May - Poem 10

Mother’s Day  / M. Anne Avera

i dislike touching my bare stomach touching the crater in the center
where i was once attached.

that was the only time i truly, molecularly touched someone
touched my mother through umbilical tie.

how it must have hurt her to rip me out how it must have
hurt

myself to be torn from her, never to cross atoms with anyone
ever again. i believe all things go back to 

her.
once,

i had a dream where i met a godhead with the face of my mother
the soft eyelids of my mother the weary hands of my mother

and she did not speak to me she only hummed.
she was electrified by moonlight current she was humming

the same five notes.
i saw her parts changing to knit together bone

from bone, flesh from flesh. she formed a newness of herself but it
was not quite 

herself.
and then i was filled as all children desire to be filled by comfort,

by thesus’ ship sailing ever forward, yet never quite
the same as it was before.

The Beauty of Life’s Elements / Desirae Chacon

As I sit back & ponder
Upon all of life’s great moments
a few elemental contributors come to mind

Light, Air, Water & Fire

Light

As i lift my eyes up to the hills 
I see coniferous sempervirentes
shaking hands with the Sun’s temperate 
Dawning palm 

Air 

feels like it has the ability to reset
responsive
sentient of
a configurative quality 
for making all things feel new

Water

the ideographic symbol for joy
a stream charts into its own purposed course
a sense of longing develops
knowing i will never see the same waters again
bittersweet
but taking comfort in knowing the same river is by my side

Fire

this comes to mind ultimately
because it feels like a primordial beginning
as gazing meets the primal glow
among flames
already present at the initiation of time
beginning with the end
& ending with a beginning

A Tiny Poem  / Heather Frankland

It is a tiny poem
one that can wrap
around your palm
twine between
your destiny lines
claim itself
the child
that one line
prophesized.
It is a tiny poem
a sponge that doubles
in size once wet
tears from joy or pain
will do.
It’ll grow
in your sleep
a green web
around your hand
pressing its mouth
to your finger
with the writer’s bump.
It has a heart now
and that heart glows
at every slow beat.
The tiny poem
becomes its own thing
with a trace
of you inside
--a seed—
and like a dandelion
when it’s ready
the wind will take
to soils just waiting
for a tiny poem
with a scroll inside
and a blossom
so bright
that it stains. 

Ode to a Birthday Candle / John Hanright

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn,
But your soft light tells the truth
About life’s little joys and turns:
Illumine my laugh-lined face;
Warm the coldness in my heart;
Reveal each gray in my hair;
Remind me of each hint and trace
In the priceless years – from start
To end – and those wishes lost to the air.

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn;
Trust I speak in sooth,
Each year’s wisdoms we earn –
This fragile flame, in whose care we’re charged,
Capable of surviving even the worst rains,
Just watch as it burns fast and slow,
Contracts and then is enlarged,
Makes pleasures into pains,
And brings to death’s abyss a boundless glow.

Flaming youth,
So soon does your wick burn –
For saying so, don’t think me uncouth;
My one wish is to return
Not to my past but to my memory,
Flickering like a fading flame.
I would say goodbye to youth’s bout,
But that would be
Like placing blame
On a candle waiting to be blown out.

Tenderness / Jillian Humphrey

After breakfast I return to bed,
one of the many comforts
of benign illness.
A head cold comes
with a permission slip.
I can put off work, laundry, writing
this poem. My brain slows,
feels almost childlike again —
floating and trusting.
My doctor listens carefully
to all that is happening
inside me.
She places her hand
on my back.
Deep breath.
Even the sound of Velcro,
the blood pressure cuff,
is like church bells to me.
Someone kind
will gently take my wrist,
ask nothing of me,
tell me good job
then send me home to sleep.

Pelham Bay, 1974  / Shane Moran

—from my grandfather

You gotta understand, 
my neighborhood was all white, 
and this black woman—

for some reason—knocked 
on our door to ask about her daughter, 
who was in the crash with Aria

Allegra and the drunk Ricci twins—
the lady wanted to know if she died 
on impact…or

Fire Starter  / Christina Vagenius

There is nothing frail about the woman
who uses the scalpel against her own heart,
revealing her own hurt, laying blankets down
for the wounded — a triage for the tired, restless
eyes of want rounded as she gathers, builds fires.
A fortress for what no longer waits for recruitment.
Just the stumble-drunk, lucky likeness
she calls love.

Can I turn you around? Hold your face
to the flame and say, you are the match,
we all need. The last ember doused
in your image, a polaroid pinched sideways,
leaking life onto what remains.

And your hands, pressed together
in a prayer more powerful than the mirror
you cracked a million times over. Seven years,
too long to recover, put back together with the ash
you smeared between seams, knowing what it takes
to ignite every lost dream. 

Mother’s Day Pantoum / Sonya Wohletz

Warm spring mornings replete with laughter and some robust chaos
Requests for more blueberry pancakes and melting butter
Sun reaching in through the kitchen window (it needs cleaning, of course)
As little legs zoom by— someone needing a band-aid for the second time today

And already requests for even more blueberry pancakes and melting butter
Time to get off Minecraft! So we can get ready and play outside
Look—the warm sun is beckoning through the window
Anticipation of the day’s newness, adventures (refill the diaper bag)

So it’s really time to get off Minecraft! For real this time! So we can head outside
There are fluffy dandelions in the garden waiting for us to wish upon
And adventure is blessing us away from routine (I’ll leave the laundry for later)
Two surprisingly strong children launch into my arms, sweet smell radiating from their heads

Like precious dandelions that I have wished upon and wished upon
While a warm and patient sun smiles through
My sweet children as they jump into my arms for another round of hugs
This warm spring morning—replete with robust laughter and just the right dose of chaos

May - Poem 9

Lines  / M. Anne Avera

im not afraid of anything at all/not the way the trees cast shadows in my bedroom/not the cockroaches along the floorboard/not the mattress squeaks or the benadryl sleep/i used to think there was bravery/in being scared/like if i was strong enough to admit it things would take a step back/far back/so far away they turn to pinpricks/and i can no longer see them/but the truth is theres nothing at all to be afraid of/theres power in the knowledge/theres growth within that thought/but maybe wishing for fear to go away completely/is a fear in and of itself

Sword of Victory / Desirae Chacon

You Victory comes like endless cavalries of barded horses
standing for the sunrise
ready forth to march on
& delivery justice
at its finest
like a shining sword
of reinforced steel
ignited with Silver
& Sovereignty of Vindication
Judgement does reign 
and Truth does stand everlasting
To every corner of the land
inlaid in every place
Forever these will always Stand. 

Energized. Exhausted.  / Heather Frankland

During track meets in high school
we would sit in the sun
wearing sweats and hope
that we could be batteries—
energy and warmth, warmth and energy.

Then there were the days
when we wanted discomfort
thin shorts and shirts
naked skin, no protection—
no sweats or sweatshirts.
The wind, cold and brutal and painful,
to be so exposed—it’ll make me run faster
we’d say or that shivering energizes me.
We needed to believe it
because that run in that cold air
always the worst on the last 100 meters
hurt our lungs, made our bodies feel heavier.

Then there were the days
that the rain made the track slick
and we worried about falling
or sliding and twisting an ankle.
We’d run two laps at the start
just to test the track—which parts
were dry, which were wet,
which were not safe.
We’d share the forecast.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I was
a runner, that I was mediocre-fast,
that my legs had muscles so hard
that I could tighten them almost
like a fist. I can’t believe
that I ran for fun with friends
telling stories before we
raced at the end. I can’t believe
I tolerated running;
it’s never been my favorite sport.
But I remember the pain, the reward,
the weight of my body
not fast like wind, not always steady
but still able to transform into something
worthy of a red ribbon—and sometimes blue
and sometimes white—and sometimes
just barely crossing the finish line
tired, yes, but staying in full stride. 

See You in the Funny Papers! / John Hanright

I don’t actually like lasagna.
I just pretend to eat it while the cartoonists are sketching my likeness.
As soon as they leave for their lunch break, I shove the plate off the table
And step out of the studio to light up a catnip pre-roll in the parking lot.
Jon hops out of his car and walks over,
Scolding me for smoking.
“Y’know, Jon, the best way to quit is to stop after the last one.”
He just shakes his head and goes inside. I take the paper from the newsstand
And flip to the funnies.
Hagar the Horrible, my favorite!
I pace around the parking lot
And drift in and out of myself. They say
A little piece of you goes into any artwork – however small the frame.
As my fur starts to go grey in my sight,
The paper jaundices in my paws,
And my story begins to fade out.
The dotted white lines on the road
Give way to my past, present, and future.
Staring into bright lights, I close my eyes.
The scream of tire against asphalt –
Suddenly thrown –
Seeing streaks of dusky sky flip over on itself before
All is in darkness.
No pain.
No flights of angels singing.
Nothing but the sound of car doors slamming and muffled voices.
My eyes open to the dusky sky again.
Lucidity, that’s not like what I’ve heard of the afterlife.
Why is there a man
Where my mangled body should be?
And why does that man look so much like Jon might look if he ever got himself –
That damn SOB gave his life
For me?

Honey / Jillian Humphrey

I put things in my mouth
that don’t belong there.
The past, a small marble — I turn it
over and over under my tongue.
Also a gun.
The gun is only imagined,
so don’t worry too much.
After a few days of playing pretend
God takes the marble.
The gun he turns into honey.

Shoulder  / Shane Moran

—After Deborah Landau & for Frank 

Should we try cropped tanks? We spoke on it the whole Waymo ride.
Heterosexuals, what good would our bellybuttons do
Out for everyone to see?  Well, we could invent new men,
Unless we’re chicken.     Oh.     We’re doing it again—
Look at us—the only ones in North Beach covered up,
Desperate to fuck a stranger.         Do I know the real you?
Eventually, we gotta let the party know how hard we train,
Risk a quick squeeze on our bare skin—risk a chill up the spine.

In This Season Of Migration  / Christina Vagenius

I want to marvel again,
at the whisper of birdsong - 
pileated and red-bellied.
The Merganser crowns
and catbird cries
that sound like newborns.

I have no time for petty mouths
or blame. The unhealed wounds 
and gilded shame. Tired, of excuses
charmed takes. Manufactured
frailty in its wake.

Instead, the marvel.
All downy and hooded
and double-breasted,
skimming the shallows
for depth. Give me
the fog-licked lake
and all her scorious
secrets. The Green Heron
and her certainty. The Loon’s
quiet descent into darkness.
I will wait on the owls,
barred and short-eared
forlorn as they go.
And the turtle
that never doubts her turn
in the sun. Hang tight,

you vultures and muskrats.
You fire-eyed opossums,
your carnivorous tongues.
Your time will come.

But for now, I wait
on the Wood Thrush.
No conspiracy between
her notes. The sound
of spring, early morning
taste of rain from a daffodil’s
swollen cup. What is there

left to know?

For Rubén Darío / Sonya Wohletz

] gauze netting
splitting fruit
yerba buena
near the porticozancudos shiver
the afternoon
sacred heart flames
parnassus and its
wild dogs ] león, nicaragua
head turned away
cinders drift
earth trembles
the zinc roofs
market empty
at noon ] from the pronaos
blue körfezptera in disarray
enemy sails
blue winds
blue winds ] the far peaks
suspended in blue
fragments
marble fragments
cloud bones
or kiss
of blessed tree ] dissolving
the symbols ] sorrow
crowns itself
in wisdom

May - Poem 8

Inventory  / M. Anne Avera

A middle finger.
Your hair, liberty-spiked, yet
still somehow soft and curly at the nape.
A carton of eggs, undone
across the summer asphalt.
Black shirts, black shoes, black pants,
and a neon yellow, silver-studded belt.
The Sharpie tattoos you gave yourself
in study hall and their smell,
chemical and cool.
Fourteen rolls of toilet paper
draped across the house by
the other boys,
the ones who play football—
how it settles in the wind
like giant anemone.
Another locker to be shoved into.
A hard world in which you are different.
And your sneer,
which shows both canine teeth and
makes you look as though you’re
older, so much older than you are.

Pale Light / Desirae Chacon

Pale light whispers into the doorway
as curtains braid with the breezes somewhere between cornflower & periwinkle dusk
faded memories aglow 
a pilot in the heart
like the light of a faint candle
descending into wax to forever oust the flame
A love once lost now buried and forgotten
just like these tombstones
embedded on grass & strolled by 
days after a day
lives remembered
lives forgotten
the day that all days dissolved ‘for me
time stood still like 
melted wax waxing cold 
a fragmentary moment of life in time
forever stilled
like ozone & petrichor before the rain
petrichor of sweet memories
ozone of piercing grief  
Electrostatic field of ionization 
arcing the mending of wounds 
easy to forget pain
once healing is suffused 
a burn no longer dangerous
but hard to remember
the details
like a well sought after dream
subsequent awakening
on the cusp of life whilst on another realm
the timbre of voice
dissonant aura of a somber day
the exact colour of eyes
how to remember 
one hard to forget
a love once thought as lost
was forever in my
hands
waning sorrows
& a heart forever full. 

The Golden Fish  / Heather Frankland

One golden fish
in one murky pond,
come on—let’s find her.
Lanterns and flashlights
and one box of matches
should be enough.
The pond sits at the far
end of the woods where the pets
are buried; the path changes
in daylight; only in darkness
does it reveal itself
when we are at our most desperate.

One golden fish
in one murky pond—
they say the fish sings
they say she laments
they say she once
had been a woman
who dreamed of youth
and beauty as her only currency.
She wanted her body
to be a penny, always lucky.
She dreamed of forever.
Some say she is the only fish
in this pond, but she always stays small.
She could be the size
of my hand or of my fingernail.
Still, she grants wishes,
and I need some luck in my life.

So come, let’s see if we
can find her.
Come, let’s see if she’ll
let herself be found.
We have dreams so high
we could use a little help.
I’m willing to believe
there is a golden fish
in a murky pond
deep in the woods
under the old trees
with their corpse hair
where the ticks drop
their hungry mouths.
I’m willing to believe
because I have to believe,
otherwise, we’d never
find a way out. 

Door Dash / Jillian Humphrey

If you’ve never returned
your Christmas gifts,
you don’t get a say,
and if you’ve never Door Dashed,
be quiet.
Have you cried on the phone
with your mechanic?
Have you recently used a laundromat?
No? Then you’re out.
If you have good insurance
with a low deductible,
if you go on a family vacation
every year — it’s not your turn.
Don’t speak.
I am not interested in your reply.

Money does buy happiness.
It’s greed that makes you miserable.

I’m sorry if you are rich
and unhappy.
There are many unhappinesses
money cannot cure.
But there are very few happinesses available
to those who have no money,
and there are many unhappinesses available
exclusively to the poor:
they are all cured with money.

