after Lucille Clifton I almost lose it, in the gym with all the nude bodies that make me love my own despite its lumpiness—your ring. A silver twining around my finger, a silver lining on my worst days.Twisted like DNA, my past & future. How I know you’re sutured to both. You have a new ring now, diamond. Still we meet in this gym and strip down to our skin, our changing bodies. When we were kids we’d peel bark from branches until we found the green center. Now I simply know

here but how but home but hope but hard but hand but hurt but hush but have but hue but help but hype but hone but hit but harm but hold but host but hire but howl but hear but hug but hate but hard but hard but hide but hurl but heal but halt M. C. Rush currently resides in Mississippi and has most recently published poems in The Sucarnochee Review, The Stillwater Review, and First Literary Review-East. His most recent book is Danse Macabre (Cyberwit.net, 2025).

My lover is a television My lover is a television playing fuzz on a loop. I am a remote. We don’t know if I am a broken remote or if he is a broken television. We don’t know if my batteries are dead or misplaced or alive. We don’t know if he is a working television with a broken satellite. We aren’t too sure how any of it works, the Apple TV or the wavering connection. And maybe the WiFi is out as it usually is. Because my lover is television fuzz, when he leaves me, he tells

Tangled knees dizzy me past the dunes, sharp grasses whistle cuts into my sand-blasted calves. I’m burning skin for paper things out here, flicking sand after copper shavings. Monarchs open & close their wings— their paths penned cursive, swift in salt wind, slow in still, over blood-brain tide. Butterflies at sea catch current & soar. What to do but toss my sandals and swim alongside south? They write the whole way there, in letters languid & scrawled, home, home, home Leela

Box up scrapbooks and scars — art projects thought lost, Beanie Babies thought tossed. Dig up fossils of selves. Declutter the cross you ironically bought. Zip through fast food stops. Glide the Garden State, bookend Manhattan. Let your college degree bounce in the back of the van. Order delivery: chicken wings and pizza. Toss the bread and cheese back while downloading dating apps. Decorate with anime stickers and family photos. Northern exposure, have a pothos dying in the

To Donna in Summer. Before the bell, the F grade. Dawn can set, then rise. She can warm her shoulders. Assure her wedding rings two. Assuage her yellow eyes Without tears, gas, or lighting her husband’s cigar to be Or maybe they are not Warm already held. After all why wouldn’t they be? As long as Donna is there in Summer. Smiling it with burns. Real ones. In shade and shades. Real ones. For me first. Then the coast is clear again. Postea Graduation. The real ones. Regalia, c

I. A woman sharpens a knife along the bottom of a mug, then pares away the hard brown root beneath an onion. She thinks of when her son first began to toddle and discovered the kitchen. He opened cabinets, banged pots and pans, and played in the basket of alliums. The woman sighs regretfully. Her son had gripped an onion with dimpled hands and handed it to her, then tried to stack one on top of another. He made a mess, scattering shards of onion skin over the kitchen floor.

morning, the air caresses pain-free nights break promise of oblivion meds break into vertigo, nausea time static, eternity sleepless slippery palms on balcony railing she lifts one leg, the other down is far enough becomes bird flightless later her sofa on sidewalk that failed at conviviality unable to hold on to friends. Marie-Andree Auclair is a Canadian poet whose poems have appeared in online and print publications such as Bywords, Canada; The Frogmore Papers, UK; and the

Hear the bee. Hear the clavichord. Hear the split lemon of the heart. How? Hunger for sour juice, soft seeds chewed to bitterness, the heart a relic of what once got said, of what once said something about what skin did to skin. Reportedly. She tugs her left earlobe, the one so far free of piercings. The asters are purple. As far as anyone knows (including her) she has never been “tore down a la Rimbaud,” as the song on heavy rotation insists throws open the door to bliss. Jo

we could have yelled our love as cheers circling the stadium. Ribboned new relationship. Our energies following each player to the Kop end. and we could have binged highlights of what-a-great-chance that comes before that-is-a-fantastic-goal while curled up in Hotel Anfield. But it’s a love ago. I belong to a new house now. Isolated on a large, hilly expanse of greenery, where every grass is a strand of desire. Still, thoughts of you continuously lodge, gegenpress, creep up t

