prejudice and life

by Ali Ashhar

A side of coin flips 

bills are passed

some weapons are sold

other side of coin flips

a life is bought

with the currencies of prejudice and pride

news breaks out in the town

but, somewhere down the hill

an estranged mother awaits

her grandchildren ask, 

“When will Dad return home?”

she gives her best

to deviate their mind, but only

for a while

they ask again

this time she replies 

he has gone 

to a distant market 

to get some food 

not knowing that

he will be back

without bidding them farewell

in the midst of war —

motherhood was left devastated

and nascent dreams of childhood crippled. 

Ali Ashhar is a poet, short story writer and columnist. He is the author of poetry collection, Mirror of Emotions. His works appear in Indian Review, The Raven Review, Bosphorus Review of Books, among others.

anything, everything

by Maisie Russel

the thing about metaphors is

they circle around undistilled truths—

like hiding behind breath-taken;

captivated moon-eyes calling it tender

like secret longing that aches, sunlight

touching dust, settling for hunger

like witnessing the tress grow and graze 

the garden beyond the clouds; praying surrender

let me say this once: ask me for the world

and I will give it to you. 

Maisie Russel is a poet living in the desert. She also works on hcl design, information architecture, and ethical technological practices. Her works are published in various homes for poetry, both online and in print.

when storms reach the edge of the world

by Adelaide Juelfs

The rain blurred the edges of the 

world, a gutted fish lay 

split on the sand, 

salt-soaked and bleeding. A dead 

man’s life spit up on the 

tongue of the ocean, a storm of fury. 

My dragonfly, my pride. Here — a new 

day is brought  to the edge, 

we’ve been here for too long. The clouds that once 

muddied the horizon turned it whole, 

my hair grew untamed in the early 

morning — a thousand little hands 

reaching toward the sky. While waiting for 

something, I suddenly remember yesterday 

when I pinned myself to the sidelines 

and a sure-fire cry brought me back. 

I notice an abalone shell sitting on the 

counter, a turquoise green light drifts in 

through the open window 

and eats the walls whole. 

My honeyed eye, my want. 

A dream catcher flies sideways in the wind, 

and I feel a part of me pulled with it, out past the waves. 

I feel a part of me surrender. Maybe I’m just tired. 

Maybe it’s the circadian rhythm. A part of me hopes. 

Here is the dark drifting away. 

Here, I sew myself back up with the storm and 

try to be alive again.

Adelaide is a high school student from Southern California. She writes in an attempt to better understand both herself and the world, and through language, she is both tethered to her life and transported somewhere mystical. She enjoys physics, daydreaming, and water polo.

temper

by Nailea Salazar

Somewhere — a redwood, charred bark concealed

in thick haze, wild engulfed.               Life awaits

your touch, lush with fervor. Temper frosts over

We make nice & skate in infinite ribbons.

Nailea Salazar is a writer from California whose work has appeared in Rejection Letters and Mister Magazine. She believes that God is stored inside Meg Ryan movies.

humming

by Blair Center

The rapid rattle—the magpie’s cackle
tap-tap tap-taps against the traffic panes
on Loch Street. The beak chaps nails to shatter
the low chorus humming of fumy wheels
which roll in waves below its sparse tree mast.
Brutalism looms. While they call above
the living flow in which I daily swim,
we both enjoy the sweeping coastal air
and the bonnie city’s shining movements
and rainy promises of future spring.

I look upon the sea like endless fields
and I shall hum and sing as is needed
to nest, to build, to keep the crops growing.

Blair Center is a writer and student from the north-east of Scotland. Center has had poetry published by Dreich, Leopard Arts, and The Hyacinth Review. Whether in English, Scots, or his local tongue, Doric, Center finds that themes of nature, memory, identity, and place particularly and consistently motivate his work.

2 poems

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

A sweet cloud dissolves in wet eyes.

Mirages of sand in wet eyes.

God’s assistant pressed the wrong button again.

The sea of heaven

Port of clouds

The future flows into its own absence

Mykyta Ryzhykh (he\him) lives in Ukraine (Nova Kakhovka Citу). He is the winner of the international competition Art Against Drugs, bronze medalist of the festival Chestnut House, and laureate of the literary competition named after Tyutyunnik. He is published in several journals and received a scholarship from the President of Ukraine for young authors.

those who knew

by Deron Eckert

The closer the coasts moved in,

the more common the shipwrecks 

became. Oceans swelled slowly,

but their slight changes disguised

them enough from those who knew

them so well they could tell the

hour of day by the sound

the waves made as they crashed in

that by the time they reached the

thickets of grass defining

land from sea, those who knew that

song by heart could now only 

hear it singing in their heads.

