the siphon era

by KG Newman

Our house with creaking butterfly doors

and what can’t be fixed with a wrench.

Mummies smiling behind the cloth.

Floats of us punctured on the one

streetlight that doesn’t flicker. Field 

of abandoned silos to which only

unlost birds return in winter.

CapriSun straw wrappers scattered

everywhere we step. Remember how

we had something to pray for.

We’d sit around the nicked kitchen table

saying the names of flowers we know.

Daisy. Chrysanthemum. Dahlia to

remind us of when charred forests 

braved storms, and we built stadiums

we didn’t need nor could afford,

just to sit in premium seats and

watch fireflies resurrect themselves.

KG Newman is a sportswriter for The Denver Post. His first five poetry collections 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.

dinner’s tough tonight

by Ashley Kirkland

The younger one asks 

if war will happen 

here & if we’ll get old, 

spaghetti sauce smeared 

on his cheeks. He means here

as in Ohio & it’s hard to say

what he means by old. My husband

takes the first question, answers

with something about being 

in the middle, something

like, who would bother? I take 

the second.We all get old, I say 

and it makes me sad to lie 

more, knowing it’s not true: not 

everyone gets to grow old. 

We all get old? he says, and I say it 

again with resolution: We all 

get old. I try to picture him 

then as an old man, even though

he’s so small right now, 

and me, long gone. I run 

my hand over his peach 

of a noggin – a baby-soft, 

summer buzz. I want him to live 

until he’s old, and then 

some, but also, to never know 

life without me, the sadness 

of being motherless, like 

losing a limb. I cut

a meatball in half and slide

it to the side, mouth 

a piece of gristle to the tip 

of my tongue. 

Ashley Kirkland writes in Ohio where she lives with her husband and sons. Her work can be found in Cordella Press, boats against the current, The Citron Review, Naugatuck River Review, HAD, Major7thMagazine, among others. Her chapbook, BRUISED MOTHER, is available from Boats Against the Current. She is a poetry editor for 3Elements Literary Review. You can find her at lashleykirkland.bsky.social and lashleykirklandwriter on Instagram.

airless satellite

by Robin Elise Hamilton

Blackstrap sad tortoiseshell rover

me and me walking alone

No sun at night and moreover

no one for me in me phone

No one gone sing out a glad tune

left their love far behind me

Slog the daft side of the mad moon

me and me melancholy

Memory me cannot forget

burning so deep in this sand

Bailing with bucket of regret

ash of last wave of your hand

Robin Elise Hamilton (she/her) is a recently-septuagenarian, recently-out queer trans woman recently-returned to writing poetry after a half-century offstage in live performance.

harebell

by Simon Ravenscroft

Find me under a pile of old leaves then

pretending not to feel this

or pretending there could be a way

to have you as if in parentheses

within the sentences of life

you would be a flowering or something

and when you look at me with that globe look

and hesitate on the edge

and all is washed bare

we would be free briefly as the breeze

making its way around the crust 

of this whole earth

in its chalk whiteness

a sudden blueness

sans thorn

Simon Ravenscroft lives in Cambridge, England. His work has recently been published in Meniscus, Trampoline, Red Ogre Review, The Alchemy Spoon, Swifts & Slows, JAKE, Ink Sweat & Tears, and other places. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.

first frost

by John T. Howard

On the radio Among the stars some 

one said to think of this earth we call

home: a planet bound by fire & fury.

My planet is small these days: dank

steps down to a basement apartment

with mornings in & mornings out

before sunrise. The old dog ash-eyed

& blind sleeps alone, moves on hinges 

tender, limping. So that I now wonder 

which death I will have to summon

strength for soonest: that of the dog

or for the loss of one of my parents.

My father ages & refuses to speak

on the subject of death. My mother

without her teeth in seems skeletal.

The sky cold & clear & full of small

stabbings. Blanket of night punctured

by a full moon as close to the earth

as the earth will allow. The shrubs

glisten with a frosted-over white caul

of frozen dew. It is now mid-October.

