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I start my day by finishing it the sun is creeping down like that spider under my bed and I really need to clean it out but my back aches like an old man god I really need to stop curling up in the bath like it’ll make me feel young again. Anyway I start my day by finishing it the sun is creeping down the bell has rung and they’re all flooding the street around me. I must look like a rock in a stream. Honestly I feel like one sometimes. Not in the fact that I’m not moving I’m always moving - me and my brain are on a high-speed train called the gifted kid and it’s taking me all the way to Cambridge and everyone’s so proud. I’m like a rock because I’m all hard shell because I’m all alone while you’re all connecting twisting, curling, flowing with each other. It’s like what the Smiths said about charms and arms. I’m not alone as in alone but I don’t know if anyone has ever really met me. Anyway you put your earphones on and I put my hands on my ears. Life sounds better this way let me hear it through a wall of grey. And I start understanding that I’m not understanding something that everyone else is. Alone in that I’m the only one who’s here. (Only one who’s not?) … I scuff my shoes on the concrete and I get the bus home. Benjamin Bowers is a student from England. His work has appeared in Backwords Trajectory. You can find him @benkb_poetry on Instagram.

my, my sister calls too early in the week, an early hour unallotted for pleasantries, especially for those a certain age a flinching, momentarily before i steel myself i say hello hello too muted to be received, ghosted in the background, in between the pauses of familiar voices, familiar sounds: the dog barking the door slamming clearly misplaced clearly unheard, all at once i am relieved and melancholy and am suddenly reminded of the true meaning of nostalgia J. R. Wilkerson is a resident of Northern Virginia by way of Lawrenceburg, Missouri

Homemaker Animal aches live in your belly. Susurration of hearts in an oblong vase on the kitchen island. Boil the bear delivered in an oak box. Pick its fur from your incisors. Outside, a snowglobe of suffering bursts into star crystals. You want to hide, but this weird world whispers your name. Sure, Call Me a “Homemaker” One-eyed cockroach sips toothpaste on the sink. Brazen blackbird bites my baby’s nose and toes. A cumulonimbus fills the kitchen sink with tears and lightning bolts. Bigfoot’s hair clogs the shower drain, so the bathroom becomes a lake, where Medusa’s snakes now want to mate. Shakespeare pens a tragedy with alphabet magnets, grape jelly. Curious George swings from ceiling fan, one foot-hand squirting bananas across the room like torpedoes. Cupid’s arrow jammed in the toaster, bent and blazing, smoke alarm blaring. Just then, my mother-in-law phones—she’s on her way. After the 12th Bedtime Story Open the night sky like a medicine cabinet, inside you’ll find God sitting on a stool, elbows on knees, chin resting on hands, glowing in the light of a moon-shaped night light, listening to a toddler whose weary parents have sent him to bed, listening to a toddler’s run-on sentences, run-on stories, run-on suggestions—that with a flick, burst into meteorite showers, thousands of word particles burning in a glorious celestial flourish. 6 a.m. A milky quiet, doughy stillness, refrigerator’s hum, my pen scratching against paper, the house inhaling & exhaling with sticky slumber, my toddlers’ lollipop dreams. I’ll imbibe this moment, melt it on my tongue, savor each morsel, molecule of peace for when tiny voices start calling Momma, Mommy, Mom when small humans hailstone their emotions, needs, desires, upon me I’ll swallow the hailstones, chunk by chunk until they melt inside me, on top of me, around me— I will drown. This moment will be the straw through which I sip oxygen. I’ve never been so elated to be awake alive at 6 a.m. Bethany Jarmul’s work has appeared in more than 50 literary magazines—including Salamander, Emerge Journal, Cease Cows—and been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Spiritual Literature. Her prose poem chapbook This Strange and Wonderful Existence is forthcoming from Bottlecap Press. Her nonfiction chapbook Take Me Home is forthcoming from Belle Point Press. She earned first place in Women on Writing’s Q2 2022 & Q2 2023 essay contests. Her essay “Intersections” earned the award for “Best in Show: Creative Nonfiction” for Winter 2023 from Inscape Journal. She lives near Pittsburgh. Connect with her at bethanyjarmul.com or on Twitter: @BethanyJarmul.

