Thad DeVassie

Metaphor for Life and Death

The day comes when they hand you a shovel and say, dig. You comply. You start to dig and keep digging. You are given no instructions other than to dig. No end point is given. Thanks to your compliance and handiwork, a hole emerges, deepens. You assume dig is akin to depth, to go deep not wide. Continuing your progress, you enter the hole: knee deep, waist deep, then full body deep in the hole. And then some more digging, lifting dirt, tossing dirt. Nobody is monitoring your progress. You have lost all sense of time with this never-ending digging. You become aware that exiting the hole is now your problem. You rest. You lie down. The moon illuminates the last beads of sweat on your quick-cooling brow. It is a moment that nobody will remember, nor will anyone recall it as the last time they ever saw you, there, in the dark, in the bottom of a deep hole you made for reasons still unknown.

Thad DeVassie is a writer and artist/painter who creates from the outskirts of a growing midwestern city. He is the author of three chapbooks including Year of Static (Ghost City Press, 2021), published as part of its Summer Series. Find more of his written and painted work at www.thaddevassie.com

Thi Nguyen

Back Pains

Traveling to Viet Nam from Los Angeles, I lose a day but gain a future
of 14 hours. Sitting still in my window seat, I catch my reflection or the ghost
of my past self, 14 hours ago—I can’t tell. The blur of dusk is but a side of a coin
where my young face is just an unfolding of Bà Ngoại, or Mẹ, or me. 
 
Someone was surprised to hear I call my mom, Mẹ, and not Má. Mẹ 
is a Northern Accent, and I’m hella from Northern California. And just like
my ancestors, I traveled South along the celestial pole, indefinitely extending 
the beads on the rosary, as if a thumb print and a Hail Mary will have 
 
me closer to a ma, someone I’ve only heard about but have never met. 
But my mẹ isn’t dead yet, and yet she talks to ghosts every time she prays. 
Sound is the body making itself known, but what if the voice is only an echo
of an ancestor that doesn’t know she’s dead or a screaming babe 
 
who can’t tell the difference between awake and asleep? Sitting 12 
hours in a corner, my back breaks under the weight of the baggage
in the overhead where a light illuminates my bowed head bowled 
over in shooting pain. I can’t move, but I am still moving.
 
On their way to the bathroom, people walk quickly past my row, careful 
not to disturb me in meditation as I will my body to unfurl its limbs and lungs, 
like the hands of a clock pointing to the space where traces 
of arrival and departure are indiscriminate, humming.

Thi is a poet, California native, born from Vietnamese refugees in San Jose, currently living in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in creative writing with a focus on poetry from the University of New Orleans (UNO). Her poems have been recognized with Honorable Mention for the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize and the Academy of American Poets Award in 2024.

Quintin Collins

sonnet from “I Am Not Job” heroic crown

Why won't God amble in plainclothes among us
like the church that once lived as a car dealership?
The lot sprawls from the turret where the logo
used to lord over rows of vehicles and salespeople
 
unlike another church wedged between retailers
in a strip mall, the church that dons a red roof
of its past as a Pizza Hut, the church that swells
the walls of someone’s basement or a school gym.
 
Holy but not ornate in a way that startles familiarity
—finding God when I don’t expect to find God
until I Google why the building facade says Jubilee
instead of Chrysler. The faith to sew seeds in ruin:
 
is this where miracles shed their brick and mortar?
Lord, don't tell me the scale of my unknowing.

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, assistant director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival and Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Quintin's other awards and accolades include a Pushcart Prize, a BCALA Literary Award honor, a Mass Cultural Council grant, the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet's Billow, and Best of the Net nominations.

Erin Schallmoser

Construction

“Devotion is full of arrows.”
— Joanna Klink, “On Kingdoms”

What my husband feels for salmon? Devotion
in stages is the only right word. First, their silver light is
a beacon, guiding him to joy when he sees the river run full
of them. Second, the selenium, the potassium, the numbered fatty acids of
their meat delights him. Like taking a piece of wood and fashioning it into arrows.

Erin Schallmoser (she/her) is a poet and writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her work can be found in Nurture, Paperbark, Catchwater, and elsewhere. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Gastropoda, is online @dialogofadream, and you can read more at erinschallmoser.com/.