In a few weeks November. Someone

will win an election. Others will not.

The dog may be dead. A parent too.

This body falls farther into age along

side a daughter whose smallness now

grows larger. With this worries surge.

Winter will come & go. Then come

& go again & again & again & again.

A first frost is not a first. It never is.

John T. Howard is a Colombian American writer, translator, and educator. He has served as Writer-in-Residence at Wellspring House Retreat and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University. His poetry can be found at Salamander, Notre Dame Review, PANK Magazine, The South Carolina Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere; he was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry found in Posit. His creative nonfiction is published with The Cincinnati Review. He resides in the greater Boston area with his daughter and teaches writing at Tufts University.

instructions for becoming a captain

by Vevna Forrow

twizzler tie your black sea hair back

tuck in a weather balloon sweater cap

helicopter pencil on a cookie cutter moustache

swap your foam beer for whoopie cushion water 

[concealed in a sunchoked crumpler paper lunch bag]

wear an XL denim jacket  & 9 ½ Nordvik boots

net laugh with the guys [net laugh at the guys]

even when the sinking crabby patty jokes make zero stinking sense

paspatou steer the wheel [blindfolded]

pluto pretend you’re the only one in a fish suit onboard

and voyager whisper to yourself aloud:

this is my deep down jellyfish jam dream

i will sail towards every sky constellation 

i will sail with my heart on the elysium edge

without boy blue boy fear

Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur) is an experimental visual designer and queer poet originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, but resides in Southern Nevada. Work of hers appears in the Lothlorien Journal, Kindergarten Mag, diacritics – DVAN, Phantom Kangaroo, and Oddball Magazine. 

ink

by Jackie Hollowell

Childhood / is only a cage / that widens

from “Dear Peter” by Ocean Vuong

Of my childhood,

I want to give you 

the parts I like to 

remember. 

I’ll write down 

as much as I can 

before god catches up. 

He was there for a while—

in my sister’s room,

my mother’s garden.

In my grandmother calling my name

while she still knew it.

The ink only falls 

on the previous page 

but I keep turning it 

anyway. I think, 

maybe the leaf can return 

to the branch 

and it does, 

if you write long enough. 

If you live long enough. 

Back when I was a girl 

I wasn't yet a girl, 

just an abjuration 

of moss 

being pulled 

from stone. 

Please don't take 

my hands from the soil; 

I want to go home. 

The ink is running out but 

I still have so much childhood left 

before I’m turned to salt.

Jackie Hollowell is an extremely queer poet originally from the Pacific Northwest but now lives in Vietnam. She has a love/hate relationship with capital letters and an all-hate relationship with capitalism. They have been published in or have work forthcoming from The Dawn Review, The Wayfarer, and Rogue Agent. Find them online: @6_Hollowell.

march

by Kevin A. Risner

A month that holds so much promise

held unease, fear, newfound isolation

just a few years ago.

I swear it happens so much more

often, the glance at an old photo,

the recollection of a trip. And here

I thought it happened

just a blink ago, and it’s been

a decade. Catch each radio

wave as it flies past.

A bit of sweat falls instantly

when I hear too much, think too much,

when I fear for the newborn ones

who will appear next March.

They’ll have no clue about a time when

we didn’t yearn for fresh air. 

Kevin A. Risner is the author of My Ear is a Sieve; Do Us a Favor; and You Thought This Was Just Gonna Be About Cleveland, Didn't You. His debut full-length, There's No Future Where We Don't Have Fire, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions. He also has work published in Gordon Square Review, The Great Lakes Review, Memoir Mixtapes, Moist Poetry Journal, The Ocean State Review, and elsewhere.

last call

by Annabel Mitchell

last call I’m sure you heard it

echoed down to the garden

please thank you well I wouldn’t trouble

you

thinking of being a poet a baker

an arboretum photographer

thirty five cents and a tin of tuna

weird word isn’t it really

arbor – e – tum

tastes oversaturated

like stone bridges and stainless steel taps

and the bricks left over from the old mill

I saw a deer on the train well it wasn’t

on the train I was but I saw it out there

poised all ears and haunches and alone

the sea sparkles when you look at it

haven’t

you noticed haven’t you haven’t you

please thank you and good

night

Annabel Mitchell lives, works and writes in Leith, Edinburgh and has a degree in Classical Studies and English from St Andrews.

rhino

by Ellen Lusetti

Skin, lattice, like the quilt my mother won’t finish.

