by Dawn Macdonald

A child’s parents know the Pope; they have an in
with Michelangelo. She swings between
the registers. She has the voice of a chandelier
in a box beneath the bed. A child’s parents know

what’s best. They’ve been to Rome. They’re readers.
A child’s voice has pitches. Her shoes
best serve to elevate. Her stature varies
with the gaze. She’s best beheld in a departure

lounge. Her shoes are loose. Her voice
glissandos unintentionally. Her gaze is fixed
upon a box. Her parents stare into
the backs of banks of chairs.

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon where she grew up without electricity or running water. She won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press). She goes by @yukondawnmacdonald on Instagram and @yukondawn on Bluesky.

by Sam Rasnake

If you know or see this person, please tell them: come home

One eye, oversized, heavy-lidded, as in
a Picasso—the other, a lit eye peeping
through the keyhole—one arm a cartoon,
one leg photoshopped from websites,

the other leg and arm from two Fellini
films—computers for fingers, flatscreens
for feet, with books for toes, paintings
for ears, a nose that’s a chimney—

the mouth is a cavern with rock formations,
trails, and stream—the lips an eel—the chin
a block of granite chiseled to fit—the face

an atlas, the hair a forest, the torso stolen,
the sex and hips are an unknown, the brain
a bowl of noodles, the heart is the heart

Sam Rasnake’s works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best Small Fictions, Best of the Web, Southern Poetry Anthology, Bending Genres Anthology, and MiPOesias Companion. He’s the author of three chapbooks and four poetry collections—most recently, Like a Thread to Follow (Cyberwit, 2023) and Fallen Leaves (Ballerini Book Press, forthcoming). Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social.

by Kelly White Arnold

Not the ponderous pining
wife-wishful woman sodden
with seawater and waiting.

Instead,
the weaver from the penultimate
verses, capable and clever, seeking
certainty in her lover’s return,

discerning the thread’s progression
through warp and weft,
colors intertwining and
separating, unraveling,
endlessly unraveling….

wanting,
wanting,
wanting,

to be, herself, unraveled by familiar
hands, to fall beneath the branches
of the bed they built together,
to fit like nocked arrow
against bow-string pulled taut,

to fly
forward

into lover’s embrace, her
aim
true.

Kelly White Arnold (she/her) is a mom, writer, teacher, and lover of yoga. Her work has recently appeared in Petigru Review, Hellbender, and Reedy Branch Review. She lives in the North Carolina Piedmont with her two favorite humans and one unhinged cat, but she dreams of mountains beneath her feet. Her first chapbook, Decidedly Uncertain, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

by Alison Heron Hruby

this, from a Medical Linear Accelerator (LINAC)

I thought I could breathe well,
that I could draw in my ribs like an expert,
knew the fundamentals in my heart,
to exhale what I did not need.

But a basement machine was patient—
subterranean to keep
gears cold, beams aimed sharply.
Someone else’s idea of keeping life

moving,
as I first thought breath moved.

Metal, paper, thin,
and pleasant sternness,
politely saying:
your intimately held expertise,
you are now mandated to expose.

But say, (instead!) remain a secret, or, maybe
there is expertise more expansive,
it expands beyond your heaviest,
most luscious breath
(your childhood, lollipop breaths).

Those difficult music lessons, the clicking
of a metronome, a doctor needing
to direct me, open your ribs, retract.

The physicist readies a lovely, organ-sized
sphere to cover one, small part of my chest.
The machine murmurs like soil,
Only I know

where to find your heart.

Alison Heron Hruby (she/hers) is a professor of English education at Morehead State University and lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poetry is published in Thimble Literary Magazine, Red Tree Review, Sleet Magazine, ONE ART: a journal of poetry, and elsewhere. You can find her on Bluesky @alisonheronhruby.bsky.social and Instagram @alliehope68

by Megan McDermott

after Julia Margaret Cameron’s “2d. version study after the Elgin Marbles”, 1867

where contestants had to pretend to be living
statues, staying very still as pigeons landed
on their heads and arms. What grand traditions
of mimicry! Women mimicking sculptures
mimicking women – layers of pretend.
Here, these women, long dead, are young
forever, invulnerable to jostling or knocked
off limbs or even interruption from the husbands
and children that likely came later. Maybe
we aspire to be statuesque because we dream
of human appearance freed from our defining
places, times, and people. Though of course
these women aren’t alone, but solid in togetherness,
in softness. The touch of their bodies – I would
never think of marble. There is something liquid
even in memorialized life.

Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Richmond, Virginia. Her first full-length collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, was published by Fernwood Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including the Maine Review, Amsterdam Review, U.S. Catholic, and more. She is a first-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Connect with her at meganmcdermottpoet.com.