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Tune in—it's prime time for mammals with a prefrontal cortex and anxiety disorders on a planet that is burning. Mammal from mamma, meaning breast: milk and three middle ear bones, some booze-buoyed god drawing traits from a hat. I’d fall for anyone who said my name aloud when I least expected it. Wouldn’t you? That's what gods are all about. Recall Adam pointing at a feathered beast, saying dodo, giggling, calling it a day. But god's gone and so are the animals. What do we care? We put mouths beside other people's genitals and open—knock-off gods, all tongue and teeth, names in our throats in the throes of it. My still-new nephew woke to a sister. When the infant cries, he laughs: baby's funny Mamma, he says, and repeats, insists: baby's funny. He doesn't have the words. He longs to be so recently named. I read to them from a board book Bible while my coffee drowns itself in milk. Once, in the middle of class, you said my name and my body burned like ancient bramble. Where then to find redemption if not in you? Sorry, it's just my amygdala, marble sized inside my head and shaking. Or wait—scientists disagree, could be something else entirely. God, can we try this again? Kelsi Lindus is a writer and filmmaker living in the Puget Sound. Her work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, X-R-A-Y, Lost Balloon, Rejection Letters, Brave Voices, and elsewhere. She can be found online @kelsijayne or kelsilindus.com.

Life in the Bathroom Response poem to “From the Women’s Restroom” by Kaitlyn Spees A sign above the women’s bathroom sink tells me Water Is Life. In red lipstick below, Thank You for Using Less. How do I use less life? Do I stuff wasted hours at work up the tampon dispenser? Nolcha has written all her life, starting with poop and crayons on the walls. Her poems have been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Alien Buddha Zine, The Red Lemon Review, Gone Lawn, Dark Entries, Duck Head Journal, Medusa’s Kitchen and others. Her chapbook, “My Father’s Ghost Hates Cats,” is available on Amazon.

CW: sexual harassment, chronic/potentially fatal illness, and pornography/pin-up girl culture Jellyfish After the really dirty and exhausting parts of the day, after cleaning up dog poop and walking a pair of pit bulls who have been known to chomp at ankles, I fold periwinkle blue and lime green towels, pockmarked with bleach stains, in endless succession. We need hundreds of them to fill up the cages. One for each cat, five or six for a large dog. I am folding them while listening to Tori Amos on the cd player when you ooze into the room. All beer belly and bad attitude, you eat hot sauce on everything, and ask things like: Since you’re bisexual, do you just have threesomes all the time? And: When you fuck another girl, which one of you gets the dildo inside them? But today, I am not so lucky. Today, as I fold towels, you edge slowly closer to me, and say: I hear you’ve been talking about sexual harassment. I’m going to show you a thing or two that’s sexual. You back me into the washing machine, your gut against my hips. I flinch into silence. That’s right, you say, I’ll lock you in the cage with them angry pit bulls. Don’t think for a second I won’t do it. I ride it out like you’re a brutal wave caught on the rocks of the Cape Breton cliffs where I spent the storm-scattered summers of my childhood. I remember the water used to look like steel tipped with cloud-froth. My sister and I would dance like sirens in the waves, moving our hips along to the beat of Madonna. We held jellyfish in the poreless palms of our hands because they could not sting you. Fern, Essentially Blink, and I’m an adult, discussing the price of asparagus over cream-sharp Indian take-out. My mom, infinitely able to make things more beautiful (who do you think accidentally spilled the entire damn glitter shaker into my soul-soup?) says: asparagus, unchecked, left to grow, essentially turns into fern. I picture a verdant web of vegetables turned fern finery, wonder if it could crawl up walls the way my mother’s autumn fern clung to recycled red and black brick. Twisted for a moment in childhood reverie, I cannot stop smiling, except then my father announces he may be dying soon. And I do. Writing My Will Without You On our first date, we each found one thrift-store miracle. We clutched clammy hands, darting across the streets of Southeast Portland. The sidewalk flung before us, sun-speckled like a freckled arm. Rummaging through dusty rows of dresses, a vision in vintage whispered to each of us. Yours: A skirt made entirely of blue, teal, and purple neckties. Handmade, no tag. Stitching delicate as cursive handwriting. Wearing it, you shimmered like some sort of post-modern mermaid. Necktie scaled. Mine: A fitted black glove of a dress that exploded below the knees. Layer upon layer of slowly brightening pink. Every single pinup girl curve kissed close, then a cotton candy eruption fluttering around the calves. I felt like Marilyn. This is the day I think of