Wrinkled, like the back of her hands.

Head devoid of hair.

The last time she took me to the zoo,

there was only one rhino.

The exhibit sign read, “vulnerable.”

As she threads her final needle 

with trembling fingers,

lips formed around a curse,

I note the ways our hands

resemble one another,

the deep ridges of our middle 

knuckles, stout, pink beds 

topped with clouded crescents.

A split runs down her thumbnail 

to the nub, threatening breakage 

beyond the keratin, beneath 

the cells of flesh and tolerance.

“They have tools for that,” I tell her. 

She scoffs, for she is the force

that weaves a taut backing

and exacts her isolation,

the lone rhino with armor stitched

to defend but sheer enough to burn.

Ellen Lusetti is a queer writer whose work explores themes of feminism and the nature of morality. She graduated with an MFA from San Diego State University in 2022 and currently teaches writing at New Mexico State University. 

murmurations of starlings

by Terri McCord

“the most subtle spooking will do it, a dog’s bark, the slam of a car door down the street”

Nautilus Magazine, March 4, 2020

To delight in the scattering

a heavy sea spray

a funneled sky ash

an old-time amusement

park ride

The covetousness in the blue

tearings and mendings

above us

the quick repatternings

Possibly 100,000 in a winter flock

To start, too,

at the slightest wind-shift

Feel the air grapple with birds

A South Carolina Arts Commission literary fellowship recipient, Terri McCord has work forthcoming from Lucky Jefferson, Panoply, Orchard Poetry Review, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Black Lily, and Coast Lines Anthology.

instructions for staying put

by Shannon Swearingen Gabriel

after Joy Sullivan

In the evenings, sit on your front porch with a whiskey sour in your hand and witness the sky’s pastels dim from peach to lilac to bruise.

On Sundays, fill the house with the warmth of every baked good you can think of: 

double-chocolate-chip muffins, craggy biscuits flaked with cheddar, lemon pound cake so tart your mouth can’t help but squeeze around every forkful.

Each day, fill your belly with what it craves: the punch of laughter, the entire bowl of watermelon. Every night, stroke your daughter’s soft hair.

Let the quicksand of her eyes root you here till you rebloom — barrel cactus or blazing tulip.

In the long winters, let your body take up the entire narrow beam of sunlight. Lie still on the made bed and absorb the dark.

Always insist on a tangle of stars. Bury your doubts here so that you always have their graves

to return to. Remember — you can make wherever is under your feet your home.

Remember — just a mile west are the greenest fields, your emergency exit.

You can make your own peace.

Shannon Swearingen Gabriel is a professional copy editor by day, a mother around the clock, and a scribbler of poems whenever possible. Originally from Nashville, she now lives in the Chicago suburbs, where she enjoys frequenting great restaurants, cute coffee shops, and vinyl record stores.

when this house was standing

by Stephen Brown

A fence is erected. The dirt path connecting our home to the creek fills in with leafy chaos. Networks of a thousand metal gleams show us freedom we children once had.

But this cannot stop us from leaving.

Drumming the links produces happy kitchen sounds, forks and spoons, while locusts simulate the laughter. Our heated debates replaced now by the catbird’s sirens.

Inside, there is no one to grit the fabric on the couch, or borrow without asking. Carpeted lanes of traffic collect dust. A death-curled spider occupies the neglect-formed crack.

I am satisfied with the crumbling.