If I could be anything, i’d be the dying star you whisper wishes to before bed in my wildest fantasies i am your divinity akin to akemi i warp the world for your safety christ calls this is my blood i scream here is my heart! wrapped in cellophane to preserve, i only ask you peel that plastic and consume all piece by piece until we are one ode to my former eyebrow piercing to the divine hole the pristine pit of my countenance, you are comely and alluring to the lightning bug underneath my skin the sorcerer’s sword which embodies self-expression you are masculinity incarnate a childhood dream meets an adulthood reality we transcend expectations in ways such as this Theodore James is a 22 year old transsexual male who writes so that he may breathe. Words and language have been his passion for as long as he can remember. He spends his free time reading, writing, overthinking, and eating delicious vegan meals. He specializes in angst, but also lives for a little bit of humor. His favorite poet is Danez Smith, his favorite color is burnt orange, and he loves the smell of the sky after a nice long rain.

Pedestrian Living Brown house finch, God’s beauty borne aerial with heart and murmur and beat of wing all enumerate in feathers sweet, small-beaked, simple drive of wearied poet and old man’s swing— crushed dead on a one-way. Missing Person’s Report Eating day old pierogi, the line between nourishment and punishment, nearly absent now. I drink my milk, but, you know, height isn’t everything. Marta was telling me how the whole thing was a corporate lie anyway, and I made idiotic jokes about how Big Milk was coming to get us. The hashbrowns were fully sizzling, golden wads of chaos on cheapskate Waffle House oil, that last big supper I ate. Homer put it second best when he claimed, “Everything is beautiful because we are doomed.” First place, of course, goes to the eggshell, glistening in barren fullness, the best articulation of physical desire mixed with perdition. I am too young to be getting smaller, I’m told, but that won’t stop me from shrinking. When the milk cartel comes to execute me for slander, I will disown this and all other poems, having finally accomplished something genuine. Abilene Rhapsody Alive again in the American Southwest with friends and a campfire and a park full of needles, we share songs that wrap ‘round the prickly pears, Thinning over their shapes like clouds or the denim on my knees, worn pews. Oh big sky, they say the tension’s between ever-moving blood and the dry bones resisting it. Oh, worn pews. Oh, big sky. Softer Living Thinking of the mallard’s wings serrating the sky, gray thread rippers on a cloudy cotton hanging. My shoulders hurt pretty bad because I can’t lift a boat properly, I really miss Victoria right now. She’s got this coat so soft it feels something close to feathers, adjacent to the kind of kindness I’d imagine ducklings have before they’re grown up or shot or mauled by bears or whatever. Soft as the wiry margin between eggshells and Peking specials, basically. This is a poem about how I went boating on a Monday, and felt generally pretty good, duck mortality aside, but right now I’m thumbing my left earring, which got put in all slanty. It’s nearly funny that 30,000 Americans die in car crashes each year and I’m mad today because my left earring is crooked from when an armed teenager shot it askew. Victoria was there. Ask her about it if you see her. Lake of Fire Opening and closing the door with some force like the gasping gills of an upturned fish; put gently, it’s hot as balls in here. Came down last night from the mountains in blue-gray fog. Gunsmoke of possible car-crashes, the headlight trajectories of running down the slope, taillights swallowed in mist, ein flammenwerfer extinguished. Like a soldier then, running as artillery rock outcrops briefly explode into vision, heading back to find some shelter, a beautiful trout longing for the river, thrown back toward aqueous mercy to find my fucking AC broke. Too Much Fun Beneath the lemon drop sun, behind the bar for tips, I wish I could just swim in Absolut Citron. The young patrons With snide Hawaiian shirts stumble and dance between uninterested parties while I hand out shots: my knees will ache for theirs to give. Augustus C. Grohmann is an interdisciplinary writer and MFA candidate at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. Email them at ggrohmann@hotmail.com.

she did not stretch 60 feet tall like that day on the Clearwater building in Florida when the city had to install sidewalks and portable restrooms for thousands of pilgrims nor did she appear on a griddle at a restaurant on the California-Mexican border. She remembered that Jesus had a thing for showing up on fish sticks or bacon on a banana peel or as a ruffled dark spot on a potato chip by all accounts Mother Teressa was partial to cinnamon buns. Our Lady of confided all of this to a guy seated at a pew scrolling absently through his phone Damon Hubbs is the author of two chapbooks: "The Day Sharks Walk on Land"(Alien Buddha Press, 2023) and "Charm of Difference" (Back Room Poetry, forthcoming in 2024). His most recent poems can be found in Does It Have Pockets, Apocalypse Confidential, South Broadway Press, Yellow Mama, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, D.O.R, and Fixator Press. He lives in New England. Twitter @damon_hubbs

