Shelbi Church

i banished all the ghosts of my past

but i never got over my crush on that blonde girl
from sixth grade. someone once told me
we looked alike and my pulse liquefied.
i shone slick with cortisol and my numb
mouth couldn’t shape the words thank you.
we were nineteen when i texted her
i’d always loved her, and she replied
(i could hear the despairing concern in her syrupy voice),
i hope god releases you from this pain. i sped twenty
over the limit forty miles down I-35 and
doorknocked at every apartment until
i found god, but he was busy watching the game.
listen, i don’t make the rules. besides,
what is god supposed to say to the queer kid
who begins with a skeleton in the closet and
ends as one, too? i am forever
craving everything that gives me rot—
i tear the angel wings from passersby
and shudder with guilt, delight.
it seems i haven’t yet figured out how to
be near something precious without loving it
like a closed fist.

Shelbi Church earned her BFA in creative writing from Emerson College. Her poetry and fiction can be found or is forthcoming in Poetry Online, Hobart After Dark, the lickety~split, Overheard, and elsewhere. Originally from Fort Worth, TX, she lives and writes in Boston, MA.

Yara Ghunaim

forget-me-not

you say dear / coming down from the fig tree / i picked you the sweetest ones / & you say how can anyone not like figs? / but i cannot stand the melancholic aftertaste they leave in my mouth / we lay down in the afternoon & you tell me a story about horses / but i am too busy counting the freckles on your arms / i try to memorise the atlas before summer /   i sit on the steps in front of the kitchen to tell you i know all of the countries now /                 except i don’t know them
the way you do / you say quick! what is the capital of yarra &                laugh / the summer after i learn to sit down & watch you watch a           war on television /                         you say be wise,
don’t rush
& your
brain undoes the
conversation
it takes me too long to
notice that the blue flowers
at the entrance are gone
it begins with misplaced glasses you
say dear dear
dear, do you know
this poem? i have known it
by heart for too long i
have known it by heart for
too long i have known it by
heart- until
someone breaks the cycle- i
love you remember, remember
always

Yara Ghunaim is an architect based in Amman. She holds an MRes (Art & Design) from Cardiff Metropolitan University and happens to write sometimes. Her work has appeared in BAHR magazine and is forthcoming in Sukoon.

Caitlin Thomson

Dusk

I caught the evening in my hands, light as cotton 
candy, big as a mouse. My daughter looked  
at it with wonder, and named it, 
the same sort of name she gifts everything 
— a word, and then that same word repeated with a y.
Tonight she fell asleep with snake-snakey, bear-beary,
and twiglight-twilighty, the last a sliver on her forehead 
smaller than any mole could be, a paper cut 
without broken skin. In the morning it 
will have been absorbed into the new day. 
Invisible, the way the past often is, 
on the bodies of children.

Caitlin Thomson’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Penn Review, The Moth, Barrow Street, Wraparound South, and Radar Poetry. You can learn more about her writing at www.caitlinthomson.com.

Richard Fox

The Grapes of Wrath

Spring’s dealings fall forward, like
its clocks. Other people’s cast-offs
 
make me nervous; poking through
them makes me murderous—
 
I would rather study the religious
leanings of the illegals
 
in the basement, those shy kindred
who are trampling out the vintage.
 
Brown as a bat’s hand, precise as a
decade of the rosary, they count
 
the patches on each elbow & knee;
I count on my fingers,
 
& the finger for you is missing.

Richard Fox has been a regular contributor of poetry and visual art to online and print literary journals. He has been recipient of a full poetry fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council, a CAAP work support grant from the City of Chicago, and a work fellowship at the Millay Colony. Swagger & Remorse, his first book of poetry, was published in 2007. He is currently working on several collections of soundscapes, which are being made available online at Bandcamp. A poet and visual artist, he holds a BFA in Photography from Temple University, Philadelphia. A former Chicago resident, he now lives in Salt Lake City, UT.

Peggy Hammond

Lament

A holiday gone wrong.
That morning, children’s
warm hands clasped in yours.
First walk on the beach,
such wonder. Bright
squeals of laughter,
wind whipping hair
across faces, salty
taste on lips. Gulls
lifting out of reach.
Everything a surprise.
 
Was there one
second to process?
To see sneaker wave
rise & rush to greet, to
lift small feet from
sand, curl tiny bodies
to the sea’s bosom?
You scrambled after them,
too late. One child’s body
later carried to shore
on currents as soft
and steady as
grandmother’s arms,
the other caught
in fretful fingers
of a muttering sea,
destined for horizons
far from your own, held
tenderly in deepest blue.
And you, left to wander
a new world, swim a 
spring thaw
of grief.

Peggy Hammond’s recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, River & South Review, Jarfly Magazine, Roanoke Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The Spotlong Review, Spire Light Journal, Straylight Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net nominee, an Eric Hoffer Poetry Award nominee, and the author of The Fifth House Tilts (Kelsay Books, 2022). Learn more at https://peggyhammondpoetry.com/