Closed  / Shane Moran

After Leila Chatti

I love you, it doesn't make sense
that we don’t have a sanctuary 
to convene our bodies—to use them 

as transit to the spirit world, to kiss 
and erase our grief—to make heaven 
legible. Our hands. Our necks. Your face 

close enough to fill all my heart’s vacancies—
I’m jealous of how close you let that me 
of two months ago, at last—get to you.

People Who Rent Bikes In Big Cities  / Christina Vagenius

always look happy,
like they’re getting a deal
on laughter, fist pumps
high-five heck yeahs
an empty goodwill bag
caught in the wind
lifted between lanes
eventually, inevitably
lost to the front of a train
two shoes tied together
tossed over a telephone wire
dazzled by the view
of the girl at the café
with the phases of the moon
tattoo, half-bitten confetti
cupcake, all celebration,
whispers me too.

<You, too, can be a hypnotist!> <emoji> <emoji>  / Sonya Wohletz

Direct suggestion
You are <emoji> this
Indirect suggestion
You may start to notice how very easy it is to <emoji> this
Double bind
Would you prefer to <emoji> this now or in a few minutes?
Embedded Command
You can enjoy wondering whether you can <emoji> more with each breath in or each breath out
Tag Questions
If you follow my instructions, you will comfortably <emoji> this, and you know that you can follow instructions, don’t you?
Yes sets, pacing and leading
You’re sitting at that computer reading my words and beginning to <emoji> this more easily
Conversational Postulate
Can you imagine <emoji> this?
Confusional Language
Sometimes it’s confusing to think about how you’ll begin not to wonder when you’ll forget to remember that you’re <emoji> this
Negation Confusion
There’s no pressure here to <emoji> this, although it’s not impossible that you already <emoji> in ways you haven’t noticed
Utilization Language
You might be aware of the sounds of everyday tragedy going on around you, and that’s OK. You can <emoji> deeper with each awareness.
Linking Ideas
The more you notice each breath, the deeper you go into <emoji> this

 (Reference: Debbie Waller, Yorkshire Hypnotherapy Training 2025)

May - Poem 7

Ten short ways I got over it  / M. Anne Avera

Ten short ways I got over it

1. Tied my will to live to package deliveries.[1][2]
2. Never bothered trying to play guitar[3] again even though I could have[4].
3. Took my melting[5] more seriously.[6]
4. Paid some lady $125[7] an hour to talk about it.[8]
5. Got engaged and then unengaged[9], followed by a string of men.[10]
6. Avoided[11] the room where you were.[12][13]
7. Forgot[14] how to swim.[15]
8. Didn’t cry[16] while watching Die Hard[17] at Thanksgiving.[18]
9. Gave myself[19] multiple cavities[20] without dental insurance.[21]
10. Wrote[22] too much about you.[23]

[1] These come almost every day.
[2] Sorry for ruining the environment and also never using all the financial wisdom you taught me.
[3] The one you passed down, by the way.
[4] “Could’ve never could.”
[5] Weed gummies and ketamine therapy and Pink Floyd on repeat.
[6] It became my job. At work. At home. At the doctor’s office. In therapy. On the bed. On the floor.
[7] Again, I must apologize for the financial decisions.
[8] This didn’t help that much and I bet you could have guessed that.
[9] Don’t ask.
[10] REALLY don’t ask.
[11] Pass the hallway like a quarantine room.
[12] Where you died.
[13] Even after mom painted it Pepto Bismol pink.
[14] Forgot, here, really means I don’t try to pump my arms and legs like you taught me anymore.
[15] Now, I just flail in the water.
[16] I did cry after, though.
[17] We can’t watch Christmas Vacation anymore. I hope you don’t mind the new tradition.
[18] Mom calls it “Sad Thanksgiving” now.
[19] Didn’t give them to myself so much as I ended up with them.
[20] Ow.
[21] Bigger ow. And another hit to the finances.
[22] And cried and talked and thought.
[23] Sorry. You hated being the center of attention.

Exhaling (Part 4) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale..
& soon 
the smile begins to return to my lips
and the hope in my heart
begins to fulfill
loneliness leaves
departing me with you 
exchanging its company 
for everything i have ever dreamed of 

i exhale..
that person 
of somebody someday
finally meets me
as tears of relief
flow from our eyes
we meet the one
whom our souls 
longed for
is finally here

…we exhale..

Someday, I Can Write More  / Heather Frankland

This is the first time she’s seen the Milky Way, she tells me,
checking her phone to make sure
that it is the Milky Way
looking at an app that assures her,
texting her husband to tell him what she saw.

We are in my backyard, sitting on ribbon
lawn chairs that remind me of home,
our feet on the rocky ground
bats swoop near the loose power lines
their wings, jagged outlines.

She is there with me, and yet not.
She is outside, remembering to remember
the time she saw the Milky Way—amazed
that this little town could boast such a beauty,
documenting it for later.

I am glad that she isn’t bored
like she was in the movie theatre—laughing
at our one-screen, one-room theatre
with strange statues posed
like they had better places to go.

She doesn’t know why I am here,
and sometimes, I don’t either,
but we can acknowledge
that the Milky Way deserves
a moment of pause, silence, wonder.

She will continue to tell the tale
of the first time she saw
the Milky Way from my little backyard
in my little town
back when we were friends.

Someday, I can write more
about this decades-long friendship
the end that wasn’t exactly an end
the pain that feels like anguish, something to mourn
like a death, words that make me feel melodramatic.  

But for now, it’s this moment—I’m trying to remember
sitting in my backyard on lawn chairs
with the ribbons that remind me of home.
It’s almost cold in this memory, our legs cold,
we look at the night sky.

Soon, we’ll have to go
back inside; I’ll stumble over the stones
in old sandals and regain my balance
we’ll talk until too tired, promise to talk tomorrow
expecting all the tomorrows to always be there.

After Thought, or a Modern Romance / John Hanright

Day 1
Hey! (excitedly)
Hey! (equally excitedly)
Day 2
Hey there! (friendlily)
Hallo! (Germanically)
Day 3
Heyyy (flirtily)
Hewwo (cutely)
Day 4
Hello, cutie (boldly)
Hello, sweetie (mutually)
Day 5
Hey, sweetheart (hopefully)
Hi, darling (sweetly)
Day 6
Haiii (gayly)
Hai (queerly)
Day 7
Good morning! (smittenly)
Morning (undecidedly)
Day 8
Hello! (basically)
Yo (chillily)
Day 9
Bonjour! (kookily)
5 hours later…
Caio! (coldly)
Day 10
Howdy, partner! (jokingly)
8 hours later…
Hi (seriously)
Day 11
Hay! (goofily)
10 hours later…
hi (unamusedly)
Day 12
What’s new? (inquiringly)
Day 13
What’s up? (anxiously)
Day 14
Hey (hopelessly)

Golden Rule / Jillian Humphrey

My Mother knows the golden rule.
   She sees what I do.
She knows that’s what I’d want
   done for me too.

When I paint the bookshelves
   she paints the bookshelves.
When I plant roses
   she plants roses.

She fills the house
   with cotton and blues.
She opens the windows
   to let in the dusk.

Today she washed the sheets
because she remembers
I like soft clean things
and sleep.
She is making dinner
   because she saw me make dinner.
She thought it was a nice idea.

On the porch
with my head in her lap
    she rubs my back
with one hand as the other
    hand stitches a quilt
she’s been sewing for forty years.

She kisses me
   on top of the head,
and when she’s finished
   I’ll go to bed.

The Starlet  / Shane Moran

These are our sequins, 
stitched into a dress,
collected from a factory 
of tired women who keep 
the machines stamping. The
body of the last masterpiece of antique 
Greece made painting
upon a young actress from a city of
statues for war casualties, posing in the city of
rent—the body glimmers in the hand of a great 
light, like the quiet gems of the minds within 
us, carrying one silence to another. We watch 
and swallow a million sequins—we reach
for Milos. A breastplate, the birth 
of a scaly-winged butterfly, the face 
of a flirty elephant shrew—all held by grasping
seaweed and a quarter of gold. The dress
is the night the titans fell. Stitched
into the arms of Poseidon, marked 
by the sign of Zeus, she wears a chase 
of infinite colors. Strands of silk, tears 
of a rainbow, brush her legs. She steps
wearing the Goddess of Desire. 
She is worshipped.

—After Chase Infiniti wore a trompe l’oeil Thom Browne dress inspired by Venus de Milo Met Gala 2026

Secret Language  / Christina Vagenius

You skipped backwards
in the video like you knew
I couldn't watch you go. How
I’d want to see your face, still
so young, legs bent in wiry chaos.
Now you send me flat screen
photos, clouds doused in light.
Words scratched beside rivers,
your fingers finding stones,
the milled-mouth limbs of trees
made into homes. And those
same bent legs, bow to bargain
between the stay and the go,
your song at dusk, writing notes
to the sky in a language
even I                  can understand.

Bedtime Story / Sonya Wohletz

When does the future begin?
Tonight perhaps—that interstice
Of season or cutlass-berm, the posy—
Its slit stem, as you
Cradle it in crystal
A vessel—
This floating work of art—
Memory pouring in
Seawater through the gunwales

May - Poem 6

In Defense of Invasive Species  / M. Anne Avera

All hail the kudzu plant—that noxious weed, 
villain of the South. Impervious to pesticides 
and cattle that graze on its wide, fat leaves,
it creeps. Oh, how it creeps! Spreading wide
and impossible to kill, it coats the ground
in a glaze of verdant green, sucking sun from 
the plants of weaker constitutions. Their poor,
sodden bodies like a graveyard in the shade.

I sit sprawl-legged
on the road shoulder

and suck up the dust. 
I am cooled and protected and 
hidden from the gym coach
by kudzu and my own wit.
Never noticed it before,
but I take it in now—
how the wide, hungry leaves
blot out the sky.

More than anything else,
I am the worst at running the mile 
and the worst at being in middle school.

 No one would believe me 
if I lied about period cramps, so,
knowing I’ll be reported
for cutting out of class,
 I lay myself back
and curl into the weeds.

All bow to this prime bane of farmers, 
this roadside decoration. Oh, Kudzu, 
you fire-resistant beast, you foreign guest, 
I believe in you. You, who wants nothing more 
than survival and stretch and propagation 
beyond your soil.

Exhaling-(Part 3) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale..
if only…
hope it beginning to hurt

i exhale..
40 days later..

and that person
of all those collected
feelings, prayers and thoughts
enters this season
enters my life
walks past the clothesline
past the spring flowers 
crosses the road high to meet me
as autumnal evening rays begin to 
meet the grass 
as it lay 
among the flowers
rays 
like curtains in the sky

Cat to Mouse  / Heather Frankland

I’m supposed to eat you.
You’re supposed to run.
But let’s sit in the pool
of sunshine instead.
I’m tired and need a nap.
I need to dream
just a bit longer;
there’s something I was meant
to figure out, some quest maybe,
some greater mystery only seen
with my half-moon eyes.
I am not lazy; I’m dreaming.
It’s a lot of work.
See how I breathe so laboriously;
it’s not really a snore;
it’s like a deep sigh
of exhaustion and contentment
that got captured
in my wind pipes
in my nasal cavity.  
Sit near me, please,
I like the company,
but not too close—
the human might notice,
and we would never hear
the end of that—
I’d get demoted to—fat lazy cat;
you’d get demoted to—should-be-food.
We don’t have time;
we have too much dreaming to do.

Montages of Mortality: A Collection of Last Words/ John Hanright

Thomas Paine: “Taking a leap into the dark. O mystery!”
Richard Sheridan: “I am absolutely undone.”
Henrik Ibsen: “On the contrary!”
WWI Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew: “We have won.”
Julia Ward Howe: “I am so tired.”
Henry James: “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing.”
James Baldwin: “I’m bored.”
Archduke Franz Ferdinand: “It is nothing…it is nothing…”
August Strindberg: “Everything is atoned for.”
Ben Travers: “This is where the fun starts.”
John Millington Synge: “It is no use fighting death any more.”
O. Henry: “Pull up the shades; I don’t want to go home in the dark.”
Osamu Tezuka: “I’m begging you, let me work!”
Paul Walker: “Hey, let’s go for a drive.”
Salvador Dali: “Where is my clock?”
Groucho Marx: “This is no way to live!”

Specimen / Jillian Humphrey

white woman, 40, Ohio
eating Chick-fil-A
in a minivan
beside the soccer fields
next to her, a golden retriever

You could pin me
to a display board,
fasten my wings in place,
and label me, correctly:
middle age middle class
middle western mother of 3
You’d be wrong.

I am crying because there are leaves on the trees again.
Write that down.
My grandfather had a talking parrot.
I fed a goat a chocolate chip cookie.
I do my cartwheels left handed.
Not every blue bird
is a bluebird.
I am a species
you’ve never observed,
a weird little bug
you know nothing about.

Cinco De Mayo  / Shane Moran

On TV, the president
is threatening another 
round of bombing in Iran. 

In La Puebla Mexicana, 
a round of shots for the five 
of us in sombreros

and singing Selena—sweat 
on the table. We pay 
our war taxes in exchange

for tacos, tequila, and corn on a stick. 
Margaritas! We ask the waitress,
flip from CNN to the Semifinals. 

Name a reason not to—
go numb, amigo

A Love Letter To The Hand On The Door  / Christina Vagenius

I plan a trip to Iceland on a day
when the overwhelm, the soon-to-be
voice of assertion begins his unruly
decent down the stairs, belt in hand
pulling at the open holes of adjustment,
accommodations, lost. My tip-toe tender
heartbeat heaving behind the door
that doesn't lock
waiting on the sound of my brother’s cry,
the wall cracking the whip, his searing
treaty. Brandished by the hand
that never heals.
I didn't know the fear would find a way
through the wood’s knotty pine that day,
follow me here
to the hardened sap place inside me
turning everything cold.

Self-Portrait: Reflection in a Sky Light  / Sonya Wohletz 

As viewed from below, experienced as from above:

Small card table, cards spread out before the figure
who is both me and not me—
a picture, maybe of a bird, or a saint.
Benedict perhaps, with his rule, his clarity,
among the disorganized scatterings, as though
gathering shiny fragments for his shrine,
or nest, depending on how urgent
the viewer’s appetite for mimesis.

In the image:

my head is covered, my gaze—insolent,
or is it something else my mother named for me,
some outdated adjective which I have since forgotten?

The scene is otherwise still—light bleeding through

in colors of the cold world, rearranging themselves
into discrete features of an interior. Let ritual
explain itself, it seems to say. Let ritual preside

This lone black bird—visible through the window on the left.