One Million Years Ago Yesterday A big girl now she recalls the first dress purchased with money of babies sat perfect for endless summers with boys bare feet on sands so hot she cried. Always willing arms protected her when rains fell heavy onto the shore lightning struck wild waves on the horizon she begged for another day to come so bright. Little stars crowd her memories as they fall innumerable from distant worlds she cannot assemble the fragments of moments lost in a shapeless cosmos. The large mirror tells a precious tale as she stands in earnest by a jealous star so little seems different for the aging child woman of centuries and universal truths. Weakness I give you the weakness of my skin so you can press your finger upon my soul leave traces of your prints on my thoughts. I submit to you the tenderness of my heart so you may handle it with your care its beats at the mercy of your will. I surrender all that might be strength in your palms so you may weigh its authentic measure and smile when you understand its truth. It is my gift to you in earnest so you will embrace this offering and hold it into your breast forevermore. Poussin is a professor of French and. His work in poetry and photography has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and hundreds of other publications worldwide. Most recently, his collections In Absentia, and If I Had a Gun, were published in 2021 and 2022 by Silver Bow Publishing.

Start the tape. and Richard says: Okay, dena. Are you ready to talk? Do you want to answer some questions? dena says: Umm. Stares at the ceiling and: Umm. Richard: Are you ready to -- dena: Sure. I'll talk to you. You and only you. Darling. And you'll remember your promise? The dust-wind autumn day we came here together, dry leaves -- Richard: I remember. dena. with a small 'd'. dena: Yes. She laughs. Yes: with a small 'd'. I want to see it printed that way in the transcriptions. Richard: If I promise, will you tell me everything? dena: Yes. Richard: Will you tell me the truth? dena: Oh yes. She looks at Richard, her smile cracked glass, a peek into deep-fathom space where cold, oiled machines hum. I will tell you the truth. And you will not scream. You will not run. Only because you are Richard. Richard: Because I understand you. dena laughs, the scratch of a stylus across the grooves of an old vinyl record. she says: I will watch your eyes while we talk ... No one can ever get dena to talk. Except Richard. So: tell me about the first night. Tell me about the rose. dena: why start there? Why not last week the week before the season before? The ancient seasons? Richard: I want to know why you chose him. dena: It was just the shine young shine coming out of his skin -- Richard: Tell. dena: I didn't know him, knew I'd never see him again his boyfriend waiting in the car outside the flower shop, old Nashville Road bluemetal Volvo, peeling flakes, bright orange primer vanity license plate: GUNS-R-US the boyfriend yelling at him and he talking, crying eyes red and wet face pale red wet but not so pale as later ... Richard: And the rose? dena: Bought it inside and gave it to him -- Richard: Why? dena: The depth there, in his sadness. Didn't know he shined, but knew exactly why he cried. Most of them cry in confusion, but he -- dena pauses, sips water. Richard waits. then: I said 'you are someone who needs' he smiled through silent tears and I made sure Richard: You made sure dena: Yes my blood was on the briar to mark him for later. His eyes so sweet -- Richard: You said you would tell me all of it. You said you would tell me the truth. dena: and the truth is that his eyes were sweet and his tongue bitter, and I drank a cup of ice water after. dena smiles. Depths slide through the smile, depths that are always trying to move out beyond the edge of the world. The black smile wants to live in the bright sunlight world of happy things. The tape is rolling. dena: How much do you want to know? Would you like to know why the sun sings? Would you like to know what crickets dream? Richard: The truth. Only the truth. He looks at his watch. He's late. Half hour. dena: Truth. Richard: Without poetry. dena giggles: There is no truth without poetry. She laughs, breathing frost, shifts in her chair. The room is cold growing colder. Cold growing colder ... Richard: Who was next? dena: That night, or after? Richard: That night. dena: That night I heard the moon scream and I flew with owls across a stained sky and when I looked, I saw everything. I saw the fever at the edge of the world all of the big world and two boys, running like kites with cut strings Pinocchio-boys paroled from sleep singing and kicking leaves and howling out too late on a school night pillow-ghosts propped up scarecrows of bedclothes in empty beds to fool foolish parents. Richard, smiling: I remember doing that. dena: Yes. The magic. The boy magic: I took them fed pushed darkness into their veins and when I stopped they weren't little boys anymore. When I stopped They weren't anymore. She grins. Her teeth are jagged slates, eyes crystal pomegranites. If she wants, she can be beautiful. She has that choice though Kafka called her Gregor Samsa ... Richard: Is there anything left? dena: Sometimes. Of little boys, no. Little boys have soft bones with warm, sweet, taffy centers -- Richard: I will never see this. dena: You asked me. Richard: Only the truth. dena: Don't you believe? She smiles again, the smile of living things, fluid crescent against the alien darkness of her rippling face. Now she is beautiful again, moonlight on flawless white skin. dena: Driving here, through sweet scents of jasmine and potpourri pine and country homes, dirt roads, I saw her drugged and beautiful, thumb cocked dripping deliciously from light yellow summer clothes I took her to that winter farm where you used to rehearse the band, remember? There in soft straw and gauze of cobweb she kissed me thought to shock me when I took her into my arms she cried out; and no one heard but spiders ... Her mind filled with sketchbook fantasies, never realized I read her hunger as I read her mind and made sure she came before she died. Richard: How many? How many years? dena: You want centuries. Richard: The truth. I want the truth. How many? dena: Lost count long before volcanoes cooled; great beasts roamed the earth and I; in another shape. I'm older than stars, didn't I tell you? Older than light. Richard: No. You never told me when you were born. dena: Before God. Light bends around me, when I feed Rainbow Halo dreambubble, silent and beautiful, I think. Richard: I will never see this. I will never. dena: You exist in second's space, casual eyeblink -- see time from my side and your mind slides sideways. You are privileged to know; only because you know me. You hear me. You are tranced by Mayhem. You hear the song. You are kin. Richard: dena: All God's children are red dreams of violence; God's children hear voices singing of meat. Second's space lures them away; parents teach them away from it, the true nature. We are Hunters all: Killers. dena: before seasons of bright time took you over painted you pastel colors you were red, too. Richard: dena: Say something. Richard: Teach me. dena: you already know. Look -- your hands stretch skin into blood shape Now you sing feast-ballads hymns to tearing flesh. She smiles. Moves to him. Kisses and kisses and unlocks him. dena: Come with me. Richard: Um. Richard: Richard: The moon is waning silver the moon doesn't matter. Beasts drink water Beasts cross the river Singing of murder. dena: Richard: The tape is rolling -- The tape is rolling. Dave Duggins is a writer, artist, and musician. He’s written four books--three novels and a short fiction collection--and a bunch of music, with a couple of blues rock albums on Spotify. He currently releases all his creative work through Silvern Studios, his little multimedia company. You can find out more about what he does at daveduggins.com, but the site's pretty static. He’s more lively on Twitter. His new novel, Romae Futurum: Invaders, is now available in the Kindle Store: https://tinyurl.com/yck8qpow