most often, on nights I can’t help but remember you. When you first left, I began to wonder if I was made of icicles. Shivering under comforter, that whole first month apart. Chapped lips, soundless sobs. How strange that you don’t know about this new disease, or that it could kill me. We once went to the same doctors, took the same pills. For so long, you scooped the very marrow from me. Now, portioning out my belongings, each pillow or end table contains some slivering of soul, yet you are not named among the thirty-six. You, who used to send me daily selfies. Lips puckered and glossed. Sprays of rainbow eyeshadow. Hair, a peacock pompadour. I can’t bring myself to delete your photos entirely, so my phone still plays tricks on me. Phone haunts me, phone decides your face, split open with laughter, will be the photograph of the day. You leapt onto my screen the other night, twenty-three and incandescent, the purple-teal skirt made of ties kissing your bony hips. Suddenly, I needed a word much bigger than nostalgia. I needed to relive that Portland moment so badly, the blood in my veins began rushing backwards. My bones turned into numinous clockwork, nudging us back to the year 2004. And there, I loved you. Reckless, foolhardy. I loved you all over again. Freeze Frame “I don’t know how long regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.” -Jeffrey McDaniel The edges of the photograph curl, smooth surface worn from sixteen years of finger strokes, sticky palm prints of desire. Gloss flattened, reds and blacks no longer richly saturated, whites gone ghostly grey. I run my index finger along the penciled arch of your raven eyebrow and down your cheek, willing your smile to leap alive. That summer, we spent hundreds of hours vamping for my camera. We tied candy ropes around each other’s carousel curves, then chewed them off. Your glow-in-the-dark skin draped across the pale of my porcelain. Your clitoris blooming, a wild iris beneath my tongue. I kept the lens of my beat-up Canon eternally on macro, shooting close-up after close-up. White wall, black amp. White guitar, electric. Slicking the pout of your lips glossy red, I squeezed a few more scatters of scarlet into the black and white worlds we created. A waxy apple, a tiny bottle of crimson rum. I fell in love with you through a viewfinder, watching as you devoured a raspberry donut, or blew a kiss. I fell in love with you as we fucked from every angle we considered camera-worthy, then pressed our bodies together in ravenous slow motion, once the camera was off. In my basement darkroom, you slid your hands around my waist from behind. We watched as paper dipped down into developer, and found life. The red safelight illuminated the hollows in your cheekbones. Made your skin pulse and shimmer. When three a.m. came, I snuck back up to my boyfriend’s first-floor bedroom. Every night I watched as the cracks in the ceiling resolved into Brontosaurus, vole, Little Dipper, wondering what you were doing one floor beneath. Every night I slept in fits, thin cotton sheets tangled at ankles by morning. A trail of lurid red roses curled their way down the ancient staircase carpet that led back to my basement bedroom. That summer in Portland, we made an island of that dusty basement, with its peeling blue and green walls, its glossy black floor, its ten dollar thrift store mattress. We hung dozens of still-dripping portraits on wires strung from cobwebbed corner to corner. It was past midnight, a June Sunday, when you pointed to my favorite snapshot of you, said: I’m beautiful there. You make me beautiful. Sixteen years later, this single photograph is wasp in mind’s amber, even when I’m not pressing palms to it. I wish I could reach through the image, and pull you back to me. Wish I could undo the noise of all the years that came between us, and freeze frame us in that single photograph. You, neck tipped back until it appears impossibly long. Left eyebrow arched, cinnamon stick eyes tunneling into mine. The incandescent swell of the moment spooling open between us. Our lips about to meet. Chestnut Oak This particular and glorious tree is found on the campus of Sheppard Pratt Psychiatric Hospital; the largest free-standing psychiatric hospital in the United States; founded 1853. (1.) Zelda Fitzgerald once stayed here, only later to perish in a fire at another hospital. Awaiting electroconvulsive therapy, flames shot through the dumbwaiter, clever and cruel, chewing into one room after another. Even the fire escapes were wooden. Crumbling to ash between clutching fingers of nine women who died that night. I try not to linger on this. I like to picture Zelda lounging under the shade of my favorite tree on campus. Sipping lemonade, or tossing back vodka from a flask she snuck in strapped to thin thigh. I picture her decked out in satin and jewel tones, sprawled beneath the enormous chestnut oak. Grey branches clustering, then shooting skyward, a sparkler’s silvered spray. (2.) The pandemic begins. My therapist and I meet outside, six feet apart on the picnic