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Boy Clouds of Xquic If she stays too long in the sea, she will see all her son’s bedroom wash by, shaking the trees. She heard he waited for hours outside of the record store, his jacket stained with biscuits and gravy and all the words from “The Streets of Laredo.” She used to sing that song off-key, and a ceramic rooster in their windowsill clanging in the dust told her to shut the fuck up. The dust in the sea folds over his jacket, ballooning over the kelp and burning. I Forget You She gave her sister broken strawberries as a gift. When her sister ate them, the seeds collapsed in her throat. When her sister had eaten all the strawberries, she tried to find the field where she had picked them, but she couldn't, and she wandered from home, eating the fog. Saturns When her balloon got caught in the milpa, she couldn't sleep for a whole week. She didn't know the dirt loved her, and when the balloon lost its air, it fell into the soil and made a new planet, and when the corn asked her to name it, she was too tired to answer.

Wasted, like a gesture of sympathy I lay starboard, at odds with the waves Which rock me gently As well as shake and Threaten my vessel Which is set off course again and again How am I to tell! Which pulling and pushing Is tearing me apart! And which is placing me Back together The changing tides form me Deaf to my prayers, my pleadings And my outright defiance I am battered and beaten I gasp for air between the violent waves And sometimes survive long enough To land on strange shores And it is luck, Not prayer Or hope Or my intervention That allows me time to catch my breath To feel the sun warm my bones And dry me out And luck again that casts my desperate view Upon some beautiful thing That is only here for a little while

Selection From Loan Words Selection From An Open Letter to Gabriele Falloppio Holding the men- iscus at eye level, you feel the sleep slough off. Hair is, and what is not?, what re-fuses to be?, ecifically all salivaried, all not here with us, bag it for me, material and each material forgets the needle. Selection From Salves Ineffectual as kicks and snares may seem or sound to the blind-wound aspect, I suspect a black king oyster blooms in her yard for the silver fish crowding the garland pretence is called alethic chaos is pronounced cows selah as a shield to those sustaining me. Selection From Gematria Blinds Calque, from calcare, umami from the silk roads, a murmur of crows, hella starlings, a mess of teeth, syncopation, in some gestural thought, only incomplete in letters, you, scattering her ashes over Yapeitso, sandals left as amber is left. Selection From Latent Roots with no Preconceived Object The net rises damp, weighted with What treasures, steam cleaves smoke, Smoke cleaves steam upon the world— Apical tissue efflux in controlled fire Chartreuse fractals fractal in form From broccoli stalk to stalk the webworm— Stephen Guy Mallett was born and raised. His wife has many questions about the deep sea. His poems appear in various corners of the internet, and his limbs appear in various corners of the forest floor.

Sunday Best Golden corn, growing up through the middle of the sea - broken glass, a message in a bottle for sailors and seaweed - I am running through an underwater field of corn in my dream Bare feet, but wearing my Sunday Best Sort of feels like walking on the Moon, but with giant whales and sunken ships My hair dancing wild - baby blue glitter sky up above and the Heavens on my shoulders, I find eternal peace; the sea is like infinity Untitled Inside the funeral home is like Heaven's waiting room; the pleasant dream-like piano music, the freshly vacuumed carpets, the flowers, the absence of any strong scents - making small talk with a man in a nice suit, who is ushering you into the double doors - He smiles with a gentle understanding and nods Everyone just lined up, waiting Pomegranate Miracle swan, flowers speaking in tongues - daylight's halo has sunk beneath the surface Fruit of the dead in my palm, fresh flowers, Earth's suggestion A dream of white trees; what will become of me, living forever, you're never a peasant with a heart made of gold Moon looks so lonely - her reflection in the dark water and tree branches like veins - the Sun always comes up again, always beating like a heart, forever

