“perhaps, it is vanity”

by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury

the river saraswati is lost / they say,

she disappeared underground,

pulled to the earth’s core

when her mother changed course / perhaps, it is vanity,

to flee into the folds of history just so i can

stare at my rippled reflection in her waters / perhaps, it is vanity,

to feel ecstasy in seeing my abandoned face in an abandoned river,

to feel like i matter—like i’m a part of god’s design / perhaps, it is vanity,

but still it is mine.

Tejaswinee Roychowdhury is an Indian writer, poet, and lawyer. Her work is published/forthcoming in Ongoing, Ayaskala, Gutslut Press, Roi Fainéant Press, Borderless Journal, Kitaab, Bullshit Lit, Alphabet Box, and elsewhere. She is currently a Fiction/Stage Editor for The Storyteller’s Refrain. Find her tweeting at @TejaswineeRC and her list of works at linktr.ee/tejaswinee.

“march”

by Adele Evershed

In my shed sprays of daffodils name the light—glowery

And Armstrong’s trumpet names the noise—a perfect din 

But they are all substitutes for the hard to bare feelings of survival

When I was young I was asked to choose 

Between a frog jumping—or its rumble   

Of course I picked the lovely splash

Now I think about things from the inside out 

And realize it is the enduring noise that is unexpectedly delightful   

Just like an honest rejection or a made-up word so I can tame the light

I get rid of the bodies—drinking sherry in my shed 

Using a stone to weigh the pages of my life  

And stop the ghosts that haunt my bloated heart  

Bitter pollens leave tracks on my blouse

And the brass fanfare tumbles me back 

To another march down a long aisle

Flowers lying like sleeping children in my arms 

Sprinkling freckles on my knickerbocker glory dress 

But at least then the sneezes sounded like cheers 

As I walked into the yellow light

Adele Evershed is an early years educator and writer. She was born in Wales and has lived in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut. Her prose has been published in a number of online journals such as Every Day Fiction, Free Flash Fiction, and Grey Sparrow Journal. Her poetry can be found in High Shelf, Hole in the Head Review, Monday Night, Tofu Ink Arts Press, The Fib Review, Wales Haiku Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Sad Girls Club, and Green Ink Poetry. Adele has recently been nominated for the Pushcart Poetry Prize and shortlisted for the Staunch Prize for flash fiction, an international award for thrillers without violence to women. Visit her website @thelithag.com

“another portrait”

written in Russian and translated into English by Ivan de Monbrison

another portrait

A child’s murder

or something

like this

a living nightmare

you put

the night in a bottle

to use it as ink

to draw your own portrait

on a piece of paper

другой портрет

Убийство ребенка

Или что-то

Как это

Кошмар наяву

Ты положил

Ночь в бутылке

Она служит твоими чернилами

Нарисовать свой автопортрет

На листе бумаги

Ivan de Monbrison is a poet and artist living in Paris born in 1969, with Jewish Russian, Tcherkess and Arabic roots, and affected by various types of mental disorders. 

“linguaphile”

by Tamara Bašić

she was a language 

full of foreign accents 

and assonance 

and metaphors, 

with an alphabet made of 

rhythm 

and rhyme 

and words not made for translating– 

gökotta 

and Waldeinsamkeit 

and la douleur exquise 

but the lilt of his voice 

as he unraveled 

line after line 

of her offbeat language 

was both saudade and tarab, both a pull and a push; 

such a perfect mix 

of language and linguaphile.

Tamara Bašić (she/her) lives in Croatia, where she is frequently trying to pluck gorgeous sentences from her thoughts and write them into poetry. She can also often be found reading, trying to become a polyglot, staring at the sky in awe, and viciously daydreaming. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Southchild Lit, Ice Lolly Review, celestite poetry, Lavender Lime Literary, fifth wheel press, and elsewhere. For more writing and updates, you can find her on social media @authortamarab

“pleumōn”

by Jeff Burt

for Linnaea

She has small lungs,

like mountain lakes

that appear to have a dark-blue depth

but stay shallow from end to end,

that means she jogs instead of runs,

can submerge but not stay under

in the coral reefs, too short of air

to dive, her burst of breath

not a storm’s torrent but more a wind

that ruffles leafs

but does not sway the branch.

She does not have foreshortened joy.

She dwells, learns 

in moderation what others miss

by whizzing by, 

the angles of bleached buildings

against the shadows of time, 

the swallows breaking tufts from cattails 

with the slightest puff, 

the manner in which a cloud takes

a field of wildflowers 

and sunlight gives it back.

Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife. He has contributed to Rabid Oak, Williwaw Journal, Red Wolf Journal, Heartwood, and won the 2017 Cold Mountain Review Poetry Prize. Twitter: @jeffburtmth

“rush”

by David J. Kennedy

The world hurried. I wanted to stay and talk — 

trace each minute that led you to this place. 

Peer through the foliage and into the 

valley where you became fluent in 

affliction. 

Devour your tales of yellow and blue;  the 

memories that arrive like indigo wrens  

at the window on late August nights  

when planes rumble, drunks stumble, 

and the reels of your mind play 

sepia scenes that drown emerald eyes. 

Cradle your wounded spirit; how she aches to 

stream northwards, far beyond red cliff tops — 

bound for stations where fairy tales are 

free and the rush of flying too close to 

heaven  

blunts the pain of the fall.

David J. Kennedy is a poet and non-fiction author from Sydney, Australia. Themes of aging, wonder, and mortality feature prominently in his writing, and he has work published or forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Words & Whispers, and Jupiter Review. Twitter: @DavidJKennedy_   

“summer blooms, winter panes”

by Jennifer Baker

I’ve never had a thumb of green

summer blooms framed in winter panes

My window lacks the sunlight seen

Dark and damp, roots begin

buried seed rising again, though

I’ve never had a thumb of green

Kaleidoscopic tones declare sanguine

flowers, hungrily reaching.

My window lacks the sunlight seen

Stubborn soil, pallid fluorescence intervenes

colder fervor, roots grow shallow

I’ve never had a thumb of green

Shadows conceal light like quarantine

the Birds of Paradise veil their faces

My window lacks the sunlight seen

From Azalea pink to Zinnia blue

and a pallet of bloom between

I’ve never had a thumb of green

My window lacks the sunlight seen

Jennifer Baker is a traveler, writer, and musician.  She has played in music festivals from Seattle to Maine; writing and cowriting many original songs along the road.  More times than not she can be seen scribbling in a journal or spending time in nature. She enjoys studying poetry and creative fiction while working her day job in healthcare near Philadelphia, PA. You can follow her on Twitter @frostglasspoet 

“antique fuchsia”

by Rich Boucher

The sky was the color of antique fuchsia,

and now I have to apologize for trying to be poetic

about how everything looked when I craned my head

to look above; there’s no other way to say

what I was thinking when my sisters

told me you’d breathed your last.

The sky being any color at all

should never matter to us,

but tell me who doesn’t look up

when the cost of looking the nearest person

in the eyes is too much to pay?

Let there be no more stories, songs

or poems about how the sky did what,

or how the sky felt like this or that,

or how the sky looked like the color

of anything else that is not the sky.

I wish a thousand people would

ask me what kind of father you were,

so that I could tell them that no sky

could ever display all your colors right.

I was happy even for the clouds, sometimes.

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, Drunk Monkeys and Cultural Weekly, among others. Rich serves as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for more. He loves his life with his love Leann and their sweet cat Callie.

“extra-terrestrial confirmation of tree rings”

by Andrew F Giles

- when invisible secrets rigged on earth, whose 

metal casements, whose searchlights unberth 

& from the casements blink at the peninsula,

the mark which he which he which backward 

& forward concentric rings, when those hands

push, hands that blur under scrutiny, but push

-  that historic fuck, whose no is written – whose 

jacket of steel, whose short-sighted distant things

Andrew F Giles writes poems, reviews and creative nonfiction, with recent work in Dark Mountain Project, Abridged, Feral, Stone of Madness and Queer Life, Queer Love (Muswell Press, 2021). He lives and works at Greyhame Farm, a permaculture project, creative residency, and rural safe space for queer folk and their allies.

2 poems

by Hibah Shabkhez

eye doctor

The rods of the machines are guitar strings 

My drumstick fingers chase in vain. I wait

For the eye-doctor who is to make straight

All the weaving, flickering, rippling things

  Of this office, this hospital, this life.

Ah, mais c’est une guerre, une guerre d’ombres,

  Une guerre ingagnable -

The eye-doctor must teach me how to see

Stool-tops, and not these earth-quaking mountains,

Forbid the curtains to tread their stately

Measures beside their own shadow-fountains;

  Ban the light and fan their eternal strife.