~ after Todd Dillard how do you write a poem? and I hand him a stick. His eyes ask the question. It's a poem, I say and suddenly the air smells like straw and manure, earth and animal. My sister and I stand just inside the barn, the raccoon I nearly touched hissing at us. Even at ten and eight we knew wild creatures could not be near our farm animals. My sister and I, scarecrow-thin and dust-covered, ran to find our father. We expected him to get his gun. We were farm girls,

Translators’ Note: the words in italics are in English in the original. Zugló is a suburb of Budapest. She was standing by the philodendron, watching the apparatus make one last click. For days she thought that the sound came from the plant. These days they come up with so many new things. Would she have been really this naïve? That was also Jack's fault, like many other things. I wonder when he'll figure out that this thingamajig has croaked; perhaps he'll notice it as soo

I wrote a poem about my mother—more specifically, about the chasm between us, and my futile attempts to connect with her. My writing group said it was too short. They wanted me to fill the empty spaces, expand the emotions, include more sensory detail. I wanted to bang my head on the table. It wasn’t about the specific sharp words we’d used, or the way my hands felt washing the dishes as we argued. It was about the effort. The many efforts. About building a bridge as far as I

midnight, how your moon-sickle slouches hooks sleep, seas–– carrying witches & dreams. i mimic it, sprawling myself like okavango i mimic the waning the waning, the witching of it all. after all what saint shall–– nurse a bullet-ridden herero, placate a scream this bushman sees a lobotomy drill–– to mimic is to not forget. lyre-birds & hyenas mimic a mouth mimics a grave, guilt the ache of being god-gagged. ghosts, school-children mimic reality. apathy mimics argon–– black­­­

Breath and Remedy Well-wishes at the opening of the day. Good, have a good.. .have you any sugar, please. Pleas to the sky, the god. Wishes on an eyelash, the train-track, the clover, the clock saying 11:11. I am plural, I am they, since 2009, no singular, here. Someday we women may stop apologizing. Such a comfortable land: the geography of an apology. That dip, there, topographic lines of green and blue. The realization that you may have taken someone’s time or comfort, or

What’s that buzz as if paper being cut when I exit the house to fetch some lunch? I look up to spot a dragonfly winging against the wood-topped carport. I reach for my rake, with plastic tongs, to nudge it to freedom. I try. It squirms. Yet gentled toward the September sun, it lurches and glints into the silence. G.H. Mosson is the author of three books and three chapbooks of poetry, including Singing the Forge (Wasteland Press 2025), Family Snapshot as a Poem in Time (Fini

I went to uncle’s house after the funeral — the house was filled with water. I couldn’t see my legs once I entered. People stood on chairs to breathe. Children on their swim rings to stay alive. Everyone in the house, except the family, tried to find the tap left open. Nobody could ask or speak about the tap, the outline of the house’s inside, or the water. Cousins held shut the doors of other rooms — so no one could see what the water touched. The wife of the youngest cousin

Falling By Pilar Graham Stubborn Mule Press – 2025 Devil’s Elbow, MO Having never encountered the first name “Pilar” I looked it up and learned it is of Spanish origin and comes from “Maria del Pilar” which means Mary of the Pillar. This was a title given to the Virgin Mary after her appearance – an apparition seen by St. John the Apostle – on a pillar in Zaragoza, Spain. And so was born the honorific name Pilar, denoting strength and steadfastness. Ms. Grahams’s collection

In orchids, he multiplied the room until the balcony broke open. Four floors underground, he grafted the apartment to compose a deep poem. Each depth has its own darkness— until he found one private enough to write in, a fragment of shadow. An invisible clock-hand spun him tight; his gaze bent with its curve. Almost swallowed by the abyss of his own eyes, he wondered: If the battery sleeps, can I stay awake outside time? What difference for one who is already the sand in an h

"At the Oncology Clinic" Did our tumors beat in sync across the decades? My mother, resigned and afraid— me waiting, always, for it to be over. Our church prayed for her death, certain it was the will of God she suffered this wither of flesh and bone. I, having learned, tell no one and so they can’t pray for me, no calls toward some divine being to kill me quick. I stand alone in an ice-slicked parking lot, the clouds weeping snow. That Once in A Lifetime She asks if I’ve eve