Observe how its beak scrapes

away at expectation, at your tired
preening. See it sharpen
grief into the vague horizon—the figure whom I call myself
daubing in blue greening: I am gazing
down or up the curve of her back. I catch myself here,
on the event horizon of recognition.

The reflection is the mirage—beyond it are the confused symbols

of circumstance, stretched beyond any prophet’s striving. Substance
traces no impression as it falls, falls—seals itself into stasis.

May - Poem 5

The Hunting Party  / M. Anne Avera

The sky is dark and circular and starlit
like the day before creation.
All is full-bodied shadow
and quiet.

They come before the world wakes up
on horses or mules or foot—
whether bare or hard-shod, each step still lands soft
on the rippled earth. Their tracks map
path upon path upon path.

Their hounds and pointers and mutts follow,
each bred testaments to the task at hand.
As they crowd out the tree line,
their eyes fix low and their hot breath froths in puffs,
harsh out of their twitching noses,
perking their ears when they hear,
“Good dog, good dog.”

Some wield angled spears or brass-plated guns
while others hoist sharpened arrows
and slingshots of shale and iron.
The stragglers carry nothing,
dragged along to trust in their bare hands
or to simply witness.

These faces, ever-changing.
These parts of a nameless whole.

Slowly, stars melt from the cloudless sky
as sun shatters the darkness.
It begins.

Exhaling-(Part 2) / Desirae Chacon

i exhale again 
someday i might see these feelings
in somebody someday 
somebody might meet me 
high on the road 
full of intention
of refined purity
full of love
kindness
goodness

a heart full
a full smile
a mutual gaze
of understanding
wordless
yet so full of meaning

Toddler Poem  / Heather Frankland

Strawberries! 1-2-3-4
Blueberries! 5-6-7-8
Puzzles, I love puzzles—
putting in that last piece.
My dog in the yard
my yard, my swing, dirt,
a butterfly—
look a butterfly!
Can I touch it?
No—
I want to touch it.
Why can’t I touch it?
No. I don’t want to see birds.
I want butterflies—
BUT-TER-FLIES.
What, a lady bug?
Where?
Luck?
I like luck.
What is luck?
Lucky me, 1-2-3.
I can count to 20.
Want to see?
I can see
20 good things out here
starting with you, Mom.
You are number—2.
But that butterfly
I couldn’t touch
was number 1.

A Shade of Red / John Hanright

After “Untitled (Heart of Heads), 1989” by Keith Haring

Effervescent heart
entwined with motion and mirth –

What a pleasure to meet
you in the interstice of oblivion and eternity –

Your art puts color into revolution –
‍ ‍
Radiating outward, screaming out
blood sweat and tears –

So many tears upon your heart –

If Van Gogh put his pain into his paintings
you wrote your manifesto in red upon a canvas –

Love – the inimitable mediator between art and life –

Your mind has diffused into the aether
to share space in the cosmos –

Your art endures – survives you –

How you would love the world as it is now
unshackled from Death’s greedy hands
constantly confining millions to early coffins and urns
yours among their number –

Our world is caught in the chasm
between utopia and dystopia –

A protopia built from the remains of dreams and nightmares –

Art can save us
Radiating outward, screaming out
silence equals death

ON THE DAY MY DAUGHTER’S FRIEND FOOD SHAMES HER, I FEED MY GRANDMA SNACK PACKS / Jillian Humphrey

my grandmother, dying, wanted
only lemon pudding
so I fed her
with the single plastic spoon
she kept unwashed
in her bedside table

she knew me but not
the day or hour
and she kept leaving us
between bites
to go somewhere like sleep

it’s possible after a life
of so much shame
she wanted finally
in the middle of her
a yellow luminous sweetness
cups of it

so when she asked for more
and more
like a baby bird
I fed her
all she wanted
and then she was gone

Caught in The Flood  / Shane Moran

Last night, the flood chased me in a glass, 
as I hunched to the bar late and tired. 
She is the one I have most desired, 
but I drowned alone in the deluge.

In the morning, I called her—wired.
Told her: not too much transpired. 
The catching up was good, until she asked: 
Why Kim texted her, she saw me at The Deluge?

I couldn’t tell her about the stalking flood,
just said I had a few ‘cause the Knicks had won. Why lie, Shane? You got drunk.

She can't see the flood that chases me,
how I’ll drown alone again tonight 
and lie again to her tomorrow.

The Passenger  / Christina Vagenius

You can control the temperature
if you do it quick, turn the knob

make it cold, push passenger side only
before he rolls the window down.

Tells you it's warm outside, tells you
to take your sweater off. But you like

the sweater. It's the one from your trip
to Ireland with the knit cuffs and the virgin

wool you bought in the shop from the woman
with your grandmother’s Easter eyes,

basket full of Hershey’s Minis, tucked
inside the plastic grass. Dark chocolate,

making your mouth pucker, your grandfather
laugh when she said, Oh, Frank. The words

dropped in a caldron for safe keeping. I told you
she doesn’t like it. Take your sweater off. But

I like the way the yarn feels
on my skin. Soft, incorrigible,

coaxed from under a spell.

May - Poem 4

Grandma died thinking that I believe in God  / M. Anne Avera

but I do believe in:

hand-sewn and smocked Sunday school dresses; peach cookies with water; paper cups; princess hats with tulle on the end; the mixolydian scale; a baby’s first tooth

jellybeans on a mountain that we dusted with salt; low blood sugar that shakes my hands up, puts sweat in my underarms; exhaustion on a stranger’s face; kudzu; the late-season yellow jacket

the first cigarette I ever smoked, crouched on my best friend’s back porch; her mother’s fake leather purse and her little brother that they nicknamed Cheese; the thing, shared, menthol rubbing its nose to our clothing

being from somewhere that considers covering trees with toilet paper a tradition; that pastor that paid my parking ticket for me; wishbones; mathematics and orgasms, which feel the same

hiding under the bushes at my house to know that someone would want to find me; studying the Bible for an essay; mountains made from molehills; the nice silverware, plates we never use

faith from a mustard seed; hot dogs and sparklers and wondering if something is worth celebrating; knowing that I found God with a capital G in that church choir I joined where there were only two other people; voices combined into one living thing, hanging in the air

that God is not just in beauty, but also in humanity.

Exhaling / Desirae Chacon

i crave connection 
the kind thats stable
the kind that i can dive into
the kind that has a
safety net of infinity
the kind that i never have to lose
like smoke…
through my fingertips
like dark matter 
its there
but i feel empty
i feel lonely
loneliness comes to sit beside me
like an old friend
im slightly uplifted inside from familiarity
but reluctant to say hello again
like another friend i may lose
like mist at the noon of day

i breathe
& exhale 
collective memories of nostalgia 
come flooding in
like water over 
a mosaic of tiles
there’s clarity
yet why is my heart always so heavy

i have no expectations 
just a pure genuine soul 
i can weave a tapestry with
for this life

somebody i can see in the next 

Instead of That Thing You Should Be Doing  / Heather Frankland

The rabbit holes of gardening tips—
Yes, you need to start your garden
with a special cell block tool;
it looks super easy. You can find it
on Amazon, and yes, you need
to learn how to dehydrate herbs.
You once tried hanging them up
by their stems on clothesline
over your sink, and only the thyme
turned out once or twice.
The rest—moldy leaves—
You’d never make
a good witch or herbalist.
Yes, what you need is a dehydrator
you hope you have the counterspace.

And then, what about those deer?
Not those that you warn your loved ones
about in the Midwest—a sign of pure love—
drive safely and watch out for the deer,
but those mule deer of the Southwest,
those stubborn squat deer with long ears
those deer who aren’t supposed
to like your green onions
but somehow do. The ones
that eat young tomato plants—those
impulse buys not even out
of their impulse-buy pots.
Study all of the plants that will naturally
deter them, and while you are at it—
study the plants that will naturally deter
ants and other unwanted pests—
you have the time!

And what about that one actress
you saw in that one show you liked—
you know the one, supposedly
she once was engaged to a man
who stood her up at the altar.
Imagine that! Beautiful, talented actress
stood up; that must’ve caused damage
never-mind the fact that she moved on
and that he moved on,
and that their careers moved on,
or that it happened over a decade ago
it’s important; you need to know!

While you are at it—maybe write a letter
to a friend or two; people love to get letters,
and you used to love writing them.
I mean you can’t be charming
because well, you are on a deadline.
But you can try to use clearer-than-your-normal
handwriting, and you can sign it
with a heart. Go ahead and color the heart—
after all you have markers, you should use them.

And then, only then, will you sit down again
to do what you are supposed to do—
that is, after making coffee, tea, popcorn,
wondering if you should make Kool-Aid
or open that bottle of wine that you are saving
for something special; surely, this day,
when you are avoiding what you are supposed to do
is that special day. How can it not be?
But maybe it would be best to drink
when done with this dreaded task
and not even thinking about this dreaded task,
and not even avoiding this dreaded task
that drains you; think about that for a while.
The clock ticks; night comes, your brain hums,
and slowly begins to focus on what needs to be done,
but first, there is one more thing you need to research.

I saw a seagull / John Hanright

I saw a seagull
Spearing a black-clawed crab
Today
I looked disgusted
Then I walked away
For there was nothing I could do
So speaks the wind.

Before the Guests / Jillian Humphrey

 after Kate Baer

In the end it’s who we loved —

and if they don’t love us back
we can get a dog
become a mystic
learn poetry
eat while we
look at our phones
live as an exile
on the Island of Patmos
or the internet
tell everybody
we are the beloved
recite it over and over
put it in the canon

after all — an angel
may come and ask us
to write something
down, something like
I am the one God sees
I am the one God hears
I am the one
on this lonely island
God loves

Mooneesha  / Shane Moran

Most Thursdays at Phoebe's,
I see her, hair straight—
sometimes dyed an unnatural color,
her make-up, dark and trad.

In mostly black—she wears
a bikini top with little shorts and stockings 
or a striped romper, or a striped crop top 
and mini skirt—always a leather jacket. 

When she finally notices me, her big lips—
lined—half-moon to reveal 
her gapped front teeth—she brings 

her hands to her chest, leans forward. 

If I ask her something, she responds 
in one of three ways—
a girlish nod—for a gift,
angry eyes—for an error

or a smile—and the touch of her hand 
on my shoulder—if I remember 
what she told me in the weeks before:
Her love for anime. Rock music.

How she dances for a living. How she left
everyone behind in Georgia—her parents,
her accent. How she wants me to lead her
through the busy bar—without touching.

She says she doesn’t do coke, but always wants 
to know if I have some. Alternative, she calls 
herself longing for the attention of white boys.
Her dark skin, well-lotioned, shines

in the yellow light of the back porch,
where she sits alone, and those boys seem
to ignore her, as her big brown eyes, marked
with stars, follow them—wet, alive.

Once, lost in new steel eyes, one hand 
on his pale neck, she swatted a shot out 
of my hand. When she felt the tequila 
splash on her uncovered skin, she turned

to me—she kissed my gold-brown cheek. 
Her fingers slipped from my face as I walked 
out. Calling a car back to the Bronx, I wiped 
away the bruise of her tar-pit black lipstick.

Resonance  / Christina Vagenius

I try to change the filter on the espresso machine
while the sun burns smoke signals inside my eyes, while

the robin throws herself against the window for the fourth time,
folds her mate within a wing, buried beneath a puddle of sky.

The rain stops coming, turns the dew into the surface of the moon, tears
like tiny craters frozen against the lying glass. I long for the unhurried,

the slow, molten pour of ancestors down my back when I ask, how’d you do it?
Across the field, a spray of lacquered feathers lifts from the quaked ground,

splits breath into pause, a pulse quickens somewhere.

Field Notes, Luhr Beach / Sonya Wohletz

5.3.2026

fir branches mewing in the breeze—eagles huddled on mudflats preening—carpets of algae pour into
Nisqually Reach—the tide turns its back again—glassy plumes of inland sea unroll and read out the sky
like a script—two police officers with tattoos and full gear search for a man they say is in
distress—somehow the word fulgent sneaks in along the margins—hazelnut branches clip the view into
neat angles—pear blossoms proud of the smooth bark—Oregon Grape flushing in the heat—two
students with a small machine to study photosynthesis—this other plant is Salal and it belongs here too
they explain—children with armfuls of dirt and bark chips—whirring of the lawn mower again—more
birds with glossy wings—answer me please if you love me says the screen—plane slowly ripping the
membrane of afternoon overhead—rabbit blasts through garden mesh—the world belongs on this side
of Sunday says one bird—prove it another responds—

May - Poem 3

anthem  / M. Anne Avera

my eulogies, my eulogies.
they sing to me. they whisper, wet against my lips, forked tongue flicking against mine.
taunting with what I will never hear.

they warm their frigid bellies on my back. come closer, come closer.
fingertips on their satin scales, pouring wine through their jaw.

they tell riddles that I know by heart. 
about the one who tells lies and the one who tells truth and
the woman who will die without tasting it all.

I am giving the life I never had back to the Earth. back to Her soft, white eggs.
I am coming home to the dog that only ever knew love from me 
and pressing my nose to her ribbon fur.

since birth, 
I have been my own witness.

Our Beautiful Lives / Desirae Chacon

You rise
uplifted on a new sunrise
pain bleeeeds..away

i rise
to stars
speckling the skies
glowing like radioactive radium

you pour
your favourite coffee
the filigree scrolls
unfolding
above your mug

i take a nightcap
bourbon neat
as a turn to look out the window
overlooking the night
a view to wherever you may be

you stretch and yawn
your beautiful eyes open
and are fresh
to the newly minted
rays of sunlight

you look out your window
a longing of solemnity parallel
with a warm hope for a new day

we miss each other
you go
i go
dawns rise
dusks settle
and time collects
as our hearts countdown
like clockwork
as every moment we have
brings us a day closer
to our reunion

For Amanda Schoenberg: Flowers and Politics  / Heather Frankland

Flower Child, I was nicknamed in high school
wearing my favorite tie-dye
every Halloween, wearing
Lennon-like sunglasses, letting
my long hair stay long and loose—
my forever costume I could pretend
I just happened to wear,
and it just happened
to be Halloween.

Or it could have been my politics, leaning left,
even more left than they are now.
I would get in debates
in high school hallways
over kitchen tables, on walks home
in playgrounds where we would go
to swing at night and pretend
we were old and wise
so much different
than the children who enjoyed
playgrounds in daylight.

Then Flower Child felt peaceful
like a field of daisies and no threat of poison ivy
like dandelion or clover chains
before they dried up and were thrown away;
it was being cautious in discussing politics
careful in who you let in, who got to see
the soil, and not just the pretty flower
that wouldn’t offend.

