gossip from the forest

by Kay Burrows

Last year I learned the difference between a forest and a woodland.

Forests are hunting grounds; ancient rites and rhythms.

Did you hear that she is home?

The moon is high and our eyes 

deal only in black and white.

You skip after silhouettes while I scatter a breadcrumb trail.

Magpies roost with shiny things

and fairy rings spring around my heavy feet.

Word travels fast in here. 

The news is pressing

on my chest and echoes are compressed.

Was she forced to confess?

I gulp and try to think of home

of silver jewelry and fairy lights and not only of the way you skewered 

marshmallows and licked

them clean off the stick, splinters in your tongue. I begged

you not to eat in the forest.

Didn’t you hear that she is home?

Kay Burrows is a scientist, musician, writer, and runner. She lives in the North of England and loves being outside, whatever the weather!

green water

by Sydney Thomson

An Ode to Herbert James Draper’s The Lament for Icarus

For a brief moment, after death, in the green,

it’s as if he were alive and had merely been

taking a rest, on a bed of soft feathers

in the pleasantest weather, before decay begins.

How long the fall, and how cruel the end,

but his face holds no fright, 

not at all, the sight almost serene.

The day is so bright all but where he now lies.

How strange to see Death in the light,

because the sun knows

Death is softer at night. It might be romantic 

if it wasn’t so tragic. 

Oh, how devastating! If only the sun

had been kinder or the sea not awaiting,

with open arms, the fallen angel

the plummet fatal, a strike that leaves the ears ringing

the rigor takes his wings and

his life already gone, their hearts surely stinging.

Their mouths are open, they may be crying –

they may be singing.

Sydney Thomson honed her writing skills in the University of Washington’s Creative Writing program. She writes poetry, short stories, and novel-length works.

2 poems

by Kirsten Ireland

twenty twenty

I look like he, 

but sound like she. 

It confuses people 

when my wife says

the baby 

she gave birth to 

has my eyes. 

why

I’m struggling,

at this point anyway, 

to understand 

exactly what happened. 

Rereading words 

nearly twenty years 

old and dead, 

I found honesty 

and happiness. 

I feel it still now, 

that truth 

and that warmth, 

but from a distance. 

I can’t say 

that it is diminished, 

just a different shape 

and I, as you, 

still don’t know why. 

Kirsten Ireland is a visual artist, musician, and longtime writer who currently resides in Illinois with her wife and children. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in anthologies such as, Shared Words, and Warps in the Tapestry. 

small talk

by Devon Neal

I never learned to float.

While friends could recline on the billowing surface

of backyard pools, the brown palm 

of the lake in June, the water swallowed me,

my ankles jagged concrete blocks,

my shoulders smooth river stones,

the goldfish of my organs swirling

in the tree limbs of my rib cage.

I could never tread water.

The stuff I’m made of is just too heavy,

my marrow like petrified wood,

my spine a clattering chain,

my lungs worn tires, waterlogged and black,

the reluctant prize of the novice fisherman.

Devon Neal (he/him) is a Bardstown, KY resident who received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Eastern Kentucky University and an MBA from The University of the Cumberlands. He currently works as a Human Resources Manager in Louisville, KY. His work has been featured in Moss Puppy Magazine, Dead Peasant, Paddler Press, MIDLVLMAG, and others.

2 poems

by Bryan Vale

oakland arena  

the canal floats

oil paints and

oxidized screws away

from their origins

in industrial backlots.

true story: i once dumped,

at my boss's direction,

ten gallons of acrylic 

down the drain.

so it's my canal

too, and i float

up to the

urban-scarred 

horizon. 

to the girls who enjoyed the hand motions

who brought waves of mercy and grace to life,

who improvised choreography to those songs that lacked it,

who closed eyes and tilted heads

as choruses hit the high note,

to the girls who enjoyed the hand motions:

i wish i knew who dispensed your wisdom,

who gave out your generosity.

i was a fly on the wall of your winter camp,

a seeker in the doorway of your youth group,

a humble pursuer of knowledge and joy

lost on unmarked dirt roads far from my destination.

Bryan Vale is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several journals, including Scribes*MICRO*Fiction, Paddler Press, Friday Flash Fiction, Bright Flash Literary Review, and Quibble. Learn more at bryanvalewriter.com, or follow Bryan on Twitter and Instagram: @bryanvalewriter.

2 poems

by Isaac Fox

as she’s dragged to the gallows

In Paradise

Lost, Earth

hangs from Heaven

by a golden

chain.

how Frank imagines the afterlife

When you

butcher

fresh-caught

bluegills,

brown eyes 

blink and

gills flap,

even

when their 

heads are

bloodied 

in a 

bucket

Isaac Fox writes crazy things, plays the clarinet and guitar, and spends as much time as possible outside. His work has previously appeared in Bending Genres, Tiny Molecules, and 50-Word Stories, among other publications. You can find him on Twitter at @isaac_k_fox.

