shrike

by Anna Molenaar

Otherwise known as butcherbird,

he impales grasshoppers, small mice, even other songbirds

onto rusted barbed wire.

Crucified in neat rows 

on pasture fences,

they twitch towards the dying light.

To see him preening on a willow branch

in the early morning

you wouldn’t suspect a thing,

for he is lithe and light

enough to rival any finch or wren 

crying out a gentle word at dawn.

But when he comes back to the fencepost

bloodied by sunset,

and cleans the dried viscera 

from his feathers,

you wonder how you didn’t notice

the way his eyes,

hooded and mischievous,

gave it all away.

Anna Molenaar is a writer of poetry and prose concerned with nature, humanity, and the messes that occur when the two mix. Her work appears or will appear in The Nassau Review, The Tiger Moth Review, and The Columbia Review among others. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she received her MFA from Hamline University. She works as a preschool teacher and teaches writing courses at the Loft Literary Center.

sea turtle

by Alex Stolis

I dreamed we released a lost sea turtle 

back into the ocean, heavy to heft,

we alternated carrying him, determined 

to bring him home; 

a gentle back and forth dance, the rhythm

of us in time with the waves.

The sun was van Gogh yellow, we laughed 

at the challenge before us,

the smell of salt, the pounding of surf,

a paddling reptile, a prayer.

Today, my first cancer treatment, you took 

my hand; your turn to hold the weight.

Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis. His full-length collection, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower was runner-up for the Moon City Poetry Prize in 2017. Two full-length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and are available on Amazon. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press in 2024.  

I don’t want to see

by Georgina Davis

Blurry ceilings in the morning, so safe,

and maybe today I just don’t want 

to shift the world into focus. 

Stretch my other senses for a while;

symphony of shuffles down the front path,

a taxi that smells like felt tips,

sleeping sister, her son stares out the window

while my mom makes small talk with the driver:

“My mom passed away last December.”

Headlights on the road like fireworks –

“Just sitting there and then…”

Draw a smiley face in the car window condensation –

“Only 61 years old.”

Glass blends into sky where the window is cracked open –

“I guess, when your time comes, it comes.”

Red light under a bridge, black and yellow stripes,

not stripes to me but colors, flowing into colors,

and maybe one of the blurry cars on the blurry bridge

will swerve and topple onto us, 

and the car will be blurry no more, 

because I can see things when they’re right in front of my face. 

Green and go and we are gone, safely through,

blurry cars stay blurry, we stay alive. 

I am alive and I don’t want to see my world burn,

so I’ll let colors bleed into colors,

lights can stay explosions.

I will stay blind to the sharp edges and 

let the world be soft, hug me instead of hurting me. 

Georgina Davis is a 23-year-old creative writing graduate from Birmingham. She mainly writes free-form confessional poetry that depicts the small details and big feelings of everyday life. 

2 poems

by Jayant Kashyap

a man years after returning from the airport one night, having seen his daughter off for the first time

The night you left, I began

building boats – the constant

chiselling into wood / like punishment / like

saying hurt isn’t necessarily the end

of something / like worrying too much

and not let it show. I’ve now built

a total of eighty-eight boats, I’ve willed

them all to you.

melancholy

note from the author:

“melancholy” is a found poem borrowed from chapter 9 of Rebecca Netley’s wonderful novel The Whistling. And, considering the fact that this piece, in itself, comes from a gothic horror piece, “melancholy” is a piece that is nothing if not particularly ominous.

Jayant Kashyap, the author of the pamphlets Unaccomplished Cities and Survival, will publish his New Poets Prize-winning third pamphlet, Notes on Burials, with smith|doorstop in 2025.

cyclical

by Stephanie Shlachtman

Moonflower opens, lays bare a

profusion of petals and self-possession,

softens puckers between secrets

until trumpeter swans announce first light

on the water; a crumpled bloom

regretting moths that stayed too long to

witness her wild side. And the

Sun — naked, famished, whimsy fueling

her very core — she floods the

morning, a siren beckoning shipwrecked

sky, and I feast on figs and honeydew

until my stomach hurts.

Stephanie Shlachtman teaches elementary school in New York. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.S. in Education. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle and Long Island Quarterly.

