationship with capitalism. They have been published in or have work forthcoming from The Dawn Review, The Wayfarer, and Rogue Agent. Find them online: @6_Hollowell.

march

by Kevin A. Risner

A month that holds so much promise

held unease, fear, newfound isolation

just a few years ago.

I swear it happens so much more

often, the glance at an old photo,

the recollection of a trip. And here

I thought it happened

just a blink ago, and it’s been

a decade. Catch each radio

wave as it flies past.

A bit of sweat falls instantly

when I hear too much, think too much,

when I fear for the newborn ones

who will appear next March.

They’ll have no clue about a time when

we didn’t yearn for fresh air. 

Kevin A. Risner is the author of My Ear is a Sieve; Do Us a Favor; and You Thought This Was Just Gonna Be About Cleveland, Didn't You. His debut full-length, There's No Future Where We Don't Have Fire, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions. He also has work published in Gordon Square Review, The Great Lakes Review, Memoir Mixtapes, Moist Poetry Journal, The Ocean State Review, and elsewhere.

last call

by Annabel Mitchell

last call I’m sure you heard it

echoed down to the garden

please thank you well I wouldn’t trouble

you

thinking of being a poet a baker

an arboretum photographer

thirty five cents and a tin of tuna

weird word isn’t it really

arbor – e – tum

tastes oversaturated

like stone bridges and stainless steel taps

and the bricks left over from the old mill

I saw a deer on the train well it wasn’t

on the train I was but I saw it out there

poised all ears and haunches and alone

the sea sparkles when you look at it

haven’t

you noticed haven’t you haven’t you

please thank you and good

night

Annabel Mitchell lives, works and writes in Leith, Edinburgh and has a degree in Classical Studies and English from St Andrews.

rhino

by Ellen Lusetti

Skin, lattice, like the quilt my mother won’t finish.

Wrinkled, like the back of her hands.

Head devoid of hair.

The last time she took me to the zoo,

there was only one rhino.

The exhibit sign read, “vulnerable.”

As she threads her final needle 

with trembling fingers,

lips formed around a curse,

I note the ways our hands

resemble one another,

the deep ridges of our middle 

knuckles, stout, pink beds 

topped with clouded crescents.

A split runs down her thumbnail 

to the nub, threatening breakage 

beyond the keratin, beneath 

the cells of flesh and tolerance.

“They have tools for that,” I tell her. 

She scoffs, for she is the force

that weaves a taut backing

and exacts her isolation,

the lone rhino with armor stitched

to defend but sheer enough to burn.

Ellen Lusetti is a queer writer whose work explores themes of feminism and the nature of morality. She graduated with an MFA from San Diego State University in 2022 and currently teaches writing at New Mexico State University. 

murmurations of starlings

by Terri McCord

“the most subtle spooking will do it, a dog’s bark, the slam of a car door down the street”

Nautilus Magazine, March 4, 2020

To delight in the scattering

a heavy sea spray

a funneled sky ash

an old-time amusement

park ride

The covetousness in the blue

tearings and mendings

above us

the quick repatternings

Possibly 100,000 in a winter flock

To start, too,

at the slightest wind-shift

Feel the air grapple with birds

A South Carolina Arts Commission literary fellowship recipient, Terri McCord has work forthcoming from Lucky Jefferson, Panoply, Orchard Poetry Review, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Black Lily, and Coast Lines Anthology.

instructions for staying put

by Shannon Swearingen Gabriel

after Joy Sullivan

In the evenings, sit on your front porch with a whiskey sour in your hand and witness the sky’s pastels dim from peach to lilac to bruise.

On Sundays, fill the house with the warmth of every baked good you can think of: 

double-chocolate-chip muffins, craggy biscuits flaked with cheddar, lemon pound cake so tart your mouth can’t help but squeeze around every forkful.

Each day, fill your belly with what it craves: the punch of laughter, the entire bowl of watermelon. Every night, stroke your daughter’s soft hair.

Let the quicksand of her eyes root you here till you rebloom — barrel cactus or blazing tulip.

In the long winters, let your body take up the entire narrow beam of sunlight. Lie still on the made bed and absorb the dark.

Always insist on a tangle of stars. Bury your doubts here so that you always have their graves

to return to. Remember — you can make wherever is under your feet your home.

Remember — just a mile west are the greenest fields, your emergency exit.

You can make your own peace.

Shannon Swearingen Gabriel is a professional copy editor by day, a mother around the clock, and a scribbler of poems whenever possible. Originally from Nashville, she now lives in the Chicago suburbs, where she enjoys frequenting great restaurants, cute coffee shops, and vinyl record stores.