Ocean Teu

approximation of ghosthouse

it's a lake house. or a lighthouse. a cottage mangled by willow trees. maybe your childhood home. the boy you loved at fifteen standing on the front porch. peering out the front window. sprawled on the roof. or maybe it's the boy you love now. squint your eyes hard enough and it looks like you, standing there at the edge of the lawn. a blue dress is slung over the balcony like a body & the moon is above you in a glass box. or maybe it’s below you. the moon not a moon but a face. your brother’s face, looking up at you. he’s in the lake house attic. or in the lantern room. or in the treehouse. or in your bedroom, the one you shared. he’s pinching roly-polys between his fingers until they explode. he’s holding the neck of a rabbit between his hands and threatening to strangle it. or maybe your brother was never there. maybe he escaped out the window years ago. the dust clears and you’re alone in the room with your grandfather. his ashes rising from his urn in the shape of a body. even though he died without you knowing. even though you don’t believe in ghosts. down the road is the lake. or the ocean. the forest. or maybe your father, standing with his hands in his pockets. the places where the concrete scraped your knees forming bloodlines on the pavement. willow trees churning. maybe it is your father—standing in the shadow of his boyhood. his mouth the front door. his limbs the stairwells. the darkness creaking open.

Ocean Teu (he/they) is a writer and student at Kenyon College. Other than writing he enjoys crocheting, going to drive in movies, and drawing doodles of cats.

Shannon Hearn

ON THE SOLSTICE I WATCH MY LAG / NEVER KNEW I COULD / SLEEP FOR THIS LONG

I learn              I squint                        I quietpromise into the earth

the darkwater accepts me         I am blessing    in the dark wormskiss my sight
 
in the dark ,,,
 
I cry holes are clingy like homes
            I cry MYHANDS are the socks of my heart
            I cry put me in pain 
            I cry my HEARTFEET are in wait
            I cry MYRUN
            I cry my glove my glove
 
in the dark ,,,                I want you       to wear me like one
                                    I shove all of my vulnerability into this handsock        let it left let it let

Shannon Hearn is a poet and teacher in Binghamton and Brooklyn, NY whose work has appeared or is forthcoming with Action, Spectacle, Bruiser, cream city review, Fugue, Voicemail Poems, and others; their poem “WHAT MARRIAGE IS / TENDER CARE” was an Academy of American Poets Prize honorable mention, selected by Leah Umansky. She is the author of the chapbook tracing circles in dirt (Bottlecap Press). 

Jack C. Buck

made a refuge of

We are sons of the desert who cultivate the top half-inch of soil.
— Frank Bidart, “Mourning What We Thought We Were”

out in the woods / small fires interspersed do their best
to swallow whatever darkness their light can / some howl
some scream / some weep some cheer / some out of answers
silently meditate against the doom / while we do our part
gathered around throwing sticks to the center / illuminating one another

Jack C. Buck is the author of Deer Michigan, Gathering View, and More Birds. He is a public librarian who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Kai-Lilly Karpman

MY PERIOD IS VERY LATE

Last week a mosquito drank me, and I broke
my own skin to catch the burn.
That’s how I’ve always desired you, Buck.
Against my will and urgently.
 
In the fantasy, I birth two
of yours. You know the story boy and girl
girl and boy. Joke about football. This could be
life. I could finally shed myself
 
in a heap of relief, like jeans in the humidity.
It’s my own problem to think of mothers
as oracles or sleepwalkers skimming
above their own humanity.
 
Surely, this summer was the worst ever.
The west brought smoke
and hurricanes’ tangled blue skies.
Our shame was barely visible
 
despite everything being our fault.
The way we killed
the cows. Sometimes, I think the land
is the only real problem; sometimes
 
I think of ripping in two
and calling it purpose. I report to you
that a swan turned upside down in the pond
and its feet warbled in the air
 
while the world creaked with rust.
You could end it now. 
I’m asking if we might speak to each other
as unambiguously as possible.

Kai-Lilly Karpman has studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from Columbia University. She has been previously published in Plume, Image Magazine, Passengers, and elsewhere. Her collection, Life Cycle of Cruelty, was named a finalist for the 2024 Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award. Her lyrics have appeared in Marvel Studio’s “Mz. Marvels” and “The Marvels” soundtrack.

Kevin A. Risner

During the First Year of the Pandemic, a Frog Snuck into the House

Our only visitor for months and months and months. I made my way to the front door, and there it was, hopping around the foyer. We transported it to a cool, shaded location in our backyard. When we found the perfect spot and placed our amphibian friend among the leaves and new plants, it didn’t take long for it to bound away and disappear. We never could tell whether the croaking we heard after dark was partly our guest. It lulled us to sleep. Like a talisman in the havoc of that year. As I think about our frog visitor today, I still don’t know how it got in. But we never really know when something sneaks inside. And the surprise when we find it might just be what we need.

