pit Star of this soreness I laugh myself awake, sling deep into the heave. Straight out of dirt road walking and at capacity—this being the back-alley way; the heartbreak; the running away constantly. Interest’s beam catches the crowd which catches you before you collapse, tremendous, breathless, one hundred hands on your back. It’s true that at its best the thrum goes sugarwater sweet; I reduced from hypochondriac fractal to taut and trembling string. A vamp kid whose hurric

It is a good day when I find you, a petal of peony caught up in the wind or puzzling out the sky’s bent dipper over pancakes before school. Each night the moon-dish splits open like a honeydew its starry lake on a floating branch. Light falls from this dark as shining pennies we flung in the Trevi Fountain for luck we didn’t once need. We’re out in the garden as cells, Mad Libs, Motown, Hercules, principally as ourselves. There is never an outbound flight from the status quo/

While on an evening walk, we see two dogs mating in an abandoned lot full of tall grass. Holding your hand in mine I look up at the moon looking like a coin caught between two cypress trees. I wonder about the meaning of time, about disappearing fragments. To our right is a fortune teller with old hands. I wonder if she knows I wore blue tonight to hear you say I look beautiful, so I can believe in the future. Pale moths are flying above a closed divorce lawyer’s office to ou

Star of this soreness I laugh myself awake, sling deep into the heave. Straight out of dirt road walking and at capacity—this being the back-alley way; the heartbreak; the running away constantly. Interest’s beam catches the crowd which catches you before you collapse, tremendous, breathless, one hundred hands on your back. It’s true that at its best the thrum goes sugarwater sweet; I reduced from hypochondriac fractal to taut and trembling string. A vamp kid whose hurricane

I. Our father was a tall man, a gaunt man, would hit like airplane whiskey, in the snowfields of the heart was supremely treacherous and knowledgeable in all things avalanche. One day up at the glass cabin we could look past his sunken eyes and see that he no longer knew the cold; he fell ill that winter. II. April is the saddest month. Winter has, again, failed to kill us, and when it cries I cry too. Not that I wish it had succeeded, but once, we were small and our father w

In the dream / I’m all hallways / windows where the doors should be / behind distorted glass / memories / all my shit / got miscoded / strobe light nervous system / blinking Christmas light response / lighthouse with a laser for an eye / someone came in / turned all the lights on / left them on for 20 years / the light bill came due / like an apocalypse / She was with me / in the last hallway / the one with the door / I thought I knew then what was in there / that was only th

—which is why I keep quiet. The small forest where I grow what should happen, which is really just what I want to happen. Like anything, this could burn, too. ⯀ I watched a documentary about forests. Reminded me of dad too much. The planting after clear cuts, all new so the trees grow identical. Same height, same everything. And walking through it reminds me that I didn’t grow fast enough. Made small by a thousand mirror-image trees. ⯀ Mom, the burns. Not prescribed

You have to first take out your guts so that it has a place to go But then, what happens if it doesn’t grow? The bear gets stuck at cub the hollow stays, the bear claws air. Remember how you used to say “Hit me” when you knew you’d done something wrong? You’d flex your stomach so, you said, it wouldn’t hurt, You’d tell us, “Do it now.” There would be tears You’d tell my brother, be a man and you’d be smiling, buttons straining on your shirt Nadia Kalman is an NEA Literature g

She likes her grapes frozen. He can’t stand the texture. She drops two or three into a glass of Pinot Gris. Summer’s a porch screened by burgeoning gardens. Already floras enclose, obscure them— He serves breakfast nude each weekend. She paints him from memory, her colors homage to tanager and towhee— What was once shameless now carries intricacies, innumerable steps (tempo dawns). Their dance, not rote, but rueful as moonbeams escaping grasp. The trailing light of one more c

The palm and the fist and the knife in the Fist of the hand. You’re the side that enters The throat, the bed of the mouth. Take As long as you need. There’s sleep in the Back on the edge of the knife. It’s cold On the counter. The numbers are flat Like a palm. Life, round. That’s the sound Of it rolling, plane reconning. Sky is more Bowl than plate. In the kitchen the stars Watch the sweep of our bodies. They wink Like a knife. What I saw first was a flash In the fist, then w

Queer hopeless romantic Mae Fraser (any pronouns) is a New Hampshire based poet and book enthusiast. After receiving their degree in Creative Writing from Salem State University, they have gone on to have work featured or forthcoming with Wayfarer. LEVITATE, Juste Milieu Zine, and others. Find them online @maeflowerreads.

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

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

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,