dad

by Britta Adams

My father spoke softly, 

like wind before the storm:

Don’t stop imagining

the life of the aphid, how it sucks

the watery marrow from each

leaf it encounters. Don’t neglect

the way raindrops dance

on car windows or how wiggly worms

cry when exposed on wet cement. Don’t

ignore a small girl caught in the eye

of a hurricane or the single shy tear

unnoticed by those who rush by —

the day you do is the day

you die.

My father whispered “goodnight”

like wind before the storm.

I can still hear him

typing away in his dark corner closet,

while we girls were supposedly sleeping.

But I would stay up and listen

to words coming to life:

The drip drip drip of keyboard clicks,

echoing down the hallway.

It sounded like rain.

Britta Adams is a poet living in Orem, Utah, with a passion for binging documentaries, playing video games, and baking delicious treats.

some poems are anecdotal like this

by Stephanie Trenchard

Anecdotal in painting is to depict small narratives, like a woman sleeping on a picnic table as the blue-sky spins and a winged lemur, a nocturnal animal, fluent in the language of dreams, waits nearby looking away from the vortex.  Reading in bed, my membrane bound matter, my cells, search for what is missing, what is available. Music, meaning images from a dream state, a daydream break, invites the unexpected, the surrealism of my layered memories, and even if, even when, a judgment pricks and forces an exhale, a resignation to time, to ego again,  I fold back into the sleepy realm and gravitate to the rhythm of patterns, novel thoughts that pair images, for instance, of Jupiter and someone from years ago, Eileen or Scott, unfinished, unopened presents from the psyche, left deep within. A hello again, together, surprise, surprise! A divertimento that feels like a key. Some dreams are like this.

Stephanie Trenchard is a nationally recognized artist whose narrative cast glass work in many fine collections and museums. She runs a hot glass studio in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin as well as teaching her technique internationally. Her writing has been published in Dillydoun Review, The Closed Eye Open, upcoming in Black Fox Literary Journal, and The Write Launch. Her artwork is in many fine collections and museums and can be seen at popelkaglass.com

gretna days

by Nate Castellitto

I could sit here all day, watch you read

that novel. You purchased it 

yesterday at the market; I left with a 

collection of reprints

of the coffee table variety. I think 

I should read it again.

Spend more time with acrylic river 

and mountain and lilac. The 

kettle has boiled a minute too late because

neither of us wants tea anymore. We 

forgot to pick up honey

 yesterday. I could 

go out again but today is a 

nothing day.

The comforter on the 

living room sofa remains inviting. I remember 

you mentioned your novel examines an unsolved

sequence of crime. This time I 

light a candle by the stove and bring

you a glass of rosé.

Nate Castellitto (he/him/his) is a poet and flash writer in Pennsylvania. His poems have appeared in wildness, Sojourners, and elsewhere. Read more at natecastellitto.net.

nature

by Bianca Sanchez

Earth is a puzzle 

green and blue pieces scattered

the details get lost  

Aloe Vera, healer 

extends her green leaves like hands

soothes burns and cuts

Fresh Ginger, yellow

sunshine for gloomy stomachs

tastes spicy, acts sweet

Hard workers, you Bees

our gardener without gloves

so much life you bring

Trees, lungs of the earth

leaves inhale and exhale

so we can breathe too

Even gray clouds bring 

a belly of gifts, brown grass

sticks out its dry tongue. 

Bianca Sanchez is a writer living in San Diego. She has a BA in English from San Diego State University and currently works in publishing. Her work has appeared in 50-word Stories, Every Day Fiction, and San Diego Poetry Annual. Her Instagram handle is @sanchezbianca1.

poor room for a sonnet

by ​​Matthew Nisinson

after Poor Room - There is No Time, No End, No Today, No Yesterday, No Tomorrow, Only the Forever and Forever and Forever without End 

by Ivan Albright, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

No, I am going to make my endless world

in a confined space. No time, no end, no today

no yesterday, no tomorrow. Now my world

will be flatness on flatness, layered forever

and forever and forever without end. No room

for depth, for nuance, for insight. Flat. No, you

will just have to gaze. Flat hands, flat feet, no

room for pain, no room for the absence

of pain. No room for absence, only flat now. 

Everything here, everywhen, always and contin-

uous. No order to it. No disorder to it. At once

and always. Poor room, we press on. Flat forever 

and forever and forever flat. We are. We both just are.

​​Matthew Nisinson (he/him) is a proud New Yorker living in Queens with his wife and daughter and their two cats. He has a JD, and a BA in Latin. Each summer he grows chili peppers. By day he is a bureaucrat. His poetry has appeared in en*gendered, Hyacinth Review, and Milk Press, among others. You can find him on Instagram or Threads @lepidum_novum_libellum and on Twitter and Bluesky @mnisinson. 

sloth at the Cincinnati zoo

by Ashley Kirkland

Maybe

 it’s the temperature, 

but I can’t

be rushed; I like

to take my time, take it

                slow. Clawed fist over

clawed fist, branch 

to branch. It can be

so lonely in winter

– so few visitors 

that time of year. Not like

                      the summer when the kids flock

for summer camp

to spend their days among 

the trees and those of us 

hiding in them. 

I play this game

– it takes all night– 

where I find a new hide-out

in the greenhouse and the children 

try to find me in the morning. 

There’s nothing quite like 

the sound of a child 

squealing with joy, calling

his friends to 

come here. 

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can most recently be found in The Naugatuck River Review, The Light Ekphrastic, and boats against the current. 

I wasn’t going to tell you, but

by Lisa MacKenzie

I put the avocados,

which were in the fridge,

back out on the counter to ripen.