\ out past the dawns (a pantoum)

by Frank G. Karioris

the warp

ripped your hands

as fallow bus 

routes departed

ripped your hands

on the empty shell remnants 

routes departed

& all we can do is stay

on the empty shell remnants

you braved new storms

& all we can do is stay

holding out hope, tomorrows

you braved new storms

where winter was oncoming

holding out hope, tomorrows

can’t break bone so easily

where winter was oncoming

phones no longer ringing  

can’t break bone so easily

so they breathe 

phones no longer ringing

love wasn’t meant to live

so they breathe

will you stay here now still

love wasn’t meant to live

were you hoping for more

will you stay here now still

or did the ocean draw you out again

were you hoping for more

what do palms contain 

or did the ocean draw you out again

waves don’t drown, just hold you close

what do palms contain

if the sand drifts

waves don’t drown, just hold you close

at night we make our own cover

if the sand drifts

make a beachhead & hold against the tide forthcoming 

at night we make our own cover

separated from a bed & a lover & all that is left is the roar of tempests 

make a beachhead & hold against the tide forthcoming

winds blow

separated from a bed & a lover & all that is left is the roar of tempests 

night still

winds blow

holy

night still 

cold

holy

aurora

cold 

eventide. 

Frank G. Karioris (he/they/him/them) is a writer and educator based in San Francisco whose writing addresses issues of friendship, gender, and class. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Collective Unrest, Riverstone, Sooth Swarm Journal, and in the collection Eco-Justice For All amongst others. They were a W.S. Merwin Fellow at the 2023 Community of Writers Poetry Program.

2 poems

by Eric Pinder

after an unexpected snowfall in May

Apollo always dillydallies

at daybreak, blanketed

in snug penumbra,

too drowsy to heed

the urgent birdsong beseeching

a tardy sun, its warm timbre

almost forgotten, to unburden

boughs and branches hunched

beneath the white weight

of Demeter’s grief.

ajar

Alone

the body

is a jar inside

of which

nothing

exists

except

the hollow

gap

so sparsely filled

by the sole

thing trapped

by Pandora. 

Only that,

that diffuse hope

spread within

the jar as thin

as the suffocating

vapor on Mars —

only that frail gasp

of hope

prevents

collapse.

Eric Pinder is the author of If All the Animals Came Inside and other books about wilderness, wildlife, and weather. He teaches at a small college in the woods, a few miles down the road less traveled. 

2 poems

by Em Setzer

Biddeford Pool, ME

My friend humming

to the periwinkle snails

and her voice is lost to the wind

and the snail remains inside

its shell.

my mother on luna moths

It rests on the side

of the lakehouse,

wings the green type

of youngskinny scions.

Spots like eyes, like

the sleepy eyes of

Byzantine saints

puncture sweet green.

I am saddened, I say.

They have no mouths.

They live a waiting

life, they die hungry.

Don’t be, she says.

They live beautiful.

They are beautiful

and they are happy

for it.

Em Setzer is a poet and translator from Maryland. Their work has been published by Asymptote, LUPERCALIA Press, and The Foundationalist. They will begin an MFA at Cornell University in the fall.

sea

by Fiona Vigo Marshall

This sea is made of light, 

rolling heavy in and crashing

on the pebbles in the old way. 

And it’s as if it prays me:

Please send him back, 

and, I want to go home.

This chastens me; 

it’s not me praying.

It’s an involuntary surge, 

basic and automatic as this sea,

or my heart beating, 

that longs for itself. 

It’s not personal.

I’m past caring 

that my love were in my arms again,

that the small rain down can rain. 

It’s this liquid light

gathering itself and heaving 

with the sway of many moons,

many centuries, that wants things 

to go back

to being how they were before.

I have no say, in my longing.

Fiona Vigo Marshall’s work has been published in Aesthetica, Ambit, Fiction, Ink Sweat & Tears, OpenPen, Orbis, Phantom Drift, Prospect, Theology Journal, and Vita Poetica. She is the author of two novels, Find Me Falling, 2019, and The House of Marvellous Books, 2022, paperback 2023, Fairlight Books, Oxford. 

echo location

by Kate Polak

The strains in an abandoned classroom were a new page —

tones mastering the same creamy range, blanching dull, 

then harried, then straining against whatever wall

they’re thrown across. But me, I’ll always take the twang

of fiddle over violin — reminds me of clear liquor, 

and the busy hurdling of concatenation, the frenzied

fingering, blown steel strings flailing from the neck: knotted

knuckles, that his play in this empty space made boiling lore,

attained, as his hands ranged, the grace of supplicant—

flagellating an Appalachian myth to form. The forearm posed

and crooked to push sinew to denim, clothed 

in all devoted practice of those renewed in covenant. 