These little suckers I rhyme too much. Despite my best efforts, words bend over. Touch each other. Hold hands. One syllable slyly slides into another. Bumpy bits sticking. Fricking. Hell. I start out all aim-ful, side glances. Soft almosts. Whispery drones of meaningful bees. On their knees vomiting up. Abomin- ations. Transmogrification. Too much and too loud. No one wants this. By all means, open a vein. But don't be naïve. I started this year saying, I'd be more chill. I lasted all of ten minutes. I thought I might die. The second language washing over me is sunset The second language washing over me is sunset. I am out of sight of land. Undertowed and rip-tided. Amused by diving schools of conjugations. Drift net thready. Talk to me in shallow dolphin-tries. Slick eels and lion manes gleaming. Rough-hewn boats. Push off from port. Tickles now for passage. Everyone's frothing. Dropping sea glass offerings. Mouths beyond imagining. Oh my, my—o'er head eyes. Billionaire wide. Once more the revolution scuppered. Le Moustier's successors construction is done for today, hoarding fence precarious gravel tarps rustle under stoic boulders from the last ice age worker bees hulk buzz-less, barbs-up snow settling in every vinyl crevasse, dropped tool stillness awaits excavation urgent orange stalagmites take the hits a solitary garbage bag half-filled with shite opens and closes its cavernous mouth every gust a lonesome cry—au secours! il va faire bientôt nuit! pas prêt! pas prêt! Welcome to the half life Welcome to the half life. This point of inflection and subtraction. My instability is common knowledge. Now that you all know here are the questions. Discuss. This feels increasingly un-like my garden. Regardless, tomorrow I will pick up the hoe of displeasure, and till the soil of insubstantial posturings. I may still look the same on the outside. Even maintain the identical weight. But inside, my nuclei are shedding. I am a fragment of what I was. At 50%. That's not dust in the air. Soon. And sooner. I will be something else again. Ren Pike grew up in Newfoundland. Through sheer luck, she was born into a family who understood the exceptional value of a library card. When she is not writing, she wrangles technology and data in Calgary, Canada. http://rpike.mm.st/

Love Has Rules And you can’t change ‘em. I told this to Harley again and again. Been this way forever, I’d say. He’d ignore me, but still I tried. I’d sit him in his favorite chair, all fluffed-up pillows and doilies where the fabric quit. I’d say, Harley you gotta start bringing me flowers. Daisies are my favorite. And you can pick ‘em right out back. He’d start shiftin’ his shifty feet, big chunky boots just waitin’ to walk him back to Loretta. Who I knew all about, and the spell she cast on him. With her flingy hair, her hands as quick as bluebirds. Harley once told me that the first rule of love was to obey your heart and that’s what led him to Loretta. Well, I gave him that, but if he also wanted me, he was gonna have to act sorry. And sorry meant flowers. So I’d ask him on those after-Loretta mornings when he had snuck up into the room pretendin’ he’d been sleeping there all night. I’d say Harley, where the hell are my flowers. He’d just grunt and say, they are busy out back, and that they needed time to grow. Right then I’d remind him that the rules of love say that time has no meaning. How it seems too long when you’re not with the one you want. And that’s when he got up to leave me for the very last time. Days later, at his funeral, I strew his casket with daisies. Nice, big plump ones they sent from the store. I squeezed out a tear but no one believed it. Not Loretta, who is still angry about the stabbing, not the policeman in the corner waiting to take me back to jail, and certainly not the newspaper guy, who named me Crazy Daisy and shook his head when I said I was obeyin the rules of love, and when it’s clear that a love thing is over, you are entitled to a little closure.