And decades later, Flower Child became Flor,
my forever-nickname in Peace Corps,
my identity for years—Flor, brave Flor
who made jokes in another language
who memorized cumbia songs
who listened to stories and politics
who felt alive at night, no playground in sight
just a bunch of people, sitting together
in the cool sand, laughing
and looking up at the full moon.  

The Bullet / John Hanright

In honor of the 54 slain at the Pulse and Club Q massacres

“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
- Harvey Milk (1930-1978)

What is the trajectory of a bullet?
Made in the U.S.A., exports of our shores.
What is the trajectory of a bullet?
Shipped around the world, some circle back to our doors.
What is a human life worth?
Roughly 35 to 55 cents, or $500 for 1,000 rounds.
What is a human life worth?
A chocolate bar costs less per pound.
What is a closet like?
Inside: dark and dank, full of mothballs and regrets.
What is a closet like?
Outside: around 24” x 75” – fit for a casket.
What is the price of hatred?
A brief, tormented life.
What is the price of hatred?
Death, suffering, and strife.
What is the shape of Hope?
The size of lovers’ timeless shadows.
What is the shape of Hope?
Ask Harvey, he knows.
What is the aim of a dance club?
Community moving in time and space.
What is the aim of a dance club?
Eyes crowded with lust; hearts keeping pace.

Bear / Jillian Humphrey

On my birthday
I imagine
I am a brown bear
eating wild blueberries
in the sun
after playing in the river.

No one sees me.
Not a fish, not
a bird.
I leave no trace.
Just one bush
missing this summer’s berries, 
and a bit of river
sticking to my fur.

I return to an empty den,
sleep with a full belly.
I die having lived
a little life,
like a secret tv show
made only for God.

WILL WE EAT BEYONCE?  / Shane Moran

Still on their feet, the favorite
of millions working—
poor or over-worked rich.

Poor ones rubbing the feet
of the enemy of millions
or their oily bodies.

It is easy to confuse
a friend and an enemy
when you are hungry.

Watching dancing feet or lying
at their feet—both will fry
in the same grease

after the revolution. 
If we are imprecise with our tastes—
we will lose Beyonce.

DEVOTION  / Hali Sofala Jones

A cardinal
fell in love
with a red bird
in a cracked mirror,
abandoned
beside the barn.
She sang for days,
warbled face-to-face,
tapped her beak
against broken glass.
Waited in the hush
of a stooped tree,
its limbs stripped bare
by winter’s blade—
believing
she could coax
that silent thing
into flight.
What should we name
such an act of  return—
of calling beauty
to the ruin?
To the fractured face,
the shattered wing,
left for no one
in the wild—

A Mother Walking Home In The Dark  / Christina Vagenius

sounds like footprints in the sand
drained of the shore, two steps from
a tide turning back. Birds still singing
somewhere, cooing their babies
to sleep, wings levitating, leaving.
A star named for her transparency,
numbered by novelty, a catalogued card-
with sympathy. There, perched sideways,
dangling from the crumbling edge.
Even a dying star grows wings once
leaves me breathless,
every time. 

Transgressive Y.O.L.O.  / Sonya Wohletz

§ 1.1      Another milestone, another project finished—

And yet none the wiser, none the richer. My booty still jiggles though, wondering to itself where is my joy at? Got put off its perverse mission, perhaps. Now here I am stuck with the worst of contradictions, confusing it all with my “very cherished” dignity. No use wondering about it if you’re a single mother, poor, and part-time whore—and I happen to be [bless me] all three.

§ 1.2      Lacan, where you at during times like these?

Sliding between confusions like he knows how this will all end—my first guess. Or maybe intonando el canto sagrado de la Paquita, maldiciendo a los chumps that did her dirty—curing it all into pleasure with her throat, articulating a true thing of pearlified beauty. What a shame for you, inútil, she snarks—tres veces te engañé/tres veces te engañé/tres veces te engañé—I’m a goddamned goddess getting my glam on this Saturday night, and you can’t touch me.

§ 1.3      Today:

If I could hover myself over to the territory of the divine, I would seduce at least three people for breakfast, spew prophecies across the sky for lunch, and bathe in rosewater for dinner. I would dance down at the club and perhaps return in the early morning to crown myself in cactus flowers. Open new visions, sharpen strange implements.

§ 1.4      San Pedro, concédeme las llaves al cielo, alright?

Heavenly I think it would be to move through selves and into the gaze of anyone that ever beheld a real woman they’d underestimated and suffer the thirst of eros, of anyone who dared dance naked downtown in daylight, of anyone who claimed nothing in defense of their own failures, let alone insanity. Anyone who beheld the gatekeepers and knocked them with the swing of one luscious thigh to the other side of surrealism before clawing their way back into the delicate balance of

clean house—clean prayers—dirty delusions

May - Poem 2

baptismal  / M. Anne Avera

weather perfect, lake water clear, god in the cattails beside the shore.
he held the lamb up and, now, you can see the milky white in its eyes,
gone hollow from adam’s guilt still sleeping, waiting to lay waste.
but thy will be done, be filled, be overflowed. water flushes the body.
blood becomes water becomes wine as the soul is washed. a privilege,
to have this grace and goodness restored, for the hide to dry pearly white.
with the glory of the sunrise and the heartbeat of the hymn, we pray—
the parts of us that know better and the parts of us that want for more.

Weight of a Feather / Desirae Chacon

as i sleep 
with weight upon feathers
i am blanketed with life
awaiting my awakening 
this beautiful life surrounds
as sleep takes me 
on divine encounters
of dreams
birds 
call into the night
dusky songs
upon silky silhouettes 
streams like night-watchers
constantly marching into the 
mists of the ny3t
night fox and moonflowers 
arise subsequently following
four o’clocks last showing
a reposed slumber

falls upon the land
as my consciousness falls upon
weight of feathers
one more dream
as birds sing
till arising
awakens
to introduce
this dreaming life
to a new dawn

Southwestern Summer Days  / Heather Frankland

For days, a heavy cloud
promised rain, fat
drops to remind us
that there could be
a storm, that the heat
could be
chased away
that our garden
may not remain
dried out promises
of spring fantasies.

For days, that cloud lingered
the sun became bashful
my skin remembered
how it loved rain.
It remembered long summer storms
wet mouths of raindrops.
It felt so very alive
like it was more than skin
a leaf trembling, a tree dancing
roots thankful—deep  
in the ground
stretching out
and still growing. 

Elegy for a Playhouse / John Hanright

What an unceremonious end to an otherwise inspired play.
We really must get our money back.

…

What? Another mailer? Another fundraiser? What does this one say?

Dear valued patron:

We are drowning in debt. We can’t keep the stage lights on without your support. We need your
help. Please, give what you can. Become a subscriber. Every little bit helps.

Yours sincerely,
The Board

Throw it in the trash, dear, with all the other junk mail.

…

Oh, that’s the theater where they do all that social issue stuff. I’m not supporting some agenda.

…

Am I a season subscriber? No, I just came to see Brigadoon for the fifth time in my life.

…

I can’t wrap my head around it. How could a woman play [insert classic male role here]? It’s like
if a man played [insert classic female role here]. Can you imagine?

I don’t support the gender-bent casts they have had
lately either. What does the Met season look like this year?

…

Pay what you can? Can you make change for a ten?

…

Why am I gonna pay $30 for a production of Hairspray when I can see it for free on streaming?

…

Dear valued patron:

It is with a heavy heart that we must say goodbye to our beloved theater, who passed away last
night surrounded by family and friends.

The theater is survived by streaming platforms like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, bad spinoff
series of originally good movies, and AI videos of people falling from infinity pools.

In lieu of flowers, for the love of everything good and beautiful in this world, please support live
theatre.

Yours in community,
The Board

Icon  / Jillian Humphrey

The hand ruins the brain
’s design. The image, made
real, is marred.

Mind resists; pleads
fidelity, not sloth.
An image is what it is.
Any tangible or legible
construction of that image
is no theophany,
only an icon.

Why insist on the incarnation
of a dream?
You’ll kill it.

But the body must make something.
With its gladness,
a pile of stones.
With its sadness,
drawn figures, shrunken heads
and hands too large
for their arms.

The body writes sentences
to record what it felt
but the mind
cannot resist
interfering. It assigns meaning
to narrative, interjects
cause where there is only effect.

Why this overgrown garden?
A figment is still a vision.
Without it the people perish.

Flower Moon  / Shane Moran

Something
holds me in this body
calling—come to me, come.

You see me shine,
but don’t try
pulling me down:

Do you really need 
to learn
the light is behind me—

touch my harsh skin, find
I am not
the body you dreamed of—

you agree, 
if you worship 
from a distance—

you only need 
your eyes—
O you of little faith.

Each month you look for me
and you can’t rest
until you’re drunk

spinning—
clouds pass
my face. I’m waning.

WATCHING HAROLD PERRINEAU AS MERCUTIO WHEN I WAS TWELVE  / Hali Sofala Jones

Wings.
Glitter.
Gun.
Black skin.
Shine.

Tell me of Mab.
Faster, faster—

No, nothing
can touch him.

Strobe
of sunlight—
a body full
of breath.

Barrel’s mouth—
choreography.
Laugh. Spin. Spin. Laugh.

Violence, theater.
Blade, prop.
The beach,
a fever dream—
The body,
a costume.

A scratch. A scratch. A scratch.

Where is the rattle—
in that laugh?

Tell me of Mab now.
Not worms.
Not plague.

Wake—

Gladiolas  / Christina Vagenius

My father tells me the story of hiding under the dining room table
when he was a boy. After his mother died, after his father made the bottle
his new bride. I don't think of this the night I hide from my boyfriend,
two weeks from turning 21, the studio off Goethe. With the southwest
thigh-high black lacquered vase I filled with turquoise sticks, felt sophisticated.
Walking past PJ Clark’s, a bent elbow brasserie keeping the Saturday gladiolas
perky, a wind-whipped sundress rising over the horizon of my knee, he’d say
was the reason his hand felt hard, hey, I’m talking to you. Honey colored neon
shadows, a ladder of blooms I’d watch wobble, then fall. Gladiola, ‘Imperial Mix’  
looks small, inside a puddle of water. Seeds born from a storied stem.
I see you under there. 

Meditation on a Russian icon and a moth flies through  / Sonya Wohletz

The moth interstices its way past the window—
smoke slips from a candle,
frame to its markings: stripes, ovoid. Morphemes
into the shrine of the saint’s forehead,
high and glaucous, indicating wisdom I suppose—
a certain elevating instinct, suspended
towards a god or the moon, who can
tell. Beautiful, isn’t it—what some people
can gloss their mistakes out of.

There is, for instance: a wing, or hand—raised
in blessing through this gospel of winter—
the saint’s eyes, antennae winking as if to
return the benediction or the place in time
where you realized I have no right I have no right
to occupy this language.

The recursive moment is the choice:
to maunder between, back and forth, up, down.
Voices drift like flakes of ash,
like a pilgrim deviating towards martyrdom
on the cold altar of ice along the Yenisei
in winter. In winter it is the embers
that are themselves alone,

smoldering in two palms. Their relic crease
warms to us and thermal blooms
of prayers lifting—wings into
the night air, fluttering like leaves of an old book
written in a language no one remembers
or cares to inhabit.

Is it the desire to understand again
that which imprisons or seals us upon itself?
Does the saint open mercy like a gate
and cleanse these hands,
cleanse my words of fire?

Free of the fire and of the vision free—
the bone moon, oh, it sometimes
relieves me at least of that.

May - Poem 1

First Poem  / M. Anne Avera

I write, now, and think of You.
The abstract, the royal, the heavy,
the You.

Yes, there You are:
my guest and my friend
and my thief and my lover.
You come without body or blessing
and Your presence remains,
regardless of my desires.

Do I want You to stay?
They say the learned doctor
secretly doubts the eternal soul
or the everlasting human will,
while these things lay
like a reservoir
beneath the poet.

Hand in Hand / Desirae Chacon

Hand in my hand
times behind 
and times ahead
centuries of bridging 
emotions
Melancholy with fury 
mixed with waters from the Seine
waters collected in my palm
feeling every single emotion
we’ve ever felt
every single tear you ever cried
falling from your eyes
most beautiful rain 
lashes like wings of a dove
when rain falls from them
your tears of the Seine
turned into these waters that
fall into my hand 
& tears from the fountains of laughter
when you smiled at me 
surrounding in light of the Sun
falling
warming
scintillating
breathtaking
a breathe is respirated 
cognitive reminiscence.. 
next
echoes of laughter 
permeating our souls
stitching every single pain we’ve ever felt
into purpose 
a balm for our solemnities
a salve for our sadness
a love for a reward
warm skies
dry grasses
balmy blue skies
of oil pastels in the middle of 
a hot June 
it was 1930
before the dust 
fleeting moments of this chapter
of our life 
of this life
of this time.

I Remember Little  / Heather Frankland

Mae—my great grandma’s name—
three letters to contain
a legacy of memories
given to me by others—
she never forgot
a birthday, she never forgot
a name, she never forgot
to make you
feel valued.


I remember little
me—shy with curly blond
hair from Midwestern
summer humidity,
horns I hadn’t learned yet
to be self-conscious about.

I remember little
me listening to Mom and Grandma insist
that my cousin and I join
Great Grandma on the screened-in porch,
insisting that we sat on her lap
to be read a story.

It was a green porch
or it could have been
green leaves seen
through the screen.
My cousin
more confident that I,
knew what to do
and I followed, trying to pay
close attention
to the story, to the lap
to my mom watching.

I remember sensing
how much this old woman
was loved by my mom and grandma
like it was armor, a block of kindness
like it was concrete bricks
my small hand could touch.

Maybe some of that magic
would flake off
on my palms, in my wild hair
on my quiet tongue—
for being loved that fiercely
must be magical
for being able to love that much
must be something beyond body.

Great Grandma was a magical being
to me, like the unicorns
I believed warded
off my nightmares
or the double rainbows
that promised good luck
or feeling valued even when 
you were small and too shy 
to say much at all. 

Remember, Shelley’s Heart Didn’t Burn! / John Hanright

In blessed memory of Neil Silberblatt
Melodies of Rachmaninoff
Repeat through the cottage –
Stifling a cough,
A poet flips the page
And busies himself with a piece,
This one is brand new,
And nothing will disturb his peace;
It must be brief yet ring true,
For it is his epitaph,
His greatest poem’s epigraph.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Memories of the immortal bards
From yesteryear and today
Play in his mind’s yard
And then fly away,
Back to their home with the Muses;
But he catches some
And passing out his bon mots, amuses
His party guests, impressed by his aplomb.
Those days are all gone;
All that remains are dusk and dawn.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Day and night are the same now,
His varicosed hands chill,
And damp sweat rests upon his brow,
But his soul and body are still
One – two nurses tend to his needs
While his love and friends tend to his heart –
The latter of which bleeds
Across the pages of his enchanted art:
“Full fathom five” and all that fine
“Shakespearean rag” and rhyme.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

What untold secrets reside
In that undiscovered country:
Where poets rest upon the divide
Between grass and tree,
One hand in now, the other yore;
Where sick and well are all in all,
Where kings sleep with the poor,
Where bitter tears never fall;
In that realm where beauty reigns –
Somewhere with no more pain.

