Shivering fingers
of a drowned valley: parting
of radiant ways.

Grinding grooves in country rock.
A truck hauls the letters COLD LOGISTICS
through monumental cuttings.

A baler founders
in a dinghy’s bilge, spinning
counter then clockwise.

Chris Andrews lives in Sydney, on Wangal land. He writes poems and translates books of prose fiction, most recently Liliana Colanzi’s You Glow in the Dark (New Directions, 2024).

You have no idea
Or maybe you do. You know.
God, please don’t. And do.

Brennan Thomas is a Professor of English at Saint Francis University, where she directs the campus’s writing center and teaches courses in creative nonfiction, fiction, novel writing, and Disney film studies.

A foot’s pressure spreads
a dull halo on slick sand.
Pop goes bladderwrack.

The line of a dragged stick bends
around a spiny puff and tentacles
bunched by frothing lips of swash.

Seethe-away backwash
plumes off shards unrushably
milled to blunt and matt.

Chris Andrews lives in Sydney, on Wangal land. He writes poems and translates books of prose fiction, most recently Liliana Colanzi’s You Glow in the Dark (New Directions, 2024).

“You’ll never take me alive,” shouted Rocco through the open window. Among glass shards and spent casings, he lay on the warehouse floor. His head below the sill, he pointed his gun in the direction of the police and fired a few rounds. “I told you, I’m not coming,” he sneered as the smoke began to clear.

“THROW DOWN YOUR ARMS, ROCCO.” That was the Chief, talking through his bullhorn while commanding the SWAT team. From behind an armored vehicle, he had a view to the warehouse riddled with bullet holes. The standoff with Rocco had done nothing to help its commercial value.

“COME  OUT.”

“No way.”

“YOU’RE SURROUNDED, ROCCO. MAKE IT EASY ON YOURSELF.”

“I’m not coming. I told you, no one’s taking me alive.”

The Chief reflexively ducked as Rocco fired a few more shots. He waited a minute before talking.

“ALIVE? WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THAT?”

“What’d you mean?” shouted Rocco, keeping his head low.

“ABOUT ALIVE?”

“Huh?”

“WE’RE EASY. JUST COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP, AND I’LL PERSONALLY TAKE CARE OF THE ALIVE PROBLEM.”

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

Below the Umbrian hilltops, mugged by mourning fog,
the regiments of ripe tobacco fields unravel green
where all the delicate courtiers of this autumn draw
vermillion coverlets upon the naked bed of summer,
arrange the mortal liveries of their gold estate
as heralds to the kingdom of our winter.
Here, in these fallowing fields, lies all there is to know
of death and life – that every future comes to bathe
and bloom in the fertile blood of its tragic past, and yield
to the moment, this, the holy seed of Now. All this
appears as a face or figure frescoed on a wall,
and these survive and serve as a balm to the death of years.
Here are the stillness of columns and painted saints,
where the bells of heaven toll, as only they can hear.

Marc Wiegand has participated at a number of universities, among these the University of Texas at Austin, and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. He has been an Affiliate Fellow in visual arts at The Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy. His poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Penwood Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, and, soon, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. He is an international lawyer and exhibiting visual artist who lives and works in the Texas Hill Country.

Red-dyed fingers dig into Jell-O.
Extract bits of marshmallow,
pineapple, cherry, walnut.
Leave gaping pockmarks
for other bits to gape at, cry over.
Pontificate their time.
Still pockmarks close over.
Jell-O demands that.
Missing bits are forgotten.
Where they were is forgotten.
Other mournful marshmallows,
cherry slices are plucked,
the spaces, spouses they leave
filled with shiny stickiness.

Brennan Thomas is a Professor of English at Saint Francis University, where she directs the campus’s writing center and teaches courses in creative nonfiction, fiction, novel writing, and Disney film studies.

I opened my mouth and spiders came out.
I opened my mouth and my tongue was a web
made from the letters of your name.
I couldn’t see around their legs
or your letters
so looking in the mirror became a horror show.
I could barely brush my teeth without choking on a vowel.
He promised he’d clear these spiders out of here,
why hasn’t he come yet?
I’ll snap the strands between these consonants.
I’ll dust the cobwebs down my throat myself
if he won’t help me.
These furry corpses stick to my teeth,
turn the words poised on my lips into a crime scene.
My stories stink of dead and rotting things.

Sydney Cloonan is a speech-language pathologist and writer living in Queens, New York. When she is not working at a special education elementary school, you can usually find her snuggled up on the couch with her partner, her dog Hannah and her cat Helo. Sydney lives her life based on two true things: there is no greater snack than peanut butter and it’s always a good night to watch a horror movie. Sydney’s first chapbook, maybe., is available through Bottlecap Press.

Color of a sea creature
suctioned to coral
trembling in the windcurrent

in the hands of grandmother gods
sitting circled
spooling galactic gas
into acid water layers

laughing
about your sour breath

Holly Castleton is a master’s student at the University of Edinburgh studying Religion and Literature. She loves to read, to eat, and to lie in the sunshine, which is sparce, and therefore all the more precious, in Scotland.

Light
drapes over us
warming shoulders and smiles
toeing waves,
which then wash over us

And you too
are light; energy.
Eyes bright—
reflecting sky, sea,
youth, me

Suddenly— light
breezes turned to heavy gusts
clouds billowed
We did not see them gather over us.
We did not see the waves surge.

But finding safety is easy
when we are the life raft.
We were drenched,
the rain fell like waterfalls,
then we emerged,
and it was light.

Athina Hinson-Boyte is a previously unpublished poet living in Raleigh, NC. She works as an attorney for children. She has two cats, and excessive TBR list, and a deep love for the ocean.

Animals talk when people are absent. It was 2 AM at the zoo. Dark, of course. And empty of the public.

Rhinoceros: Hey, who are you? And what’re you doing here?

Rattus: You’ve got to help me.

Rhinoceros: You’re a rat, right?

Rattus: The name’s Rattus

He was a brown rat, also known as a common rat or sewer rat

Rhinoceros: So?

Rattus: May I stay here?

The rat was wet and scraggly. The rhinoceros took up a great amount of space, as rhinos will.

Rhinoceros: Huh?

Rattus: I can’t take it anymore.

Rhinoceros: Was it the sewers? Was it the people out there?

Rattus: The sewers were gross, and the people even grosser. That’s why I figured it’d be so much better here with a rhinoceros.

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).