The farther the tides crept up 

beaches that grew greedier

in their embrace, the harder

those who knew them best chased their

familiar call, even if 

it meant their end, because those 

who knew they had already

lost so much refused to let

their beloved song leave, too. 

Deron Eckert is a writer and attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His writing has appeared in Rattle Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, Sky Island Journal, Swim Press, Treehouse Literary, and Rue Scribe and is forthcoming in Ghost City Review and Querencia Press' Winter 2023 Anthology. He was a flash fiction finalist in New Millenium Writing’s 54th Writing Awards. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic, coming-of-age novel, which explores how personal experiences change our preconceived notions of right and wrong, while working on a collection of poetry and prose. 

membership

by Adam Deutsch

In the barn, two green-bodied black-winged 

bugs are joined at their backs, crawl rims 

of surfaces nobody can honestly claim as their own. 

The farm’s main house’s wallpaper

is stubborn, pushing back at the steam iron, 

glues and old centuries’ ink enduring 

like a domestic tattoo, a fabric that moths 

and moisture ignore. It can get into your limbs

before you scrape it away from the original wall. 

When I rub palms together, small strands

of tarnished ribbon unravel to cellar dust, 

a box of papers, my aunt tells me, that say 

she’s recognized as a daughter of a revolution,

could be of confederacy, and I could be a son.  

It’s something like thirty dollars to register, 

another five to insert yourself in the record

of who was where in histories that topple 

toward myth. A ship’s belly who could not find 

the sun in the flag-soaked ocean, carrying

our organization of murder to shore. 

Adam Deutsch is the author of a full-length collection, Every Transmission, forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2023. He has work recently in Poetry International, Thrush, Juked, AMP Magazine, Ping Pong, and Typo, and has a chapbook called Carry On (Elegies). He teaches in the English Department at Grossmont College and is the publisher of Cooper Dillon Books. He lives with his spouse and child in San Diego, CA. AdamDeutsch.com

stenotype

by Ayelet Amittay

If speech survives 

a courtroom, unstruck

from the record, it is

broken, coded

as abbreviation: 22

keys, a ticker tape of white

margin space, no man’s

land where letters stand for

pause, punctuation

S T PH = question

mark in a topography

of neighbor keys. Your Honor,

may I approach

the bench to stand before the court

reporter, beg an alternate

ending? <Question> Surely

some repair can come to

this interstitial

brokenness:

missing consonants missing

I and why.

Ayelet Amittay is a poet and nurse practitioner in Oregon. Her poems have recently appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Whale Road Review, and others. She has received fellowships from the Yiddish Book Center and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing.

there’s just no blueprint

by Abbie Doll

for constructing

all these damn

mazes

built from words

i pluck them out

one-by-one

like stray strands

trying to tame

this unruly brain

Abbie Doll is an eclectic mess of a person who loves exploring the beautiful intricacies of the written word. She resides in Columbus, OH and received her MFA from Lindenwood University; her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Door Is a Jar Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), among others. Follow her @AbbieDollWrites.

calibrating the dream machine

by Tyler Raso

In my hometown, there was

this bridge. Sounded like an

apocalypse whenever you drove

over it, the river beneath always

a little sickly with stones. 

I was raised by liars. Black mold

in my childhood bedroom. No one

ever hurt me. The concrete of

my small throat. Socks coming

pink from the washing machine.

I don’t have much to say.

My father is a kind man, held

God like a baseball bat. Left

my jawline in his will. Our faces

falling from one another.

My mom had this tomato plant,

upside-down, in the kitchen window.

Nothing grew from it. She’d smoke

with a rubber glove on. We could

hardly see her face through 

the sour mist.

When I fell in love, I was walking

up a hill. My bones were somewhere

else. None of this is important,

even if it is true.

I think about dreaming a lot.

There’s this one where music

spills out of my ears.

Nobody knows the song. 

Yet everyone’s toes tap

the wet grass. Someone stands up

to leave. A tangle

of sound holding the hole

their body made.

