Randy Lundy

Note from an Esteemed Editor

What good is another poem about a tree?
Why adopt the pose of some species of realist?
That’s so last century. Early last century, really.
Since you don’t seem aware, we are living in
a post-modern, poet-truth, post-tree milieu.
 
In spite of the fact that 40% of the country
is covered by forest, we do not want to hear
a litany of names—birch, pine, aspen, oak—
nor do we want to hear recitations about
boreal clearcuts or wildfires in the Rockies.
 
Please keep those hysterics to yourself.
 
Our world is now virtual, and trees are virtually
useless, especially in the context the literary.
If this poem were about language, identity, or
something more conceptual, conceptually relevant,
we’d be happy to reconsider. Thank you, however,
for your interest in our publication, which appears
only digitally because we refuse the use of paper,
which would be, obviously, an acknowledgement
of the existence of trees in all their vulgar variety

Randy Lundy is Irish, Norwegian, and Cree. The author of four full-length collections of poetry and a recent chap book, he resides in Toronto, Ontario, as companion to two elderly, female dogs.

Kit Evans

Tomato Skins

Robbie told us it was like a woman
when we crushed fall-time tomatoes
 
with our hands. Split red skins,
leaking seeds and something sticky-wet. 
 
We giggled, thrust the rotted
tomato-woman in his mouth
 
and asked if he liked it that way.
He licked the smeared, soured-sweet
 
September juice off his lips and released 
a chorus of yuck from within us.
 
You tried to eat a dandelion 
so it could be spring inside,
 
but it was too bitter for your tongue. 
With our hands we raked the yellow
 
over our arms, colored ourselves May.
We opened the skin on our thighs 
 
with razors when those fruit-fly boys
buzzed in, and we found the sticky seeds 
 
of autumn sprouting inside us.
With my hands I pulled your hair,
 
batted your bare chest like 
a nursing infant, desperate for 
 
your soured-sweet juice,
so we could be those used and trashed
 
tomato-women in wet fall grass,
 
not the ones forgotten,
softening on the vine.
 
Like dry grass in the mouth of summer
I need something wet on my lips
 
when there’s an echo of breath in my ear
right where your tongue is. 

Kit Evans is a 20-something queer poet and writer from Corvallis, Oregon. He can often be found meditating next to large bodies of water, or lifting rocks in search of cool bugs. His poetry has appeared in The Dewdrop, Hiram Poetry Review, and is forthcoming in the Beyond Queer Words anthology and Vagabond City Lit.

Caroline Reddy

The Butchering of a Child

An exorcism recording
played into the night,
and pews shifted. 
 
I found my prayer book 
underneath the bunk.
 
I flipped open Boy’s Life
in secret while 
others hummed along
and praised hymns.
 
I bowed my head
as we huddled 
around a campfire 
and roasted our sins:
 
wrists burst open 
and scriptures spilled
screams of the possessed:
 
trembling we watched 
a sacrificial banquet hall
waiting to prepare a child 
to be crucified.

Caroline Reddy’s work has been accepted or published in Active Muse, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, Braided Way, Calliope, Clinch, Grey Sparrow, Deep Overstock, Fresh Wods Magazine, Indefinite Space, International Human Rights Arts Festival, Journal of Expressive Writing, Literary Heist, The Opiate, Quail Bell and Star*line among others. In the fall of 2021, her poem “A Sacred Dance” was nominated for the Best of The Net prize by Active Muse. Caroline Reddy was born in Shiraz, Iran and is currently working on a collection of poems titled Shake the Atmosphere to Reclaim an Empty Moment. 

Tommy Sheffield

In Memory

for Dennis Simms

Death
is a close thing.
How long
before another student dies.
How long
before Death comes knocking.
I'll keep grading, making lesson plans.
Standing up in front of the class
as if Death is not standing next to me.