Kevin A. Risner (he/him) is from Ohio. He is the author of Do Us a Favor (Variant Literature, 2021), You Thought This Was Just Gonna Be About Cleveland, Didn't You (Ghost City Press, 2022), and There's No Future Where We Don't Have Fire (ELJ Editions, forthcoming in 2025).

Crystal Taylor

Sky

My mom called her brother Ronnie when they were kids in rural Missouri. I never met him, but I heard he was a drifter, and changed his name to Sky. The call came in that he tested positive for a virus. Back in the early 80’s, the medical community’s understanding was thin. Our rural community’s knowledge found it positively sin. Mom hauled out dusty shoe boxes to reminisce about someone living. Sky and I shared long thin faces, like two story homes, whose cheekbones never moved in. We were the trees in their backyards: tall, long limbed, with unruly canopies for hair. He was also a writer. Sky didn’t let his peas touch his potatoes, or his potatoes touch his meat. He understood the code: the correct way to eat. It was curious how all but his genes had traveled. I wish we would have met before he unraveled.

Crystal Taylor is a neurodivergent writer with recent work in Rust & Moth, ONE ART, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Cosmic Daffodil and other sacred spaces. Follow her on X @CrystalTaylorSA.

Rachel White

The Wounded Deer

after the painting by Frida Khalo


cacophony clutters
my morning commute
my bedroom    
my head
the shower    
 
pinch of voodoo spikes
tensing my back    
arrows 
 
in the venison flesh
of a body     determined
to persist    
a deer
gallops
 
through meadows    to drink
from a spring     milling 
the buttercups    
tending
young
 
I am an animal’s
fixed instinct     with two
sets of ears    
blinded
I smear
 
a trail in the dirt     dragging
my blood     towards the tide
 
the forest    
trunks
 
only thickening
tongues      blocking the path
to the sea

Rachel White (she/her) is an American-born poet and artist who lives and works on Kaurna land in South Australia. Her poetry has been featured in Kissing Dynamite, placed highly commended in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2024.  Her work appears in Lunch Ticket’s Amuse Bouche, Rogue Agent, Third Wednesday Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Amethyst Review and Porcupine Lit. You can find Rachel on Instagram @rachelwhite.studio.

Cait Johnson

decompressive craniectomy on video

first, frontal alabaster
white smooth tainted
coagulate blood
 
            then, forceps return the flap
of skin where it belongs revealing
                                                            he is a handsome man.
 
the surgeon peels the flap
down again    optic nerve tugged
            as a loose tooth held by the root
           
 
i am disgusted,                 though replaying the third time
exposed raw temples pulsating at me
 
the man is man again—then he is stone
            only forceps and a face away
from unrecognizable—or
 
                        i have seen his temples beating like mine
 
                        i know blood
and skull more than name
i recognize his bareness.         how humbling
 
to connect through left temple, surgeon’s marker, open head.

Cait Johnson is an MFA candidate at University of California, Riverside. Cait is an editor and member at Art of Nothing Press, a Southern California indie publication and local art collective. When not writing or in school, they spend the rest of their day working in accounting and studying astrology.

Shailesh Vasandani

I counted five nosebleeds today

If you lose enough blood to fill a cup, seek medical attention. The last time I had this many was 19 years ago. A little boy in a white shirt full of roses. My mother tearing napkins up to stop the bleeding, feeding wounds like hungry mouths. Holding me close like it was her fault somehow. This body was hers once, after all. I think it was trying to tell me a poem. Is repeating it today. It's hard to get the words out with the blood all on my mouth, but it's something about how once the tissue scars, it tears again more easily. Grief etched on the inside of my nose. I cut it off to spite her face. My house littered with blooming roses, and I'm nothing but a hungry mouth tearing up my body. I've read too many poems on grief to have two living parents. One day that won't be true. She stopped the bleeding in the end, but no one wants their child to drink an empty cup. So let me give you back what's yours. The words all on my mouth, my overflowing nose.

Shailesh Vasandani is a Filipino and Indonesian poet. They write out of Brooklyn, NY.

Whitney Koo

THERE IS NO TALENT IN

There is no talent in growing a life.
The life grows with or without your consent.
 
My life grew as a storm trajectory's nerves.
My baby grows without connotation,
 
grows purely for the sake of time spent engaged.
I read about a middle-aged woman dancing at a festival.
 
It was her first time dancing. My baby knows
nothing about five-year plans or nostalgia.
 
On the sonogram, my baby jumps on my uterus like it is
a trampoline. My baby knows nothing of trampolines.

Whitney Koo is the author of Any Gesture (Black Lawrence Press 2026) and Founder/Editor of Gasher Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as POETRY Magazine, the Los Angeles Review, Colorado Review, Seneca Review, American Literary Review, and others. She holds a PhD in English-Creative Writing from Oklahoma State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University.