Tyler Raso (they/them) is a poet, essayist, and teacher. Their work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal, and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook In my dreams/I love like an idea, winner of the 2022 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest. They currently write, teach, and study in Bloomington, IN, tweeting @spaghettiutopia and websiting at tylerraso.com

cupped hand

by Ervin Brown

life is a mewling flame

in the shadow of a cupped hand

twisted appendages linger

molded from fly-paper and resin

webbing and wedding the remains

purring to the ashes 

hymns of tinfoil

and enchanted double-helix

the faux lavender glow

reverbing across space

Ervin Brown is a twenty-year-old storyteller and poet from Coney Island. His works have appeared in The Dillydoun Review, Willows Wept Review, The Closed Eye Open, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal, among other places. He is currently a master’s student at the University of New Hampshire.

the road ahead

by Julie Stevens

They say the dead walk this road

every time the moon showers light

on steps caught in its glare.

A line of broken souls 

breezing earth’s warm crust,

before mounting the wind to the sky.

The chilled air catches memories:

sugar-coated, hardened, raw.

An eternal collection for the library of life.

We walk the same path

surging forward with ambition,

never knowing when our steps will take flight.

Julie Stevens writes poems that cover many themes, but often engages with the problems of disability. She has two published pamphlets: Quicksand (Dreich 2020) and Balancing Act (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2021). Her next pamphlet Step into the Dark will be published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press. www.jumpingjulespoetry.com

I used to know your place in the dirt

by Gal Snir

when our eyelids were flowers and our minds were thick bark 

with ridges that curved — ribbons on the most exquisite of gifts.

During then, the ground was a place to grow words from

and deadweights more like roots and root systems

extending down Earth’s crinkly covering 

where tomato & basil seeds sweetly bud.

They call it companion planting.

Meaning anecdotal wisdom.

Indicating tried & true.

I employed this truth like a cancer.

Planted basil seeds until basil seeds

were nowhere to be found 

and blamed the swelling of green tomatoes

on their absence.

It is easier to indulge in an abundance of emptiness 

over an abundance itself.

Now, I stand over dead ground surrounded by winds 

and white walls 

and white-knuckles

made for punching.

Now, hands are meant to punch.

Hands are not meant to dig.

Now no more composted words.

Now no more people seeds.

No earthlier things to replant.

Gal Snir lives in Seattle, WA. She works as a medical assistant for a small primary care practice in the city. She enjoys writing poetry that peers into the bower of the self and explores cycles of grief, loss, and change. When she’s not suffering for her art or studying for the MCAT, she likes to annoy her sweet dog, Angel. 

2 poems

by Sadie Kromm

till’ solace due us part

my inner child now

exists in a balmy

cottage filled with

harvested books,

lemon loaf, and

a fireplace that keeps

the baby hounds warm.

it is all handmade and

habitually preserved

by me.

I often weep knowing

that she feels safe

and will forever live

rent free.

the two ferns are now dancing

to those who mocked

me for resisting the

emotional poverty

of materialism,

you taught me that

big homes often feel

too cold, but smaller

homes preserve warmth.

and your hatred was

because you could never

fathom why I could ever

be so happy with so little.

Sadie Kromm is a wordsmith and visual artist who is homestead in Ontario. She has pen’d a collection of irresistible columns and hosted an audience, leading local pioneers in the arts and culture sector – particularly independent music. Sadie is now inscribing her own life’s tale about mental health, childhood trauma, kindliness, and her unique relationship with animals through the medium of poetry.

the perfect weather

by Wheeler Light

The weather outside is your heart. 

The weather inside is your heart also 

but the weather outside is more of your heart. 

Inside is more like an echo like your pulse 

is a call and response. It’s like the weather. 

The tide goes out. It comes back every time. 

The good times go away. You could lose your job. 

You could lose your heart, your little sweet 

marching drum. Honey, there is enough time. 

I love you I love you. Cold and muted. Simple  

mirror. The weather outside is just atmosphere  

You know what the good times are like. 

They’re like summer but without the 

sweating. These days, you’re just waiting for the first snow, 

for that opportunity to dip your toes into the sky. 

I promise the good times come back 

but not before the bad times go away. 

Well sometimes at the same time, 

like snow melting while it falls and pooling 

at the edge of the sidewalk and when you 

walk over it, there it is, your reflection. 

Always there like the weather. It’s just the weather. 

Just something to talk about it. Isn’t it amazing?

Wheeler Light is an MFA candidate at the University of Virginia. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Spit Poet Zine, and Pretty Owl Poetry, among other publications. You can find his work at www.wheelerlight.net.

