on understanding daisy jones & billy dunne

by Melanie H. Manuel

there’s a man & woman 

in a hospital church, waiting 

for news, where they talk about 

god & what it means to come 

together. they sit there, side 

by side, only a breath 

away from touching skin. 

i think about last week 

when we talked about seeing 

each other. how we’ve always 

done this, looked past persons 

standing beside us, as if those 

bodies could stop this moment—

an intersection of lines, etched 

by time & chance, to believe

in this: the lingering, a kind of 

holding beyond hands, rather 

bodies—your chest pressed firm 

into mine, warm, steady, like 

a weight that brings my knees 

to kiss ground, you’re there 

to tether me to the expanse of this 

apartment. we hold ourselves 

pressed flush together underneath 

the technicolor lights & muted 

instrumentals to some song forgotten 

in darkness, another kind of falling. 

how in that is slick skin on slick 

skin, a melting between our 

bodies in an unbothered crowd. i dig 

my nails into your forearm after 

the second wave of unmooring. 

feel you tighten around my ribcage. 

watch you hold the light, the 

only one, pull me, back to center.

Melanie H. Manuel is a Filipina American poet. She obtained her BA in Asian American Studies and English from UC Davis and is currently attending SDSU for her MFA in poetry. She has been published twice by Third Iris Zine. She has been awarded the Prebys Creative Writing Scholarship, the Master’s Research Fellowship, and most recently, the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Scholarship. She is currently the Production Editor for PIOnline and teaches in the RWS program. 

after the storm, silver and green (vault sky)

Arthur Dove, 1923

by Jesse Curran

We must remember he lived on a boat. 

We must imagine what it feels like to sway.

We must recall the sea is never still, even when still.

We should reminisce that we were once embryos 

    then tiny people, sheltered in amniotic warmth.

We should try to see the sound as a mattress, a watery bed 

    a soothing expanse of undulating rhythm. 

We might then sense that for Arthur Dove, the bay itself

    was a berth with a view.

We might image how it looked after the storm

   the clouds clearing and the moon’s reflection 

   cascading across the Cow Harbor Bay.

We might then learn that metallic paint offers a shine

    not otherwise possible with the standard earthy oils.

When we behold the painting, we might see ourselves.

We might stare out on our seas and feel safe and at ease.

We too might feel ourselves being gently rocked.

We too might remember that water 

    draws away 

    half of our pain.

Jesse Curran is a poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher who lives in Northport, NY. Her essays and poems have appeared in a number of literary journals including About Place, Ruminate, After the Art, Allium, Blueline, and Still Point Arts Quarterly. She teaches in the Department of English at SUNY Old Westbury. www.jesseleecurran.com

3 poems

by Chrissy Stegman

dear pine trees,

I have this desire to cut down the roses I see 

through my library window. The feminine urge to burn it.

Rip every last blossom off the branches & tatter

the pink into worthlessness.

dear PTBGK,

My right hand stopped working yesterday.

Today is better.

I do feel alive. I know I am consuming a starry sky

drop of poison

after poison after poison I wake

alive inside

a poison &

each morning, comments arrive in my mind:

Stop, stop, stop. Not another drop. Tick tock.

dear II,

My brother sent me a song.

The title was let our names be forgotten but

I will forever remember our middle names.

Chrissy Stegman is a poet/writer who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has been featured in various journals, most recently Rejection Letters and Gone Lawn with work forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Red Ogre Review, Stone Circle Review, and Fictive Dream. She is the recipient of the 2022 Patricia Bibby Idyllwild Arts scholarship for poetry and placed second for the 2022 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize. She is a 2023 Best of the Net Nominee.

you could never get my nose right

by Samantha Kelly

A monument to your potential,

squandered. 

Like the bottles of claret spilt on the floor. 

I suppose red was never your color. 

Dust covers everything, 

causing the light to scatter. 

It is a deficiency of humanity to only 

see things in contrast. 

Paint drips toward the easel

in the center. The heart – your heart.

With the canvas atop it like autopsy. 

It’s not a bad likeness of me,  

aside from all the cuts. 