Elisabeth stood within the bounds of the cupola and looked out to sea. The storm was beginning to rage full-tilt now, abusive and wretched, making division between the coast and areas inland such that the coast would have mostly water and frozen rain, or at the very least melting snow in abundance, whereas the mountains and plains would bear a resemblance to a solid white counterpane heaped up over numerous indistinct bodies, their purpose in lying so still to be covered not certain, if not rooted in death itself. She’d wished to go with John, she’d asked repeatedly to be taken along on the small, refitted trawler, but he had protested that as he himself knew very little about sailing, he didn’t wish to take her along too and endanger her life as well. It had been clear to all of them, to him and his five brothers, that they had to get out even if a storm was on the way, even if a trawler wasn’t the ideal vehicle for it, and search for the treasure before the McPherson sisters got to it. Elisabeth, in her heart of hearts, had some sympathy for the sisters, Rosalee and Winnie. They were very close in age, in their forties, and knew what they were about, though little it was they shared the tricks of the trade. They were treasure seekers, and what’s more had made a good living at it for about twenty years, give or take. They’d even gone along with a couple of scientific expeditions to recover gold from sunken Spanish ships out in the broad ocean once upon a time, though now they stuck closer in, even sometimes just taking fishing expeditions out for variety. She admired their strength, since she felt she had so little, and somehow for six men to be out on the ocean doing their best to do two middle-aged women out of what they seemed to have more of a traditional right to didn’t sit comfortably with her. But John had researched the matter, had thought he’d located the general area where the Belle Handsome went down fifty years ago, all hands on deck carrying a shipment of illegally acquired gold bullion from Mexico to Venezuela. Since the remains had drifted or been carried by storms just like today’s and, by his earnest calculation, were now in full international waters, anyone could look. The six brothers were determined that legal or illegal, it was theirs for the taking if they could raise it. Only three of John’s brothers were what you might call seaworthy vessels, though John himself was healthy enough at fifty for two men. His two youngest brothers were sickly and spindly in her eyes, and furthermore John and his eldest brother were not sea-going men. They’d been in other people’s speed boats on rivers and lakes, had even taken a turn at steering, but all in all, Elisabeth considered the whole venture at best a waste of time, and at worst a threat to life and limb. She’d wanted to go with John in good weather, but when it was clear that they were planning to ship in the middle of such a hell broth, she desisted from persuasion, and let John talk her into staying home instead. Elisabeth squinted and peered, finally holding the binoculars up to her eyes, as the spy-glass on the cupola of the small period house she and John had bought was busted right out and they had never repaired it. She saw something bumping furiously up and down on the waves in the distance over to the left, but it didn’t look as large as even the small trawler had on going out. The sleet and snow were making it hard for her to see, but yes, there was something dark on the waves, getting short shrift from the pounding of the sea and the relentless pissing down of precipitation. Heaven wasn’t a word for it when it released such evil torrents of white death. Yes, it was a small raft, or a side of ship waste, and as it drew closer, she saw that there were three indistinct figures clinging to it, anyhow clinging, alive enough to know that they were desperately near to death, but not able to strike a bargain with the elements, instead just riding it out. Should she wait, or go down to the shore? The ocean billowed up once in a huge wave as they drew nearer, and they went under. Finally awakened to the reality of it all, she gasped like a baby just spanked for the first time into awareness, and turned and raced down the steps and out of the house, in her haste leaving the door open behind her. It hardly even mattered who they were, they might be people, still alive. Elisabeth strode as far as she could get into the surf without getting washed away, and after a scene of desolate, empty ocean, the tiny scrap of metal and plastic bobbed up into view again, the three yet holding