After a late one, our hands were laughing at one another’s waists

when we were rudely interrupted, and so, rephrased.    

Kate Polak is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has recently appeared in Plainsongs, McSweeney’s, So to Speak, Coffin Bell, The Closed Eye Open, Inverted Syntax, and elsewhere. She lives in South Florida and aspires to a swamp hermitage. 

the girls we were

by Irene Cantizano Bescós

We were immortal children 

in the forest’s golden glade.

Our skirts swirling in the schoolyard,

poplar seeds like falling snow.

Three half-remembered dreams

I caress every morning.

Here’s the last one:

Remember when I showed you Orion’s Belt?

The summer stars got tangled in your hair

I brushed them out - your thick black curls the night sky

I was afraid to breathe; how could time not stop right then, how did it dare?

You were so beautiful back then.

But when we went into the woods and tried to play,

our bodies weren’t ours anymore 

our hands suddenly too big,

we couldn’t recognise each other.

Then all these perfect boys I loved and hurt

because 

they weren't you.

Now, when the house is quiet

on the eve of the long summer,

I unspool my days onto my breast.

Of all the lives I didn't live,

ours is the one I most regret.

Irene Cantizano Bescós is a writer and immigrant from Spain lost between two languages. Her work has been featured in Amethyst Review, Moria, Black Hare Press, Five Minutes, (mac)ro(mic), and Tales to Terrify, among others. She is also a freelance journalist, and her reporting has appeared in leading Spanish and UK titles such as Huffington Post, El País, Telva, and Positive News. Irene lives in England with her husband, two boisterous toddlers, and two warring cats. You can find her on Twitter as @IreneCantizano.

youngsters

by Hiram Larew

Remember that

I peeked through the group kitchen’s door

That was ajar like memory

And saw you carrying 

Trays of tortillas 

To the oven  

You looked up for a split second

But were busy

Years from now

When you’re my age

And the tortillas are youngsters

Remember that I looked in 

For just a blink

Before the door closed

And then went into another room

As you will someday

Founder of Poetry X Hunger: Bringing a World of Poets to the Anti-Hunger Cause, Hiram Larew has had poems appear in recent issues of ZiN Daily, Contemporary American Voices, The Iowa Review and Poetry Scotland's Gallus.  His most recent collection, Patchy Ways, was published by CyberWit Press in 2023.   

roller skates

by Lisa Caroline Friedman

Stiff-legged, arms jerking 

like bent wings struggling 

to catch air, we inched up the driveway

giving first flight to our identical 

twin gifts from Grandma Rose.

We were four feet bound

in hard white leather with pink 

wheels and toe stops. We found 

a jagged rhythm 

as our wheels rolled over 

pocked and pebbled pavement 

then hiccupped at the lips 

between slabs. We hugged 

parking meters to rest or stop

a fall then hit the playground 

where we skated between metal 

swings and mostly dirt 

fields. We skated until dusk

then back to the dreaded 

driveway, now downhill. I reached 

the bottom upright and waited 

but your wheels ran wild  

and you skated into me – 

my body, your stop. We fell 

and first I cradled you. Then I yelled

at you, embarrassed. You skated

while I fake-limped 

the rest of the way 

home. What I wouldn’t give

give to cradle you now.

Lisa Caroline Friedman (she/her) was born in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, grew up in New York City, and currently resides in Palo Alto, California with her husband, daughters, and thirteen year-old labradoodle. Her first published poem appeared in the March 2023 issue of Pink Panther Magazine. She will have two more poems published in the Fall 2023 issues of San Pedro River Review and Rat’s Ass Review. She received a BA in English from Stanford University and this winter, will begin Antioch University’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program.

she, her, and me

by Annie Tallis

She comes in the dark 

when I am defenseless, 

washes over my body, 

presses her fists down 

my throat and 

deprives 

me of my senses. I cannot 

sleep until I give in to the 

tidal wave of grief. Salt 

stings my eyes as 

tears race down my face, 

speeding, trying to prove

who loved her 

more. 

I wake, screaming,

drenched in sweat 

jolting at

the realization: I can 

never be hurt by her again. 

In my personal drought, 

I sit on the floor

of the shower, let the cold 

water run

over and under my pain.

Annie Tallis is a young queer poet living in Cardiff, Wales. She originally began writing poetry as a cathartic experience to process grief, trauma and pretty much any emotion! She has previously been published in Sideways Poetry Journal and Green Ink Poetry. She will have upcoming pieces of the new editions, both online and in print, of Inspired Poetry. 

easter 2020

by John Tessitore

The hands of the buried have dug to light.

Over night, flattened fingers pierced the leaves

that cleave to the loaming after the thaw,

clawed the soft ground at the margins

of the open yard, and spread to the heavens.