2 poems

by Jordan Ranft

sonnet for before I was med-stabilized

I was unaware of the door until it unlocked with a clack

and swung apart like a jaw, and where a mouth opens 

breath tends to follow. How best to explain this glittering

chemical inhalation? How better to describe the absence?

Imagine the brain not as a single lump but a composite– 

a swarm–how was I to know what piece was missing? 

What I’m trying to say is harmony hides its own efforts. 

I spent a lot of time chasing an echo that sounded like me,

or maybe I was the echo, part air and part sound. Either way

I was flung into space and broke apart against the wall.

I can hear you ask already about the wall. What is the wall?

If you have to ask I’m not sure I can help you… 

You’ve cobbled yourself together before or you haven’t; 

let’s restart. it can’t be called a wound if you were born with it

we take our friend to a Chinese restaurant the day his brother dies

a bell above the door chimes 

its little voice indifferent.

the patio lush with potted ferns 

beckons with swooping strings 

of lights, but you sit inside 

where the air is hot and thick

with garlic.

every minute wears a shroud 

across its face. pink napkins 

unfolded in your laps, scooping at 

a mound of rice with scattered peas 

that glisten and refuse to blink. you 

avoid asking the same question 

for a fifth time.

a plate breaks in the kitchen. Your

throat is full of gristle. steam haloes 

above your tea and blank flames 

chew their way through you. finally, 

the pork arrives, red and sticky. 

is being here enough?

you only have the wrong words.

the rice is gummy now; you 

poke at it with a fork. if someone 

put a gun to your head 

you still wouldn't remember 

how it tasted.

Jordan Ranft is a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated writer. His chapbook, Said The Worms (Wrong Publishing), was published in 2023. He has individual pieces published in Cleaver, Carve, Beaver, Eclectica, Bodega, Bayou, Rust + Moth, and other outlets. He lives in Northern California where he works as a therapist.

the artist

by Leah Mueller

for Hana

Backyard plastic easel

with three paint tubs,

all in primary hues. 

Overhead, a nest of

newly hatched sparrows, 

mother circling with nourishment.

You, barely out of diapers,

on a rainless spring afternoon.

I lead you behind the house, 

toddling as if blindfolded. 

Spotting the gift, 

you stare with bewilderment.

Sheets of white paper

fastened with a plastic clip.

Sturdy paint receptacles, 

filled with bright, viscous liquid. 

So different from 

the hardness of crayons

grasped in quivering fingers, 

needing sustained pressure 

to make straight lines.

You lean forward, 

extract brush from paint, 

peer at the foreign object,

and turn your gaze towards me,

asking for permission.

“Go ahead,” I say.

Open-mouthed, astounded,

you apply brush to canvas,

as birds circle overhead,

and our entire yard

fills with color.

Leah Mueller’s work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions and was nominated for the 2024 edition. Her two newest books are "The Failure of Photography" (Garden Party Press, 2023) and "Widow's Fire" (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Website: www.leahmueller.org.

dolls

by Sarah Daly

Pretty guises are they:

lipsticks of every color,

dyes of every shade,

skirts of every fabric.

Such pretty apparel

for the dolls we dress 

and then tuck away 

in our dresser drawers.

Dolls who mock us 

with their porcelain perfection,

and whose eyes only close 

when their bodies are perfectly horizontal. 

Hollowed and aged, we cradle these dolls, 

striving for childhood, once again. 

Sarah Daly is an American writer whose fiction, poetry, and drama have appeared in twenty-six literary journals including A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Ibbetson Street Press, The Seraphic Review, Superpresent Magazine, and Stick Figure Poetry.

a woman’s trash bag to goodwill

by Akshita Krishnan

after Mary Syzbist “Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle”

that One dress (butter soft, Georgette,

Jezebel’s, and 15);  threaded together, 

Vanity Fair, a Guide on Losing

Weight in 50 Days (or, a slow

descent into stuffing/starving/

purging/measuring); Barbie dolls,

eyes blacked out with Sharpie

and costumes ripped to shreds; 

bottleneck vase, convexed, rotted

mulch stuffed inside; annotated copy

of On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous,

made out to “a Girl who I’ll follow

everywhere;” rusted jhumkas that 

once belonged to a Mother; intricate

wedding China (blue flowers & curlicues)

with chipped edges; diary recollections

of years 9-13 ; and, the hollowed 

shell of my body curling around 

itself like a millipede.