Khai Q. Nguyen

What’s left of our days

is the sun that bristles
to my squinting eyes
I travel through
smell of coffee
petrichor of tropical forests
wet and warm like
droplets trickling
down
your thighs
from previous nights
your voice, crisp and turquoise
your camembert breaths marinated
with Virginia cigarettes
garlic bread, sticky rice
agave, and scrambled eggs
your sour sweat and
musky eau de toilette
as reference
on calabash’s vines a ladybird opens
her elytra and flies
sitting there, I stitch
incinerated days into my palms
while a cacophony of
noises shimmering
alive in my ears

Khai Q. Nguyen lives and writes in the northern mountains of Vietnam. His poems appear in CounterPunch, Eunoia Review, In Parentheses, Mekong Review, New Note Poetry, Porch LitMag, and the anthology Suitcase of Chrysanthemums (great weather for MEDIA, 2018). He holds master’s degrees in literature and cultural studies from the universities of Perpignan, St Andrews, and Santiago de Compostela.

Devon Webb

I Love

I love the miracle of your gentleness // I love your executive function // I love the blue of when you look at me // I love you lying on my couch // I love you lying on me // I love watching you play chess // I love saying ‘are you winning, babe?’ // I love you winning // I love the analysis of your mistakes // I love your fucking nerdiness // I love your random facts // I love your… specificity // I love you cooking for all of my friends // I love your chicken parm // I love your cleanliness // I love your autism // I love watching you do my chores // I love your hospital corners // I love you making my bed // I love you unmaking my bed // I love you making me in my unmade bed // I love making you moan // I love that I can’t make beds for shit but I can make you… make me need to do my laundry // I love you laughing at me for sucking at sea combat in Assassin’s Creed // I love the considerate way in which you make me suck less // I love that I don’t need to make another joke // I love that I get in the shower & think of you // I love when you kiss me in the shower & it’s all wet // I love that I can’t kiss you without it being all wet // I love dry-humping // I love amusing you // I love everything being an allusion all the time // I love metaphors // I love when you’re all like how many poems have you written about me & I’m like well fuck, babe! // I love how insufferable we are in public // I love clinging to you like I’ve finally got something to cling to // I love it being so very unusual & startling that I am not alone // I love your company // I love the hand-crafted Skyrim alchemy table incense holder // I love bragging about you on the internet // I love that chivalry isn’t dead // I love that I’m locked in // I love that you made me surprise myself // I love that you can roll better than me // I love that everything is suddenly so much bigger // I love that I finally have a reason to stay // I love staying // I love going somewhere // I love being beside you // I love being teased by forever // I love being sure // I love that rare certainty // I love being my best self // I love loving you

Devon Webb is a Gen Z writer & editor based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her award-winning work has been published in over seventy journals worldwide & revolves around themes of femininity, vulnerability, anti-capitalism & neurodivergence. She is an in-house writer for Erato Magazine, an editor for Prismatica Press, & is currently working on the launch of a collective called The Circus, which will prioritise radical inclusivity within the indie lit scene. She can be found on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok & Bluesky at @devonwebbnz.

Derek Thomas Dew

Boys

I listened to the music
meant for girls.
 
 
I tried to sing
like a girl. 
 
 
Fists up against pa,
I graduated to ten-year-old,
 
 
was arrested for B&E,
called blondie
 
 
by the arresting officer 
of the K9 unit, 
 
 
& when asked
if I was a fan of dogs
 
 
I looked at the cop
& said I was a cat man.
 
 
/
 
 
The wind opened
westerly gulls high
 
 
above a stranger’s porch 
we had been sleeping under.
 
 
Each in a wet pair of trunks
and swallowed by the drink,
 
 
we thought about each other
but uttered nothing
 
 
until I asked for the lip balm
& pressed it to my mouth
 
 
where it became the begging 
of our unusable grief  
 
 
until somebody said
hey look at that lipstick.

Derek Thomas Dew (he/she/they) is a neurodivergent, non-binary poet currently earning an MFA in poetry. Derek’s debut poetry collection Riddle Field received the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize from the Black Mountain Institute/University of Nevada. Derek’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, and have been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Ocean State Review, and Cathexis Northwest Press.