Ah, mais c’est une guerre, une guerre d’ombres,

  Vitale et impitoyable;

The eye-doctor brings forth a battery

Of frames and lense-glass, but the fan fights

Back, swishes across the flickering lights,

And makes all the machines dance in the scree-

  Shadows of an imaginary knife.

Ah, mais c’est une guerre, une guerre d’ombres

  Une révolte ingérable.

Holiday Homework

You'll stand at the skylight in the gloaming

     That makes lonely mountains of the rooftops,

Singing of love and loss, of hearts breaking

     For burnt pains au chocolat, for lamb chops,

And the summer-worlds where mangoes reign.

You'll pirate and wrench love-songs to lament

     All things lorn, ludicrous and lame that tug

The tears out, then pour all the laughter meant

     For great joys on them like mayo. You'll hug

And guard it like a last unspoilt seed-grain.

You’ll go on smashing vases, to piece them 

     Back with strong glue and genuine regret,

Until you learn to graft memory’s stem

     Seamlessly onto the branch that will let

Exile's stony clay turn homeward again.

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Black Bough, Zin Daily, London Grip, The Madrigal, Acropolis Journal, Lucent Dreaming, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez 

“silence in three parts”

by Victoria Punch

I

the orchestra tunes their A – that

warm string and weave

curling over the heads of the evening crowd

who turn to each other and fold their

conversations away until 

the intermission

II

the conductor stands

all eyes on the darkness.

drapes (like water,

like silks) fall:

the veil unturned.

he shuffles in the hush and rises

III

eyes meet, tuba to 

bass, violin gaze, straight

as a bow, the baton

flicks, his breath is seen in the lift 

of his shoulders, he strikes the first beat 

and marks the end as it begins

Victoria Punch is a voice coach and musician. Curious about voice and identity, the limits of language, and how we perceive things; her poetry comes from these explorations. Published in the6ress, The Mum Poem Press (guest ed. Liz Berry) and Sledgehammer Lit. Forthcoming in Nightingale&Sparrow. Found on Instagram and Twitter @victoriapunch_

“true name”

by Robert Okaji

I greet you daily without knowing

whether my words stick

or fall through your leaves 

unheard. Sometimes I pause and listen

but a reply evades me,

at least while I stand there.

Do you remember my voice?

Do your acorns share secrets?

Two lifetimes have passed.

Could I be that branch emptied

of birds? That root buckling 

pavement? Who are you

today? What is your color,

your emblem, your true name?

Robert Okaji lives in Indiana. The author of multiple chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Book of Matches, The Night Heron Speaks, Threepenny Review, The Tipton Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

“June 21, 1987”

by Joshua St. Claire

bottle rockets

how does heat

   become

sound

cumulonimbus downdrafts

oak leaf undersides cumulonimbus

chicory and Queen Anne’s lace

bowing in worship cumulonimbus

whispering to each other

in lightning cumulonimbus baptizing

the land in lightning cumulonimbus

beyond cracked carnival 

glass 

the sky

cicada and

cricket distant

motorcycle

revving

Joshua St. Claire is a CPA who works as a financial controller in Pennsylvania. He enjoys writing poetry on coffee breaks and after putting the kids to bed. His work is published in the Inflectionist Review, Blue Unicorn, Eastern Structures, hedgerow, and Whiptail, among others, and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.

“my Polonius”

by Alina Stefanescu

Haunts himself.

Haunts his mother, his pals, the stained stage, the beer bottle fallen in the aisle,

and my view of the sky

from the lake's surface, two arms 

extended in flails like angel 

limbs on snow—or whatever this is

as melting continues

one could drown

without knowing it happened.

Be the eternal tragedy

or the inconceivable consequence

who haunts the accident.

after Philip Fried

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.

“circus act”

by Julie Stevens

I can skate when these legs work

dare myself to somersault over your hedge.

Give life-changing news. You’re happy now. 

Make clothes that shape me a billion years younger.

Rub two sticks together. Toast marshmallows,

let them spin and drop fire on my tongue.

Extend the hours. You’ve got time now.

Ride a bicycle. Sprint to swallow your deadline.

I bake cakes. Pretend it’s my birthday.

Invite the town. Throw a javelin faster

than that hurtling train. Believe it.

Make a meal with one hand and the world can eat.

Plan a trip to Jupiter and start selling tickets.

When my legs don’t work, I swallow glass.