on. They were nearer to her now, and she called to them, not even knowing what she said, perhaps “Halloo, halloo!” to let them know if they could but paddle a little, she with even her small strength might be able to help retrieve them. The rest was phantasmagoric, but when they drew nearly abreast and she pulled as well as she could to drag them towards shore, avoiding the jagged edges of the non-wooden fragment they floated on, she saw it was John and the two sisters. The three women struggled and managed to pull themselves towards where the pale sand lay covered with white. At the last minute, John’s left wrist, tied to something under the slab of material, started to tug the other way, into the water, nearly rolling him off. Elisabeth, using all her might, grabbed at it and unwound it from his arm; it was a wet sack, with something very dense and heavy in it. Elisabeth looked at her husband’s face, as pale as she had ever seen it, his hair stringing wild as seaweed over his face and collar. Her eyes happened to meet Winnie’s eyes, which rested on the bag. With a sudden intuition of what was in it, she grabbed it, waded backwards towards the shore, and slung the one bar of gold they’d managed to retrieve angrily and full force against the wind and the ocean’s depredations. John’s eyes were closed; he was alive, but so barely that he had not only not missed the bag, but he hadn’t seen her throw it. Catching Winnie’s eye again, and then Rosalee’s, she gestured freely towards the bounty of the shoreline, where the bag had hit a huge boulder and fallen, harmlessly wedged into a crack in the breakwater. “Are you sure?” asked Winnie, as the two women helped her pull the wrecked fragment with John still half-conscious on it onto the soft and treacherous safety of land. “You saved him, didn’t you? Could I do less for him, for you?” she answered furiously, knowing that if John had sought some form of dry-land treasure, done something more productive with his time than going into an ocean and coming out without his brothers, that she too might’ve had money to burn. “That we did,” confirmed Rosalee, pinching her nostrils to with her finger and thumb, and blowing snot and effluvia out, then stooping to rinse her hand in the tide. “Well, then, we’ll retrieve that and be on our way. Unless you need help getting him inside, that is.” Elisabeth gave a firm shake to her head, turning now to the near-corpse of her husband. He was bleary-eyed and reminded her of a dead jellyfish that had washed up on shore, his arms and legs like tentacles extended outward in different directions, his clothes forming wet panels between them. The two sisters were up the beach and gone with their booty before John really stirred. It was then that he saw Elisabeth looking down at him, showed some kind of cognizance, gave a quick glance all around him, then glared up at her, a strange surmise in his eyes. “Did you see anything tied to my arm? A sort of bag? Quick, before it sinks and gets away again. It’s got a gold bar in it.” “No, there was nothing. Just a heavy iron weight, tied to a rope, that had gotten wrapped around your arm and was weighing you down. No gold.” “But I know I had gold! One bar, at least.” “You must have imagined it. You’re lucky to have survived. Your brothers don’t appear to have been so lucky.” “No?” he said, as if indifferent. But the next minute, or perhaps after several minutes, or maybe in the hours after they returned to their small house, their lonely kitchen, their cold fireplace in the front room, where they had to sit with the chill because neither of them felt up to building up the flames, with the electricity off and the storm still endlessly roaring around them in their small shell, he felt something more. And Elisabeth watched him as he put his head in his arms and wept, her own eyes dry from her exhausted strength, as much as she had ever expended at one time for any human being other than herself. Victoria Leigh Bennett. (she/her). Born WV. Lives in Greater Boston area. B.A., Cornell University, M.A. & Ph.D., University of Toronto. Degrees: English & Theater. Since 2012, website creative-shadows.com, articles/reviews mostly on literature. August 2021, "Poems from the Northeast," 334 pp. September 2021, @winningwriters.com. January 2022, @press_roi, x 2. January 2022, @cultofclio. Has written 8 novels & 1 collection short stories, all in search of publisher. Current WIPs, 9th novel, new fiction, CNFs, poetry. Regularly on Twitter @vicklbennett, occasionally on Facebook Victoria Leigh Bennett. Victoria is a member of the disabled community.