Run from that empty urn;
Take up a pen,
Which never lies,
Nor never dies;
And remember:
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!
Shelley’s heart didn’t burn!

Marionette  / Jillian Humphrey

My mind marionettes.
When I swing my hands, she
walks. When I dance,
she dances.

When I knead dough,
I knead the mind.
And when I slide my trowel
into the garden, I dig —
my two marionette hands plant
something — in the brain.

Do you see how my hand hovers
over this page and my mind
is tied to it with a string
attached to a bucket
pulling ink from a well?

I can’t think unless I make
something. Striking a match
does less than washing the dishes.

I stand at the sink
for thirty minutes
noticing bits of food
and feeling water
run down my wrists
toward my elbows.

I look up to see my face shining
back — not in the drinking
glass — in the window pane.
There inside me, a flame.

UNCLE FATHER  / Shane Moran

There is howling in the morning, I listen 
to them breathe. Today, brushing their teeth, 
the girls told me I look like their father.
Another way to say, I love you.

These young ones explain my life to me. 
Show me as they squeeze their faces— 
love can land on the tips of their noses. 

Getting on the bus they wave goodbye,
and I miss their mother. I don’t forget.
Sometimes I go back in time. Sometimes

I yell. This is my work—to keep them 
out of a fire. I’ve made all my wishes 
upon these girls. I listen for the air breaks
from ten till two. At two, I’m waiting on the porch.

WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY DOWNTON ABBEY SAVED MY LIFE  / Hali Sofala Jones

“One thing we don’t want is a poet in the family.”
—The Dowager Countess of Grantham

There’s something sacred about the way
they hold grief with posture,
how even despair is draped in velvet.

I watched the same war end twelve times,
same telegram arrive in trembling hands,
same butler pour tea like nothing was burning.

My skin flared—red sprawling wherever it wanted—
but the screen stayed pale and British,
orderly as pressed napkins.
God, I needed the soft tyranny of it.

What was dying in me
didn’t matter at Downton.
Matthew still crashes the car.
Sybil still dies, lock-jawed in bed.

But nothing there is final.
Even now, with these hands,
I can return us—whole,
to the beginning.

Cereal  / Christina Vaagenius

I made a grocery list of all the ways I wanted to be loved.
Squeezed between the Wheat Thins and tender ripe limes.
Wondered if I'd find them tucked beside the condiments,
the chickpea pasta, the bone white bleached flour, always
escaping the battered seams. Or if I ‘d have to ask someone
for help finding the bread I like with the little seeds that turn
my teeth into piano keys. The cookies shaped like windmills
no one buys anymore, pushed into my 3rd grade pocket, turned
to crumbs by the time I remembered them. Toast-colored sand 
castles rising between fingers, swept out to sea. Or if the all ways 
I wanted to be loved
would be hidden at the bottom of a cereal box. Marshmallow shamrocks,
four-leaf clover good luck, my fingers digging for a prize shaped to fit
the palm of my own hand.  

Lithium 2  / Sonya Wohletz

If it cries—the mistake was involuntary.
What can I say, I am struggling still,
as though my abilities to human were in question;
though I am not—

I am not aching with the mistake of
gorgeous charity but raw
at the filing of stars through my ear root,
thick with the music of brain waves,
their deltas emptying into that peace,

that thankless peace that exists between old lovers.

How lucky, to be uncertain, and yet break
fast quietly at the table before dawn—

how lucky to know the hour
when you are called to recount your
sufferings, knowing they will be received
with suffuse laughter. The noble way, I guess
it opens concrete

certainties so therefore belie
the calculated movement of ancestors, whose
bones angle in such a way that we
may know them, and speak of them with reverence
and wish them safe returns.

I myself was like this—a stray projection
of those past failures, those past griefs,
all of which articulated and unnamed of
myself, simmered in the sliver of the pasture moon.

It will cost me so little to tell you:
(and would you have such patience as to absorb)
the pillared salts before and behind me, and
how now to take them in,
to ingest and hold steady the silent
messages, to steward such fresh image—
a zest, warm yellow separating
my palms from yours.

April - Poem 30

you’ll need to speak louder / A cento Composed by mk zariel

with lines by and from Maureen Alsop, Bob Bradshaw, Sarah Carson, Stan Galloway, Ava Hu, Sergiy Pustogarov, Nate Raum, Daniel Avery Weiss, and MK Zariel.

as though there were no terror.
i have always been able to allow myself to fail
i hope someone pieces me back together into something more beautiful.

pink peony snouts are breaching ground in the verge / the many-tailed surge
so what am i? says the inner voice / weeps at the disembodying chaos
i wonder if you miss the secret of us
But you can mitigate the spirit only so many times

Reinvigorate the meanings in a cloud 
Leaving me looking at the ruins.

Audrey Hepburn Searching for a Stray Cat[1] / Maureen Alsop

like soldiers on a crumbling castle wall,

Evergreen—[2]sun inside sun,[3]  

Handsof someone I knew[4]—April is the

monthof rising sap—[5] earth

waitingto crack open, to bloom, to

burn[6]and come alive in graphite on the page[7]

and somehow

that sometimes sends me   

into a tailspin.[8]

__________________________________________________________________

[1] April 22, 2026, “My Perfect Reader,” Bob Bradshaw

[2] April 26, 2026, “Picking Blackberries, Circa 1970,” Stan Galloway

[3] April 19, 2026, “Magnum Opus,” Ava Hu

[4] April 24, 2026 “I Blanked and Forgot the Meaning of Life in the Back Pocket of My Jeans Before Putting Them in the Wash.” Daniel Avery Weiss

[5] April 20, 2026 “On returning from Birdsong Nature Preserve,” Kirsten Miles

[6] April 15, 2026, “closure,” MK Zariel

[7] April 25, 2026,  “sonnet for syanna,” nat raum

[8] April 2, 2026, “untitled,” Sergiy Pustogarov

The Old Couple, The Washer And Dryer, Dance The Watusi  / Bob Bradshaw

  Whenever old videos
    of American Bandstand
    are playing,
    I’m inspired 
    to do laundry.

    Soon the washer's 
    boogying,
    throwing
    its heft around
    in slow, deliberate
    dance steps

    and as American Bandstand
    jacks up its volume
    the washer’s lid 
    starts popping up and down

    hurling clothes out
    like a stripper 
    flinging off 
    one piece of clothing
    after another!

    As she does this
    she rubs her hip
    gently at first
    against the dryer’s,
    then brazenly--

    swinging its hips
    left and right--
    the two banging
    each other 
    in a loud clamor,

    the house’s pipes
    clanging along
    joining in  
    this jubilant 
    moment

    knowing how life 
    is as short
    as a spin
    cycle—the timer
    unable to be
    reset.

April Ends / Stan Galloway

Iris buds have opened
on the back bank
feminine and frilly
after five years of
leafy show
a kind of second puberty
after planting tubers thinned
from the neighbor’s fenceline
a signal that beauty may lie
ahead

Afterlife / Ava Hu

*

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

Dear wilderness,
without you
I am snow.

A house made of rising water 
before it floods the lungs.

Two hands 
become one.

The way you let go, 
I let go too.

Night birds sing 
all night long.

Your mind 
is a river.

We are the last 
two lines.

Until the world
enters your mouth.

Everything that reaches for you, 
everything that carries the light.

The world, the size 
of a hand closing around an apple.

It’s hard to hold on
to the language of birds

come morning.
Can we walk on water?

A looking glass,
ritual object,

mirror, transmission, 
you.

You slip under.
The water dreams you.

Shake leaves into essence,
a listening.

A lifeboat,
a song.

Is there still time 
to build an ark?

Their bodies press 
into flowers.

Put your hands 
over your ears.

Who will remember
the names of trees?

You must change 
your life.

Who will remember 
the names of trees?

How big are you 
compared to the moon?

You break open
a brush of light

across the purple 
mountain.

Who will be the water
who lifts the boat?

We are the black ribboned song 
of Orpheus descending, 

the ascent all depends 
on how you hear it.

*

While you enter hospice I host a poetry salon in which we discuss thresholds / Kirsten Miles

Through the front window Mount Angeles is obscured by clouds,
even Unicorn Point is a shadow

I dream we join your grandson, travel into Hang Va
another generation finding a future in a cave

seventeen poets are gathered under two hundred year old Turkish Hazelnut trees
the Stellar Jay kvells at the bounty while we write

I will invoke you every time my mouth is delighted by some amuse bouche
you so love to surprise your tongue

Behan, Heine, Wordsworth, your reserves,
my first poets on your bookshelf

the tide rises, the tide falls at Cape Flattery when you visit
look, how I have followed water as my source

there is an Emily Dickinson Coconut cake on the table,
little cucumber sandwiches fine enough for a high tea

in Brooklyn, a paintbrush in one hand, a slip of granite in the other
your bright bloom holds a piece of your heart, gently

on the west side of the house, four deer nestle in the yard under the window
below my room

the poppies are rising in Blacksburg, and
the lilacs are emerging, early flags before the day lilies and trillium

the floors creak under our feet, Gentle House walls full of poetry
and the footfalls of those whose love entered here, you are here

the poets have eaten Emily’s cake, written, shared their efforts
now the salon begins, a warm hum, conversation and laughter fill the air

a little girl again, I am listening to the flow of conversation below me
voices of your friends and students swirling up in the evening air excite my imagination

Danny is waiting for you for his next pet and your next walk
for he is, yes, your best boy

now, as the evening closes, there is a pearl in Black Mountain whose glow lights your way
and we will love her for all her days

the penumbra   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i belong just below the arc of the horizon,
glinting over your golden head,
casting rays that curve around buildings
through the reflections of your eyes.

i bask in the sunset aura
escaping over your forhead.
the peace flows through 
your fingertips,
and touches every particle 
in every atmosphere you inhabit.

i belong in the shadow of your being,
where schrodinger becomes the only one 
who can calculate my position, 
even then leaving half his calculations to 
guesswork.

i am an eclipse circling 
your presence,
only to return in a million years 
still shinning with the same light 
you sent me into orbit with. 

foiled orchards / nat raum

would that it were as simple as reaping exactly 
what i sow, but proverbs don’t account for

changes in the rain or the soil or the sun. i toss
seeds in tilled dirt with reckless abandon, harvest 

shriveled husks come the end of the season.
haters will say overwatered but really, the landscape

itself can warp, fertile fields now sapped, clouds
absent from the sky for weeks. fault probably

lies a little in column A, a bit in B—i’m trying 
to help, only dousing the vines who starve.

i do too much because everyone does too little.
who could blame me for trying to save it all?

Wing / Daniel Avery Weiss

There were still things that did not get said;
how his purple suit could be so dry cleaned,
how her pearl necklace could gather up its own pearls on the beach,
hitch them to its one twine spine,
how a man's ears cannot be pierced because
they're made of rock.

These things did not get said.
I did hear, however, about the economy
shipping options the poor use for goods
and bads and in betweens, each of which they settle
like a carbonated beverage
into accepting. The walls, the walls, they're
gold.

April - Poem 29

untitled / Maureen Alsop

If Only  / Bob Bradshaw

  I was 29 again.
    If only I could dial the sun down.
    If only I wasn’t shouting
    into a gale every time
    I ask the IRS
    for a break.
    If only this mass
    of flies would choose
    another old man
    to follow.
    If only the Neptune Society
    would stop  
    sending me ads…
    The boat’s waiting
    at the dock!
    If only my hopes
    weren’t tumbleweeds.
    If only love hadn’t proven
    to be another vault
    I couldn’t safe crack.
    If only I had you
    with me, babe,
    again.

Turn the Radio Up / Stan Galloway

Let it sing you away
to a night when love was new
recall a park, a beach, a quiet invitation
before the cup of hope was cracked
and love squeezed every raindrop
looking for a miracle.
Let the melody float you
on a raft of reminiscence
where the beating of the drum
foreshadows – stop!
Turn the radio up.
Let the long-ago song
block the ache
and lie to you again
that there will be no end.

Love Poem in Reverse Osmosis / Ava Hu

*

We sink like ships
beneath soil.

We flower-breathe.
We hold our breath

under the weight
of green.

What’s the use
in speaking about

the passage of light
through veins

when we are created
as one image?

We are pulled with violence
underground.

We calm fierce animals
by saying their names.

River snakes.  Yellow dust
of bees entering fruit.

Metal turns the mouth
to gold.

Praise water for taking
the form of its mate.

We are pulled by wind
we cannot explain.

Two moons tied
to each other’s wrists.

We are the milk
of ascension, milk

of the mother
constellation.

I call you my other half.
My swallowing mouth.

My moon
eat sun.

Look at me.
Look at me.

Look at me urgent,
melodic, hypnotist.

*

Is This Transgender Joy or Sorrow   / Sergiy Pustogarov

drawing 
lines 
across 
my 
chest.

dreams
dripping
down 
from 
my 
shoulders.

tracing 
hopes 
disappearance 
like 
chemtrails 
along 
these 
fateful 
curves.

figuring 
out 
where 
i 
belong

between 
the 
curves 
i 
chopped 
off.

and 
scars 
that 
i 
swim 
in 
the 
ocean 

proudly 
out. 

firefighting / nat raum

i once craved touch but luck would never bless me
with its presence, so i dashed fantasies of hands
on my waist. sometimes i think about the reasons

i’d rather be cold than hot—i can always layer up
but public nudity is frowned upon, and i hate to sweat.
in essence, i’d sooner freeze than burn the house down

again. i imagine the shapes i’ve forced myself into 
in the name of love, so intimidated by that which stands 
before me should i choose to walk these halls again. i lose 

control like kids of a certain age lose teeth. bones slip
loose from gums and i too sizzle like a lit fuse threatening
to blow—past a certain point, there’s no stopping it.

Wet Fur/ Daniel Avery Weiss

This spring, the blossoms unfolded
from their buds early.
I folded them and put them back.
It has been a spring of threats like that.
The river near my home is flooded already,
and still the sky appears congested:
clouds stumped by blue,
and then they get darker, grayblue
and then they get darker, black and grim,
and then they have floated away,
and the sidewalk is uncanny and dry.

