Julietta Bekker (she/they) is a writer, educator and illustrator who lives with her husband and child in Portland, Oregon. In 2025, her poetry was published by Pile Press and Bitter Melon Review, among other literary magazines. Her work incorporates elements of the natural world to explore political and societal themes through the lens of a queer parent.

Poetry by Ordell Bizahaloni

To a father: About your son

Ethel tells jokes so bad, she

adds “get it?” before slapping

her knee and wiping

the joy dripping off her face.

Ethel has scars criss-crossing her

legs from exploring the woods

with Charlotte the mastiff, reading “Little House”

on the u-shaped branch of her favorite tree.

Ethel makes world-class oatmeal raisin

cookies for all her friends, but only

in the fall when the air is crisp enough

for the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove.

While the tech rambles about strawberries

at Whole Foods, I squint between my stirrup-ed

feet at the ultrasound screen. The grey rabbit’s foot

on the edge of my uterus was not Ethel.

When the surgeon lasers my insides

free of adhesions and scar tissue, she

will remove the only thing my body

is fit to grow, a polyp we’ve named Francis.

And I’ll go home in post-partum panties

with painkillers and heating pads, curl

around the pregnancy pillow and pray this

time, this treatment, this surgery will work.

If I could’ve had a daughter,

I would’ve named her Ethel.

Rowe Carenen, a graduate of Salem College and the University of Southern Mississippi, work has appeared in Womanly Mag, The Revenant Culture,GERM, Terrible Orange Review, and Running with Water. She's published two collections: In the Meantime, Neverland Publishing, 2014, and First Drafts from the Brewery, Unsolicited Press, 2022. Her chapbook, Body of Work, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

and “The Joy of Cooking”, my mother

nudged a champagne flute

from the top shelf of the china cabinet,

filled it halfway with Perrier and Jouet

and tendered it to me, whispering

into my ponytail, “Every twelve-year-old girl

should learn how to hold her liquor.”

That New Year’s Eve, we drank

to ’68, to change, to Gloria Steinem,

to each other. I was giddy from the fragile

rim that curved towards my

teeth, from the bubbles’ surprise,

from the suspense of fizz.

When I toasted my mother

for the fourth or fifth time,

I shattered the flutes in our hands.

We rang in the New Year

on our knees–laughing, plucking shards

off the counter, mopping the floor.

You could run through our house

in white socks, and the floors

would be blameless. You could nab

Cinnamon on the spice rack

between Bay Leaves and Cumin. You would

surprise my mother’s Dixie Cups

of vodka behind the manual Smith-Corona

in her attic office, where she edited

the Phi Beta Kappa Quarterly. My mother

was the same age as Anne Sexton, author

of “To Bedlam and Part Way Back”.

“There is no map,”

Anne wrote. Time travel across the lexicon

of a mother’s psyche: Bedlam

for a mental hospital in London,

an archaic diagnosis,

the abyss of an accomplished woman. Did

my mother experience bedlam

as Anne did—a locked room

disguised as ambition’s cure?

Six years later, Anne Sexton was dead,

and my mother, sick of drinking,

committed herself to the “The Institute for Living”.

I drove from med school

each weekend to visit—my car door

closing like a New Year’s Eve toast

to the sweet resolve

of our thin flutes clinking.

Ann Chinnis is the author of two poetry chapbooks- “Poppet, My Poppet” and “I Can Catch Anything” and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, 2025. Her work has been published in Sky Island Journal, River Heron Review, Gyroscope, Oyster River Pages, among others. She is an Emergency Physician and lives with her wife in Virginia Beach, Virginia. You may follow her on Instagram @achinnis.

Pune’s humidity still clings
to his matted fur when O’Hare’s
hazardous hum replaces
Hadapsar’s lullabies.

My sister stitched his name
in disheveled Devanagari
now it dangles, upside-down
like a stalled pendulum.

Security unpacks him:
X-ray eyes probing for seeds,
stories, contraband childhood.
Just stuffing, I lie.