Tommy Sheffield was born in 1991, in Fairfax, Virginia. He is a graduate of James Madison University, where he studied poetry under Laurie Kutchins. He currently resides in Washington, DC, where he teaches high school English Language Arts. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at George Mason University, where he studied poetry. He is the poetry editor for Stillhouse Press and Voice Lux Press. He has served as the Managing Editor for Megan Merchant's poetry collection Before the Fevered Snow; Baltimore Sons, a collection by Dean Smith, head of Duke University Press; How to Bury a Boy at Sea, Phil Goldstein's debut poetry collection; The Machine Code of a Bleeding Moon by Latif Askia Ba; A Map of Every Undoing by Alicia Elkort; and The Castration of a Minor God by John Compton. He is a co-founder of Shiversong LLC alongside Megan Merchant. Sheffield's poetry, stories, and essays have been featured in ucity review, Adelaide, Sanitarium, Cough Syrup Magazine, and 3 A.M. Press.

Kristin LaFollette

A Recovery

I was given a sedative, then a nerve block.
 
With a terrible dryness in my mouth,
I was unable to speak 
or ask the nurse how they knew
 
            the fragments wouldn’t find their way back together on their own,
                        meld into new mechanisms and relocate to their former
 
                        compartments—
 
I fell asleep and woke with
tangles of surgical silk sticking up
like pebbles under my skin
 
When the IV was removed,
my mother tried to catch the lost blood and hold in the rest 
                        but there was no way to stop it, 
years of too-high-hematocrit unspooled from veins
slack with anesthesia
 
On our way home, I wandered into the bathroom
of a fast-food restaurant, arm pinned snugly
against my breastbone in a mesh sling.
When my mother found me, she gave me
ice water and drove me to the house, 
put me to bed on the living room couch so she could
 
monitor the blood
force cold into the plaster &
peel the electrode stickers from my chest
 
With the sutures cut away, the incision
widened to an estuary lined with rigid fiber
The occupational therapist scooped aloe
from a jar and worked it into the skin with a metal tool,
 
the breaking and dispersing of crystal

Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. She is the author of Hematology (winner of the 2021 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize) and Body Parts (winner of the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Contest). She received her Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University and is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana. Learn more about her work at kristinlafollette.com.

Evelyn Lauer

Capacity

You bury yourself in mudsand.
Your mouth the hole that’s left
 
To fill. Over the grave
Of you             her red lips.
 
The leaving because if I didn’t leave you
I might hollow your lungs      fill them with stones. 

Evelyn Lauer holds an MFA in poetry writing from Texas State University. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Sentence, Denver Syntax, Blood Orange Review, Huffington Post, Education Week, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.

Silvatiicus Riddle

Does it Pain the Flower to Bloom?

Does it pain the flower to bloom?

Just as death is often mistaken

for an ending, so too is our suffering

mistaken for needless.

 

Great forests often begin

with great fire.

Silvatiicus Riddle is a Dark Fantasy Writer and forest-punk living on the borderlands of New York City with a menagerie of cats, a hoard of books, and all of his imaginary friends. He has recently been published by Abyss & Apex, Enchanted Living magazine, and The Quarter(ly). You can find him folding paper airplanes and sending them sailing off into the void on Twitter @blackthornriddle.

Tina Barry

Another haunting

Our room in Maine faced a quiet inlet. Early one morning, we heard a sound, someone carefully pushing a door open, but both doors were closed. The air stirred. A whirring echoed through the room. That night we had left a small lamp on. In front of it, each time it orbited, the dark shape of a bird. 

Tina Barry is the author of Beautiful Raft (Big Table Publishing, 2019) and Mall Flower (Big Table Publishing, 2016). Her poems and fiction have appeared in numerous literary publications such as The Best Small Fictions 2020 (spotlighted story) and 2016, The American Poetry Journal, Nixes Mate, Sky Island Journal, Nasty Women Poets, Feckless Cunt and upcoming in Rattle. Tina is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has several Best of the Net nods. She is a teaching artist at The Poetry Barn and Writers.com.

Joan E. Bauer

Director’s Notes: ‘Radical Eye, Tumultuous Life’

Logline: Italian-born photographer is torn between Revolution and her art.

Characters: Tina Modotti. Edward Weston, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, 
a Marxist professor, a survivor of Spanish Civil War.  
 