Akshita Krishnan is a South Indian writer that splits her time between Texas and Massachusetts. An alumna of the Kenyon Young Writers’ Workshop, her works have been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Eunoia, Bright Flash Literary Review, Girls Right the World, and more. When she’s not writing, she enjoys coke floats and struggles to solve Connections.

anemone

by Claudia Wysocky

His hands smell of 

anemone and mushrooms

on a spring morning. The 

sea is as flat as he is silent.

He’s a man who deals with

water, with

the weight of the stones in his pockets.

The tide has just begun to come 

back in, and he’s on the beach,

walking toward the town where I live 

alone, taking pictures of angles

and shadows that look like things they 

aren’t. There are no waves –

I pretend that I have never been kissed.

I think about the way that he 

walks, and how he smells like 

my mother’s garden

in the summertime.

Claudia Wysocky, a Polish writer and poet based in New York, is known for her diverse literary creations, including fiction and poetry. Her poems, such as "Stargazing Love" and "Heaven and Hell," reflect her ability to capture the beauty of life through rich descriptions. Besides poetry, she authored "All Up in Smoke," published by "Anxiety Press." With over five years of writing experience, Claudia's work has been featured in local newspapers, magazines, and even literary journals like WordCityLit and Lothlorien Poetry Journal. Her writing is powered by her belief in art's potential to inspire positive change. Claudia also shares her personal journey and love for writing on her own blog, and she expresses her literary talent as an immigrant raised in post-communism Poland.

an ode to oui-d

by Jacklyn Whealan

From the ground

A leafy plant is born

Its smell confused

Skunks misconstrued

Once fully emerged

Flowers are stripped

Cut to be sent away

This week.

These little buds

Now stored away

Are ordered

Each day, for customers

Who want to smoke a tray.

A multitude of flavors

An addictive array

Built for adults only

Or with a medical display.

Once acquired

The person inspired

Uses the plant,

Rolled into some paper

When lit with fire

Watches the anxiety 

Dissipate away.

What some may

Call a crime,

Is another’s divine.

Jacklyn Whealan is an aspiring poet currently attending Wentworth Institute of Technology, located in Boston, Massachusetts, earning a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering while maintaining her creative roots in writing. Jacklyn’s knowledge of poetry was founded in a Poetry Workshop class at Wentworth Institute, taught by Gloria Monaghan. This class truly propelled Jacklyn’s love of writing forward, to where she is now continuing her writing projects.

flowers for ann

by Beth Gilson

i’m not sure if i want to plant a garden for you,

in my memory, 

in my mind.

there are seedlings spread out

each one a memory of you.

if i gathered the seedlings together, 

it would become a ground for wanting,

the soil never quite rich enough

to grow a life worth harvesting, 

a lack of sustenance and a bounty of disappointment.

i want to love you unconditionally.

i want to bring you bouquets of vibrant flowers,

put them on the kitchen island while we brew a pot of coffee.

we sit at the kitchen table, 

fingers running over the tiles, 

the sun streaming over our hands.

the furrow in my brow has deepened since you last saw me.

the sun savors it with pride,

showing you that i can furrow my brow and make it a life, 

that age is not a curse.

you ask me who i am dating.

we finally talk about sex and the city.

you laugh at how carrie calls squirrels rats with better outfits.

i’m a carrie/samantha,

while i don’t know if you would consider yourself so bold,

i think that you are the same.

i bring you to the garden behind the garage,

the coffee maker sputters and drips.

i show you the part of the garden where you are still alive.

if you look in the center of the hydrangeas, 

stick your nose in

and let the sweet, 

pungent flavor get to your head, 

you can breathe again.

i want to love you with grace and forgiveness. 

i want to envelop you in warmth.

i want to tell you i do understand.

i know that the sun did not burn bright for you for a long time.

you lay down amidst the flowers, 

so careful not to damage them with the weight of that which you carry.

your eyes crinkle as you smile and it is bright.

you look up at me and say you can finally feel the sun.

i hold that warmth on my shoulders, 

my cheeks, 

in the constant ache in my chest.

i will be your sun so your garden can grow

in my memory, 

at home.

