Lynn Rather

[what if I told you]

what if I told you
it shines inside everything
 
there’s no secret to living
every day is enough
ask the tree frogs, the foxglove
what they need to understand
 
across the world
bar-headed geese fly over
the Himalayas
a woman washes her clothes in a river
a pathway disappears
 
across the universe
of black holes and bumblebees
we spin in an infinity
disguised as daily life

Lynn Rather lived in Michigan with her cats, rocks, fossils, perennial gardens, and a great love for poetry. Her collections Spin Infinity and The Startling Light of Belonging are available on Bookshop.org.

Angel C. Dye

Two Truths and Lie

after Gwendolyn Brooks


Remind me to keep fluorescing freely. We
should never have to earn joy to prove our pain real.
 
13 was the year I learned staying home alone wasn’t cool.
The summer my innocence was moved onto the curb, I realized we
 
were textbook poor, and no one dared say so. Just left
me to fight through hormones and pimples and start high school
 
a freshman already fresh out of youthful naivete. We
got evicted three times in two years, so I can’t linger or lurk
 
with the idea of policing the lint in my pockets. Too late
to save or un-spend my way out of inherited lack—we
 
are who we are. If takeout or movie tickets strike
me out the running for struggle, say it straight
 
to my face. Say, we see you withering, but we
would never offer water or else you’ll sing
 
wolf, siren-cry suffering again and again. Isn’t it a sin
to judge and jury those in need? We
 
wear the patience of Job thin
with inflated egos, drunk on self-righteousness like gin.
 
You said it’s hard to believe a sob story behind a smile, but we
know better. Remember—I am free to fluoresce, dazzle, jam jazz
 
even while mining joy each moment. No dollar can dim sun in June
the way no deficit glares as brightly as we
 
do, refusing to relent to capital’s chasm, losing before we toss the die.
Any eyes unable to stand my smile and striving should avert—or go blind soon.

Angel C. Dye is a poet and researcher of African American Literature from Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A graduate of Howard University, she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Kentucky, where she was a Nikky Finney Fellow. Angel's poetry has appeared in A Gathering Together Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, and The Pierian Journal, among other places. Angel is the author of BREATHE (Central Square Press '21) and My Mouth a Constant Prayer (Backbone Press '23). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey researching Harlem Renaissance rent parties. She writes in the tradition of a pantheon of black writers who came before her hoping to discover, as Audre Lorde explains, the words she does "not yet have."

Jared Beloff

Tanka

The sea releases
whatever it can: a boat
sways swell after swell
unaware of depth or shore.
I am still waiting for you.

Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). He is the editor of the MCU poetry anthology, Marvelous Verses (Daily Drunk, 2021) and the forthcoming Poets of Queens Anthology, Vol. 2 (2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, EcoTheo Review, River Mouth Review and elsewhere. He is a Poetry Editor at The Weight Journal and Managing Editor of Porcupine Literary. You can find him on his website www.jaredbeloff.com. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters.

Jessica Coles

After School

The trickster goddess prepares a snack and demands that I write my life in apple cores. She grins with bits of peel wedged between each tooth. There is a star in the middle of every apple, even the ones with worms, she tells me. I ask her if the worms gestate in nebulae just like stars, if they are conceived in the collision of gases, if gravity collapses out of exhaustion and stars are simply what happens when a mother cannot cut another apple for her children. The goddess lays her paring knife on the counter next to three seeds that scattered in the slicing, and laughs. What the fuck do I know? She twirls a stem between her fingers until it breaks. Your true love’s name starts with the letter ‘K’. Who’s going to tell your spouse? I pick up the plates, nibble the sweet flesh of her cheek as I pass. She disappears between my lips. Later, my spouse will wonder why my kisses taste like apples.

Jessica Coles (she/her) is a poet from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Treaty 6), where she lives with her family and a judgmental tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet. Her work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, Capsule Stories, Full Mood Mag, EcoTheo Review, Stone Circle Review, League of Canadian Poets - Fresh Voices/Poetry Pause, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, unless you’re willing to evaporate, is available through Prairie Vixen Press. Twitter: @milkcratejess