We have dug for greater things than
existence, something fake and tacky.
I am real now, and like you,
will be nothing to me in a decade.
Memory kills me and spares few precious
moments to consider.
The clouds remain here,
floating like grief,
and drawing shade over
everything with feathers.
We have shivered for lesser things than
existence, something sticky, something
squalid.

Something swells from the treebark.
A tumor. A bubble. A knell.
The roads fold. The light at the
end of the tunnel is LED and bounces
off posters of dead bugs, which
block your way.

The sky dies.
From clouds I cannot see against
a backdrop of horrible night sky silence,
an orgasmic onslaught of rain
explodes into the earth. I saw a fox there,
there on the side of the road,
trotting past like the opposite
of symbols,
metaphor murdered
by the blight
of its pure, sopping tail.

a map of undoings / MK Zariel

you'll be one of that boy's harbingers of doom
my friend says, and i can't tell if she's talking about
you or an abstraction. i certainly aspire to bring down patriarchy
and yet i don't do myself any favors, scrolling through

a confirmed idiot's photos all because i wish
he could have been anything else. i loved you the way
i love an unfinished novel—full of promise yet always
fraying in the last couple pages, defaulting to the same

technicolor cover art & deeply straight stock phrases—
still i made erasure poetry from your canned jokes
your oft-repeated anxieties. i tried to get over you and so
had a brief fling with a vengeful ghost. it didn't last.
i tried to get you back and concluded

that, pathetically, i'd rather split my consciousness
into gleaming shards than ever understand yours.

April - Poem 28

untitled / Maureen Alsop

Riding The Grizzly  / Bob Bradshaw

    At 14
    I rode The Grizzly,
    a wooden roller coaster,
    known
    for its quick—
    stops—
    its—lurches
    ahead 
     
    but what I feared most
    were its tight 
    curves—

    at any moment about
    to fling me out 
    into space
    the way a skeet thrower
    catapults a clay pigeon 
    skyward—

    for its finale the roller coaster
    throwing itself
    off a waterfall,
    taking me,
    white-knuckled,
    with it,

    the water at the bottom
    flying up
    like wild 
    wings!

    Why do such
    a crazy thing?
    I hoped, hoped!
    to impress
    Cara!
         
    Over and over
    as she stood outside
    a railing,
    I would sit down 
    into a wooden crate
    of a seat,
    faking a smile

    like a stunt pilot
    at an air show
    getting into a rickety
    Fokker, a Nieuport 28,
    a Sopwith Camel.
    
    Did 
    she notice me?
    Or was she watching
    her friends
    in another
    car?

    Later I’d try
    writing poetry
    to impress Cheryl,
    but that was years
    away. 

    But that day
    The Grizzly
    was all  
    I had.. My heart
    even then 
    risking irreparable damage,
    against all odds,
    for love,

    —as it would do
    again and again
    and again.

Desire / Stan Galloway

It is no coincidence that
fire and desire rhyme.
Desire flaming high as a barn
brings the news reporter
when someone fails
in spectacular conflagration –
think imploding submersibles.
But some fires go unreported
serving to cook food
and warm rooms
the desire for creature comfort –
think grandma's quilt..
Failing desire clogs the lungs
of everyone around
all smoke, no heat
all negative attention –
think your last stalker.
And there is desire
no one notices at all
tucked beneath the ashes
of betrayal, rejection, callousness
an ember barely warming itself
tossed out in the ash bucket –
think my heart.

Pilgrimage / Ava Hu

*

The joints of one person
become the next.

Your breath,
the only lighthouse.

Fire makes light
but destroys its beloved:

a monk was discovered
sitting in lotus position

for 118 years,
if you just

let him be,
he could tell you

the secrets
of the universe.

Erase everything.
Call me by my name.

*

How To Build A Book Case   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i built a new book 
case. broke some oaken logs just
to shape them into twenty
plaintive shelves.

took nail gun and drill to 
work and made circles over circles,
shelves marching in line to the 
formation of a fibonacci spiral,
and i started wondering if 
i could reach the heavens.

i stacked my books in lines,
and columns,
calculating which cell could 
hold which width,
the dimensions betraying me just to 
see spines bursting through the 
seams of cavalcading nails. 

words spilled down the trellis of 
tanned posts at the edge of each shelf, lit 
brilliantly to shimmer in the 
afternoon glow.

i thought this should 
help me read better.

i woke up the next day 
and said i’m never writing again. 

self-portrait as kill-devil / nat raum

drunk words are sober thoughts and i’m quick 
to label a lie. sugar smooths everything over until 

it ferments, becomes fire down a bone-dry gullet.
this is to say i am doing everything in my power

to remain sweet, but chemistry foils me sometimes.
oh, holy saint of SNRIs, please find me some

substance that will at once keep me honest
and settle me. oh, how the juice sucks all the water

from my blitzed body, its sharp-edged molecules
sliding down my throat. same time tomorrow.

Kaolin / Daniel Avery Weiss

How swift, how
delightfully swift, that
the porcelain unspools
itself between my fingers,
as if melting at my touch,
as if my lowly, earthly body
could suede the clay into
something holier
than dirt.

I have buried it at a grave,
the line between kiln
and cremation
and kill
deathly tight.

a butch is a receptacle until told otherwise / MK Zariel

i rarely received your anger, your scorn, your untidy
perfect scrawls in the depths of your mind and notes app—
instead i was your brick wall, your easy target. cut me off
then suffer publicly, as if daring me to reach out
your hollowed-out face an engraved invitation
your collection of blank phrases echoing

like a ghost learning to network. i hate that i can't care for you
with your voice flattening to the shallow hum of a chatbot
and today i had a crisis of faith and pretended
it wasn't about you—because i apparently can't feel close to Eris
until i feel close to a repressed teenage guy with a martyr complex—
and that is the worst logic i have ever encountered, even in a faith
that prides itself on disorder. i found religion the night

you almost left me. i started to give a shit about it
the night you actually did. the first night it was 1am in Milwaukee.
riverwest was too aesthetic for its own good, as usual, and you were sharp
and curated, telling me i made you into a vessel, content only
to receive, to be held. i didn't understand at the time
why you didn't want that—and i wanted to entrance you—
and i wanted you to be my audience of one—and i wanted you

to believe me, for once, without my having to exaagerate
for your benefit, a habit that unfortunately stuck. you never could
believe much of anything—and neither can i, anymore. a month ago
i walked judgmentallythrough the historic third ward, and i didn't think
about you, and i almost passed out in public. i refuse to believe these two things
had to do with each other. i used to call you my life force and now
i settle for my unwilling muse, the person my internal monologue
is inevitably directed at. i hope you have one too.

April - Poem 27

untitled / Maureen Alsop

The Drive-thru Car Wash  / Bob Bradshaw

    I love losing myself
  in the yugen

    of broccoli forests, living
    “in the moment” 
    at Safeway.

    Yet nothing 
    beats a car wash
    with its cloudbursts
    and flash floods 
    and its sudsy clouds
    washing up against my glass—

    And fierce rains sweeping
    across my hood,
    my beetle
    now a submersible,
    long slats flailing at it
    like the legs
    of a deranged giant octopus
    escaped from 20,000 Leagues
    Under the Sea.

    And though I feel 
    like a guppy, its bowl
    overflowing, the faucet
    at full blast,

    I’m as safe 
    as if I were riding a car
    on Santa Cruz’s Big Dipper 
    —pushed along, as we all are,
    by forces outside 
    our control. 

    And yet as a bright light 
    breaks over me,
    my car emerging
    into the Ordinary 
    again,

    I wonder what 
    it’s like for a babe
    in a womb being pushed  
    along,
    as if it too were riding out
    on rollers,
    its old world-- 
    of dim waters and tides-- 
    being left behind 
    for an almost 
    inconceivable
    life. A new
‍ ‍yugen.

Relationship Advice / Stan Galloway

Jealousy clamps
a leg, bites through the flesh,
holds you at the bone.
Suspicion filters rose from daylight
shifting everything Othello green
smothering affection with a dingy pillow.
Distrust demonizes innocence
creates ghosts where no spirit ever wailed
and sucks the marrow from integrity.

Snow / Ava Hu

*

We are whirls
in bark and wood. 

An amulet of snow
heavy with moon.

Has the die
been cast?  

The serpent turns
with her tail

in her mouth.
The hero turns

and refrains.
Branches bend

under the weight.
Inhale.

The earth is a desolate
wilderness.

The earth is desolate,
dear wilderness,

without you
I am snow.

*

all the steps from the pole barn to the berm / Kirsten Miles

measure Place road gently carrying that
rib bound vessel beating out to sea
past the little ponds blueing down the sky

elegant Long Tails glide over mirrored peaks
Hooded Mergansers with their impossible crests 
slaty sided Harlequins, their mousey peeps 

returned these years since river Elwha flushes 
back her path and claims her mouth
Bushtits and Pacific Wrens flit, eagles whistle

over the growing crest of surf as the path 
turns towards the Strait
metering the breeze along the spit where

sand is still learning its own course
loose grains silt down footprints on the bank
yesterday’s channel is today’s dry bone  

the current drifts a restless
scrimshaw for steelhead and salmon to scry
This is the way

I am built of the same silt same wild 
unpatterned spilling
the same stubborn refusal to fit

I’ve spent my seasons dammed
up steel struts straining before the thrust
unmakes the bank

the way the heart must lose its shape 
to find its reach
see how the river takes the weather’s pitch

gale winds scrape the gray skies clear 
tides lap or ravage, she makes a braided delta
tosses the skeletons of prehistoric trees  

today her mouth widens 
sand spits trail from her eyes salt-singing 
each day newly carved

Main Street BookShelves   / Sergiy Pustogarov

i wish i knew which way my words would 
go,
between collapsing 
sonnets
and lines spiraled so 
far away;
they aren’t even free 
verse 
anymore,
just something i like to label 
‍ ‍not quite there.
still slipping between 
agents’ fingers,
readers’ minds,
and journals’ grasp.
i’ve spent the afternoon
passing up the 
main street 
small town 
bookstores, 
staring through the 
windows 
to spines lined up like 
soldiers marching to 
their next homes bookcase.
but i’ll just go home tonight and 
type words onto a 
screen
for others to wonder what 
happened in 
my life. 

hollaback duplex / nat raum

the fever jostles you like earthquaked skyscrapers
swaying in hopes their foundations are sturdy.

even sturdy foundations hope for chaos sometimes—
who doesn’t want to be a bit undone? sameness bores,

wanting those who don’t usually unravel to bare teeth
at their enemies for once. the fight in you is innate.

once your instinct takes over, enemies ought to flee
in droves. you feel hungry. you need to sate the itch,

unsatisfied after decades of starving. hundreds
of hands stroke your throat at once. it’s up to you

to take your own and grab back, fracture wrists
and hearts and ties to that which no longer serves.

no more heartbreak—untie the tethers and release
yourself into feverish sky, still gently quaking.

An exchange about my dog./ Daniel Avery Weiss

you do not have to optimize for productivity / MK Zariel

a text message poem

most of my tasks are basic self care.
i'm reading lacan for the first time. it's not going very well.
yes, that's happened before.
plans ended early so i'm killing time:
someone implied i was cis today and it really bothered me
i won't hold her accountable so it might be perfect!

dealing with a bunch of interpersonal crazy stuff.
he clearly is just afraid of culture <can you ask not to talk politics?>
that means we don't shit talk people's art in front of them
i've seen people of all genders do this.
if he's a poetry reader at all, that'd be great to know

tell me before inviting twenty different people.
yes, i'm sure
if it's not a hell yes, it's a no

April - Poem 26

untitled / Maureen Alsop

First Driving Lesson  / Bob Bradshaw

  The car—leaps—forward.
Whoa! Easy…easy, he says.

    The car—jerks—ahead--
    --stops--jumps again.
    It's like our dog
    when I’m walking him
    and his radar’s picking up
    another dog nearby

    and I keep having
    to yank him back
    on his short leash
    from running off.

    Obviously the car
    needs a tuneup.

    Maybe it’s the brakes?
    I offer. The instructor
    shakes his head.
You might want
    to keep your left foot
    off the brake pedal
    when you drive.

Slow down 
    when we take curves,
    he reminds me.
    Yeah yeah.

    I've always aced
    my classes. I'm expecting praise
    as we take our first turn.
Jesus! God!
    he shouts, leaning back
    into his seat
    as if slammed
    by G-forces.

    Let’s take another
    turn! I need the practice,
    I say, overriding
    his instruction 
    to pull over…

    Okay, the first lesson
    didn’t go great.
    I failed it,
    my dumb instructor tells me.
    I say I’m available
    tomorrow. Maybe
    in two weeks,

    he says. That’s 

    when I start
    vacation.

Picking Blackberries, Circa 1970 / Stan Galloway

After Erin Murphy

never quite enough bowl or bucket, balancing
the last ones like soldiers on a crumbling castle wall
Evergreen, Himalayan, Cascade, Mountain
sweet varieties of childhood, all with thorns
some small, some oblong, some without a shape
we braved the heat of August, proud
of purple fingers earned at seven cents a pound 

Untitled / Ava Hu

*

We are pulled by things 
we cannot name.

Is it the mind’s nature
to bend bamboo 

just enough 
so it won’t break?

Do thoughts have sounds?
The beating beneath my jacket,

does that have 
a sound too?

We are photographs
of a river in sudden release.

A house made of rising water 
before it floods the lungs.

*

If My Mother Met Noah Kahan   / Sergiy Pustogarov

she’d probably hate him 
just like me.
we’d be smoking weed together 
in the backyard 
of an old rundown 
farmhouse that
we decided to visit 
back in the north just
for one week.

we would be intoxicated on 
speeches that 
hate on the patriarchy,
while we both just keep 
trying to climb the ladder ourselves, 
questioning whether the world should 
know our name.
will we just curse our 
future with fame and money?

we would talk about 
the north with all we left behind. 
little black sheep running away from 
the flock,
trying to see if 
we could find somewhere 
we belong.
and i don’t think we quite have 
found that place yet.
happy here 
but not truly knowing how 
the way of life works.
but today we remember the beauty of 
mountains and auburn leaves,
nestled within mountains named after
grandparents we never met. but 
we guess that they probably fought 
for the racists,
the bigots,
and the colonists.
its still got a quaint charm,
just to run away from.

we chuckle over the church next door.
where our childhood friends will 
still walk in on the morrow,
dressed in their suit and ties;
reciting lines 
we learned were the only thing that 
mattered during childhood here.

but since then we ran 
for the hills,
down on the other side of the mountains.
just trying to avoid the 
wreckage that has overtaken the towns behind us.
but we still come to visit on nights like this,
telling stories unlike the way our 
mothers told us for years.

but my mother won’t meet noah kahan,
his words are just to pure for my company.
but god i miss the northern lights
so i’ll just start over again. 

against rot / nat raum

all the stones on my altar are red. this is how little i know 
of desire right now, or maybe i know too much of desire
and not enough of the fruits it can bear—they hang low,

close enough to bite if i had the balls. indeed, i’m terrified
to even finger waxed skins, let alone pick seeds from teeth.
the sun doesn’t have to set for me to cast sex spells; hunger

can exist at all hours. i run the highlight reel and fuck off
to bed, afternoon sun-dappled ass in the air. i’m too shy
to invite company, so i have to manifest it. something

is coming. someone is cumming. and i can only see it
when i close my eyes and remember i too am body—
these folds of skin, this limerence, this soft celestial.