Soon they will be hidden in the bramble

of wild raspberry that chokes the edge

of this wood, in the glade where the oaks

stood tall, on this side of the mended wall

that once marked the limit of my knowledge.

No deeper had I ever wandered

into the wild than this outline of an old

estate, or a farm gone to seed, overrun.

A quiet garden must have grown here

with bulbs along a hedge, maybe a walk 

for girls with baskets, boys in short pants.

It’s still too soon for jocund company,

no blooms to twinkle across the gray sea, 

although the forsythia is powdered today

with yellow, like the shavings of a pencil.

Maybe the season prepares to write 

its way back to routine and tell the tale

of our returning. I may not be ready

to reckon again with time, if what I seek

is a pause in the cascade of days,

a frozen moment, since the ones we love

may not live a long tomorrow.

Narcissus always rises to remember 

this sorrow, and weeps as the season resumes, 

as the vines creep to claim dead flowers.

John Tessitore has been a newspaper reporter, a magazine writer, and a biographer. He has taught British and American history and literature at colleges around Boston and has directed national policy studies on education, civil justice, and cultural policy. He serves as Co-Editor Across the Pond for The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Boats Against the Current, and Wild Roof and elsewhere. He has also published six eight chapbooks and a novella available at www.johntessitore.com. 

old town portland

by Virginia Lake

The flier in my mailbox

said I could discover

Jesus in downtown Portland

I would find him

at the Garden Church a 

storefront church

of modest proportions.

To clinch the deal, if I replied with an

RSVP, I would get a $5 coffee gift card.

The Garden Church is not really

Downtown like the Standard Insurance and

Historic Meier and Frank building.  

It is in Old Town, 

forsaken by God

and the City of Portland

The mentally ill 

relegated to the streets

have made Old Town their home.

They are assailed by rats 

sleep in tents

surrounded by garbage 

they shout and howl.

I would love to discover Jesus 

in Old Town. 

Virginia Lake is a senior auditor at Portland State University. She audits literature and writing classes. In 2022 she published two poems in Old Pal Magazine. She was 77 years old. That was her first publication.

foghorn

by John Martin

Sea grey and flat.

Fog,

its greyness merging with the plate of water

in a continuous monotone.

Complete silence is an absence

between each foghorn drone;

distant and sad,

laden with amorphous undefined dangers

at unknown distance on the starboard quarter,

or perhaps ahead.

The anticipation of the next moan

brings both anxiety that it will not come

and fear of its imminence.

Then suddenly the far thud

of a warning gun in another quarter.

The two unknown distant dangers

Out of phase.

John Martin’s 2004 collection, “The Origin of Loneliness” was followed by poems in The London Magazine, Magma, The Lancet, Dreich, Trasna, Drawn to the Light and Ink Drinkers magazines. A former soldier, he studied philosophy before medicine and currently works as a doctor and scientist in Europe and the US. 

beyond the bookcase

by Tamiko Mackison

you ask if we should remove our shoes
as they did –

I shake my head.

a line of pilgrims, mourners of one that represents many,

snakes from bedroom to narrower bedroom
poring over what survived.

you gasp at the steep staircase,
grasping the steps with your fingers to rise

to the next floor where the original sink remains
and a sign says Do Not Touch.

silence hangs like flags in each worn room.
the tall, terraced walls are papered with sadness.

a shopping note from a coat pocket
is now encased in glass:
we preserve the quick, insignificant scrawl
which becomes sacred.

outside, cyclists and trams fly around the city
whilst canal boat captains entice us aboard.
shiny, broad-shouldered professionals
drink small pints outside bars, joking and laughing.

it’s a strange world.

for every basket of pink geraniums that tumbles over a bridge
I smile.

she’s taught us more than we can ever know.

Tamiko Mackison read Latin and French at New College, Oxford. She was the winner of the BBC Radio 3 carol competition 2021. She has published two poetry books: "SHIMA (Islands)" (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) and "Seasons of Love Around the Rising Sun" (Broken Sleep, 2023). 

take a breath of fresh air

by Moriah Soriano

I want to ride the waves of the 

sea, fall off my surfboard

over and over and over and 

let the glassy sea 

catch me, embrace me wholesomely.

Though, if I swim back to the 

surface, I know, the water will 

accept me back. 

I want to drown my feet in the 

sand dunes, let mother nature 

kiss the bruises of my sadness. 

The grass on these sands

then sways to dance 

to the whispering 

sounds of the winds of chance. 

No, I don’t want to chase 

time, I don’t want to 

chase money – just want to submerge 

in the sublime that gave me.

Love so supreme better than 

you could ever give.

Moriah Soriano is an aspiring poet based in London. Her introduction to the world of adulthood forced her to have an existential introspection of the life she had pre-adolescence and the disquiet uncertainty of her future. This propels her to bleed those emotions into words as she navigates life with poetry on the passenger seat.