Terminal lights bleach
his Mumbai airport tag
to a ghost of itself.
(We fade at different speeds.)

Somewhere over Greenland,
his button eye catches
a crescent moon,
same one that watched
our balcony in Amanora.

Chicago winter greets us
with concrete breath.
I zip him inside my coat,
pretend the shivering
is just turbulence.

Ayush Dadgale is an Indian-American poet based in Brookfield, Wisconsin. His work is shaped by a childhood spent moving often, finding comfort in the ordinary objects that stayed constant through all the change. His poems explore memory, place, and belonging, and have previously been featured in the Cathexis Northwest Press & the Elm Grove News-Independent.

Feels antediluvian—Savoie’s roux burns on the stove alongside a pot of debris, simmering and

sauntering.

Outside, a flood rises, maybe to erode memories embedded in our earth—we tend to a garden of

dirt and pebbles.

Ma patiently waits for the electricity to shock and shut and talks of blackouts in Kolkata to lessen

the surge.

Waves of oceanic heat reminds Baba of the Bay of Bengal and how a swoosh of air brings in

tides of cremated stars.

Outside, a flood rises, maybe to erode memories embedded in our earth—we tend to a garden of

dirt and pebbles.

A heron in the rain—rather, for every flap toward a steeple to rest a beak and listen to thunderous

songs of the Gulf.

Waves of oceanic heat reminds Baba of the Bay of Bengal and how a swoosh of air brings in

tides of cremated stars.

I've heard of solar storms and mathematics and stories that broken abacuses bead away from rod

to rod while Dadu and Dida sip tea in the dark.

A heron in the rain—rather, for every flap toward a steeple to rest a beak and listen to thunderous

songs of the Gulf.

Anthropomorphic clouds—magnetic and flared, a Muppets bedsheet from childhood continues to

cover my dreams where I visited relatives in Jodhpur Park.

I've heard of solar storms and mathematics and stories that broken abacuses bead away from rod

to rod while Dadu and Dida sip tea in the dark.

Playing cricket in a back alley, bird stained and cobbled—we perfect laughter while aunties

dressed in flowery saris listen to my Thomani’s voice on vinyl.

Anthropomorphic clouds—magnetic and flared, a Muppets bedsheet from childhood continues to

cover my dreams where I visited relatives in Jodhpur Park.

Feels antediluvian—Savoie’s roux burns on the stove alongside a pot of debris, simmering and

sauntering.

Playing cricket in a back alley, bird stained and cobbled—we perfect laughter while aunties

dressed in flowery saris listen to my Thomani’s voice on vinyl.

Ma patiently waits for the electricity to shock and shut and talks of blackouts in Kolkata to lessen

the surge.

Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), and most recently, Atchafalaya Darling (Belle Point Press), The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books), Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), and Iron Oxide (Assure Press). He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at www.shomedome.com and @shome_dasgupta.

The way I wait for death
unmoving, biting my lips, biding my time,
this black bough in freezing fingers.

My self converges light upon myself
confounding the subway prism shine.
I am so far away,
feeble being. Pulsing.

The armageddon roar of rain
on the railroad tracks
and suddenly the light lasts long

Sarah Ellis is a chemist who lives and writes in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore and is forthcoming in Ranger Magazine.

My solar radio is turned to WGN and I taste like salty SPF Birthday Cake. July

means Harry Caray’s  slushy bellow flies across Ernie Banks’ Friendly Confines.

There’s a long drive, way back in the left field, hits the left field wall,  Holy Cow!

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!  God must be satisfied today.

At the lifeguard stand, I am CCR’s star-spangled fortunate son

shimmering, chlorine sun glints off my Irish tan.

I peacock my park-district-issued swimsuit: candy apple red,

marshmallow white and spandex blue.

Swimming pool patriotism evaporates and melts

at the ICEE stand: pink lemonade, white cherry and blue raspberry.

Brain freeze. Not a care in the world. Wasn’t that the point?