Opening: Modotti’s sudden death after dinner at Pablo Neruda’s house.
Heart failure or murder? Then flashbacks—
 
Tina in her uncle’s photo studio in Udine, Italy. She works in textile plant
to support her impoverished family. Casting: A younger Salma Hayek?

Tina arrives in San Francisco’s Little Italy where she begins acting
in Italian-language theatre. Meeting with Dorothea Lange?
 
Discovered by D.W. Griffith, Tina goes to Hollywood where she appears
as femme fatale in silent films. Re-enact some clips?
 
In Bohemian LA, Tina meets photographer Edward Weston. They become
lovers & move to Mexico. Who should play Weston?
 
With a Graflex, Tina masters her craft. Affair with Diego Rivera.
Deep friendship w/Frida Kahlo, defying category, arm in arm.
 
From Modotti’s photographs: sea of sombreros, worker’s hands,
typewriter, calla lilies, cactus. Hammer & sickle?
           
Tina joins the Mexican Communist Party & becomes Stalinist agent.
Expelled from Mexico & flees to Soviet Union. Climax?
           
Tina works tirelessly for the Comintern. In Spain, relief worker & spy.
Implicated in deaths of Revolutionary fighters? Too much of a downer?
 
Closing scenes: Return to Mexico, mysterious death. Final image:
Modotti’s ‘Hands of the Puppeteer.’ Too symbolic?
 
Cinematography: B&W docu-style?  Muted color w/ earth tones?
 
Sample dialog:  ‘I cannot solve the problem of my life by losing myself
in the problem of art.’ Too philosophical?

Joan E. Bauer is the author of two poetry collections, The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008) and The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021). For some years she worked as a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-hosts and curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins. Her new book of poetry, Fig Season, is forthcoming from Turning Point in 2023. She tweets @Joan_E_Bauer.  

Katie Cossette

Lobotomy at Claires

I am a woman,
but don’t call me a feminist.
In a flash I would trade
this measly existence
of HR complaints
and battling my
complicated gender identity
for a fluffy skirt
and a hole in the head.
Tell me what to do, honey—
it’ll be done with a
perma-smile.
Your steak was overcooked?
Go ahead, hit me.
Don’t worry,
my Cover Girl coverup
will hide the evidence.
Oh, I’m sorry sweetheart,
the hysteria’s acting up again.
Must pay a visit to the doctor
with the ever vibrating hands,
then I’ll be good as new.
No daughter of mine
will go around
demanding rights for her body—
your flesh is at the beck and call
of your father and
someday
husband.
Come on, honey,
let’s head over to Claires
and get you all fixed up—
I’ll even let you get
double pierced!

Katie Cossette (she/her) is a Montreal writer pursuing her BA in Honours English Literature. Her work has been featured in Toil and Trouble Lit, DarkWinter Lit, Dollar Store Magazine, and elsewhere. Katie is also the co-founder/co-editor of Crab Apple Literary and you can find her random thoughts about this and everything else on Instagram (nerd.i.am) and Twitter (cossette_katie).

Luke Johnson

O Mother, the music 

after Terrance Hayes

by which I mean 
the slap of skin and grunt
 
and after the grunt, 
the slob who eats your 
 
pecan pie and praises sister 
while she spins in sequins, 
 
spins and lights electric 
as the daylight slips, 
 
is not music, mother, 
can't be. What is music, 
 
is my eager hand along 
a hunting knife 
 
and the lightest touch 
of blade that cuts 
 
so cleanly, his beard, 
and if not his beard 
 
the hair that tufts 
his saggy nipples 
 
and makes him look 
impish, small, so easily eaten, 
 
a lion with no mane.
Is the warmth along 
 
the bone-carved handle 
and the nudge of tip 
 
to throbbing throat 
that surges as I squeeze 
 
and shake and wrestle 
the rage that moves 
 
like wind in a box, 
a cat that is caged, 
 
the scream 
of a stillborn prayer. 

Luke Johnson’s poems can be found at Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Narrative Magazine, Florida Review, Poetry Northwest, Frontier, Cortland Review and elsewhere. His manuscript in progress was recently named a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, The Levis through Four Way Press, The Vassar Miller Award and is forthcoming fall 2023 from Texas Review Press. You can connect on Twitter at @Lukesrant.

