south sound soliloquy

by Noah Brown

Today we woke up in a cloud, 

A sea of white, white sound, 

The white Puget Sound. 

It was tremendous. 

I wanted to shout Ah breathe it in 

And I did. What a day 

To be on a boat with sails and 

Woodstove, the good company 

Of the dog and pa. We moored 

Through the morning here, great floating 

Amanda in great South Sound 

White shroud, cloud abyss fog, 

And made coffee and watched the steam. 

Saw Great Blue Herons float 

In the horizon on their own boats, 

commandeered-broken-half-logs, 

And watched as they took off 

Wings beating just tips of feathers 

Tapping tap-tapping the water’s surface 

Creating ripple after ripple adding 

To the infinitesimal ripples of 

Seemingly infinite South Puget Sound.

Noah Brown writes poetry and prose in close relation to lived experience, focused on capturing small moments and finding voice for the ordinary. He was born and raised in Oregon, spending most of his young life exploring the Pacific Northwest. Noah has a Bachelor’s from the University of Oregon, with a degree in Advertising and Creative Writing. He currently uses his degree to write for himself, splitting his professional career between seasonal work, including wildland firefighting, skiing in Utah, and fishing in Alaska. He writes mostly in the backs of cars, while traveling, and between working shifts.

tips to survive the south

by Chelsea Catherine

We scan red dirt for fire ant colonies, spot snake skins, trace
gator trails in the water, watching for bubbles. We lap ice cream to
stay cool, sway on our grandmother’s rocking chair perched
under porch hangs. We spritz our faces with sunscreen and don
hats, wear high socks to ward off the ticks, blood lusting as the
cypresses which leech nutrients from the parched ground.

To be a grandchild in Louisiana is to learn how to escape death.
How to run from the heat, hide from it like we would a licking, 
how to free ourselves from the moisture wet as a blanket on our
chests, heavy as the hiss of the heat bugs, the drone of the bullfrogs,
the discord in sound of hundreds of deadly creatures all around –
black bears, alligators, yellowjackets, vipers, diamondbacks. 

Everything in Louisiana could kill us if we let it, most
especially the grandmother who sips sweet tea in front of a
bunny-eared television, surrounded by gold rimmed portraits,
expensive powder makeup on her neck. So sly and raging, she is,
fierce as the sun. We cower under her crimson lipstick and white
lace gloves, her harsh words, her thick spite, her clean whippings
which slick blood and sweat into the air away from her body,
leaving her unsoiled and prim as a pew on Sunday. 

To be a grandchild in Louisiana is to learn how to escape death,
both indoors and outdoors. It is learning how to run from the
glare of an angry grandmother; how to steal from her ice cream stash
unnoticed, how to pluck pieces of antique jewelry from her vanity and
put them back in the exact same position, how to be quiet when spoken to,
how to hide when her thunder gets rolling. 

This is the most dangerous natural threat, the grandmother who
wishes we were never born, who shushes us at her side as we
stare out the windows at everything there that could kill us, all of it so
similar to the woman who sits next to us, who is wild as the outdoors,
bursting and unpredictable in her silk shirts and intricate hair pins,
spitting rage and full of the deadliest venom nature has ever seen. 

Chelsea Catherine began writing poetry at eight years old and eventually expanded into fiction and nonfiction. Their piece, Quiet with the Hurt, won the Mary C Mohr award for nonfiction through the Southern Indiana Review and their second book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. They like bird watching, photography, and reading books about the art of living. Their dream is to become a cowboy one day. You can find them at chelseacatherinewriter.com 

the food cart man

by Owen Taupier

A food cart at night in Times Square,

the man looking out into the distance

working the busiest street out in the cold

in deep thought, he worries.

The man looking out into the distance

he sees the chatter of the crowds of people,

in deep thought, he worries

imagining the night that is to come.

He sees the chatter of the crowds of people

they wander the streets contented,

imagining the night that is to come

the man waits for the coming customers.

They wander the streets contented.

Working the busiest street out in the cold

the man waits for the coming customers

a food cart in the night of Times Square.