bench beneath the chestnut oak. Humid swell of masks bubbled around mouths. The shade of the tree cools us even in ninety-nine-degree weather. We talk about my father’s mortality, my mother’s anxiety, the man who caved in my egg-fragile abdomen with his fist. My therapist wears over-starched, bleach-white button-downs, and insects crawl all over him. One week, a small brown spider. The next, a ladybug. He smiles, That’s luckier. Lets it race across his open palm. (3.) Legs vised tight, I sit under the chestnut oak with my fiancé, sit at cliff’s edge of losing him. His cello-low voice dips even deeper than usual. He’s drinking again. Has to leave Baltimore for rehab. A psychiatric hospital romance— deemed doomed to fail. We made it two years, made it all the way to matching white gold rings, dreams of tulle gowns and blue plaid suits. I loved him so much, I was willing to have a giant Catholic wedding. But the pull of clinking wine bottles and furtive bathroom cocaine won out over our love. Our initials, carved into the chestnut oak, bear witness to the hospital’s rush and tumble. J.M. + R.K. in rough-hewn heart. Our love lingering in grey bark. (4.) I swore I’d only allow myself to be admitted here again when my mother died, but nobody saw this zebra of a disease, this twenty-seven in a billion coming. Hospitalized again, Zelda hangs heavy on my mind. How often F. Scott Fitzgerald was cruel to her. How she danced and danced. Cried and cried. The impossible horror of dying by fire, alone, just forty-seven. Forty-one myself, I walk toward the chestnut oak. I forgot the slope of broken concrete, bursting with slippery grass, and strapped on four-inch platforms. Glitter-pink, foolish. Outside only thirty seconds, I fall— computer screaming through air, books tumbling through grass, knees scraped meat-raw. I begin to weep. Instantaneous. Is this what it means to be here this time? Must I learn how to pick myself up all over again? Robin Kinzer is a queer, disabled poet and sometimes memoirist. She previously studied psychology and poetry at Sarah Lawrence and Goucher Colleges, and is now an MFA candidate at University of Baltimore. Robin has poems recently published, or shortly forthcoming, in Wrongdoing Magazine, Fifth Wheel Press, Corporeal Lit, Defunkt Magazine, Delicate Friend, and others. She loves glitter, Ferris wheels, and waterfalls.She can be found on Twitter at @RobinAKinzer

You only went and died. You said you would, but I didn't think you’d actually do it. Neither did Robbie. ‘Remember that time,’ he said, ‘at Heaven, when it was empty except Gina, dancing on a podium in a see-through dress?’ We laughed. Bathing in your glow was our thing, I guess. But you kept on saying it. ‘I'll come back and haunt you,’ you said one night when we were video chatting. You were out and I was at home wearing my favourite slanket. ‘If you don't start living,’ you said, ‘I'll show up at your house until you do.’ ‘Very funny,’ I said, stuffing crisps into my mouth and trying to look like I wasn't watching Netflix at the same time as talking. ‘I'm serious Siobhan, you need to get off the sofa and get out. You only have one life.’ ‘One is enough,’ I said, eating more crisps, ‘more than enough.’ ‘You're an idiot,’ you said, as you applied sparkly eye shadow, pushed up your bra and pulled down your top ready to hit the town and put everyone else to shame. ‘It's never enough, wally,’ you said, waving, ‘you'll see.’ Then you were gone; it was just me and Netflix and the crisps. Just the way I liked it. Five minutes later you called back. I could hear the music. The bass. ‘Here's the thing,’ you said. You had to shout to make yourself heard. ‘You used to be fun. Don't you remember how we used to laugh like nothing could ever stop us? Don't you miss it? Don’t you miss me?’ It was only five minutes but whatever you'd taken must have gone straight to your head. ‘Mate,’ I sighed, ‘you're off your face! Go have fun!’ ‘I am,’ you said, ‘but you know I'm right. What happened to you? I miss you.’ ‘Nothing happened,’ I said, ‘I just grew up. That's it.’ ‘That's not it,’ you said, ‘it's not. I know it’s not. And one day you’ll have to…‘ ‘Goodnight Gina,’ I said, cutting you off. ‘I'm hanging up. You have fun.’ ‘But I won't,’ you said, ‘not without you. It’s no fun without you.’ ‘Whatever,’ I said, ‘I'm off to bed.’ And I hung up, pressed play and ate more crisps. The next day I caved and agreed to meet you. Daytime was still just about OK. I didn’t want to take the slanket off, so I tied a belt around it to make it look like a dress and put my coat over it. You raised your eyebrow when you saw my attire. ‘What?’ I said, ‘what’s wrong?’ ‘It’s a slanket,’ you said, shaking your head, ‘it’s not an outdoor garment. In fact, it’s not something anyone with self-respect should be seen wearing. It’s an abomination.’ ‘It’s a blanket with sleeves Gina,’ I said, ‘it’s the greatest evolutionary step man has taken since we stopped walking on all fours.’ At the park we sat on the swings, linking arms as we swung up and then down again. Your face looked sad underneath last night's glitter and I could see you wanted to ask me again what was wrong. It was everything. It was nothing. It was me. It was bigger than me. I kept swinging and I think you could tell I didn’t want to discuss it. ‘You can talk to me you know,’ you said as we headed home with our ice cream cones. ‘I will one day,’ I said. ‘I will.’ ‘Just one question though,’ I asked as we said goodbye, ’just so I know. What kind of ghost will you be? The poltergeist kind or the nice kind that returns to help?’ You thought for a moment. ‘I’ll be the kind that parties with Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain but sneaks up on you in the night to cut up that bloody slanket!’ Then you hopped onto the bus, laughing at your own joke. I waved and then went home with the slanket to catch up on the TV we’d missed. - We were sitting on the sofa again the day I took the call. ‘She's what?’ I said. I thought it was a joke at first. I called Robbie and he said, ‘yeah, I know mate. They called me too. ‘ We agreed to meet in the park. I had to look everywhere for my shoes it had been that long. ‘It turns out she was more ill than we knew,’ he said. ‘It turns out she didn't want to worry us,’ I said. It turns out we had no clue at all what was really going on. We trudged around the park. It was a lot less fun without you. The slanket hadn’t even bothered to put its belt on, it felt so sad. Occasionally, as we walked, I saw the odd speck of glitter that looked like it might once have belonged to you. I resisted the urge to collect them all up and try to reconstruct you speck by speck. ‘Don't worry,’ I said, ‘she'll be back. She said she'd come back to haunt me if I didn't get on and live and well -‘ ‘Well?’ ‘Well, let's just say I think she’ll be back.’ But you didn't come. I waited. I sat on the sofa and pretty much begged you to come and haunt me but you didn't. I sat and sat and sat just to annoy you. The slanket started to smell. It got really depressed. One night I tried to take it off to put it in the wash and found I couldn’t. Somewhere along the line, we had become one. We walked in the park and sat on the swings and looked for you everywhere but you still refused to take a ghostly form. You were starting to really annoy me. ‘Come on,’ I said to you (not out loud, that would be a bad look,) ‘come on. Surely you can manage a little light haunting?’ But you stayed silent as the grave. (You would have hated that clichéd metaphor. I'm sorry.) One night I couldn't find anything to watch. I mean genuinely. I think I had watched everything on Netflix and Disney and Prime and BBC. Really. The slanket was cross. It required a regular feed of distraction. Ok, I thought. This is it. If you won't come to me, I’ll go to you. I knew where you would be if you were anywhere. Our old haunt. The slanket didn’t want to go. It knew it wouldn’t fit in at a club. ‘Don’t worry,’ I told it, ‘I can make you look better.’ I found some brooches at the back of a cupboard, festooned them onto the slanket, tied the belt around it and gave it a pep talk about how ‘you just have to be yourself and no one will judge. You just have to try.’ I don’t know if it listened. But it went along with me anyway. On the way out, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. My plain face appalled me so I quickly applied some glitter, just the way we used to. I knew you would be pleased. I sat at the back of the bus with the slanket. You used to call that seat King of The Bus. No one came near. I was the lone ruler. At the club, I could swear the doorman remembered me and was looking around for you the way men always did when they saw me without you. I got in and the music was loud, loud, loud and the walls felt like they were shaking. Everywhere I looked there were people. People dancing, people drinking, people smiling, people peopling. There were so many of them. But none of them was you. The slanket wanted to go home. It felt terrible. It felt like everyone was looking at it and judging it and deciding it was ugly and didn’t fit in. It kept trying to remind me about what happened last time I went out with you and that terrible thing happened with that man. ‘Not now, ‘I told it, ‘We don’t need to think about that.’ Do you remember Gina that there was a toilet cubicle near the bar we used to sit in because it had a shelf behind the cistern, big enough for two to sit and smoke and chat? Me and the slanket went there. ‘She’s not coming back,’ it said to me, holding me close. ‘You’ve only got me now. I’m all you’ve got.’ I couldn’t tell if the slanket was being a good friend or not. I couldn’t tell anything anymore without you around. People kept banging on the door, shouting, ‘Hurry up!’ which hurt the slanket’s feelings so eventually, I unlocked the door and went to the bar. The slanket didn’t like that. It doesn’t feel thirst, or anything. As I stood, waiting for anyone to notice me and take my order, your favourite song came on. At first, I could block it out by holding the slanket against my ears but eventually, as it rose to a crescendo it was so loud the sound wasn’t muffled anymore, and I could hear it even underneath the slanket’s heavy folds. I let the slanket go. I felt my body move almost involuntarily to the song we always used to dance to together. The song is about Little Fluffy Clouds. We’ve danced to it in fields. We’ve danced to it in clubs and in your car on the way to clubs and at festivals and in your room and in my room and everywhere. I realised at that moment that we could always be dancing to it somewhere, if I just let us. And, at last, I let myself go. - The back seat was taken when I got on the bus but I didn’t mind. I sat at the front and watched the journey unfold. The slanket was sulking. I ignored it. I wasn’t going to take its nonsense anymore. When I got home, I knew what I had to do. I pushed the door open, stood in front of the mirror and ripped the slanket off. It made a massive fuss and tried to cling to every bit of me it could grab hold of. But this time, I wouldn’t let it. I had had enough. I took it outside to the bin. ‘You smell!’ I shouted, ‘and you’re disgusting and ugly and I won’t let you ruin my life anymore.’ I pushed it down to the bottom of the bin, underneath the rubbish, where it belonged. As I walked back to the house, I could see the path was strewn with glitter that was sparkling where the street lights reflected off of it. I couldn't tell if it came from me or somewhere else but I liked the way it looked. It looked like a galaxy waiting to be explored. In the morning I messaged Robbie and asked him if he wanted to come over. I could tell he was surprised I had initiated a social activity because he said, ‘yeah’ and next to the yeah was an emoji of a person with their head exploding. We sat on my sofa and drank tea and Robbie smoked. I put music on. I was wearing jeans and a top and one of your hoodies that your mum gave me when she cleared your room. I felt good. ‘Did you know?’ he asked, flicking ash in an empty crisp packet, ‘that there's a trail of glitter going out your house and all the way up the road?’ ‘Yeah, I did actually,’ I said, putting my feet up on the coffee table. 'I know. And one day soon, I’m planning to follow it and see where it leads.’ ‘Really?’ he asked, ‘you are?’ ‘I am,’ I said, ‘I really am.’ And then Gina, you’ll be pleased to know, I only went and did. Deborah Zafer lives in London with her family and rabbit. She can be found @deborahzafer on twitter and at www.deborahzafer.com. She has only recently been brave enough to start submitting and now has work published or forthcoming in Janus Literary, Oranges Journal, A Thin Slice of Anxiety and 3am Magazine.

“Just five minutes. I won’t be long. Try to be a good girl.” Mummy makes her wait in the car. Mummy doesn’t like to pay for parking. Mummy watches her pennies. Sophie counts to sixty. She knows there are sixty seconds in a minute. She counts to sixty, five times, raising her fingers, but Mummy doesn’t return. Sophie counts again as she might have counted too fast the first time, but she gets muddled. She decides she’s counted enough. Sophie opens her colouring book. She picks a red crayon and colours in a picture of a house. One with a door in the middle and a path leading to it, a window either side and a wavy thatched roof. A pretty house where nice people would live. Sophie scribbles, pressing hard and colouring outside of the lines. Sophie sings to herself. The song she hums when she doesn’t want to feel afraid. Five little apples so red and bright were dancing about on a tree one night. She sings to her dolly, then shouts and throws Dolly on the floor for being naughty. “Silly Dolly she shouts. You’re always under my feet.” Sophie climbs into the front of the car, stepping on the hand brake. She pretends to drive. Broom, broom. She wiggles the steering wheel, turning it as far as it will go from side to side. She presses buttons and flicks switches. She flips the windscreen wipers and winds down the windows. Broom, broom. Mummy is saving her pennies in her post office account. She makes the housekeeping stretch. She buys cheap cuts and day-old bread. Mummy sews and darns or buys clothes from the Shelter. Mum needs some money of her own to buy things for herself. To fund her escape. Sophie slouches to touch her feet on the pedals, then pulls herself back up and presses on a handle to look up in the mirror. She draws on lipstick with a crayon, puckering her mouth and smacking her lips like Mummy. She doesn’t notice at first when the car starts to move. The wind came rustling through the town One little apple came tumbling down. Emily Macdonald was born in England but grew up in New Zealand. Fascinated by wine as a student, she has worked in the UK wine trade ever since. Since going freelance in 2020 she has been writing short stories and flash fiction. She has work published with journals including Reflex Fiction, Retreat West, Writers Playground, Virtual Zine and Hammond House. In writing and in wines she likes variety, persistence, and enough acidity to add bite.