Stephen Brown (he/him) is a writer-activist with a Philly attitude and a background in LGBT+ studies. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The Queer Gaze, Tofu Ink Press, SCAB, Beneath the Soil, Querencia Press, Wicked Gay Ways, and others. Stephen's debut chapbook, His Boyfriend Materials, is available now from Bottlecap Press.

that which precipitates

by Ivy Aloa Robb

The storm’s far off, just below 

A veil of grey. 

I can only smell it, or 

Imagine its pattering on leaves. 

There is no thunder, 

Yet I hear it in the distance –

Louder than the trains I used to hear at night, 

Like children closing cupboard doors 

While I am meant to be asleep. 

Rain sweeps in on faerie’s feet, washing 

Against my home. 

It all gets louder, 

Like plunging ivory hands 

Into a church pew. 

Then silence, such stillness 

I think it is over. 

Finally, where I have laid 

On the porch grows mild. 

I am left with the mire and 

The chorus of one bird, 

Who I think underneath the Spanish moss 

Was singing the whole time.

Ivy Aloa Robb is a poet and artist living in central Florida. Her poetry has been featured in print and online in various literary journals, including Emerge Literary Journal, Lindenwood Review, Ephimiliar Journal, and others.

reparations I’ll pay piecemeal until death

by Elly Katz

I converse with

nobody all the time,

a liminal voice singing.

But I write to complete

discourse between lines.

I owe them that –

for stepping up

when life stood me up,

for proving the palpability

of dusk,

of spaces in

between,

that wholeness can be harvested  

out of breaking,

that earnest beauty beats in the ear,

not in the eye,

for being abiding open lines that

never end even when

syntax says they do.

At 27, verging toward a doctorate at Harvard, Elly Katz went to a doctor for a mundane procedure to stabilize her neck. Upon waking from anesthesia, she searched in vain for the right half of her body. Somehow, she survived what doctors surmised was unsurvivable: a brainstem stroke secondary to a physician’s needle misplacement. Her path toward science, amongst other ambitions, came to a halt. As a devout writer, she feared that poetry, too, fell outside what was possible given her inert right fingers. However, in the wake of tragedy, she discovered the power of dictation and the bounty of metaphor.

what she wouldn’t tell:

by D. Walsh Gilbert

That the silence of rural woodlands

was louder than any city sirens,

and crickets scared her. Her sisters

had been pulled from her as surely

as the moon pulls the tides. And tidal

pools trap sand crabs which require

salt water to survive.

That her man in dress uniform wanted

her to spit shine his leather shoes

and lately, she’d been using tears.

That lately, she was drowning, her only

lifeboat the cellophane wrapped around

a package of Pall Malls. And at the end

of her cigarette, all she had was ash.

That there was something heavy on her

heart, the weight of it hidden in her

breast. That it was the worm in the apple

she’d promised to feed her man. That it

routed through her, intent on absence,

chewing as it went along. No map at all.

That women die from a million small bites.

A dual citizen of the US and Ireland, D. Walsh Gilbert lives in Farmington, Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain, previous homelands of the Tunxis peoples. She’s the author of six books of poetry, the most recent, Finches in Kilmainham (Grayson Books). She serves with Riverwood Poetry Series and is co-editor of Connecticut River Review. 

a photo from Rota, Spain, 1963

by Taylor Thackaberry

Never knew my grandmother

when she wore those 

trajes de flamenco, 

full, flowing skirts,

rings on each finger, 

clack clack clink

With each turn of the wrist.

Flush with wine, 

Swinging side to side

with her husband

on the coast of Spain.

We cleared her house 

In Sarasota, Florida

and found the rings in a box

with the photograph. 

My sister and I 

took turns picking out

our favorites, 

cobalt, ruby, amethyst 

slipping them on our hands

and inspecting them in the light. 

Grandma watched from the corner

Bright scarves draped 

on the arms of her wheelchair

as we twirled and danced

our own rat-tat-tat

flamenco dance, 

Wrists flicking 

flick-flick, click-clack,

while her hands tremored

like they remembered

how they made that dance

come alive.