Sunshine soldiers run this public pool, nodding, strutting teens,

enlisted to make the summer move and wave.

Almost adults, we pop and whistle all chlorine season long. I can see my dad’s irritation.

I can see how he can’t make sense of what he missed out on.

The summer after high school, 18 and full of brassy hope,

You signed yourself up for Vietnam.

The recruiter said: if you sign up yourself, you can pick

where you go. What a mean trick.

During your final swim unit in P.E., papers for Saigon in your gym locker, you tried

to baptize yourself back to 17. Who’s satisfied today? No one I know.

You would have killed for this too, a park district summer government job, standing

with your friends, sticking bandaids on skinned knees,

practicing with plastic dummies how not to drown.

In May we end the year with a Vietnam unit and my teacher tells us we won Vietnam—

that we always win. We always win. When I tell you this, you walk into the garage.

Big sad POW/MIA flags clink against the metal pole shooting

out of the pool parking lot. YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN. I don’t know

what that means.

You are not here to ask.

Kathleen Fields lives in Chicago. Her honors include a Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet & Author Fellowship and a Seventh Wave Digital Residency. She is a poetry reader at Iron Oak Editions and a founding poetry editor of Pine Row Press. She holds an M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. www.kathleen-fields.com and @kathleenfieldswriter.

I stand between the brow 

of two cliff faces — 

The cold breath of time curving me 

into a bereavement — 

one step out and onto the oak panels 

of the past. Childhood is a thin ship. 

I sail along the fossilized riverbed 

beneath me. 

Memory’s grassy plots have For Sale signs 

glued to their mailboxes. 

In the first, the one that is not 

a stopping place, 

The great blue spruce 

carves a hole into the earth — 

A rooted master of its tenants 

living in its gaze. 

My bedroom, my bedroom. 

I will not sleep inside it. 

I will not walk on all fours. 

Further and further, I press my pole 

into the water. 

Grass plots. Empty, and for sale, 

shape shift into crumpled paper. 

A child’s body. Hands groping for form. 

I have crossed the sea. 

I have known many hands. 

(searching and like yours) 

I have been a shore to myself, 

held the tide as a breath. 

A child’s body. 

Blue-bottled and beautiful. 

Sophia Fornwalt is a Kentuckian writer currently living and teaching in the United Kingdom. Her work explores the relationship between nature, memory, and survival. She has previously been published in ZENIADA Magazine and Persimmons Art & Literary Magazine. She is a graduate of Kenyon College and the University of Exeter.

To pull it to my chest, wrestle it to the ground.

It felt safer to keep a little distance between us.

Short-term-rental moments in the sun,

willing to forget myself

in cloud shapes across the blue.

Always to return

to the stern conditions of the lease,

the unforgiving landlord’s sigh.

His look of disapproval in the mirror.

I’ve watched others step into their bodies

as if born to play the lead—

discard the rules and make their own.

At high school senior skip day

I spied their shirtless and bikinied antics

with wonder and envy

from the roof of the party van

and knew I would never cross the sand

to join them.

I’ve skirted the edges of the arena

waiting for the concert to begin.

Taken love a dozen times to the brink

of consummation.

Scraped my plate into the trash bin.

I learned too young that love is a heartbeat

away from disappearing.

That the worlds we construct are fictions

of our own design. I’ve kept my imagination

bound and gagged in the basement

for her own protection.

Built myself a shack far from the beach,

though gleaming bodies still trouble my dreams.

Whether we own or lease,

we’ve only one chance to make a home in this world.

We shape a life through intention or denial.

After long decades, I’ve landed on the shore again.

The beach is cool and deserted,

except for the gulls with their cries overhead

and the endless roll of the sea

kissing the beach.