I think of you

by Dave Nash

When your grandson comes down in the morning and I know that’s your gift he’s wearing because only you would search and search for the perfect pjs, when I crack eggs, mix flour, butter, water, listen to the sizzle, and study the pancakes for the golden brown remembering our big holiday breakfasts, when a friend stops by for coffee recalls your kindness and how you helped, when I think to call you about what the boys said, or there’s a too cute picture I have to share, a new show in the city we should go, let’s try this restaurant, I’ll meet you at grand central by the clock and that’s when I realize you're not coming back from this vacation and then I remember to hand wash those pajamas.

Dave Nash enjoys coffee in the city on rainy Mondays. Dave is the Non-Fiction Editor at Five South Magazine and writes words that can be found in places like Bivouac Magazine, Atlantic Northeast, The Airgonaut, and Roi Faineant Press. 

write the work

by Zary Fekete

Write the work.

Graveled drive.

Poet’s hive.

Reread. Resist. Write.

Lettre étrangère.

Étouffante au pair.

Pausing, musing. 

Daubing, choosing.

Widened field.

Years of yield.

Persist. Fail. Write.

Write the work.

Come back…

Attack.

Revise. Rephrase. Retype.

Pebbled slope.

Book-shaped hope.

Babaházat

Magyarázat

Write.

Write the work.

Consider.

Fritter.

Place in space.

Efface, erase.

Rows to tend.

Personally offend.

Amend.

Send.

Write.

Zary Fekete has worked as a teacher in Hungary, Moldova, Romania, China, and Cambodia, and currently lives and works as a writer in Minnesota. Zary has a debut chapbook of short stories coming in February 2023 from Alien Buddha Press and a novelette (In the Beginning) coming out in May from ELJ Publications. Twitter: @ZaryFekete

2 poems

by Emily Moon

always raining

It's raining 

in my left ventricle.

A flood flows 

through my aorta,

rushes to my brain,

drips out my eyes.

I want a hurricane 

to rip through my consciousness,

churn the seas of memory,

wring showers from my dark amygdala,

make a nest of driftwood 

for my inner demon to rest upon.

I want fat drops the color

of black plums to purple me clean,

refresh my brain,

make me want to 

lean into love again.

I want to be the rain 

falling like love,

falling like the ghost of love,

falling like the love that might have been

had we been 

the people we thought we were.

immortality

Our atoms 

are likely the only bits 

of us that will come close 

to immortality.

We carry the minute imprint 

of everything each of them

ever touched. 

Tinges of us

carried on our former atoms 

will join collections of molecules 

ad infinitum 

until they shred

into quarks and leptons

dissolving 

into the event horizon 

of a black hole 

at the heart

of a new galaxy.

In this way,

we shall live

forever.

Emily Moon (she/her) is a queer transgender poet from Portland, Ore. She is author of "It’s Just You & Me, Miss Moon" and Editor at First Matter Press. Her work includes appearances in or forthcoming from Pile Press, Boats Against the Current, Banyan Review, Culinary Origami, Roi Fainéant Literary Press, [in her space] Journal, and elsewhere. You can find her on Instagram @emilymoonpoet and Facebook at Emily.Moon.57/. Her link tree can be found at https://linktr.ee/EmilyMoonPoet.

bicycle

by Allison Thung

Exactly when did I get so wary, so overly vigilant I catastrophized seven different ways before attempting anything even slightly risky? She must at least be in hibernation, that incarnation of me who at ten decided the best way to learn how to ride a bicycle was to take off from the top of a hill with nothing but momentum on my side, throwing all caution to the classmate who had offered to hold my bicycle upright, but whose generosity was ultimately no match for my heft. I sure had life all figured out then, certain that triumph lived in eliminating all options but “succeed” and “die trying.” Two lifetimes later, I still recall with absolute clarity the exhilaration that coursed through my entire body as my thick brown hair whipped back from my sweaty face, the way the wind swallowed my well-meaning classmate’s words of assurance or maybe admonishment, and how my sunflower-yellow bicycle flipped right over at the bottom of the hill, sending me crashing to the ground, but only because I had slammed too hard on the brakes to stem the velocity I had gained too quickly, and certainly not before I learned how to maneuver that two-wheeled menace; to ride a bicycle. As I washed the massive oozing scrape on my right knee with murky seawater, bicycle unscathed and leaning against a palm tree, I knew that that was the way I would hope to live forever — with abandon, and without regrets.

Allison Thung is a poet and project manager from Singapore. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Chestnut Review, ANMLY, Heavy Feather Review, Maudlin House, Lumiere Review, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @poetrybyallison or at www.allisonthung.com.