No, Okay, I Love You / Daniel Avery Weiss

He's in a bottle—
neck, thin and wily,
uttering stale things to
legs that can't peel
themselves from the
sheets, as corpse-like
as he will be in a
week.

No, his tongue hobbles,
one of the first words
to reject its way back
into his brain of snapped
plastic and burnt rubber.
No, no, no, he breathes,
bubbling up at nurses.

Okay, he confesses the next day,
and I see it as repentance
for his first word back
being fuck you at the
first stirrings of mortality,
a rejection of a rejection
of a rejection of a rejection
of a rejection of

the brain, the way it drags
him into its crevasses
which are really just
bigger hospitals and
myriad memories that
could have happened.

Something weasels past his lips and
I must ask for clarification:
Are you trying to say, “I love you?”
Speaker and poet now enter. We witness
as one his nod, the breathy desperation of
his I love you, witnessed as a
see you tomorrow,

and tomorrow and tomorrow,
as a have a good night,
as a good night,
as night,
as night,
as night,

letter to a straight bro / MK Zariel

the sky was the color of a week-old bruise or
a buffering screen when you stared me down
on the sidewalk, your cacophony of college merch
and offensive slogans as bright as day. you jeer out
casual judgments, vacant glances—your drunk friend

wears something overtly misogynistic—a red logo
on your tee shirt and every tee shirt—like a bloodstain
you wear to prove that vulnerability terrifies you.
i hate that i still wonder what you're thinking
when you stare at me. i will unravel any man who asks me
if i'm a boy or a girl again. i will put off transitioning

solely so i never look like you. i will, realistically,
silently judge your fashion choices and keep walking
and talk shit with my friends and hate that all i can ever do
is file away another data point on how not to be. the sidewalk
was the color of regret and spilled drinks when you stared me down like
a silent curse that ricochets through the air—i walked past, you
continued shouting. nobody shouts anymore, don't you know?
we all learned to shut up because you never did.

April - Poem 25

untitled / Maureen Alsop

First You Grew Up, And Now You’re Leaving Us?  / Bob Bradshaw

    The doctor pulled you out,
    the room blood 
    and howling cries, 
    but we hadn’t parted
completely yet…

    that would take years.
    Even from the start I was like play-doh
    in your hands. 
    Who shaped who,
    sweetheart?

    But here we are, 
    and a young man stands
    at the altar with you—
    ready to kidnap you,
    to whisk you away.

    Who gave you permission
    to grow up, to fall in love?
    Was it your Dad?  
    I’ll never forgive him
    for allowing you to walk
    away, into what?
    A man’s arms? That’s
    all it took? 
    After decades
    of my love, my prime years
    spent focused
    on you?

    Men…they do this to us
    in the guise of love.
    They take from us
    what we value most.

    And now Dad
    insists on the bride’s
    first dance? Mom booted
    to the sidelines watching…
    Is that my place now?
    The sidelines?

    What am I to do
    tomorrow? Pick up
    your room? 
    Dust your old dollhouse?
    Oh, to retreat with you
    into its rooms again….

   The game of love and parenting
    was rigged against  
    mothers long ago. 
    That young man you married?
    He will never love you
    as much as I do.
    Never.

The Poem and I / Stan Galloway

After Denise Dunahel

My speaker wants to be someone

no generic cloud-embodied voice

the way I wanted to be Tarzan

when I was 12 and reading through an old mirror

not launching myself from branch to bole

but protecting the world from wantonness

and discovering a willing woman in my arms.

At 16 Jessica 6 escaped her false world

into mine, complete with a decrepit government,

finding her renewal, without death,

free will restored and choosing me,

or at 17 torn between the snark of Solo

and the earnestness of Skywalker

and either way embracing the cloud-clad Leia

saving my own universe, inside my head.

I tell the poem I’ve outgrown those adolescences.

The poem laughs, pointing to my college textbooks.

You just learned, the poem says, that Jane and Jessica were really

Daisy Miller and the Wife of Bath when not controlled by

male authors synthesizing life through their own broken lenses

letting characters dance inside an artificial ring.

Lolita was Nabokov’s Leia, but they don’t exist.

Well, Nabokov does, we both agree, the poem and I,

and none of us is whole without our second selves.

Love Poem / Ava Hu

What is the sound of one hand clapping? — Buddhist koan

*

Gateless gate. 
The body half 

out of the ground.
Shining lantern, mirror. 

Coincidence 
or an omen?

Proclaim, “Earth 
is my witness.”

Sound in the body.  
A bell under the skin.

At first, someone
was afraid.

Earth as my witness.
At first, someone

held back.
Earth as my witness.

The object of thought
seeking itself.

Two hands 
become one.

*

Diving into Lake Crescent under the Snow Moon / Kirsten Miles

six figures in bathrobes, phantom breath rising
nostrils frosted in the February bite

bare feet stationed  on the snowy dock
edge inky  lake lapping  below

five inaugurate the newest
a deep breath just before you jump

its warm bubble shields the heart 
paddle hard as soon as you hit the water

here, stand closest to the ladder
five bodies vanish, plunged into the still dark 

I pull the night into my lungs
The lake waits like an open cave 

I am the last witness, and now propellant
the leap is a severing

liquid ice breaks around me skin on fire 
a sudden concussion of clarity

The ladder rises like a prayer, 
and I am leaping up it, back to the dock, back

where we are  six seal skins reborn laughing
electric in the milk-glow moon

How to Apologize from a Narcissist  / Sergiy Pustogarov

say you’re sorry // but we both know you aren’t.
say you didn’t mean it, // so i shouldn’t be upset.
say you don’t really care // that it hurt me, // or whether i // flinched.
say it’s my fault // these emotions are mine, // not your problem.
tell me to stop placing // my fragile heart in your hands
while you blame me // for what you did.
say you’re sorry, // then turn away.
say that should make me happy, // now you’re wounded. 
i must have done something. // it’s never your fault.
how unfair.
say you’re sorry. // you aren’t.
say nothing. 
leave.

sonnet for syanna / nat raum

the nightmares form themselves, it seems,
and come alive in graphite on the page. 

we have this in common, rhena and i. how
else could i hope to communicate the worst

of it? words may never be enough. i close
my eyes and see every shadow of the night.

faces i do not remember take bites of me,
and i arch my back in pleasure. fantasy worlds

call when awake, glitched-out mythical 
creatures or not. all we ever wanted was to be 

understood. i haven’t taken a lover in over a year; 
the thought disgusts me over half the time. still i’d climb 

mutant vines skyward and sigh in the clouds if someone
got close enough bear me, for even a moment.

Shino Haibun/ Daniel Avery Weiss

There are two thousand three hundred and fifty steps to melting him into a sunset, each of which requires having skipped the previous step. There are centuries of bothered potters stifling silicosis so she can surface, each yielding masters who prefer mud over memory. There are fires, little golden things, little golden things that eat the sky, and little golden souls to turn the leftovers into pyrite on porcelain, each of whose bodies froth with envy at stars surrendering themselves to clay. There are ingredients which want you dead, and each must be the other to yelp the tinny spontaneity of the vase in your kitchen. Chance was born and died in this muck. Burn it.

My glaze tiles are wrong.
The porcelain wields
a false orange.

on blocking out / MK Zariel

i know the general outline of who i was: the pulsating sparks
the crushing of fire against velvet, the energy only qualified
by the bounds of time. i know i would have said i didn't have much
to live for, and i know that was a lie, and i know i was held but unseen—
i know the general outline of a constellation of parts, i know the muffled shouts,
i know the difference between bystanding and cold complicity—
i know boundaries like scattered files on the floor, i know the half-whispered
oft-repeated phrases that populate them, i know the feeling of sparks dimming
to accommodate cold touch, cold water, the weight of a body no longer real—
i know the constellation aligning.

April - Poem 24

untitled / Maureen Alsop

My First Great Grandchild  / Bob Bradshaw

   “Granddad you look so young!"
    Ashlyn, six years old, says,  
    gazing at my photo.

    I wasn’t much taller
  than a bonsai, I say, spreading
    my dusk like canopy.

    “How’d you get so old?”
    I shrug.  “Granddad, 
    I love that bird’s nest 
    atop your head.
    
    You look cool! None 
    of my friends’ grandparents
    are as cool as you!”

    Could you and your daddy
    build a bird feeder,
    and hang it on me?

    “YES!” and Ashlyn sprints inside  
    —but when she comes out
    she’s a teenager, 
    wearing a spring dress
    and sandals, 

   and carrying an obsidian 
   bird feeder. A translucent 
   water bottle hangs 
   on one side.

    
    “You look handsome,
    Granddad!” 

    As I’m about to offer her
    my last yellow blooms,
    her mama calls her in.

    Red hummingbird sage
    is spiking the air 
    when Ashlyn returns—
    in her twenties,
    carrying her first
    baby.

    They gaze 
    at our famous 
    bird feeder—Ashlyn 
    as optimistic as spring
    about their future.

    —While winter  
    slips onto me a soft 
    white robe
   
    from inside the house
    Ashlyn lifts her baby  
    to the window. 
    “Look, sweetheart,
    snow!”

Day 1,154 / Stan Galloway

Beauty makes no sense in a world / where friends die*

To wake in the night to the shaking of the bed-
room from a new crater in the parking lot
should not be normal
should not be ignored by a compassionate world.
Power out on a sub-freezing night
should be an emergency
not an irrelevant circumstance.
No one talks of Mariupol or Bucha anymore
but bodies still decay there.
Coffee at dawn and roses replaced in the broken window
do not erase the morning’s obituaries.

“Elegy” by Josh Schneyer [Eunoia Revew, 8 Apr. 2026]

Prediction / Ava Hu

*

My pencil drawing 

of a small house 

built with soft talismans 

to bring in the light.

The author writes us 

in black and white 

lines across rivers 

and fields.

Pink sakura blossoms 

sweep across the page.

What do we hold 

onto from this life to the next?

Does hunger mean

taking everything at once?

The way you let go, 

I let go too.

*

BiPoLaR RoCkEt ShIpS  / Sergiy Pustogarov

i DoN’t WaNt tO hUrT yOu,
So LeAvE mE a SiGn In ThE sTaRs.

i’Ll SeE iT aS i’M fLyInG bY. 
A rOcKeT sHiP iN tHe NiGhT,

tRyInG tO fInD mY rOaDmAp 
ThRoUgH cOnStElLaTiOnS,

uNtIl ThEsE rOcKeTs BuRsT aLl ApArT
AnD sUdDeNlY i FaLl DoWn

tO tHe EaRtH.
FoRmInG nEw CaNyOnS

wItH tHe DeBrIs FrOm My CoLlApSe.
I kEeP gOiNg On ThEsE jOuRnEyS,

a NeW oNe EvErY qUaRtEr.
NeW sTaRs I’vE fOuNd,

aNd NaMeD aFtEr ThE sOuLs 
WhO i LeAvE bEhInD.

i WiSh I KnEw HoW tO sTaY pLaNtEd;
FuLlY gRoUnD iN eArThS mAgNiFiCeNt CoRe.

bUt DaIlY,
NeW cAlLiNgS.

nEw AdVeNtUrE,
My SoUl WaS nEvEr MeAnT fOr.

oNe DaY iT wIlL aLl SeTtLe DoWn,
ThE eArThS gReEn PaStUrEs 

sOoTh My WoRn OuT sOuL.

BuT i HaVeN’t FoUnD tHe RiGhT mEdIcAtIoN fOr ThIs YeT. 

self-portrait as a citadel / nat raum

all slabs of formstone and stacked-up
barricades, there is nothing this body

can’t weather. who needs a tower
when you were at once built and taught
to repel the forces of evil? everything

is supposed to be black and white
like this—you’re good or you’re bad.

when you don’t tell the truth, that’s a lie
by omission. there’s a reason no one talks 
about what lurks within the city’s walls;

they still want to sleep soundly and say
there’s only splendor here. they don’t tell you

this, but when you build your walls this
high, you’re stuck with what’s inside them.

I Blanked and Forgot the Meaning of Life in the Back Pocket of My Jeans Before Putting Them in the Wash. / Daniel Avery Weiss

O, the glorious Point of it rests in the Hands of
someone I knew for a bit in college, who
teased the absurd wit from the hands of a situation
like a thread from a threadbare
comforter, thereby exposing something abysmal
and, like spilled milk, hilarious.
How very public.
Let’s be frogs, you and I.

on people-pleasing / MK Zariel

the text chain glows like an unwanted spiral, the mood lighting
of your house equally piercing, illuminating a bunch of trash
that you pretend not to see. i try to set a boundary like a human
and i see the no-compute flare behind your eyes
and it is a brick wall. it is a loud obtrusive walk that kicks up dust

and envelops all. it is a buffering window. it is a rerun—
the television flickers in and out in your room, the sound
like a white noise if it were overwhelming. you talk over it,
but pause it when anyone else talks. you get upset
when people anticipate your needs and when they don't.

you write a letter—and i've done this a thousand time over—
and my exhaustion cuts like a blade. it is the specific pallor
of someone who's pulled an all-nighter in the airport
and been yelled at the whole time. it is anarchist infighting.
it is a conversation with a void. it is an attempt to reason with one's cat.
i don't know why you claim to be emotionally intelligent

citing the two theorists you've read, only to develop
a mysterious amnesia for boundaries. you perform an idiocy
that lingers as long as you need it to—and it is the cloying
smirk of a politician. it is a soundbite. it is a problem player
at the d&d table. it is ad copy for nobody. it is the refusal to hear

anything you didn't optimize. you talk about your diet.
i begin thinking that if i dematerialized out of sheer disgust,
i'd lose weight (all of it), and you'd be proud. you talk about
your opinions of people you don't know. i wish i never knew you
never came into your sphere of influence, not close enough
to gossip about. you talk. i break.

April - Poem 23

untitled / Maureen Alsop

The Search / Bob Bradshaw

  I’m sitting here,
    legs dangling,
    from the highest book shelf,
    thinking of you 
    and your cat
    El Senor.
    