Kim Jensen

Landays for Wilmington & Palestine
January, 2024

1.
It has snowed all day in Wilmington.
Grey clouds have severed every natural ray of light.
 
2.
Joe Biden rings a bell in a church.
Out fall the broken bodies of thirteen dead sparrows.
 
3.
Snow conceals the rectory statue.
The Virgin is sobbing beneath a layer of ice.
 
4.
Here the Sixth Sorrow is carved in stone.
In Gaza a mother kneels near the corpse of her son.
 
5.
The Brandywine River still runs cold
with the lifeless bodies of DuPont’s gunpowder men. 

6.
The path to the Brandywine is sealed.
Fathers are carrying their children in plastic bags.
 
7.
Who taught you these vile miracles, Joe?
You turned five loaves of bread into five hundred missiles.
 
8.
I’ve forgotten the words to the hymns
but not the blighted music of your merciless voice.
 
9.
Sometimes I wish I had never seen
the tunnel that runs from Wilmington to Tel Aviv.
 
10.
A soldier aimed a gun at my son.
I froze as the checkpoint became one with my body.
 
11.
The sound of a child’s shriek on the screen
detonates a fiery charge beneath my pillow.
  
12.
The snow has been melting since morning.
The wide-eyed trembling children have turned me into rain.
 
13.
The churchyard is a maze of white lace.
Bodies wrapped in sheets remain like ghostly mounds of snow.
 
14.
Wilmington is not the capital
of Delaware—and Dover is not in Palestine.
 
15.
I will no longer curse, shriek, or scream.
Like Christ I will find the secret prayer to levitate.

Kim Jensen is a Baltimore-based writer, poet, educator, and translator who has lived in California, France, and Palestine. Her books include an experimental novel, The Woman I Left Behind, and two collections of poems, Bread Alone and The Only Thing that Matters. Active in transnational peace and social justice movements for decades, Kim’s writings have been featured or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Boulevard, Anthropocene, Consequence, Modern Poetry in Translation, Arkansas International, Decolonial Passage, Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora, Anomaly, Extraordinary Rendition: Writers Speak Out on Palestine, Gaza Unsilenced, Bomb Magazine, Sukoon, Mizna, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Left Curve, Liberation Literature, and many others. In 2001, she won the Raymond Carver Award for short fiction. Kim is currently Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she co-founded an interdisciplinary literacy initiative that demonstrates the vital connection between classroom learning and social justice in the broader community.

Isaac James Richards

The Self, A Portrait

Mounted antler, fox pelt, bison skull—they decorate
the spacious art studio. I’m here as a volunteer, not a
model. “I need to practice,” my friend said, “I’ll give
 
you: the sketch.” But have you ever tried to hold still
for four hours? Hold still. How difficult it is to hold
still these many trembling members. The artist knows
 
how to locate me in the light, looking first from the left
then from the right, watching me flicker in still shadows.
Stare straight ahead. Try not to watch me melt, merge
 
from matter to light, refracting, the upside-down eye,
spread like jam, butter on a creamy canvas leaking oil,
glitter, reflection, prismatic, color, invisible, a mirror,
 
transparent, opaque—are these words unclear? Forgive
the rich texture. Like electrons, because I am, I change
when I am observed. I am contingencies converging at
 
a vanishing point, lines on the horizon, a landscape,
a smile so subtle none can pretend to capture. This
likeness is no metaphor. In the morning, I am only a
 
sketch, in the afternoon I am blurry, at night I am as
stable as meaning or wet paint, a malleable potentiality
or smear of possibility. Four hours of music, audiobooks,
 
silence. I am the itch you cannot scratch, the quiver you
cannot subdue. Who knew that being a statue could be
such intense exercise? I ache therefore I am; almost done.
 
I stand from the studio chair, worried. Will it look like me?
That darling we call consciousness—always nervous, shaking.
You are a masterpiece. I am a masterpiece. The self is.

Isaac James Richards teaches first-year, honors, and advanced writing at Brigham Young University. He has placed in six poetry contests, and his poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, BYU Studies Quarterly, Constellations, El Portal, Young Ravens Literary Review, and several other venues. He is also a current Pushcart Prize nominee. Find him online at https://www.isaacrichards.com/.

Aldo Amparán

Last, or Next to Last Elegy

I wrote this poem years ago. I’ve written it
1000 times. I’ve dreamed this dream more times
 
than I can count
the pores in my skin.
 
This morning, the ocean spits
346 human fingers onto some dark shore.
 
I’m far away, but as the sun
severs the horizon, the flashing
 
of police cars fill the coastline. In the distance,
cops collect limbs like pearls & dust them
 
for fingerprints. They ask townsfolks
for missing bodies. They clip photographs
 
from last month’s newspapers. The hungry
earth is a picky eater. I want to hold
 
my brother’s finger one last time.

Aldo Amparán is the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), which won the Alice James Award in 2020, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2023. They are the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo. Amparán's work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, & elsewhere.