Alfred Fournier is the author of King of Beers (2025, Rinky Dink Press) and A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books), which was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His poems have appeared in The Indianapolis Review, Oyster River Pages, Hole in the Head Review, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere. He serves as a community volunteer in Phoenix.

you were seagrams whiskey branding my throat and i was your
cattle. sorting you into four compartments of a stomach: from most to
least digestible. one for blurting “i love
you”, one for backhanding, “i’d love
to fuck you if you weren’t so needy”, one for boasting, “i’m in love
with the girl i ditched you for”, one for berating, “i love
it when you can’t speak.” still i would graze, as i always
had–feet grounded and eyes skyward, promising
myself tomorrow the sun would finally come
back. you would put down your pitchfork instead
of poking me with it and push your flannel sleeves up your arms instead
of into my mouth. we would watch the sunset instead
of the sunrise, fear the darkness instead
of craving it, and entwine our words instead
of twisting them. but the field we tread was soft from rot instead
of tenderness, and so i left you there, cropless, the muddy tracks
of my feet fading as i found steadier ground.

Kieran Fu is a queer, wasian, & neurodivergent poet currently rooted in Chicago. They write about their perspectives of love, loss, family, and belonging. You can find some of their work on instagram @kierxpoems.

When the coach crosses the border

everything is all newsreel—

                        black and white,

Chamberlain, tanks, 1938.

I recall the theater tickets

I once bought for my parents—

US premier of a Vaclav Havel jot—

just after the velvet revolution.

The play was like three packs

of cigarettes smoked in a small,

dimly lit room—agitated vinegar voices

parsing arcana lost on the free.

As the grey hills roll on

my great grandfather pops to mind—

he who took a bullet somewhere in Croatia

for the glory of the Hapsburgs

in the Great War. Then house prisoner in

Russia, waiting on petty nobles until

the revolution freed him to walk

thousands of miles back to his Slovak

village to tell stories of capture,

servitude, return. What if Christine Y.,

my Dad’s mother, had not

shipped to Ellis Island in 1923?

Would I be one of Vaclav’s strange

new beasts—some kind of Eastern Euro

girlpop throbbing on the radio,

zipping American tourists from the bus

station to their swank hotels in my taxi?

It’s all a show, the bobbing

Tiki girl swinging on the dash,

the unlit cigs dangling from his lip,

              begging for the big American tip…

Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. He was a 2019 Pushcart Award nominee, and a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review and the 2022 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contests. Recent poems have appeared in Cagibi, Stillwater Review, Fourth River Poetry, Cordite Review (Australia), and Tar River Poetry.

Really, I could drive down to Publix right now

and buy a sheet cake, and I could carry it

back to my apartment, set it down on my desk,

lock my bedroom door, turn out the lights,

and take a fork to the cake, stuffing as much of it

into my mouth as possible, all the frosting flowers,

the sprinkles, until it becomes too much

and I have to crawl to the bathroom and throw up

the entire cake, and then I could sit there

on the moldy tile, my back against even moldier tile,

waiting for the sweat to cool off my skin,

and I could walk back to my room, and I could draw

the blinds, and I could pick up the fork again,

and I could finish the cake. That’s something

I could do. I could hit all the burger joints

on this strip, tell myself I’m running an experiment

to determine which has the best fries and chocolate

shakes. I could fill the backseat of my car

with all the wrappers and empty styrofoam cups,

the same backseat where I used to sit

and look at the stars through the sunroof

and wonder how long someone can feel

unlovable before it becomes pathological.

I could start putting French vanilla ice cream

into my coffee. I could leave a gallon of chocolate

milk on my bedside table in case I get thirsty, and when

I wake up in the middle of the night, my sheets

soaking wet and my head pounding, I could eat

an entire pack of Entenmann's, and I could wash it

down with a case of caffeine-free Coke.

That’s something I could do. I could order

a large pizza, extra cheese, and when it arrives,

I could open my front door just wide enough

for the box to fit through, and then I could drop

the whole pizza, and I could get down on my

knees and I could eat the pizza straight off the linoleum.

​​​E.C. Gannon's work has appeared in Peatsmoke Journal, SoFloPoJo, The Broadkill Review, Vast Chasm Magazine, and elsewhere. Raised in New Hampshire, she is a graduate of Florida State University and an MFA student at the University of New Mexico. She is ec_gannon on Instagram.