The Dry Spell It hasn't been raining since it had. I sound vague? You haven't stared at the spearhead of a midday road. You haven't tried to track rain and heard the summer roar. Everything set for the rain - that cup of tea, those books and music, social media posts, bad mood, sudden sex, uprooted sadness that breathes on and perishes at the same time - all hold a bowl. No noise, tune, ting - the bowl remains an arch of aching. It waits. Nothing is nothingness; even a dry spell gets wet with our sweating. Halo- rainbow around my sins (To Robert Frede Kenter) A halo-rainbow surrounds my sins, its glow almost motherly callous and concerned as if she stands in our longevous balcony and see us playing soccer in the street without watching us, and hence we can be the truants from good behaviour, moral language. I blink. I cannot remember a rainbow in my life let alone a halo around the sun. I murmur, "Forgive me for leading a monochrome life." Cold breeze feels for my pulses, touches my neck. "Am I alive?" I desire to ask and decide not to. The grass smells of a memory falling from a great height, from the parapet of Eden. The air thronged with the particles reminds me of how the crows circle and scream when one of them falls. Light has fallen. It is sundown soon. I can call you Rob and say, "Slainté Mhaith." or hear the sobbing water of a lake nearby. An author, journalist, and father, Kushal Poddar, editor of 'Words Surfacing’, authored eight books, the latest being 'Postmarked Quarantine'. His works have been translated into eleven languages. amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

