
poetry
a map to get lost
a poem by Andrew Furst
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
a poem by Neeraja Srinivasan
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
a poem by Em Seely-Katz
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
a poem by Jered Mabaquiao
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
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
a poem by Wheeler Light
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
a poem by Eva Allison
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
a poem by Julia Duerig
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
a poem by Carissa Ma
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
a poem by E.C. Gannon
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
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?
a poem by Annie Stenzel
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
a poem by Aurora Lee Passin
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
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
a poem by Julia Lombardo
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
a poem by Meghan Malachi
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
a poem by Eugenia Pozas
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
a poem by Ela Begum Kumcuoglu
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
a poem by Alina Kalontarov
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
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.