Owen Taupier is currently a senior at Kents Hill School, an independent boarding school in rural Maine.

sometimes it’s okay to be whole

by Bonnie Shao

I let go

and the world didn’t stop

the day and night still rise

And the sky didn’t fall

blue to black to pink and back

the sky did not leave me behind

But for a moment

my heart stood still

you couldn’t feel it

For a moment

my heart rested in my chest

the tugging finally ceased

I loosened the bow

I shut the case

and time marched on

but for a moment

the ghost of a note in the air

my heart stood still

Bonnie Shao is a Chinese-American high schooler in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Xia Stories series, three contemporary realistic fiction novels published throughout her middle school years. In 2023, she was a Teen Writing Fellow at GrubStreet’s YAWP Summer Teen Writing Fellowship. Visit her at bonnieshaobooks.com or @bonnie.shao.books on Instagram.

the avian family life

by Daria P.

i spent three nights observing two mallards

in the puddle near my parents’ house

i watched them swimming, drinking meltwater, eating off the ground,

quietly quacking sweet nothings to each other

a ritual, the japanese pastime: savoring a slice of life

on the fourth sunset, as my hands were freezing,

i saw a lonely drake walking around the puddle

there was a subtle voice crack in its song

the start of a hero’s journey

i hope that mine is over

and we'll spend our days

in the beautiful avian mundanity

that’s worth writing it a poem

Daria P. (she/they) is a poet and science fiction writer. Their poems can be found in Tap into Poetry, Occulum, and BOMBFIRE. Daria’s works are inspired by the mundanity and characterized by the minimalist style, the detached approach to the subject, simple but effective metaphors, and a vague feeling of nostalgia.

I’m sorry I got my hopes up. [it will happen again.]

by Wanda Deglane

It is May and love doesn’t feel real anymore. 

I’m locked in a room with all my loss. I’m banging 

on the walls because there are no doors. No windows. 

My loss is a fist-shaped hole. My loss looks like 

a thousand bloody mirrors. I discover who I am 

in a thousand different shades of red. 

There is something about one-sided dead-end 

relationships that makes me roll up my sleeves 

and push and try and fight. There is something 

about broken, emotionally unavailable people 

that bleeds a mother out of my throat. I’m tired of 

crying in the bald face of cold, unfeeling silence. 

I’m tired of standing knee-deep in a sea of my own 

surrendered needs. 

My mother is the kindest person in the world, 

but in my dreams she stuffs push pins into my eyes. 

My father’s fury calcifies in my chest, all brittle 

glistening rock, and that, for lack of a better phrase, 

sucks so bad. Everyone who ever hurt me is tired of 

feeling sorry about it, so I alone carry around the hurt 

like a dandelion seed tickling my chest. I carry 

my grief like it owes me money.

I tell my therapist, I don’t think I’d know what to do 

with myself if someone finally treated me well. 

If their love was boundless and free. I think it’d really 

freak me out. I don’t think I’d be able to hold it. 

I look down at my upturned hands and notice 

for the first time how small they are. How pathetic. 

I’m locked in a room with all my hope, and my feet 

sink into never-ending floor. My hope looks like 

a thousand velvet-soft Mays. My hope is wild-eyed 

and sticky-handed and unwashed, all sweat and grime 

and stain. My hope keeps me on my tiptoes. I face myself 

in all my sweetness and my still-birthed reality. I face 

myself and cut the hope straight out of my chest. 

Wanda Deglane (she/her) is a poet and therapist from Arizona. She is the author of Melancholia (VA Press, 2021) and other works. 

for Diana, after her seventieth birthday

by Brandon North

Throughout the tilting course of October

aging forms will themselves to beauty,

no longer content to be precious when gone.

Within the shortening slots of daylight

allotted to autumn’s peculiar displays,

elder requiems arise with the fading heat:

legions of leaves forgo their green fatigues;

stoic gourds spill their sticky innards;

bees and gnats do mathematics near trash;

and mycelia emit fungal artifacts.

The muting splashes of augured color all about

shift where I sit to a grove without sound

to help me forget, to have a child’s mind

as I think of you splitting like dry leaves in wind.

You’d slumped in your scarlet chair, pallid, until found

and still you sit, as if being painted for the first time.

The blunt eloquence of dying provokes us,

though repeals of fact will harvest nothing final.

For each birthday we see, we know less and less

about death, our guaranteed miracle.

Brandon North is a working-class, disabled, and multi-genre writer from Ohio. He is the author of the chapbook From The Pages of Every Book (Ghost City Press), and his poems and prose appear or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Annulet, The Cleveland Review of Books, Bridge (Chicago), and elsewhere. Find him @brandonenorth and theappreciator.substack.com.

2 poems

by Cameron Tricker

disorder

Retreat, recede, re-

interpret words said

Create 

relentless axioms

of thought

Avoid

everyone you love

if only for 

shoebox-room

to breathe 

triadic mathematics

Cameron Tricker is a writer from a southeastern corner of England. His life's tapestry would depict him as being enamored by humanity, cats, and blink-182. His poems have been kindly published by DUMBO Press and his novel writing shortlisted by the National Centre for Writing in the UK.

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.