Julie Weiss

1943

for Olga

Taste the malt and sweat of it, baby.
Slide across the laughter of it,
 
nude as a dew-swept field
at first light. If we´d lived then, 
 
I´d have clutched your hand 
to a blaze and not let go, there
 
in Vi´s speakeasy, where we´d have 
grand slammed the world´s scorn 
 
clear out of the era. 
Where we´d have unbuttoned those 
 
flowery dresses of convention, 
down to our briefs and swagger, 
 
down to the trickle of beer 
I´d have spilled between your breasts, 
 
knowing this time, you wouldn´t 
have run or flinched. I´d have splayed 
 
on a bar stool, legs wide enough 
for fist or face, as we guzzled 
 
the fear from each other´s bodies.
I´d have pilfered every damned tube
 
of regulation lipstick, smeared it 
like mud across the mouths of those 
 
who, scandalized by the swoon 
in our slow dance, would have 
 
dragged us downtown, bruised, 
cuffed. Switch off the television. 
 
Let´s pretend ourselves backwards. 
Let me take you to a place where 
 
the only broken bones are hushed 
conversations laid to rest at last 
 
while we, ghosts of our era,
bat sin after sin for the home team. 

Julie Weiss (she/her) is the author of The Places We Empty, her debut collection published by Kelsay books, and a chapbook, The Jolt: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, published by Bottlecap Press. Her "Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children" was selected as a finalist for Sundress´s 2023 Best of the Net anthology. She won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for her poem "Cumbre Vieja," was named a finalist for the 2022 Saguaro Prize, and was shortlisted for Kissing Dynamite´s 2021 Microchap Series. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her work appears in Rust + Moth, Orange Blossom Review, Sky Island Journal, and ONE ART, among others. Originally from California, she lives in Spain with her wife and two young children.

Grecia Espinoza

What’s Eating My Sister

When we were girls our mother 
sewed knots inside our throats 
to muffle our cries. 
We learned to communicate 
in low and pained croaks 
and now neither of us knows how to ask 
for what we want
so we settle for what we have.
 
our childhood was spent hoping 
our mother would leave her room 
but she never did. When i cried
My sister would rub my back 
and brush my hair with her small hands 
gently combing the loneliness out of it
 
When she cried, she did so softly 
and always while I slept.
Her long hair draping off the bed- 
tangled with years of untreated loneliness
She’d lay there shaking, her small body 
moved by the ocean of sorrow 
that trapped and banged inside of her.
 
When the sadness of nighttime fell away
we’d fling pots at one another 
and say ugly things that we picked 
from our mother’s mouth.
We were storing our rage inside each other 
hoping someday we’d have the courage to use it 
When I try to calculate the magnitude 
of my sister’s suffering, I multiply it by my own
 
Each time I see her she’s smaller. 
And there it is, our pain, 
still multiplying in her hair uncontrollably, 
like cancer cells.

Grecia Espinoza is a Brooklyn based writer, emerging poet, and a voracious reader of dead authors.

Benjamin Anthony Rhodes

Going to the Gay Bar with Jesus

It goes without saying, but Jesus 
is in booty shorts. 
 
It's summer, so we're showing skin. Jesus
sports a mesh top, his chest hair and side scar
 
peek through the holes, the absence of cloth
more present than the strings pretending
 
to cover him. I'm in a similar get-up, 
jockstrap and harness visible under my clothes.
 
Because we're both in booty shorts,
everyone assumes we're not together – correctly,
 
and that we're both bottoms – incorrectly,
and that we're looking for dick – correctly. 
 
***                              ***                              ***
 
Jesus charms the door man, so we don't have to pay the cover.
He flips his hair when we walk in, but not until he's sure
 
every eye is on him, which they are. Even the queen on stage
flicks her attention to the savior briefly, mid-lip-sync,
 
and straightens her back. We walk straight to the bar, and people
step aside to make space for us. The bartender approaches immediately,
 
a miracle in and of itself. Two shots of vodka and two ice waters, hun, 
Jesus says, tossing a wink over his shoulder at me. We clink
 
our shooters, tap them on the bar, then down 'em.
Jesus takes our waters, thanks the bartender, then leaves
 
two twenties on the counter without using his hands.
C'mon, hun, he says to me, making his way to the dance floor.
 