Elisa A. Garza is a poet, editor, and writing teacher. Her books include Regalos (Lamar University Literary Press), Between the Light / entre la claridad, and Written in the Body (both from Mouthfeel Press). Her poems have recently appeared in American Journal of Nursing, Ars Medica, The Acentos Review, and Huizache, who nominated her for the Pushcart Prize. 

Wonder and calculate. Conundrum
got me scrambled. Spinning bed,
flash, black hole. Zero wiggle room
tonight, none this morning, an
agitated mind. Other trail might
be better. Heads, tails, middle;
I have needle pain. Hornet stings,
troubled yearning. Bitter anger I
want gone. I’m generating questions.
Human vehicle penetrating a thornbush.
Stage is found crumbs, they were
knocked aside and forgotten. Need
need need a goddamn answer.
Eradicate some bleak. Symptoms
boomerang meaner. I chase stability.
One step at a time. Earth weight
fluctuates, any number I skip
the dive. Random planet could
be silent, it could be even louder.
I’m here, I brought my spirit.

Christopher Gerrior is an American poet! He is fueled by passion!

Look, Mom, he says as we drive,

pointing through the gathering

snowflakes on our window.

The trees look like a beater

with white frosting all over them.

He loves the details

which have disappeared in the rush

for most of us.

Doesn’t even have to reach

for that line,

never does.

Oooh, there’s a little toenail moon tonight.

He dreams in metaphors

and similes.

I sit in the dark

with my stacks of crumpled paper,

trying to catch

some of his dreams

as they float my way.

Stacy Julin’s work has been published in Pirene's Fountain, Sky Island Journal, Southern Quill, Word Fountain, borrowed solace, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, A Pebble Thrown in Water, by Tiger's Eye Press, and Visiting Ghosts and Ground and Things We Carry, both from Finishing Line Press. She lives with her family at the base of the beautiful Wasatch Mountains.

Sumaat Khan is a writer and artist based in Virginia. She holds a BFA in Photography and Film from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work attempts to trace the quiet ache and yearning that lies beneath what is said. 

Instagram: @halcyeonic 

Website: chitroshilpi.com

When writing I try to tilt

My script to a certain degree

As if it is a sail in the wind I write

& can really see both sides of its equation

I work at a for-profit for non-profits

We are lured these days to our downtown office

With a beer tap & popcorn machine

Square packets of chex mix and granola

Where we are told things like the TEAM

Comes first & TEAM is always all—

Caps in emails, a blue-glass

Building buried into the sky

& our cameras should really always be on

While emerging from the stairs of the train

Leaves me winded sometimes

In its sweeping into the elements

The three physical therapy clinics

I pass to get to my building hold repetitious

Movements into thick walls & straps

A friend says at her workplace she likes to pretend

She is acting so for a while I say it

I’m acting, I’m acting

& it does add another dimension to the moment

A way of being more genuinely in it

Going home I pass a woman using a manual

Push mower on her square of grass

That keeps choking but she smiles

Still at me & at the big intersection

A man balances coffee & a blue gatorade

Bottle on his head

Lisa Kouroupis is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Montana, where she teaches and serves as a poetry editor for CutBank Literary Magazine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in antae, West Trade Review, The Hyacinth Review, Funicular Magazine, Lavender Review, and elsewhere.

My sister’s ’63 Mustang and I were left behind

when she set off for college. Days crawled by

in my sleepy Florida town, as slowly as the rusty

freight train that rumbled through every night at 2.

Time sped up when I kicked that metal beast

into high gear, flying through orange groves,

on narrow country roads to towns even smaller

than mine. Anywhere was better than home,

where my nightgowned mother, fog-brained

on sleeping pills, would greet me after school

with taunts like, You made me sick today.