Taylor Thackaberry is a software engineer and writer from Seattle, Washington, and balances her love of science fiction with the gut-wrenching fear that as an engineer, she might one day have to build something from science fiction. Her work has appeared in the Summerset Review, Voyage YA, The Red Cedar Review, and Silhouette Magazine, and her poetry was longlisted for the Steger Poetry Prize.

i saw a possum on my way to work

by Arlo Arctia

the sun meets heaven 

in a momentary dance –

blending breath and air,

for the bassoons chant. 

a D-minor blues,

lacrimosa in its tune,

catches the light,

now dimly lit,

of a foxtrotting man. 

his arms like bows, 

lifted as though, 

tilt him back, then sideways,

releasing an arrow. 

he’s a soloist in flight,

emotive and visceral – 

striking, like the swiftness 

of a ribbon dance. 

he stretches outwards,

rolls his shoulders again,

above the sky, to the trumpet’s 

metallic blare. 

and like a cupid 

shaded obsidian black,

his arrow comes back. 

erupts roses from his chest – 

and with a final gaze towards the light –

the showman calls forward the curtains,

and his staccato breath,

comes to a rest, 

to the sound, of running footsteps –

the sun meets heaven 

in a momentary dance –

under yellow headlights 

in a desolate dance.

Arlo Arctia (they/them) is a 22-year-old poet living in Washington DC. Through their Instagram poetry account and Substack, @arloarctia, you can find their personal works and conversations. 

extra

by Jaime Jacques

Julia wants to perform her piano piece for the school talent show, but with a blind fold. For a little extra pizzazz, she says. I’ve been drinking four cups a coffee a day instead of two, and linger a little longer each time I walk past the new bar. My massage therapist is really going for it, talks over the 528 Hz about how men can’t bother to put on clean shirts, how a watermelon costs eight dollars and nobody is willing to stand up and say anything. Like, how long are we going to take this? I say I don’t know about the men but the watermelon is still cheap in Mexico and my co-worker Grady says in 10 years we’ll all be poor so I might as well just quit my job and go. He’ll keep delivering mail though, because he likes how it lets him interact with architecture. Louis wants to climb K2 because Everest is too commercialized. Sixteen years old, he gets up at one in the morning to run 4 x 4 x 48s. Pounds the pavement under a dark cold sky. Says he likes the feeling of accomplishment. I hear: I’m terrified.  During my haircut I mean to ask for a little extra off the side but instead I say genocide. I think we should focus on what’s going on here, my stylist replies. Some people get beds and some people get tents. Rent control has really saved my ass this year. There’s a bit more money for gas. I drive to the beach after work, where whales get together to ram up boats. As if to say: The party’s been over for quite some time.  Don’t you think it’s time you went home?

Jaime Jacques currently lives in the ancestral and unceded territory of Mi'kma'ki, where she delivers mail and sometimes writes poems and always drinks too much coffee. Her poetry can be found in places like Rattle, Rogue Agent, Variant Lit and Birdcoat Quarterly. Her reporting can be found in NPR, Salon and Lonely Planet among others. She has a deep and abiding love for Central America, where she lived for several years working as a travel writer and binge eating mangoes. She is a poetry reader for PRISM International.

pyromaniac

by Maddy Sneep

The house is on fire

and you’re asleep in bed

with matchstick fingers 

and gasoline breath

burning hair like 

morning pancakes

& the smoke on your tongue

thick like syrup – 

it’s all happening now

it’s all happening now

the indelible urge to buy 

the indelible urge to make 

seared into each palm

with a cattle prod

& each passing thought 

is a shrieking alarm

give me a window

to jump out of

a rosebed below

to cushion the fall

give me an adderall 

and I’ll build Rome in a day

give me Rome and I’ll 

finally be quiet. please, 

give me something

my house is on fire

Maddy Sneep’s work has been published online and in print. She lives in Austin, TX with her two cats who inspire her to work less and lounge more.