Samantha Kelly is a student of the Warwick Writing Programme. Her poetry has been featured in Along Harrowed Trails, a recent Timber Ghost Press anthology. She was born and raised in a city with a lack of water and an abundance of cathedrals.  

father/firefly

by Nikita Kohring

I have never seen a firefly in person I would like to

hold one and watch it light a candle on its face

wince and flicker a sweet bug, molded with wax

its body will warp in time stomach cut open, sick

with leftover mistakes. my mistake for thinking you could change

me, a path of bruises into someone good

good and gold and Godlike. my father hates boys more than

he hates me or himself because he once was one and look how that turned out

he’s not mad at me, he just wanted to hold the world and he has only me

he’s mad at blue light bathrooms and he watches you, boy-bug, repeat the cycle of

me, loving me. our history, that of blue gray girls and matchstick boys.

we love each other but we don’t know how to love each other,

just like how I know what fireflies look like but not how one would feel in my palm.

Nikita Kohring is from South Florida. She edits for her school's literary magazine, Seeds in the Black Earth, in which she also has two pieces. She is featured in Bullshit Lit's second anthology and has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. You can find her @ratglrl on Instagram. 

2 poems

by Heather Ann Pulido

together at sea

Waves unclenched like dragon claws

Lightning cracked like spits of fire

Still, we braved the midnight:

Two paper boats

the kite to the tree

Seize me, gingerly

Cradle my wind-chilled body

Plant me in your bones

I glided above the seas

To dive into you, agape

Heather Ann Pulido is an indigenous bisexual author from Baguio City, Philippines. A longtime freelance journalist and content writer, she is a returning artist. Her poetry is in Yuzu Press and Sage Cigarettes. She has a BOTN-nominated poem published by JAKE. When she's supposed to be writing, she's on Twitter (@heather_tries).

farmer’s market

by Luís Costa

instead of allowing myself to be happy I keep trying

to find you exploring the tight curves of bell peppers,

your laugh echoing within the crunch of sourdough,

a smile lingering as the sharpness of sheep’s cheese,

hiding melancholia inside green olives’ salty brines,

ghosts tucked so tightly in the shadows of fig leaves,

hesitantly pacing between the honeys and the jams,

lavender bunches chosen to mask a grey loneliness.

I used to love you on Saturday mornings – now I go

to the farmer’s market and pretend you’re still around.  

Luís Costa (he/they) is an anxious queer poet featured multiple times in Visual Verse, Stone of Madness and Queerlings, as well as in Inksounds, Farside Review and FEED. Longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry in 2022, his debut pamphlet Two Dying Lovers Holding A Cat was published by Fourteen Poems in November 2023. He holds a PhD in Psychology from Goldsmiths and lives in London with his cat Pierożek. You can find him on Twitter @captainiberia

2 poems

by Caitlin Upshall

peanut butter & jelly

On days when my grief is too loud, I put in ear plugs and roll away from her in bed but she finds me anyway and I wake up with a hand across my chest that makes it hard to breathe and when she refuses to leave, I decided to spend the day with my grief; see, they say you should feed a cold and starve a fever, but I don’t know which one she is so, instead, I make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but I leave the crusts on and we go to a park but she pulls a shadow from the trees and I feed the ducks but she wails a swan song and I don’t want to invite her to my favorite places but she leads the way, knowing each one better than I do and eventually, when the sun has set and we are home, I fall asleep on the couch, a small hand resting on my chest, making each breath difficult and each one something to be thankful for.

flat

there are no mountains there

my Oregonian mother spends

months trapped in a paper picture

searching up

for heights left unconquerable

any perch for the gods

years after she leaves the paper picture

Washington breaks loudly atop a geological conversation

and my Oxfordian father understands 

why we do not yell

Caitlin Upshall (she/her/hers) holds a B.A. in English from Western Washington University and is currently based in the United Kingdom. When she's not writing, she enjoys most things dinosaur-related and trivia nights. You can find her on Instagram at @CaitlinUpshall or at www.caitlinupshall.com. 

