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.

maybe this is the life of your dreams?

by Annie Stenzel

We were talking about dreams, and I said it’s rare these days for me even to dream of flying though I used to do that often as a child and even after. Then the memories poured in: how sometimes I flew like Superman — prone and adept in the buoyant air but with my arms out to the side at an angle, like wings. At other times I was upright…as though the air beneath my feet was solid as the forest floor but I moved, a hundred or a thousand feet above the ground without walking. // Yesterday, a whole poem presented itself to me, and I wrote it down line by line as though I were simply taking dictation. Later, but still yesterday, another wonder seized me and again I marveled. Maybe this is the life of my dreams. // I could see so much from however high up I was when I did all that dream-flying, and I remember thinking, as I stared out the window during my very first airplane flight, yes! That’s exactly what it looks like in my dreams. 

Annie Stenzel (she/her) is a lesbian poet who was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her second full-length collection, Don’t misplace the moon, was released from Kelsay Books in July, 2024. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., including Book of Matches, Does it have pockets, Gavialidae, Kestrel, Night Heron Barks, One Art, Rust + Moth, Saranac Review, SWWIM, The Lake, Thimble, and UCity Review. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.

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.