Kate Sterlin

Night Fall

I tiled the kitchen wall after staring at it for a year and saying I would. My fingertips pruned from the
mortar. I thought I would feel better as though I accomplished something finite. Instead, now the floors
and other walls look dingy and need paint.
The wind ripped branches off of the trees in the back yard while we slept. Young limbs wrapped in bright
green leaves grinning with spring. Lying on the bricks motionless with the air whipping above.
My mind feels tender as though it might leak. With any pressure, tiny parts could collapse.
Maybe I would forget my life up until this moment. Perhaps my legs and arms would lay down next to the
branches or the sound of the whipping would drown completely. Replaced by a thudding pulse.
My thoughts stack up on both sides like stiff lining holding a crown. Remembering words like clues.
The shadows of leaves dancing on the curtains that I can still see when I close my eyes. The light’s warm
glow right before it goes and the slow afternoon chirps of one bird. One by one. The day is finished ready
or not. Without a plan or exhaustion, I feel lost in the sadness of the leaving light. Wait for me, I say to no
one. I’m not ready to fall or break again.

Kate Sterlin is a photographer and writer who currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. Her photographs have most recently been featured in the New York Times and Vogue Magazine. She is working on a book of photographs and stories for publication in 2024. 

Samuel Burt

The Breathing Game

Laying a while beside my open window, 
in the dawn of the drying day, I let leaves fill my ears 
with oceans I’ve never seen, 
and stories of the storm I slept through. 
Their language, their terminal present—
a balm to my chapped solitude. I watch birds,
maybe starlings, cut a river through the smooth clay sky. 
I watch droplets flick from the sharp tips of limbs
as wind dips between their leaves, 
all of it shrouded in the sound of sea, of breath. 
And I taste my own breath
as I strop my tongue on bedside water,
remembering a time when I was small enough
that this twin bed would have felt royal.
A time I knew only the barest distinction between parent 
and child. How I would doze in a hot tangle 
of flannel and breath, sinking into the bed
as dad’s chest caved in my little sliver of the earth.
I would try to match his rhythm—
the molasses tempo of his breathing, the damp
burnt scent of it. I would feel my heart surge 
each time my lungs overfilled. And in the mirror
where we rose and fell together, 
I’d watch us fade into a dizzy darkness as I, 
empty-lunged, waited for the hiss of his next inhale. 
This game, I played to be as one with him
as I knew I’d once been. 
But now, alone, I let each breath become a wish 
to never be left, and drift through memory on
a vessel of sound: the wind he’d pull through his nose, 
the waves at the shins of a pier, 
and the houseplants, here beside the window, fluttering 
as they turn my breath into sugar.

Samuel Burt is a poet and artist from Iowa who is currently pursuing his poetry MFA at Bowling Green State University. A winner of the AWP Intro Journals Project, Sam's work has been featured in a number of online and print journals, including Indigo, Salt Hill, Empty House, Stonecoast Review, and The Journal. 

Elyse Hwang

mother, sister:  brother

a pungent aroma of isopropyl alcohol 
and cheap cotton 
punctuate the silence
stale ghosts from a cold room 
 
it’s dark, now
city lights shudder to life
along an endless highway
searching for illumination 
 
sweet iron and salt mingle
in my mouth 
bite your tongue
my mother said
he can’t see our tears
 
it’s drizzling outside
my cheek melds to the cool glass
the car’s rolling vibrations 
rock me to sleep

Elyse Hwang is an aspiring poet from California. She finds her words drawn to the tension of human relationships and the passage of time. You can find her work in The Sunshine Review, Hooligan Mag, and The Galliard International Review.

Robin Shepard

The Many Loves of Edward Theodore Gein

He dances under moonglow, a blanket of 
corpses over his body, kissing his lover’s mouth, 
wearing her breasts on his belt. He’s gentle
and whispers her name, and those of others
hanging onto him, clinging like second skin,
their lives a layer of love and adoration.
But he’s thinking of his mother 
and would she approve of his behavior,
late night shopping in the cemetery,
candlelit dinners with soup served in skulls,
masturbating to the obituaries, which read
like lusty dime store novels. Always
the romantic, keeping part of every woman 
who gave herself to him, out of pity,
out of her own pain, carving her initials
next to his, leaning her head against the bedpost.
The boy who ejaculated at the sight
of a slaughtered pig, he’s sensitive and knows 
the terrible torture of being alone. 
For his mother was his first lover, 
abandoning him for her jealous god,
who disapproved of his self-abuse in the bathtub,
while she grabbed his genitals, called them 
the curse of man, swearing him to a life of 
virginity. But his latest lover understands him
and craves his touch, giving up her flesh 
to his fantasies. And he, being patient 
and amorous, preserves their passion 
in common objects of his darkest desire, 
the lampshade that glows with her memory, 
chair that carries the scent of her hair,
and the window curtain that flaps 
and waves at the mention of her name.

Robin Shepard is a poet and musician living in the lowlands of California's San Joaquin Valley. He completed an MFA degree in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2006. His work has most recently appeared, or will appear, in Black Poppy Review, Poetry Super Highway, Autumn Sky Poetry, Rat's Ass Review, and Monterey Poetry Review. He is the author of Quiet Stars Falling into Quicksand Memory (2017) and The Restoration of Innocence (2022), both from the Merced College Press.

Richard Ford Burley

Tideland

That summer we bought a house, and by the winter there was nothing outside it. The walls, old like the hull of a ship, kept the seawater out, but everything we cooked still tasted like salt—at least until the tide withdrew in the spring. I thought of renovations, then: a tower, envisioning a lighthouse in the dark, standing against the waves. When we fixed the chimney it even looked that way, for a night. The mason's scaffolding lit up the shores like a signal fire, but I built us a new bedroom and office instead. When the world went away again, you worked from yours and I mine. And when the ship began to leak, by thimbles and teacups and buckets, we slept apart to try to stay dry. It didn't work, and, for a while, we sank. But the waters are starting to recede again, and every morning I crawl out from the same dream, where fish swim in through the windows, and you and I have finally learned how to breathe.

Richard Ford Burley (they/he) is a writer of speculative fiction and poetry as well as Deputy Managing Editor of the journal Ledger. Their second novel, Displacement, was published in hardcover in February 2020 by Prospective Press and is now available in paperback. They post updates (occasionally) at richardfordburley.com, and they tweet (unceasingly) at @arreffbee.

Sophia Ivey

Tampon

White and pristine
like a pair of freshly 
washed sheets. Shoved 
up a body to collect 
the only blood not born 
out of violence. Sticky 
cherry syrup,
pulled out like a bundle
of mucus, now soaked
in a clucky dark red
like the slimy bits of fish
grandma would cut up
and douse in red wine
for Friday’s dinner during 
Lent. Slices of oranges that                    
turned feverish from 
the Christmas day sangria.
Or the color of my mother’s
fingers after removing the
pomegranate seeds and feeding
them to me. Some days the red 
was closer to black –
slithering like a garden snake in the 
toilet bowl – like the first time
in 7th grade, I was at a pool party
and went to the bathroom to find
a bundle of blackberry molasses 
teeming in my bikini bottoms, a single 
tampon soon to collect clumps 
of dripping blood, once white and 
pristine, now bleeding 
like a living being. 

Sophia Ivey recently graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature, Media, and Culture. She has been writing poetry for about four years now and has had work featured in The Rising Phoenix Review, Outrageous Fortune, and The Oakland Arts Review. When she isn’t writing or working, she enjoys baking, reading, and doing arts and crafts.