if a bird would sing

by Caroline LaNoce

If a bird would sing,

amongst the terror and rage,

it was my sign to go 

I have thought about this many times you see – 

running away

as fast as my feet would allow

Not considering the sweltering heat in early July, 

Not envisioning the plump blisters on my course skin, 

splitting open and bleeding out,

cherry red, my favorite color 

Not sealing my eyes shut and standing still,

hearing the sound of my own heart palpitations bang like a drum 

pounding violently against my leathery chest 

And I think to myself – 

Oh how I think and think and think

If only a bird would have sang earlier, 

perched gently in its tree

High up from the madness,

the Northern Mockingbird watching destruction unfold, 

singing his sweet song,

the lullaby I never received 

Watching me closely, and with purpose, 

the endearing eye contact that failed to ever exist – 

I hear that song

And I go 

Caroline LaNoce attended Saint Joseph’s University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude in the Spring of 2023 with her Bachelor of Arts in English, Writing, and Literature. She is continuing her education at Saint Joseph’s and is pursuing her Masters of Arts in Writing where she hopes to expand her writing skills, both professionally and creatively.

distant stars illuminate nothing

by Tohm Bakelas

It is September, no October,

and for three days the rain 

hasn’t slowed. Except now,

now it has stopped, when

just before it was steady.

You can see the river has 

risen, far higher than it had 

been all summer. And 

summer, a season now gone, 

is a place you no longer wish 

to remember — too many losses, 

too many heartbreaks. Summer 

grows shorter as you grow older.

But here in this autumn, you

hear crickets talking amongst

themselves, talking about things

you will never understand. You

wonder where all the birds have

flown, is it to some place south,

some place tropical where the

sun always shines? You wonder

why you were not invited, but then

you remember you are not a bird.

And tonight, outside your window,

you will watch the moon disappear 

behind grey clouds in the inky sky 

as distant stars illuminate nothing.

Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a psychiatric hospital. He was born in New Jersey, resides there, and will die there. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world.  He is the author of twenty-six chapbooks and several collections of poetry, including “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023).  He is the editor of Between Shadows Press.

the cloud

by Virginia Lake

My computer tutor tells me

My poems are in the cloud

I guess that means 

With everyone else’s poems 

Rent receipts

Grocery lists

Etcetera

Thomas Aquinas 

Father of moral philosophy

Who was canonized in 1308

First asked 

How many angels can dance

On the head of a pin?

That is a famous subject

Of theological debate.

I worry about the angels

Who dance

On the head of a pin

In the clouds

Where the angels live

How large is that pin?

Will there be enough

Room for my poems?

And the tutor has

Yet to explain

What about the rain?

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.

iron lung

by Benjamin WC Rosser

My window shut,

blocking Summer’s fierce gaze

and brown haze from distant flaming timbers.

One machine cools the room,

then my cats and I may nap.

Another, like a Vegas magician,

pulls gallons of water

from the air we breathe.

My window shut,

glazed by Winter’s cruel lick, 

outside sheets of ice and broken branches.

Furnace air and a space heater

blanket us with dry heat.

Eyes itch, hands and heels crack,

another device weaves soothing water

into the air we breathe.

I met a man, years ago,

who lived inside an iron lung.

It did the work of breathing for him.

His hapless head stuck out one end

of what seemed a metal casket on wheels.

With cheeky laughter, he read everything

and used his mouth to write.

I crack open my window.

Benjamin WC Rosser is a Professor Emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan where his areas of research and teaching were, respectively, cell biology and human anatomy. His poetry has been published in Consilience Journal (2022) and London Grip (2022, 2023). He currently resides retired in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife Corinne and children Isabel and Oliver.