He hands me a tequilla sunrise, sipping his own through the straw.
Wine doesn't taste good on ice, he says, starting to churn his hips
 
to the Dua Lipa mash up slamming our ears. I want to ask him
if he can only turn water into red drinks, or if we can have
 
rum-and-cokes after this, but the blood of Christ is potent.
A stone rolls in front of my inhibitions, sealing them away.
 
I'm not too much of a dancer, but you wouldn't be able to tell.
I arch my back and shake, surrender my arms to the air.
 
Jesus is spinning, singing along, head tilted, hair flowing.
His arms are spread wide, pierced palms spilling light. 
 
***                              ***                              ***
 
At the end of the night, we're all sweaty. We danced until close.
We didn't find boyfriends, despite many hopeful candidates,
 
so we lean on each other to keep upright on the sidewalk.
Couldn't you make our Uber come faster? I ask him, hiccupping
 
halfway through. He laughs, really girly, pushing his forehead on mine.
I cooooould, he croons, kissing my cheek, a little sloppy. But I'm not ready
 
to go home. He sighs, looks up beyond the stars. 
I'm not ready to leave you all down here alone. 
 
***                              ***                              ***
 
I wake up in my bed, an alka seltzer on my pillow
and a copy of the King James all hollowed out,
 
the cove filled with pre-rolls and a note:
Thanks for the fun, hun. 
 
Pray sometime, why don't ya? 
XOXO, JC. 
 
P.S. Never forget how you're made – 
wonderfully, and beautiful.

Benjamin Anthony Rhodes is a queer and trans poet living in Northeast Ohio. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University and a BA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. His work can be found in Cowboy Jamboree, Cleveland Review of Books, LimpWrist, and in "Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology," forthcoming from Madville Publishing. His poem "Elliot Page Just Came Out as Trans" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Drunk Monkeys.

Kindall Fredricks

Poem in Which I Take Too Much 

The chest cracks mother            and so
 the little door                             opens       
its wood                    as cool as 
            a memory                     sparrowing 
back into dirt         my grandmother’s name 
     now the frog
 in the flower’s throat       This is the body untroubling itself 
                                                                            of its nectary 
this is the hook whispering through the worm 
             this is           this 
                                                                this is another way I split 
myself open    
                   On Facebook a grandmother 
             berates a dead teenager 
for hanging herself            after a boy shared her nude pictures
            as a joke                    as just a joke
                                             If we ALL had took that much time to morn thered be
no woman left
            Sometimes i can’t even breathe—
Each day the sun hides in the water 
            and unhooks its blackened trees 
popping them apart one by one         as it belly-drags to the top 
                       as impatience pushes my mom’s smile up 
like a cuticle                           everyone is falling out of love with me 
               I carry myself              like snuff coaled 
     in a cheek now              i can’t tell the difference between want 
and revulsion       god i don’t even know if i ever made it out 
      of that apartment 
                                          i can reach for a nasal strip or a pill 
and pull out his hair         
                                    i can be asleep 
    and the tin-pan bones of my fingers        will rattle 
with were tf r u I’m about to turn around     from my pink flip-phone 
              because time has a Moro reflex 
and everything gutters into everything else 
            and i am still afraid to pick it up
You can’t say i didn’t try          my friend texts    no 
                                    my husband says 
and the only thing i want        from this body 
                            is for it to just tap 
 
 I’m here 

Kindall Fredricks (she, her) is a practicing registered nurse and an MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University, focusing on both poetry and the intersection of literature and the medical sciences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Drift, New Letters, Grist, Sugar House Review, DIALOGIST, Passages North, Quarterly West, Rust + Moth, Menacing Hedge, The Academy of American Poets, and more. She has been nominated for both Best of the Net and Best New Poets.

Kelli Simpson

Hymn of the Birds

One god
must be good
as another -
 
the hymns
of the birds
never change.