You wanted to make guacamole 

for dinner tomorrow

with these stones.

I don’t mind if you’re mad,

but they won’t taste good.

Like you,

no softness,

no yielding.

Lisa MacKenzie is enjoying the free time of retirement in which to write poetry.  Her work has appeared in boats against the current, Visual Verse and Literary North. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two entertaining cats.

Note: The title of this poem is inspired by This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

daybreak and the little moon in the sky

by Charlene Langfur

The sky is a sweet, deep, dark blue before the light breaks.

The little moon, an arc over the tall fan palms.

A single star glowing over a hot planet.

This is a birthday poem in the Sonoran Desert.

The poem tracking where we are, marking it safely.

I think this is what the poem does now. Saves us.

Reminds of the best we can do, remembering the miracle

of stopping to see what was around us all along.

Fan palm leaves alive, green, deep green, swaying,

in a place of sand and scraggly wild grass.

Mesquite covered with small pods all over it,

cactus on fire with yellow flowers and red fruit.

What goes on living no matter what. I follow along

after what lives, what goes for more where there is less.

I think, why not grow older along with the universe,

eat cupcakes with lemon icing, blow out the candles on top,

on a planet of bombs and threats, a pandemic

that does not quit. And I keep going back to the poem and the sky,

my rescued dog’s wild kisses, the idea nothing’s amiss even if it is,

and I open up the day this way, all in, agog with the new, exactly who

and where I am in the desert in the pandemic in the recession

at the beginning of earth changes.

Charlene Langfur is an LGBTQ and green writer, an organic gardener with many publications in Room, Weber, The Stone Canoe, most recently in The Hiram Poetry Review, Poetry East, Acumen, an essay in Still Point Arts Quarterly, and a short story “The Force of Atoms in an Imperfect World” highlighted on the Hudson Valley Writer’s Guild website.

today is Rilke’s birthday

by Justin Karcher

and the café’s busier than usual. The guy

sitting at the table next to me loudly recalling

drunken heroics. Like the time he swam across

the Niagara River. His friend’s absolutely

in awe. There’s a very fine line

between being a hero and having your little life

come crashing down. A torso cut off from the whole 

worried you’ve wasted it all. Everything blooming 

most recklessly. How it starts in your bedroom. 

The loneliness is fever-pitched before it unravels

into syringed hands and barefoot candles.

Thousand echoes you want to gently push

in front of a moving car. But that’s where it needs to end. 

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Bluesky: justinkarcher.bsky.social) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). Recent playwriting credits include The Birth of Santa (American Repertory Theater of WNY) and “The Trick Is to Spill Your Guts Faster Than the Snow Falls” (Alleyway Theatre).

convergence

by Kristen Mitchell

for Sage

in the small of the light

a private conference of toads

do not touch this pool 

we are growing here

the trees hang onto sound 

acoustic players of the night 

I can’t sleep

shut the window 

my brain washes itself on 

8hrs of sleep

kissing

jumping spider

looking for the smaller flies

the killer mosquito

but the old toad who didn’t care 

for that dream you were having 

caught it

with a sticky tongue

Kristen Mitchell is a queer/ disabled writer living in Michigan. They are the author of The Wound (Alien Buddha Press) and their work has been published in Witchcraft Mag, Wanting to Die Poetry Club, Door Is a Jar Magazine, and others.

outside of the seven

by Daniel Lockeridge

A lake lends its balanced levitation

to another duck that sang like Saturn,

and the driving morning — more midnight —

is suddenly having to make room for planetary poesy.

I let it grow like a ring in the sun,

till it almost sounds, like the trillion wings

that split water only because you remember the air

and tell me to stop imagining your planet-sunned hum.

The lake rises as the earth cares for its revolution,

and in the extra rush I indulge your singing stares;

I hold the ducks like deservedness, while they soar.

I may not find another muse among the seven

remaining decades of fluttering, precise destruction

left by the ballpoint-sound whose slowness soaks the mind.

Daniel Lockeridge is a twenty-nine-year-old Australian who has self-published two collections of poetry as well as a collection of meditative reminders. His Instagram page – @danlovepoetry – has allowed him to expand on his love for writing free verse, especially romantic poetry interlaced with nature themes. His poetry has been published in Reverie Magazine, The Winged Moon Magazine and Free Verse Revolution. Currently, he is focusing on completing novels as well as additional poetry and spiritual books.  

2 poems

by Bo Rahm

the sinking ship

They are gentlemen

Top hats skin tight

Reservoir tipped.

The ocean plots to

Be filled and won’t

Stop until fully satisfied.

All the men in slobbering saucer eyed amazement

Take off their hats

Before jumping in.

looking at my niece’s painting

It is

The way a leaf is...

The way Jupiter is...

Everything has been said before,

Frightfully before. She says,

“All the colors of a clown

Are all the colors of the universe.”

And that is

It.

Bo Rahm’s favorite Poets include Theodore Roethke, Frank O’Hara, and Japanese Haiku poets. Bo has earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. He is the latest bloomer in any group of people he finds himself in.

proposal

by Bart Edelman

There’s a voice in the ocean,

Calling out to you,

And you can faintly hear it.

It’s intended just for you—

Of this you’re quite certain.

You visit the shore each day,

Waiting on the water’s edge,

Watching the waves roll back and forth,

Straining for the proposal—

Buoyed by its presence.

Friends begin to worry,

Wonder where you reside

In this silent life you lead.

But you have a secret,

And intend to keep it,

Until the current sets you free,

Answers any remaining question,

Before you marry the sea.

Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023, forthcoming from Meadowlark Press.  He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles.  His work has been widely anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Fountainhead Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, Thomson/Heinle, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.

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