still life

by Chloe Cook

Lipstick rimming glass
imprint of bottom lip like nectarine segment
bruised purple shade Amythest Wrath
I aim for the same spot, sucking in citrus notes
The glass’ contusion follows my head, blurring
Strangers hang like swollen berries on the vine
movements slow, anchored by elbow on syrupy bar
I stroke the wooden butt of pocket knife
enclosed in jacket as pip is enclosed by lemon flesh
fingers feel its polished streak embellished by nights like these
Fantasy of fruit freshly cut from stalk, warming in the palm
The people change faces nightly, mould their bodies more generously
but their smell – fruit bowl sickly, banana peel splitting – unchanged
flies feeding at the dishes of their mouths, alcohol rotten invitations
I am an apple rolling from crowded tree, worm bitten
sensing the sagging, bathroom door is the gateway to safety, sagging of my face
I find a mirror to see it with, toilet sounding behind me
with closed eyes I wash the glass clean, water pouring over cuff
soaking up to my elbow, I push my shoulder under
tip my head beneath the faucet, washing myself down the drain

Chloe Cook is a literary fiction writer and fine artist, located in England. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing and is interest in themes of dissociation, the fracturing of reality and the contrasting stillness that inhabits everyday lives. In her spare time she goes for walks – normally with a coffee in hand, avidly fantasies about improbable things, and runs a modest bookstagram account under @thenovelobserver.

thank you

by Robin Kinzer

It’s drizzling when I step outside.  

A July Sunday in Baltimore,

the night after we say goodbye.

Even as the sky spits steadily

harder, fireflies weave drunkenly.  

They continue to flicker and flash.

Tiny strobe lights in the night sky,

I wonder how strong their wings must be.  

Wonder if you realize you changed my life.

I tilt my face towards the ink blot of stormy sky, 

let rain spill down my cheeks. Let it curl through

my spray of pink hair. I watch the fireflies

weave drunkenly through the rain, seeking

out love even with sodden wings.

They know what they desire.  

As do I.

Robin Kinzer is a queer, disabled poet, memoirist, occasional teacher, and editor. Robin has poems and essays published, or forthcoming, in Cleaver Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Blood Orange Review, fifth wheel press, Delicate Friend, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She’s a Poetry Editor for the winnow magazine. She loves glitter, Ferris wheels, vintage fashion, sloths, and radical empathy.  She can be found on Twitter at @RobinAKinzer and at www.robinkinzer.com

summer storms

by K. Rice

Cruelty to me is the stoplights never staying red 

long enough for me to think about how

"He occupies his body again"

made it sound like the poison was just something to sweat out.

Like this dream was something I could have controlled

if I could reach inside a synapse and grab

a fistful of sedative

and wake up on purpose for once.

Between me and this highway,

I hang from these words like milkweed,

moonlight on the wall signaling seasons

when I cocoon myself away from the grief

and the loose threads of you everywhere all over

this damn house:

When every day is a choice

I either die in my wraps or fly away.

K. Rice (she/her) is a creative based in Los Angeles, CA. She currently studies urban planning at UCLA. In her downtime, you can find her at Philz Coffee working on passion projects and sipping a Honey Haze.

little magic

by Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano

Sometimes you want magic

but not like Morgana had 

for your hands to be filled 

with little magic

to do the simple things 

with your powers

like pausing a bad day

avoiding an accident

turning off the light bulb 

from your bed or 

telling your grandma 

you love her

few seconds before she dies.

Ifunanya Georgia Ezeano is an Igbo, Nigerian writer, poet, and editor. She holds a BSc in Psychology. She has her works published in journals and lit mags in many places. She is the head editor for Writers Space Africa Virtual/Video Poetry. She was the pioneer leader of Poets in Nigeria, at the University of Nigeria Nsukka.  She is the author of the poetry collection; Naked and Thorns & Petals (on Amazon and other places) and she has other unpublished works. She has a Gazelle (Droplets) coming out on the Konya Shamsrumi Review Gazelle series. She was nominated this year for the British Loft Prize for flash fiction. She recently received the Sparks Poetry Award honorary mention from Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada. She is interested in human experiences, the psychology of life, femininity, and Africanism.

two objects

by Celinda Olive

Summer again, my beloved peonies 

the palest of pinks in their petal fleece.

I wash a wine glass under the spotlight 

just above the sink. Junior Kimbrough

lulls in the background in steady 

pulsed blues. It’s a mantra, 

this ominous lyric, “You better run…don’t let him get you…” 

The crystal of the glass, awfully 

clear, kissing the serrated blade like a mandate 

from heaven — and it overwhelms me, 

this terrible, sharp beauty, of living. 