She always loved airports. Her dad, robbed of having a son among his three children, used to take her to the parking area at the end of the runway to watch the planes take off. Her sisters were uninterested but she loved it. For a long time she thought he did it only for her. Really he was doing it for him. When her marriage failed and she was still only in her twenties, she took to spending time at the airport even when she wasn’t going on a trip. She liked to sit in the main terminal and watch the travelers check in, pulling their wheeled luggage along and gazing at the panel of ETAs and ETDs. She’d read or listen to string quartets through her earbuds, and then, after a couple of hours, she’d go home feeling revived. In search of a bathroom one time she wandered into a long hallway that didn’t seem to lead anywhere. It had a firehose in the wall behind a glass case. It had a struggling ficus backed into a niche where it didn’t get any light. High windows threw some sunlight beside the niche, so she dragged the ficus there and watered it with her Evian. Every time she went to the airport, she’d go there to check on the ficus and discover that someone had moved it back to the niche. She’d set it out again in the the sun patch and water it, and it started doing better and better. She saw a man look at his watch after checking in and thought he had too much time to kill before his flight. This was all on impulse and later she was surprised at herself, but she went up to him and asked if he wanted to see something special. He was nice looking, a little older than her, and had sweet eyes. She took him to the hallway with the ficus and showed him how she had nursed it back to health. Then she took his hand and led him into the niche, and she unbuttoned her blouse and said he could have her if he wanted her. When they were done and he had to catch his plane, he asked her name. “You can call me Bluebird,” she said and went skipping away. Her father used to call her Bluebird. For a while she did this regularly, finding just the right man, showing him her ficus, and offering herself to him. These men were always grateful, then bewildered when she told them her name and skipped away. It was better than her marriage. But then she chose a man quite a bit older, and he wept when they were finished, and that made her wonder what he was thinking. His eyes were something other than bewildered when she said her name. They were full of sorrow. Kevin Brennan is the author of eight novels, as well as stories and poetry that have appeared in many online and print journals. A Best Microfiction nominee, he's also editor of The Disappointed Housewife, a literary magazine for writers of offbeat and idiosyncratic fiction, poetry, and essays. Kevin lives in California's Sierra foothills, where he cavorts among the pines and writes anomalous indie songs for his wife.

With striped lawns and fences and barking dogs and lost cat posters on lampposts. I’ve spent weekends pulling weeds and evenings walking, some years pushing a stroller. Cordial hellos. You get the idea, but I’m not finished. Here where they pretend concrete is art—cul-de-sacs and speed bumps, medians and roundabouts. Someone paints their door bright then someone else follows suit but in another hue. There are kitschy flags about holidays and seasons or sometimes wine, advertising alcoholism as a worthwhile pursuit. There are wreaths on doors, welcome in curly fonts, all screaming personality! The sound of rolling trash bins is music every Thursday morning, or at least an alarm clock, everything is pulsing in that methodical way. We don’t know how much money the neighbors pull in, it’s in the same ballpark probably but some winters it’s a class war between snowblowers and shovels, sometimes we’d leave our driveway uncleared hoping for some benevolence. Once I tried to move my kids into the city proper, where we could walk somewhere beyond a park, a gas station. I want the trees, the forest, but that will have to come after the kids are grown. My ex said downtown was too far, he didn’t want to drive them to me there. He might have said more but I didn’t bother to make it out above the endless drone of a weed whacker. Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction and poetry. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. Her prose can be found in The Normal School, Okay Donkey, and Jellyfish Review, among other places. Her collection of letters to her daughter, Cleave, was recently released by Autofocus Books. She works as a librarian while raising boys in Omaha.

Show tits. Be Black. Laugh too loudly. Order veal. Have the kind of queer relationship that Netflix hasn’t figured out how to monetize. Rent. Walk down the street thinking they don’t know your headphones are blasting that one pop-punk hit you felt guilty about listening to even back in high school. Slouch. Pick your teeth. Do the drugs they don’t write breathless travelogues about. Run back and forth across the Brooklyn Bridge at 4 a.m. with someone you just met because you feel that ugly beautiful energy when you look at them and it has to come out, come OUT, COME OUT, before you can go somewhere as prosaic as bed. Appreciate silence. Age appropriately. Imagine a better life is possible. Call an ex from 10 years ago who occasionally stalks your Insta stories and tell them you don’t miss them, not really, but sometimes you wake up with the memory of the taste of their ass on your tongue, anyway hope they’re well. Know sorrow. Learn nothing. Turn right on red. Chas Carey is a public servant and member of the interdisciplinary performing arts collective Wolf 359. This piece sprung up after someone told him about a colleague who charged $800 for a masterclass on how to get accepted by the New York Times' "Modern Love" column.