A Tub Poem I was watching this poem float by and thinking it was painted by Van Gogh I don’t know Or was it the women going to and fro talking of Michelangelo I don’t know but what I do know that there are no words once the water gets cold and the words get old Tied Down I don’t wear ties anymore but I have hundreds of them hanging around and when I die I don’t want one on Same thing goes for these poems I’ve been writing daily since Ash Wednesday and if this energy creeps into another Lent let me burn the ties and the poems too and then push me towards the many books that are collecting dust especially those diaries stacked not neatly in the bowels of the basement cleanse me of my sins and wash away my iniquities after the fire amen The Last War For the last war on planet earth I don’t want to wear a uniform maybe just an olive green tee shirt in vogue these days by a Jewish comedian but of course war is not a laughing matter I want to be in a foxhole with you with shovels to dig our trench deeper so deep that we’d be at the opposite end of the world I used to think that it would be China but now I’m not sure there’s a good possibility we’d end up in the middle of the ocean somewhere we’d bring along an inflatable raft like the one used in a James Bond movie just in case we’d be in it for the long haul living on each other’s breath not tiring of the work involved knowing in advance that we may be the only two alive to start something new

We share moments of grace And we love the bones of the bird That flies around our blooming fantasy Collecting paper notes written in your own text. We sit by the water Coming to terms with loss Objecting against the need for revenge We swirl out drinks to create a pattern But we can’t fall in. You cry for your dearest Thinking about him Creates tension in your mind And your screams reverberate. I take your elegant hand And look deeply into the eyes of fire I tell you that you must confess and lose the rage Or the world we’ve built will sadly fail. Every moment aches for tenderness Your bones are tentative, and your voice crackles, I’m losing you to inner conflicts, Even when your photogenic face keeps its shape, And your skin stays soft. We are the forgotten You knew that We ran away For a momentous future Now I fear you’re becoming undone. The lick of paint on the car The red and blue The rust has been abolished there, Though, there’s still rust on your mind, And a deep hatred for the world.

Love Me Some Coyote (After 'Coyote Dream II' by Karen Pierce Gonzalez) Coyote is a friend of mine, at least, he told me he was, but how can you trust a creature who shows up everywhere? In coastal North Carolina, after Hurricane Floyd and my father's death, a big rangy canine began wandering the area and once looked in the window directly at me. It was skinny and rough-coated; I worried it hadn't had enough to eat. That storm was bad but then I realized, oh, Coyote. He always knows how to take care of himself. He was just saying hello, and goodbye. “She Adorned, Without Speech” I am the seasons: Summer Winter Fall Spring The Time of Deep Terror I am music all music, the keys, the staves, the notes, the time signatures I am weather oh how it blows the wind, rains, sleets, snows I feel none of it I am trees, root bark branch leaves needles oh I am... I am ...help, I cannot see myself what am I? Can you tell me? Sin and failure exaltation and glory all have abandoned me, blessed blood in the veins I think I still have. I can barely see I have no mirror. Are you there? Kyla Houbolt occupies Catawba territory in Gastonia, NC. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn's Fool and Tuned were published in 2020, and Tuned is soon to be released in a digital version. More about them, and her individually published pieces online can be found on her Linktree, https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. A full length collection, Mapless, is forthcoming from Rare Swan Press. Kyla is on Twitter @luaz_poet.