Celinda Olive is a poet residing in the Minneapolis area and holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Seattle Pacific University. She’s a clumsy steward of beauty taking one day at a time. 

2 poems

by Anne Mikusinski

definition

Art is debatable

At best

If civility is your 

Aim 

For the discussion

At worst

It’s

Raised voices 

And various opinions

Expressed

In sitting rooms

Or noisy bars

Or sometimes

Outside venues

Where people wait

Together

To see the same event

But come away with something

Different.

as yet

Tonight I read 

As if you were listening 

Attentively

While hidden

In a quiet corner

Dimly lit

And undisclosed

But there.

As underneath

An imaginary spotlight

I revealed

My true intentions.

Anne Mikusinski has always been in love with words. She’s been writing poems and short stories since she was seven. Her influences range from Robert Frost and Dylan Thomas to David Byrne and Nick Cave. She hopes that one day, some of her writing will impress others the way these writers have had an impact on her.

summer calm

by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

There were always fresh peaches

in the fancy bowl on the counter

as soon as the summer scents

lofted the days to never ending

Diving into the liquid blue

further and deeper, over and over

seeing just how long

you can hold your breath

Playing ditch beyond last call

no one even looking for us

at stake the light of the moon

should we ever let ourselves be found

Taking late showers

the sweet sweat of an endless climb

up a cherry tree ready for harvest

forever holding its luster

A bowl of ice cream before bed

in our boxer shorts on the back porch

the boundless chirp of crickets

shaping the contours of our slumber

Jeffrey Yamaguchi (jeffreyyamaguchi.com) creates projects with words, photos, and video as art explorations, as well as through his professional endeavors in the publishing industry. His work has been featured in publications such as Okay Donkey, Atticus Review, Kissing Dynamite, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Vamp Cat Magazine, Nightingale & Sparrow, Failed Haiku, Daily Haiga, Black Bough Poetry, Feral, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Storms.

scene at sea

by Nida Mubaraki

a lightbulb forty feet up waves hello from the southern tide, 

little hiccups in the waves 

dancing at our knobby knees. 

we woke up 200 miles north from last year’s dream 

in a farewell letter to the silver dollar espresso – 

traded in your boiler pot for a slow & grating stove, simmering 

soft your protruding ribs inside-out. 

newport’s sun-cloud glaze and my sworded fingers, 

wrapped up in sheets and echoes of yesterday. what happened to the

smell of the morning blackberries? too early picked 

and i don’t know what home is anymore. is it true 

you left her here to die? 

coffin in the kitchenette, sitting like a 

four o’clock scone. back there you’re all buttery and bone-thin 

in some alienatic way; 

dirtied hands and two-knot hair that you left in the city, 

all out of your reddish plates you fed to a lazy-eyed tomb. 

you were wound-up in the days of yesterday 

before the interstate drive down up (please don’t go back down).

education born in new england, the only place 

we can read with the fisherman’s daughters. learn where comfort resides:

they’re not short-knived in the boroughs. 

stay here with me is what i’d say if this was about us: 

linger where the ocean is the broth at supper, 

savory & seasonal is our mainland diet. 

no energy drinks except for the accidental saltwater sips, 

breaking bread with crab legs and lemon instead. 

august can be eternal now, if you keep holding my hand – 

do we abandon our souls if we leave here? 

down south we don’t work. just let us nod off 

in crisp winter with nothing 

but the woods, the fire, and us. 

waves shouting at you: the tide will welcome you now. no more nostalgia, no more

dreams, no more wonder; 

certainty is in the cusp of your palm & is thumbing your lip, healing the years

of bites. north is no north but it’s evergreened home, 

the city gives you nothing but day-old bread and a lack of remorse.

Nida Mubaraki is a New Jersey and Philadelphia based writer. She has work in/forthcoming in Maudlin House, Bullshit Lit, and Eunoia Review, amongst others. She works as the senior editor, Twitter head, and a contributor for The Empty Inkwell Review. Email her at nidamubaraki@gmail.com or find her on Twitter: @pennedbynida.