I swallowed her slurred words much like

the syrupy sweet cola stacked in the carport,

addicted to her disdain and resentments

as she was to her pills. Behind the wheel,

I was in control. As the radio blared

Little Deuce Coupe, I hit the open road shouting

the lyrics into the afternoon’s dazzling sunlight,

wind snapping my ponytail like a flag of freedom,

and raced to put distance between us.

Celia Lawren is the author of the poetry chapbook, Among Dead Things, a chronicle of tragedy and resilience, published by Finishing Line Press. She is the winner of the 2021 Poetry prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as She Speaks: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia, Colossus: Freedom Anthology, Stirring, Catamaran, All Pales 2 Anthology, Arts & Letters and South Carolina Review. Ms. Lawren resides in Knoxville, Tennessee after living many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.            

Este Marie is a writer born and based in Oregon. She studies poetry at the Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland and is currently completing a chapbook.

Worn memories renewed, found clues in
Kept trinkets with unique value
Leaves hidden in dim pockets
Clothes that reek of summer
Mud on my white shoes
Stray grey seashell
Tear dried tissue
Same old
Blues

Kelsy Melton began writing as a part of a healing process and has since grown twice over with poetry as her soil. She is an active member of Florida State Poets Association and enjoys reading at open mics. Typical inspiration comes from nature and appreciating small moments. Her process can be found at SirensCraftYard on Instagram and YT. 

I don’t believe a tattoo needs to be meaningful

in any way, but I’m getting one of an orange

next month. It’ll be my Florida tattoo, I say. A piece of home

that can sit above my knee. When I was ten,

the orange trees around us started to die from disease. Springs

spent with the car windows down, sweet, citrusy orange blossoms

blooming in our noses, disappeared in a season.

Here, a flourishing staple of our state’s natural beauty.

There, a housing development and a dollar store

and the trilling beep of construction equipment.

Yet, even as the orange trees are replaced with orange hats and vests,

I can hold the memory of the fruit on my body now

like the way I was marked by them as a child, picking

spheres too big for my growing hands from the low branches

in my great-grandparents’ yard. As I plunged my arms into the tangle

they sliced through my skin like gigi’s knife

in her kitchen cutting us neat, dripping slices we sucked with wide grins.

I want to remember what my wild Florida smelled like,

how the wind felt as we drove through

country back roads and it whipped my shiny

golden hair around my eyes. The light passed

through the strands and looked like branches blowing

in the wind if I squinted. I don’t want to have to close my eyes

to find Florida’s beauty, anymore.

Emily Rose Miller (they/she) holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Central Florida. She currently serves as a reader for ONLY POEMS and has had the honor of attending the summer 2024 Kenyon Writers Workshop. Find them online at emilyrosemiller.com, on Instagram @emily.rose.miller, or in real life in Orlando, Florida cuddling with their cats.

Because sometimes we run out of coffee filters

and I have to take my little boy with me

out to the store and see bumper stickers

that embolden stares. And because

once I took him to the playground and saw him

pushed down and called North Korean. Because

I followed the kid back to his mother. Because

I told her what happened and she shrugged.

My entire adult life, I wore baseball caps—

hid my eyes beneath a brim of logos, always

waiting for the next thing. Because

many people around us voted for him and

because my son isn’t four anymore. Because

I need to model how to box fear, even as I expect

a punch. Awake in bed, I wonder how I’d respond.

How, if someone knocked me over, could I do it?

Could I stand up, tap my son on the back

and tell him, it’s okay, then stoop for the cap?

Could I ignore the man yelling,

his hand busted by the steel in my cheek?

Could I walk away praising the one who made me?

Putting the cap back on, would the brim hide my eyes

as I tell him love is real, as I pocket another stone?