Julie Stevens writes poems that cover many themes, but often engages with the problems of disability. Her poems have recently been published in Fly on the Wall Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, Dear Reader and Café Writers. Her winning Stickleback pamphlet Balancing Act was published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press (June 2021) and her chapbook Quicksand by Dreich (Sept 2020). 

Website: www.jumpingjulespoetry.com

Twitter @julesjumping

“to float”

by Imogen. L. Smiley

I lay each night suspended over a tepid mattress.

Can’t my dreams wash me over like the coming tides and

Drown my unconscious mind, leave it unable to breathe? 

My mind whirls under the gaze of a flickering moon,

Demons crawling from their nests in empty mugs and discarded socks

They thrive in the debris of my shipwrecked room, and 

Know how to keep the mind submerged in thought.

How do I reach the shores of dawn?

To survive another sleepless night, must I 

Swim in a stagnant mind. 

Imogen. L. Smiley (she/her) is a twenty-three-year-old writer from Essex, UK. She has anxiety, depression, and an endless love of dogs, especially big ones! You can support her by following her on Twitter and Instagram at @Imogen_L_Smiley.

“a memory of tomorrow”

by Allison Grace

There is a grief in never knowing.

Of creating our own seasickness even when the water

barely laps at our toes and still we find ourselves

bodies wrought with sorrow and rung out of tears

fighting listlessly against the ripples.

Still wondering what comes next 

as if standing ankle-deep in wishes, telling stories 

that don’t build in pages for tomorrow, 

will open up something new. 

Will ease the guilt of never knowing.

For every day until forever I would take the grief

if it meant at least knowing. Then maybe

I wouldn’t find myself fabricating funerals in my mind

until I am drowning in a storm of my own creation.

And I could finally say goodbye.

But I know

there is no ocean, there are no more tears. 

And for the one who has seen the world 

in everything but herself, there is

no tomorrow.

Allison Grace (She/They), is a lover of tea and all things literary. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Allison writes coming-of-age poetry and prose that explore the challenges of everyday experiences. Published in Small Leaf Press, Powders Press, Ink Drinkers Magazine, and more.

“a slip into the reflect”

by Kwabena Benyin

We were—& are unto ourselves,

Abysses who recur again & again by the pulse of the wind.

Gathered.                & reflected like memories.            We are only our poetries,                alliterating

chapters of our being in & out of season.

But.   Now               , we’ve slipped into allusion, 

& have met the beginning of our essence—we're translated like synonyms of ourselves.

& it's how we come. 

& it's how far            we have stretched into the 

Kwabena Benyin is a poet, and an arts and nature admirer. Born and raised in Accra, Ghana, he can be found reading anything from poetry to articles. He has work published in the CGWS anthology, ASSmag publication & Writers club website, and others. Benyin is currently working on a chapbook. He blogs at www.aswrittenbybenyin.home.blog and can be found on Twitter @KwabenaBenyin_

“grandpa”

by Jennifer Fox

I learned to dance tip-toed 

on the ends of your feet as

you twirled me around

the living room at 

six-years-old, no music

at all. Listen close and you

can hear it, and I’d press my ear

to your round belly, searching for

the drum of your heart.  How was

I to know it’d be my favorite 

song? I stand tip-toed again,

ear to the sky, listening 

for you. 

Jennifer Fox is a western New York native with an MFA from Lindenwood University. She is Editor-in-Chief at EVOKE and a staff reader at Bandit Fiction. Her work has appeared in The Metaworker, Across the Margin, The Daily Drunk Mag, The Write Launch, Sledgehammer Lit, Ghost Parachute, and more.

“vaticinated”

by Maddie Bowen-Smyth

He can’t compare her to a summer’s day,
But to moonlight streaming through canopies,
As her lips, in quiet mischief, convey,
Quaking truths that come to rest with unease.
He gets used to the beautiful strangeness,
The way he’s so used to her everywhere,
And finds empty spaces when, so aimless,
She chases peril without single care.
He can only think she’s some fae creature,
Flitting and freewheeling easy as smoke,
Soon tangled in tonight’s silent feature,
Where the dark drags long and the shadows choke.
He can’t help but feel inevitably
Drawn to dreams of their own sure misery.

Maddie Bowen-Smyth is an avid tabletop roleplayer, an incurable fan of fried shallots, and an indefatigable hunter of obscure historical facts. Her work explores the lasting echoes of trauma but is animated by a spirit of bull-headed hopefulness. She lives on Whadjuk Noongar land with her wife and their growing menagerie. Learn more at www.journalistic.com.au