Kelli Simpson is a poet and former teacher based in Norman, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared in Lamplit Underground, Green Ink Poetry, One Art Poetry Journal, The MockingHeart Review, and elsewhere. 

Amanda Nicole Corbin

2015

everyone keeps a childhood home under their tongue
but i either have none or many. my grandparents house
 
(the one that outlived a fire but later lost a tree tired 
of enduring and eventually my grandmother also tired of enduring
 
the backlash of her own blood) resonates. the grandfather 
clock had more authority on getting me to bed than my grandfather: 
 
stalling, i was always stalling from sleep except when i was awoken 
for my brothers birth or to go to camp with a tucked-away romance novel–
 
laughing at steamy nipples written on a page–
i lived in another state but brought my first period with me,
 
the need to keep parts of yourself in one place.
 
i think it was here i learned the art of writing, not the pen 
to paper word writing but the noticing of things, the intricacies 
 
of the grout in the guest shower i remember better than years 
of my life. this house served me stencils, drawing my future memories
 
surrounded by mid century wallpaper hosting holidays, unaware
these brassy thoughts belong to another timeline where i stay the course
 
beside who i thought i would be. i was not there when she died
but i was drunkenly glad there was no funeral–a notion im tired of enduring,
 
a decade spent stalling, left in another place.

Amanda Nicole Corbin has had her short form prose published in a variety of magazines and journals including Thrice Fiction, Nano Fiction, the Notre Dame Review, and more. She currently lives in Columbus, Ohio and spends her time writing, drawing, and playing Magic the Gathering.

Katrina Moravec

Needle, Egg, Chicken, Rabbit

The soul is hidden in the needle
that I pricked my finger with in second grade
 
the pact I made with a tawny-haired girl
whose face I can’t remember
still flows through my veins
 
Crack an egg over an open flame
the sizzle as the yolk meets cast iron
 
as the edges of the whites burn
as the rust seeps into breakfast, ruining
my appetite for the Most Important Meal of the day
 
Which came first, was it the chicken
or the hare that left a trail of destruction
 
in its fur-footed wake
my vegetable garden will never be the same
 
and neither will my mental health
the hunter-gatherer that I knew in my youth
is finally dusting the cobwebs off
 
The chest of drawers from my childhood
Stickers, 50 cents from the grocery store
 
peeling from its sides
the cocooned identity that I grew wings in
 
although I haven’t seen it in years
it got sold at a garage sale
or maybe I donated it to goodwill
 
when the capacity of my room collapsed 
and the four walls caved in
 
I’d burn this
Home Is Where You Lay Your Head
to the ground
and spread the ashes over half the world
 
but in a hundred years
it’ll just reform again

Katrina Moravec is a poet with her heart split between two cities.  She was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, and recently spent a year in Dublin, Ireland getting her MA in creative writing.  Katrina loves traveling and nature, themes that frequently appear in her work.  She is a ghostwriter excited to start getting published under her own name.     

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Night in Winnemucca, NV

Helene has a broken ankle and a scooter. Her lobby’s full of 
unmasked men. In the lot, construction trucks beep, casino and liquor 
signs blink. The bedside lamp’s out, the plug buried behind the bed, headboard 
screwed into the wall. My cheesesteak and fries stew in their own sweat after 
the slow check-in, the lamp debacle, refusing to admit the masked 
maintenance man who’d come to rummage in the bedclothes and fix the light. 
After the soggy sandwich and two beers, I unscrew a bulb from the 
desk lamp by the door to try beside the bed. I text Helene in her 
room off the lobby, Presto! It’s fixed. Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel 
plays in my mind: I need you. I don’t need you, and all of that jiving 
around. The light shines on the stiff spread. No one’s giving me head. Curtains 
luff from the window unit’s heat, Winnemucca frozen outside. I 
stretch out, needing nothing, feet freed from boots, joints loose after the long drive.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon is a gender-Queer poet living in a rural community in northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry including Transitory, recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry, forthcoming in the fall of 2023 from BOA Editions. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in 45th Parallel, Rogue Agent, The Indianapolis Review, and Rise Up Review. She is an avid hill-walker and lover of nature who spends most days contemplating what's moving, growing, or arriving around her.