Beth Gilson (they/she) is a queer writer living in Brooklyn, NY. They enjoy saying hi to every dog they see and line dancing. They can be found on Instagram at @bethwritespoems.

carving out

by John Rutherford

Carving out, the wren clings to the wall, 

feet scrabbling against the plaster, 

takes wing, falling, jumping into a stall 

but comes back again all the faster, 

twig clamped between her tiny jaws, 

poked into the beak-scraped hole, 

inspects her work, then, after a pause 

returns again to the little knoll. 

There and back again she flies, 

a clump of grass or bright moss,

a mushroom cap or leaf her verdant prize, 

securing, proofing her creche against loss.

Some gopher said it’d be an early spring, 

but what would some silly marmot know, 

around these parts El Nino’s king, 

and I still have hope we’ll see snow. 

Relentlessly she darts back and forth,

dives just in time; dark clouds to the North. 

John Rutherford is a poet living and writing in Beaumont, TX. He has been an employee of the Department of English at Lamar University since 2017. His work can be found in The Concho River Review, the Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Basilisk Tree. In 2023, his first chapbook, Birds in a Storm, was released by Naked Cat Publishing. 

cloud haiku

by Joshua St. Claire

sea foam

stratocumulus clouds

cover  reveal the moon

contrails 

a downdraft splits 

the flax field

stratus drizzle 

only the lichens

greening 

the golden hour's violet clouds nectarines

stratus nebulosus

shadows

under pear blossoms 

the fog’s softness snaps them into focus

                                                                         white pines

stratus undulatus 

rippling along the parking lot

waves of rain 

cirrostratus sun brightening and fading cherry blossoms 

cumulonimbus 

a Chincoteague pony 

becomes mist 

altostratus dawn

two mourning dove perching

in a sycamore

coyote ululations

from nowhere to nowhere 

cirrus intortus

Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania who works as a financial director for a large non-profit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly including in The Asahi Shimbun, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His work has appeared in annual anthologies including the Dwarf Stars Anthology (SFPA 2022 and 2023), The Red Moon Anthology (Red Moon Press 2024 (forthcoming)), and contemporary haibun 19 (Red Moon Press 2024 (forthcoming)). He has received recognition in the following international contest for his work in these forms: the Gerald Brady Memorial Senryu Award, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational, the San Francisco International Award for Senryu, the Touchstone Award for Individual Haiku, the British Haiku Society Award for Haiku, and the Trailblazer Award.

POTS outdoors

by Ali Rowland

Compression threatens to explode something, 

a vessel, or the skull; blood, or grey matter 

sprinkling, fertilizing the hot soil 

snoozing in my raised beds – I wouldn’t need 

to feed again this season.

It’s not that dramatic, really, 

it’s sun-heat thwacking me, dizziness 

its maid-in-waiting. As I try to rise from 

tending, pulling, mulching, pruning, it forces 

me to hover halfway up, unsteady, 

leaning on a stake that shakes. 

I won’t die, it’s a feint attack, 

I could faint, at worst; an Edwardian 

lady’s hack in a twenty-first century 

allotment. Instead, I stagger to the shack, 

put my legs up higher than my heart, 

disturbing countless spider’s cocoons, and

the birds, wondering what I’m doing here at all.

Ali Rowland lives in Northumberland, UK. Sometimes she writes about life with mental health issues, but just as often her prose and poetry is about the world in general. After being published in over fifty magazines, and winning two poetry competitions, she is coming dangerously close to regarding herself as an author.

the wind

by Mykyta Ryzhykh

the wind has settled in the house

there is a bullet on the ground under the wall

and the sky still bears the scars from the missile attack

– 

caterpillars can't fly

caterpillars don't know how to die

what is the bright flight of a butterfly 

inside the geometric spring silence

– 

sunny embrace of summer

a white cat wanders at the crossroads

his fur shines in the sun

Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, and others. 