    Climb down
    from the shelf,
    my heart advises.
    Go out, find someone
    just like Ann.

    But I could drift
    down the Yangtze,
    ride a barrel
    down Niagara Falls,
    drift through Rome,
    Florence, Venice...
    I could cross
    Times Square,
    or listen to folk music
    in a coffee house
    on Bleeker Street,
    or scan the crowd
    gathering this afternoon
    in Washington Square…
    What are the odds
    of meeting
    someone just
    like you, 

    Ann?

    She would need
    to be your long lost 
    conjoined twin,
    separated 
    at birth. 

    She would have to feel 
    the way I do
    about your absence—
    wondering 
    if I will ever 
    feel whole
    again.

Cleaning Crew / Stan Galloway

A jury of turkey buzzards
presides in the old white pine
above the cabin
weighing evidence
sniffing through the rising mist
the smallest twinge of rot
knowing another deer strike on U.S 259
will feast them today.
Before the sun has topped the ridge
they flap up to a thermal and glide
in ragged spirals
down the mountain.

Possession / Ava Hu

*

This sinking boat
possessed by air.

Master of weather.
Keeper of branches.

Snowy thread
as it unwinds.

As far as the sound
of a falling branch.

White-eyed angels. The music 
of branches winding into

other branches. Heaven.  
White world.  This boat of glass.

Who knows the sound 
of a branch falling

when no one
is listening?

*

in the high-shouldered glow of May / Kirsten Miles

it appears in a topology of hardwoods, a sixty acre wedge
of forest that still speaks its first language
light filtered through lobes of white and swamp oak

spring fed ripples  lined by mountain laurel, native thickets,
undiluted by invading vines, or stilt grass rivulets braid teasing sparkles
between roots and burls rising from gravel bars

in the cup of the fluvial curves 
sun-tipped fingers pointing toward
slivers of sky in a secret knot of streams 

 the Golden Club fires its torches, lining the midstream
amidst banks lined with rare ferns,  green ribs  waving
a river  of their own ephemeral witness,

between asphalt progress, a peninsula of concrete and
dumpsters perched above the mouth of the spring
How hard it is to shield what is quiet.

clinging to the gravel,  never wet leaves, roots veined into earth
despite flood or drought refusing to vanish
until the water itself is asked to leave

What Happens with SSRIs, Abuse, and Dreams  / Sergiy Pustogarov

she shook my shoulder,
calloused hands wrapping my deltoids so 
hard the prints were left on my skin the next morning.
all i could hear was her shouting in my ears:
‍ ‍you belong to me.
‍ ‍you must do what i say.
‍ ‍shut up and sit down.

shocked with fear and perpetual confusion i 
stood still. 
the floor below me swayed as i questioned
my rights to not sit down.
the boards began to ebb and flow 
as i told myself nowhere was safe to seat this hurting body.
the walls began to close around me 
as i became closer and closer
to that final decision: i would not sit and 
be beaten more.

suddenly i found my voice.
yelled no and made it all stop.
the breath left the room as her lungs 
inhaled. shock swept over the 
floorboards. the walls jolted in their march to 
my toes.

then she marched me out the door , around 
the building and through the back of 
some murky place she called
the church.
Her piercing cry ripped through 
the building as she yelled out 
the pastors name 
and ordered he come here.

‍ ‍does this child dare have the right to 
‍ ‍say that they do not want another 
‍ ‍beating 
‍ ‍bruising 
‍ ‍scarring.
‍ ‍i say they are mine.
‍ ‍i will treat them how i dare.

the pastor bent down his ear,
graciously held my face.
and whispered softly so almost no one could hear.
don’t worry child.
this too shall pass.
your mother doesn’t own your soul.

so i ran away.

from my mother.

and the church. 

sonnet for shrike / nat raum

After “The Lesser Evil” by Andrzej Sapkowski

my apologies to blaviken, but renfri vellga
is my problematic fave—who among us,
given the chance to right our own wrongs

the old-fashioned way, wouldn’t slaughter
a village to get to the root of the problem?
solar eclipse be damned, i too would strike
all parties responsible for my misshapen

sense of self. i am not always the hero 
in my own story, but so often, the cataclysm. 
i won’t defend my fallout, the hollow eyes

of all i meet who plead for mercy. violence
begets violence begets violence—so the circle 
spins. i find fault a funny concept, in that
it’s always mine when the fracas is done.

The Train of His Great Midwest / Daniel Avery Weiss

And what is that train I hear?
With a dozen full bodied whistles
and a hundred little passengers,
living each their little lives as they
pass? And do I hear you there,
singing some sallow song?

And what is that window that I see?
And is that you, humming some
Minnesota hymnal praying a
man into a river? Does this
glass you forge hide you from a
mountain you have mourned?

And dear, do I see the ash of a
river’s lavish valleys
sat between your teeth
as a bluebird, and dear,
for whom do you take a bluebird’s life?
Our passenger flying sideways?

And what is this home 
to whom you are bound?
Its thousand bricks of clay
dug from a canyon in the meadow of
your soul? And dear, what answers are bore
of the fruits of your travel?

speculate / MK Zariel

recall the day i apologized to you for being trans—
hazy afternoon, social awkwardness, auras crashing
into each other—hazy boundaries, social change, and nobody
but the one individual most likely to accept me.

so in my friendgroup, what are most of the people?

you chide me. so what am i? says the inner voice—
i know, a few moments in, that i had only self-repression
to apologies for, among the weeping decay of the trees

among the people you were before someone tried to define you.

so in the universe, what are most of the people? you say, hoping
that bias passes like a 2010s trend long forgotten—we'll outlive them
at least long enough to learn who we are without them.

April - Poem 22

untitled / Maureen Alsop

My Perfect Reader / Bob Bradshaw

    What would she be like?
    I’d settle for one reader,
    much like I would  
    for one umbrella
    during a downpour.

    I’d also want my reader
    to be beautiful,
    and tall.
    But not so tall 
    her face is veiled by clouds…
    a reader whose height
    requires me
    to reach her 
    by climbing
    a firetruck’s ladder,
    wobbling 
    on the top rung
    as I read my latest poem,
    the wind riffling
    its pages.


    No, I want a reader
    like an Audrey Hepburn
    searching for a stray cat—
    a poet—
    in the rain 
    in an alley.
    I wouldn’t mind getting wet 
    if I could be clutched
    to Audrey’s
    chest!

Desert / Stan Galloway

The lone and level sands stretch far away*

I thought we had built something          wunderbar
                            explored new landscapes
                                                  airports
                                                  foods
                            laughed long into the night
                                          over the word funicular
                                   defended each other’s
                                                   dignity
                                                   reputation –
until you said you had to go it alone
and promptly found someone else journey with
leaving me looking at the ruins.

* “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Book of Breathing / Ava Hu

*

Your mind 
is a river.

Death, a field 
of offerings.

If the weight 
of your heart

is lighter 
than a feather

pass through 
the serpent gate.

Remove your gold rings
and bangles. 

Remove the crown 
from your brow.

Stop thought.  
Stop breath.

Set the heart
under the left arm.

The book of breathing
inside your chest.  

Become the form 
you desire.

Your mind 
is a river.

We are the last 
two lines.

*

Warhol In the Bungalow / Sergiy Pustogarov

we paste posters of Andy Warhol 
above our beds
And collect newspapers each morning 
To pulp into paper mache 
Adorning the cracks along the wall next to Andy 
Hoping the slopping scraps of paper
Will cover enough peeling paint
To woo the next humble lover 
Into our bed 
as we touch their bodies 
We hope to grasp their memories 
Pulling them out with each kiss 
So we may learn 
What the past was like
We are seeking siblings 
Family 
And hope
In this crazy chase we have told 
Ourselves is just for love 
After fucking 
We snort a line of cocaine 
Off each others insolent pecs
Gasping for air between each set of fitful coughing 
Completely ignorant as to 
The rules of doing drugs 
In the middle of a studio apartment 
On the 115 floor in New York City 
But somehow we made this 
Altar a place 
To collect the past 
Like little marionettes
Coming for the stroking of a dick 
And leaving as a scholar 
 A bungalow in NYC 
A museum of the past 
And portal to the future 
Mixing drugs and sweat
Cum and with scraps of margines
Together we march on 
Together we are the city

abundance finds me / nat raum

in money, yes, but also in love, that spiteful force
which eludes me still, not for lack of flip-turns

in stomach and quickening heartbeats—i have always
been able to allow myself to fall, but the problem

is in the plummet, the hurtling, the things i yell
when control leaves my body: fuck you i hate you you’re scum 

and no one believes i don’t mean it and who could 
blame them, when venom makes up the meat of the anger 

behind my voice, when i fear the affixion of too much, not enough, 
or both in tandem, when he asks for goldilocks’ porridge 

and i bring back big bad wolf—extra fangs, hold 
the patience—and maybe i don’t want abundance 

after all, i just need to know there is a holding room 
somewhere for all of this feeling.

Sickness Insomnia / Daniel Avery Weiss

A number of things:

1. The life inside

2. A series of malfeasances

3. By an immune system

4. Cells

5. Progenitors

6. How a virus looks like a typo

7. How sickness includes

8. My nose

9. A sneeze

10. A hundred slumbering explosions

11. Awaken

i'll do it later / MK Zariel

it could be my last night on earth and i'd still spend it
procrastinating. the tasks pile on like weeds on
a suburban crank's monoculture lawn. the numbers
are slightly scary. i have been type A for a long time
witness my shrug when someone asks me

if i need to take a break. we live in a world in which
being a good student means exhausting yourself,
then rebel against it and decide that being a good anarchist
means exhausting yourself with a smile—that being
an anarchist at all means forfeiting one's ability

to delegate. my friend tells me that, after thirty years
of organizing, she's only now learned that she
can tell other people to do things. i hate that i can relate.
i have been left-wing since middle school and a people-pleaser
since conception. i think i came out not crying but instead saying

no, really, anything is fine. it could be my last night on earth
and i still won't answer my freaking email. somehow i think
this is cosmic confirmation that i'm a bad person. even as
a practicing Discordian, i can't seem to let go of the moralistic

preaching that seems to have all of humanity in a polite chokehold.
i could unlearn that, but it would be a task. i could take a deep breath,
but it would be a task. i could procrastinate, and i could die,
and i could live.

April - Poem 21

untitled / Maureen Alsop

The Life Of A Failed Poet / Bob Bradshaw

  “Poets write about misery,”  
    my friend said. 
    He appraised me
    with his sad eyes.
    "You’re a failure. 

    Happiness
    doesn’t look good 
    on a poet’s resume.
 
    You need more Trochees,
    Dactyls in your life--
    preferably  
    starting at the beginning 
    of your lines
    the way Misery
    must begin each day
    of your life. 

    You’re plagued
    with the Anapest,
    making your poems
    and your life too
    lighthearted.  

    Not to mention
    outbursts
    of Spondees 
    when your team homers.”

    And not to mention,    
    I add, at night
    in bed with my wife!
    OH, MAN!

    He goes on. “All of us have rage
    living quietly in us
    like bullets 
    within a revolver’s 
    cylinder.
    Just pull the trigger!”

    Seeing me smile
    my friend shakes his head.
    “You’re incorrigible. 
    Name one good poet
    who’s as happy as you!”

    What should I do? I ask,
    desperate to be miserable.
   
    He shook his head,
    before striding quickly off.

    “Stick to limericks.”

Meriem’s Lion Song* / Stan Galloway

to her doll, Geeka

Yesterday hunters carried in a dead lion.
It smelled quite dead.
No more will he slink silently on unsuspecting prey.
No more will his great head and dark-maned shoulders
strike terror in the grass eaters drinking at the pool.
No more will his roar thunder the earth.
The lion is quite dead.
When they brought his body into the village they beat it
with their feet and the butts of spears
making sounds like a ripened melon with the carcass
but the lion didn’t mind.
He did not feel the blows, for he was dead.
When I am dead, Geeka, neither shall I feel the blows.
Then I will be happy.

*borrowed and adapted from The Son of Tarzan, chapter 5, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Ordinary, extraordinary / Ava Hu

*

Scent of summer rain 

on the river. What

we take we will remember,

secret notes on a secret river,

memory as long as the wind.

What’s yours is mine, 

what I remember I forget, 

the way your name sounds:

bells in the churchyard,

the fresh-faced wind.

What’s yours is mine.

Everything we are:

tiny spaces between the stars.

Collisions. Blind negotiations.

We are invisible incantations.

The clamour of the river’s 

slow dance 

to the sea.

*

black sun / nat raum

“Black Sun is a reference to a certain eclipse, better known in the context of the Curse of the Black Sun, or Mania of Mad Eltibald. It was a prophecy made by the mage Eltibald that foretold the end of the human civilization in the hands of sixty girls born during or after a certain eclipse … It might be that the Curse became a self-fulfilling prophecy, for some of the girls who managed to flee [their] persecution later inflicted cruelty on others because of the treatment they had suffered.”

—The Official Witcher Wiki

what else could it be? the moon walked
in front of an oversized star, cast its permanent
shadow over my body. i emerged in the dark

and thought surely this must be as bright as it gets.
any brighter and it would sear, i convince
myself, and prophecy agrees—i am fated

to rend all i hold dear with my own two hands.
claustrophobic as i am, you have to believe me
when i say i’d gladly be hogtied if it stopped

the destruction of which i’m capable. my grasp
is always too hefty, too firm to gently cup a moth 
i’m too chicken to let go anyway. i’ve gone and grown

attached again. divination points toward the clock.
i know what half-lives are, have felt gold degrade
in real time before. the end of you and i is no different.

it’s because i was made like this that i drive lovers
away. it’s because those lovers ran that i’m bricked further
into the holding cell of my own overreactions. clip

my tongue and watch what happens—i will still find a way 
to break things anyway. and you should know: the eclipse 
will take your eyes if you look directly into that corona.

Clear-cut Forest / Daniel Avery Weiss

Shreds of dank wood.
Greenbrier thorns
stab at my feet.

for the wreckage / MK Zariel

there are better days to come says a teenagerly scrawl

on a decidedly abandoned dumpster. can confirm, although the bar

is on the floor. the air is heavy with repressed emotions

and the aftermath of severe weather—it's hard to tell which—

the subreddits aching with ambient climate anxiety

and people wondering where to belong. i make a little idle

small talk with someone growing aggressive by the second,

edge away, make an excuse, come up with something

believable, if not fully true. leave, rejoin, walk away—

protect trans kids says every sticker on a decidedly

overwrought lamppost. i don't know if i need protection

anymore. maybe i just need a break. i drift through a room

avoiding interaction solely because all the cis people

seem to know each other. the gender binary is nature's

AI slop—self-replicating, impossible to distinguish

from anything real.