Grab a pen, write this down. Ink it before you forget. Nonsense is: The things people shout when they know they are wrong. The things people scream when they know you are right. Anything politicians utter. Anytime. Ever. More than half the things written on a local Facebook page All attempts to capture the colours of a broken heart. The concept of complete unconditional love. The texture of shattered dreams, taped over at the cracks. Sentences that start with ‘Never’ ‘Always’ or ‘Should’ The reasons you do. The reasons you don’t. Every single thing you are convinced that you know. Rachel Canwell is a writer and teacher living in Cumbria. Her debut flash collection ‘Oh I do like to be’ will be published by Alien Buddha in July 2022.. Her short fiction has been published in Sledgehammer Lit, Pigeon Review, Reflex Press, Selcouth Station and The Birdseed amongst others. She is currently working on her first novel. Website - https://bookbound.blog/writing/ Twitter - @bookbound2019

I am barefoot and hungry on the forest fringe of a black and white dream over-exposed shadows film my skin as I squeeze out of a tightly thatched family portrait tearing my nightgown to shreds A word from the author: Forthcoming chapbooks: True North (Origami Poetry Project), Coyote in the basket of my ribs (Alabaster Leaves).

Each Step Each Step The Ancient Ones step through me. Each step, So fresh No step was ever taken. Purity Two dozen Purity Roses. The aroma embraces them Like an aura. Frederick hands them to Katherine, Five years ago. Now she stares at his picture While sipping watery ice tea. And talking with their daughter Whom they never had. Something New and Hopeful Pushed off the Mountain. By the fierce wind. Joey chased his kite, Grabbed it, Hid it behind the rocks. Joey stood up to the wind, Protecting his kite From all comers. As the last gust exhausted, Joey’s kite rose To the permanence of their Bond Flying through the sky. Understanding I do not expect you to understand. Very few people can see the clear blue in a field of bluegrass. Or the blue - way back - behind a girl’s eyes When her teenage man goes off to war. Mother made blackberry cobbler That Last night before Tom went off to war. What we got back 4 years and 3 days later Was a man with no arms and legs Who opens his mouth to be fed. Eventually Eventually in meditation One sees the blank wall. Not a vehicle for something, Just a blank wall. Then you are home. You, a person, get up From Meditation, Drive the kids to school, And wash the dishes. The Study of Ego The Ego Is a Blackbird Perched In a Pitch Black Room Pecking at itself In a Mirror. A Study of Blackbird * … the way the blackbird quickly and curiously darts his head to one side at one angle, then quicker than quick to the other side at a slightly different angle; he is sitting here on the thick cable that goes taut at 45 degrees as though it is securing something. the bobbing and weaving of his head shows off the high sheen of his feathers. how very much his coat of sheen has to offer the world. Footnote * I saw this blackbird while I was walking along First Street between Hedding Street and Mission Street... I was walking along North First from Mission Street toward Hedding Street, San Jose, California. Sunday, November 18, 2012 As As morning breaks too late, I am always here Passing through the fiber of every being, every space, every note of music, every rock, every pail of goat's milk. At this moment here in the Sous Valley, Morocco they are blessing weddings with the scent of orange. Endnotes 1. Goat Industry in Morocco … https://www.iga-goatworld.com/blog/country-report-the-goat-industry-in-morocco … … … … retrieved on Mon, July 12, 2021 … … … 2. Goat Milk in Morocco … https://tinyurl.com/3npny427 … … … retrieved on Mon, July 12, 2021 … … … 3. MOROCCO’S SOUSS VALLEY: WHERE GOATS GROW ON TREES … … https://thevalemagazine.com/2020/01/15/morocco-tree-climbing-goats/ .. … … … retrieved on Mon, July 12, 2021 … … …

This is the inventory of what I now have: One set monogrammed sheets, stored under the bed. One set, once-washed, petal pink sheets, on the bed. Two bars, French triple-milled soap of lavender and olive leaf. One guest soap, still in its paper. A long white nightgown. A black slip. The bathrobe which belongs to Sunday, the silk robe which waits for an evening. Set of four wine glasses, three in the cupboard. Set of four linen placemats with a red stripe. Set of four solid red cloth napkins. A stack of small bowls for nuts, or oils, or the tails of shrimp. A ceramic swan waiting to hold flowers. A vase which holds the pairs of unlit beeswax tapers. A drawer of framed photographs, overturned. The blueberry bush he planted. The ruby I wear on my ring finger in place of the diamond which rests in a box. Kel Warren is a writer in New England.