2 poems

by KG Newman

puncture wounds

The garter snake lays on its back in the grass, 

gnawed on from the run-in with the dog, 

imagining the late train home, the one light bulb 

burnt out in the chandelier above the table, 

dented apples on the counter, our checking account 

running low again, slipping skins just to climb back 

in them, out of the last cab on earth, into the restaurant 

where the passersby can watch us silent fight 

from the street though the aperture, and inside 

even the corner silk fern is shedding, and your nails 

are chipping again, what if the steak is undercooked, 

if the presets misdirect, what if the road dead-ends

en route to therapy, our time turning brittle 

and expensive, like another couple at the crosswalk 

well-dressed and with well-crafted feet between them, 

for all to see, yet no one journals it, no one takes 

a Snapchat of that or a safety coffin anymore —

oh to be fearless, and to be that currently, 

with no need for fertilizer, or edging, with what 

we witnessed from the kitchen window that morning, 

the floor folding up to meet our shoulder blades, 

the dog on its way.

refusing extinction

My whole life is light-up dinosaurs

and turning clocks around. 

Picking which whisper to listen to

while walking down infinity halls,

burying fossils atop warped walls

for the son of my son’s son. In history 

he will learn about taxis and why we

should’ve stopped at the flip phone.

And maybe he too will be obsessed

with restoring beauty from the dead.

He might even break at a café terrace 

and feel no need to document it.

He will just sit there, sip his coffee,

watch two magpies fight over

a dropped slice of bread and then

bike home to his farm where

he collects eggs and carefully cleans

the coop of his own dinosaurs. 

KG Newman is a sportswriter for The Denver Post. His first four collections of poems are available on Amazon and he has been published in scores of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He is the poetry editor of Hidden Peak Press and he lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and three kids.

how I respond when asked about my hysterectomy

by Erica Anderson-Senter

Bracing body: one hand, palm to wall, other hand, other palm and press. 

Again with each wave. Again —

Standing was fabled-action — myth for the un-bleeding. When I remember,

I see sickle, I see scythe — bent and small and blue from no breath. 

Bouquet of women bloom in panties. I was one. I was a she whose body 

brought blood but it was a different kind: a purple, a bruise, 

clots and yes, I held, tenderly the clumps of congealed menses.

I would pray to them, ask them to end. 

How can I know love in body when my body bit down and held on —

I could withstand the black dog of my full blood moon, but why?

I birthed my own defunct organ after I begged my god-my doctor:

Take the thing that causes the thing that takes my knees, my breath, 

my sheets, my underwear, my nights, my peace, my-life-my-life-my-life. 

Erica Anderson-Senter writes from Fort Wayne, IN. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Midwestern Poet's Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, was published by EastOver Press in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Midwest Gothic, Dialogist, and One Art. She has her MFA from Bennington College.

2 poems

by Lydia Ford

push and pull

The first baby born

in the hospital’s system

this year unraveled 

into the world 

while we were there 

carving an entire room out

for our grief.

First cries,

the entire sea of our mourning.

It’s a miracle 

the whole building didn’t drown

in the becoming 

and unbecoming.

Lullaby music drifted

through the speakers,

a life for a life. 

The tick tick boom

of monitors, 

the haunting whispers

of Dad’s Dilaudid haze,

murmurs of “no, no, sorry, no”

adding to the clamor 

of motherhood blooming

when it had ended for us.

Dawn comes for us all

under the same sky.

first month

It’s January 

and you’re writing your mother’s obituary,

an ode to disconnection,

the severing of the umbilical cord

strung up red and proud 

like a welcome home banner

attaching your hearts.

Grief like rebirth 

into an unfamiliar skin,

the new year unravels, 

untouched by maternal love.

You constantly ask,

how do you put 

your own mother into past tense? 

Lydia Ford is a poet based out of the beautiful state of Colorado. She has been previously published in Words Dance magazine. You can often find her in a local coffee shop, probably telling someone about the year an album was released. More of her work lives on Instagram @lydfordwrites 

had a reading that night

by James Croal Jackson

spent the whole day down-

town at the library writing

poems in the procrastination

of destiny the flood through 

the window watching birds 

worms and cars inside the frame-

work of a city I could outgrow 

the orange construction 

cones everywhere outpace 

outspend every quick-

witted rodent that sneaks

from my brain to feed

my endless hunger

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in Hello America, Little Patuxent Review, and Ballast Poetry Journal. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)