Jae Newman was born near Seoul. He is the author of one collection of poetry, Collage of Seoul (Cascade Books 2015). He lives with his wife and children in Rochester, New York. Jae has led workshops for the Poetry Foundation on reading and writing poems; his poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, he is at work on a new collection of poems tentatively titled Fishbones.  @jaenewman 

basil payne (they/them) is a queer poet-artist living in Logan, Utah. Their work can be found in Sugar House Review, Sink Hollow, Progenitor, and occasionally Utah State University's Projects Gallery.

of space-time . a cartographic

and chronologic impulse with no edge

. a horizon that retreats as we pursue it

. everyone who knows the past

, is a library , is a most dangerous place

. the year after I was born

, Allen Ginsberg debuted Howl

at the now famous 1955 Six Gallery reading

, was a perfect image of protest

stepping over the hypocritical debris

of Suburbia’s nuclear family

. what now can we say

to comfort the single , Black mother

who weeps inconsolably 

in the wake of the loss too large

to be held in the words

she struggles to voice . the harder we grasp

, the deeper we fall down . we euphemize 

our sins while missiles spear shrapnel

elsewhere , over there and invisible

. our U . S . of ignorance , fear , bigotry

, violence and greed , despite

the folksinger whose guitar three-corded

: this machine kills fascists

. in an era of melting glaciers

, of weeping , sheared-salt tidal surges

, the climate-warmed artic ice

, out and out and out

in incremental ocean rise . the ocean fish

plastic-bloated , and burst to death

. the shit flowed unfiltered from water pipes

, and evening news awash

with flash flood stories

, and our solutions feigned as genuine

, albeit transparently marginal . the threats

we foresee , but distort , deny , are

distracted by : we still have time . and all

that is deemed improbable 

, crouching in clearly favorable odds .   

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience & a barbwired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart—a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press.) His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana and Oyster River Pages.

Felix Valentino Salmoran is a trans writer, musician, and artist of Mixtec ancestry. His creative practice centers grief through the archivism of revolutionary lives, loves, and communities, primarily in poetry and photography. His work appears on Poets.org, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He is ½ of Last Plum Press, a collaboration with his husband, artist and writer Arden Shostak.

In two weeks, you will have been dead for four years.

Yesterday, we turned twenty-one. I am one long breath 

away from forty. What does time mean for dead people? 

Less than it means for the living, I’m sure. What is 

the point of Botox if you can’t take it with you when 

you go? I want to know what it feels like to be dust 

without becoming dust. I want to know where you are, 

but I don’t really want to know. Life is short and too long,

all in the same sigh. I went to bed sixteen and woke up

in my late twenties. I can see time unfolding in front of me

like a bridge splitting. During the Northridge earthquake 

of 1994, a section of the freeway collapsed. It was early 

in the morning hours when it happened. The sun hadn’t yet

come up, and a motorcyclist unknowingly drove off 

the strip to his death. He couldn’t see where it ended. 

You couldn’t see where it ended, either.

Danielle is a professor of creative writing in Southern California. Winner of the Touchstone Literary Magazine Debut Prize in Nonfiction, a finalist for the Diana Woods Memorial Prize in Creative Non-fiction, and nominee for The Pushcart Prize 2022 & 2023 and Best of the Net 2022, 2023, 2024 & 2025, her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Driftwood Press, The New Orleans Review and others. @danielleshorr

What immediately preceded Big Bang? The dictionary says bigamy. What comes after is big-brother (that reality show on CBS which was originally Dutch). I watch my bathroom mirror like TV and see someone with milky skin who is something between miracle and minutia (though surely not miracidium or minx). My skin shows Scottish origin or a scorpion clawing the center of the Milky Way. When I put on NARS red lipstick, I pucker and become Mars. Red lips, white flesh, blue eyes. A hand reaches for my heart while red lips recite one nation under God, god-child, god-daughter, goddess. Sometimes I take a Venus razor to my bikini line (the bane of my existence) and wonder about the birth of the universe and whether I really exist because of expansion. Are we sons of Adam or Atom, daughters of Eve or of Evening Star? Venus is too close to the sun to have a moon. I look like the moon during those fifteen minutes of face mask. I’m a white circle with round holes or an astral ashtray of space dust or a forlorn form floating in the vast mass of galaxy like a cosmic vagabond. I want to go back to before men (to memory?) so I can see how me came to be. Is it true that I’ve always been of unoriginal lunar origin, or is life infinite, and if it is, is it infernal? What is there after death besides deathbed— deathless? When I’m six feet under, will I find that six under surface is not sure but surprise?