Gaffes Will Be The Glory To err is human, to something is divine. I could Google it. But I have a problem with the whole setup. Pit human against divine, it’s obvious: humans lose every time. But where it goes from there—I’ve had enough. The planet would be better without us. Machines can do everything better than humans. Humans are only special in how much we suck. What happened? Why do so many of us hate us enough to believe the world would be better human free? Is being human not enough to console us in our relentless flaws? To err is human? More like to self-loathe is human. Can I plead for healing without accusations of centering humanness, species ranking and whatever else? It’s no wonder we are marching dead on into division, destruction, dystopia. Do we really see no flaws in our plot to mechanize all the things? It’s a plan humans came up with, after all. But mistakes are not gnats to be blotted out. They keep it real. They mean we’re not machines. They give us so many chances to forgive ourselves. To try again. For a species not so contorted with distress, that would be balm. And You Are Free You are not on the runway to the alien faux-oasis architected by dispassionate forces that see the humanity of humanity as the final obstacle. But show your smile to the stranger, offer your hand to a human dying alone, round your arms around one you love, squeeze and you are free. You are not reducible to anything monetizable, you are not shedding data like dandruff. Get close to your fellow humans and you are free. Breathe with no barriers and you are free. It is not (yet) as they say: you are free. When We Have To Calculate Age Age is to object like river is to rock. Age is to time like face is to clock. Age is to goal like rubber is to road. Age is to knowledge like bow is to bowed. Age is to child like penny is to wish. Age is to adult like water is to fish. Age is to habit like lightning is to sand. Age is to perception like marching is to band. Age is to number like raindrop is to ocean. Age is to wisdom like gravity is to motion. Age is to pain like hurt is to rage. Age is to history like age is to age. Age is to dreams like burglar is to theft. Age is to dreams like weaver is to weft. Age is impossible to the very new like age is impossible to all it’s happening to. The Great Glass Party We all want to be surrounded by ravishing. But we are alive in the magic of this world, which is whenever the castle, however the hill. It is time to celebrate that everything is connected. Everything that is still here, everything that is not, whatever the marring, whichever the color, matter matters matter. Life used to be the kind of uncertain that made the alive curious. Paint is real, trees are real, lies are real, singing is real, assault is real, love is real, cats are real, the truth is real, rain is real, bombs are real, hope is, too. Everything was always glass. Time Never Tells The flame from the lavender candle I light for my evening prayers reflects on my window pane in the exact spot where the bare tree is and I get dizzy with awe? horror? panic? at this Moses moment (I get a Moses moment?), which reminds me of the time, a week after I fled thirteen hundred miles from my home state, when a fat-ass fog rolled in and I could see three inches in front of me and I thought it was the rapture and I had been left behind. We don’t have fog where I’m from. Also, I’ve been left out my whole life. Back to my burning-bush moment: I had been praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying, praying for a spouse, for good friends, for life purpose, for answers,--a life I could remain present for and then everything stopped--paused, they said--and I was told I had to do what my anxiety but not my soul wanted to do (stay the fuck home and away from everyone) and, for the last half hour, I’ve stared out my window at the tree that never bears leaves and is not actually semi on fire searching for the mute button--Zoom is different every login, right?-- so the construction at the elementary school where all the neighbor kids would be in the Time Before would stop triggering the tinnitus I got from coming up to fast from a wreck dive with my dad in Mexico yesterday, or, no, it was last year or, Jesus, it wasn’t even last decade but the decade before that, when things were definitely not perfect but I was still as-only-the-young-can-be certain that, one day, they would be. Megan Wildhood is a neurodiverse writer from Colorado who believes that freedom of expression is necessary for a society that is not only safe but flourishing. She helps her readers feel seen in her poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017) as well as Yes! Magazine, Mad in America, The Sun and, increasingly, less captured media outlets. You can learn more at meganwildhood.com.