Alyssa McIntire Start is a writer and English instructor living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is currently a creative writing MFA candidate at Western Michigan University, where she serves as poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine. Her work is forthcoming in I-70 Review. 

Naomi Stenberg (she/her) is queer, nuerodivergent and thriving in Seattle. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Oyster River Pages, Sky Island Journal, Knee Brace Press, Does It Have Pockets, the anthology, Teacakes and Tarot, and elsewhere. In her spare time, Naomi collects, on vinyl, female rockers from the eighties, does improv, and plays with her dog.

Bunny tried to feed the future a CBD drink

and couldn’t keep it down. Bunny,

sweet dumple sunset, snagging his glasses

on the strobe lights. Stratford up in flames

tonight. Hey bunny, how you doing.

You been travelling? Summer here

and your chest still a litany of pains

in your best Hawaiian shirt. 

Your best friend scats as you get down

to the dark glow of the klezmer,

bunny, paws wet in beer pong cups;

bittersick, bunny, ten miles to run.

When the last guest leaves you close

your eyes and make love to the pendant lamp

then go out to break glass on the balcony,

warm your red tongue with a vape

and count the days till winter comes.

Bless your sweet boy heart, bless a world

slipped over your back like a sweater. Outside

snow hurries. Not a hint of snow.

Alison Clara Tan is a Southeast Asian writer based in London. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in fourteen poems, SUSPECT Journal, The Comstock Review, and is highly commended in The Passionfruit Review 2025 Here and Now Contest. She is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and a member of Spread the Word's Poetics Lab 2025.

Is it selfish to celebrate

my small victories when our liberties

could wretched away before twilight?

Grandma is nearing ninety

& the pregnant thunderheads threaten

new floods her bible cannot comprehend.

My gnarled fingers bleed still

but I’ve sculpted my melancholia

with words and barbed wire

into roses for Rose, while the fine

thread of America unravels like a cheap shirt

thrown into a washer.

My new coworker is expecting

but can’t claw her way out

of the shelter, and for her those muddy waters

claw at her neck.

I still dream: maybe one day I’ll own

a home with a verdant lawn, a virile mango

tree out back.  I dream: tall bookshelves,

the musk of new paper, fresh prints.

But in that cold ghost vision

the lights don’t turn on, fridge

empty as a savings account.

No real difference between my uncle’s couch

& a king sized bed. 

I dream, I dream.        How many

“once in a lifetimes” warp dreams into nightmares?

There are dark times…

& then there is this.

Kashawn Taylor is a formerly incarcerated writer from Connecticut. His work has been or will be published in such magazines and journals as Poetry, Solstice, Jelly Bucket, Sequestrum, and more. His full-length collection of "prison poetry" was published in March 2025 by Wayfarer Books. Keep up with him on Instagram: @kashawn.writes.

Every time I met Tyler something would break.
His stepdad’s dirtbike, no helmets on, straining

to pull in the burnout. His chest on my chest, my
wrist in the way. The weight of my first cast. I liked

how he etched names into it, his curses and loops.
We chased streetlamps in his Acura, faces slipping

in and out of focus, my plastered arm hanging
in the darkness waiting for a cornstalk to lash at it.

My wrist still pops. I can’t sleep on my left side, rest
my arm beneath someone’s head. I liked the bleach

in his brown hair, I only bleached mine once—I didn’t
look like him, I didn’t look like I wanted to look. It’s harder

to be him, to be the one who breaks.

Jon Woolwine (he/him) is a Chicago-based writer studying poetry through the Poetry Center of Chicago. He is an active volunteer gardener for the native prairie initiatives throughout the city and helps run a monthly poetry workshop with a handful of friends. His work has appeared in River Heron and Gyroscope Review and is forthcoming in Passionfruit Review.