I watched you digging in the doorway piling sod at the rim of the hole until it sat like a small hill in the space between our bedroom and the corridor you turned and spoke across the distance but the pit swallowed your voice we hollowed the earth like this nightly at each of our thresholds bolstering our membranes with liquor and dressing our lips with mourning gowns so many hours spent kneeling beside it tossing our futures in like offerings (Grave, you swallowed them like spit) so bleak we were in your presence and indifference that we failed to see the blooming our gifts had made: the pungent green rising from the depths of our composted hopes. Had we only known the spectacular flame a billion burning dreams can be, or take into account the afterwards: a spring rain mixing with ash and turning to ink.

Bad romance Did she seduce me or did I use her it was hard to say in the throes of our romance to blame her would be unfair after all I picked her from the shelf {and not just once} but what did she expect whispering French words that tasted of long summer evenings beguiling me with foreign scents and full-bodied promises but I was no innocent it was all on my terms from my own amusement or worse in self-pity and so we’d continue around in senseless circles blaming each other Vino and I The pinch I sat on my bed eating toast and drinking tea like a Lord I scrolled freely and breathed deeply but there was a pinch – you might call it that thing that doesn’t allow you to be to relax you see we mothers need time to process recalibrate circle back on all our wrongdoings some call it self-care others survival but that pinch it stings and squeezes whispers “don’t leave us” {I almost wondered if they carried a voodoo doll of me to their grandmother’s and poked me so I couldn’t forget} that pinch is the price it is needing time to eat toast and drink tea but missing them sorely as soon as they leave An aspiring poet from Northern Ireland who dreams of being paid to write poetry from the comfort of her bed. Thankfully, though unpaid, she derives so much comfort from poetry that even if she is never published, she feels a little warmer inside. Mum of two, writing on a variety of subject matters and in a variety of forms, depending on the mood of the day.

Silver unthreatening 6:50 am. this was london. I was 22 – working 12 hour shifts out near chelsea, just down around this new estate by the river. I was there every morning by 6: 45, and the world had the cold tang of cheap apple juice from out of a fridge when you've just woken up and you're thirsty. the grass all as silver- unthreatening as spoons in a drying rack stacked by the sink. I love frosted mornings – loved them then and still love them: the silence of leaves and the eiderdown softness of breezes. one bird in a tree somewhere – a sparrow or some other golfball- sized feather of brown. a heartbeat of motion and shiny-eyed caution, core comfort in bare wood like bone. Bukowski look, I admit it's a weird one and agree he’s despicable – but that doesn't mean there's nothing in the poems and the form of poems. when I read them (which I still do, I can admit, occasionally) I think of nothing else and that is rare – in poetry – to not be reminded. each line means itself, like pencils on a notebook. no self-conscious artistry. no world in conversation. and I'm sorry – I know that it's not any longer fashionable, but that still has value, whatever else it does. and he wasn't a homophobe and wasn't a racist – in the 50s being only misogynist? fucking progressive. but even then – the line lands with such force. it did when I was 15 and it does now as well. the line the line the line. like a corner turned by a beach when the tide swings unexpectedly, turning sand- banks into pooling. With my girlfriend, driving to the Ballymount Asia Food Market, southside of Dublin and just at the N7 junction, two weeks before Chinese New Year from the roadmap, the roundabouts roll off the road, regular as buds on a hedge-stalk. and the road is all dry and all shut dusty offices. the stamped ends of cigarettes. glass that nobody picks up. it's one of those parts of all cities we're in – those that branch from the main roads to places that nobody visits. the occasional magpie – airports and generator stations. a dog going hungry someone drove out and left here. I've been here at some time in each city I've been to – roads ugly as knots from the trunk of a manicured oak. and we turn, see the light brightly red out of windows. and a series of paper lamps, statues of animals up as a called celebration. not to advertise; shoppers here know where it is – it's just what they come here expecting. I love coming toward all this colour from shadowish night-time – a bumblebee walks the inside of a flower. a flame crawls its way over coal. DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, "Noble Rot" is scheduled for release in April 2022.

The neighbour’s cat licks its lips, and mimics a human hello In our bottom of the bag road We are people who see, but are not seen Aerials create shadows, wingless birds, too high to focus on, now they are full stops, scavenging for sentence ends Last summer’s hanging baskets, Shed crisps of leafy dandruff in winter‘s breath, family pictures fade, And curl up on dusty sills Soon we will join them, to sit as pictures on sills And fade like sentence ends, Scavenging memories in the suns of spring spirits that lick forgotten lips, can only mimic a human hello Gavin Turner has been writing poetry and fiction in secret for several years. He lives and works in North West England with his family.