by Jeannie Prinsen

No church is big enough to contain
your relationship with Jesus, you said.
In that Gothic cathedral, did you belly

the arches like a superhero inflatable, the Hulk
bursting his undersized shirt? Did worshippers,
pinched by your piety, shrink to the edge

of the nave, did the bishop shoulder the sacristy
door as it strained against your devotion? No
mustard seed would do — you always claimed

a communion far more rarefied.
I believed it, me of little faith, back when
we were a thing worthy of saving.

Cracking the dome, you floated free and
staggered skyward, tethers trailing. You knew
you’d outgrow us all. I miss you, still

you get smaller and
smaller the higher
you fly.

Jeannie Prinsen lives with her husband, daughter, and son in Kingston, Ontario, where she is a copy editor for a local news organization. Her writing has appeared in Barren, Relief, Dust Poetry, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter/X at @JeanniePrinsen and Instagram at @jeannieprinsen.

by Jen Feroze

Paul has overheard that it’s my birthday.
He brings us breakfast on the verandah,
dewy and humid. At the centre of my plate
is a passionfruit, big as a tennis ball
and split open. It’s like
looking into two dark gold ponds,
clogged with frogspawn that snaps
between the teeth.

He’s made doughy pancakes too, sticky
with berries and honey. As your fingers
make lazy circles on my thigh under the table,
Paul is calling to his sunbirds.
Pipettes of sugar syrup for the littlest ones.
His whistling polished by decades
of mornings like this.
Thin brown arms steady, chin lifted
and song carrying over the fruit trees and ferns;
hot rain and bird calls
and the electric hiss of mosquitoes.
We are so far away from our lives.

Jen Feroze is a UK poet living by the sea. Her work has appeared in journals including Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog, Chestnut Review, Okay Donkey, One Art, Stanchion, Poetry Wales, Berlin Lit and Black Iris. She won the 2024 Poetry Business International Book and Pamphlet Competition and placed second in the 2022/2023 Magma Editors’ Prize. Jen has edited anthologies for Black Bough Poetry and The Mum Poem Press, and her pamphlet Tiny Bright Thorns was published by Nine Pens.

by Ori Fienberg

Taking turns napping counts
as a vacation under circumstance
of life and death; a bed will take us
over months of flood each night.
A good sleep is commemorated
by a special assessment, and later
come custom t shirts of our untaxed
traditions; the bottom of a drawer
is its own ark: a scented letter
more sacred than a sound investment;
we have tenements within ourselves
that testify to our crowded roots,
cousins atop cousins, and rooms
within rooms. In some circumstances
a sheet can be a wall that will never
fall, just bend with time, or fold down
to a symbol of itself. We’ve driven
demand down to a symbol of itself
stored in our wallets; we save and
redeem for fabulous prizes every
quarter, and three moons shaded
by hand or hidden in cotton will
protect a season long of longing

Ori Fienberg’s poetry will appear this year in Cimarron Review, The Dallas Review, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, and Superstition Review, among other places. Where Babies Come From is now available from Cornerstone Press. Ori teaches poetry for Northeastern University. More writing can be found at orifienberg.com or be in touch @ArtfulHerring on Twitter.

by Taylor Hamann Los

After the anatomy scan, I dream
I can trace my daughter’s growth
with my fingertips: rings
of muscle and amniotic fluid
and her body curled at my center.

One umbilical artery
where there should be two.
Too much it’s not a problem until it is.

I dream I can write
her a different origin song,
one without drought,
without uncertainty. One with
the fullness of everything green,
more notes than we were promised.

Instead, I’ll sing each stunted verse.
Cup my ear to listen for the tendrils
of her reply. I dream of soil
and water, of moth-ravaged leaves,
and there—suddenly—
the beginnings of a refrain.

Taylor Hamann Los holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is currently an MFA student at Lindenwood University. Her poetry has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Parentheses Journal, and Split Rock Review, among others. She lives with her family and two cats in Wisconsin. You can find her on Twitter (@taylorhamannlos) and at taylorhamannlos.wordpress.com.

by Katie Robinson

CW: Miscarriage, blood, and mourning.

Between my fingers, I rolled a small, fleshy ball like you would a pen while speculating.

Brick-red, it had layers. Should I bury it? I believe the technical term is blastocyst. At four and a half weeks, I had lost it.

Johanna. The name we’d never use and the premature premonition of her face that I dared to conjure before the guarantee of viability.

Days earlier, I smiled with a secret. Now, I bleed for weeks. A woman is no stranger to blood, but this is different as my body empties itself of that which was intended to grow new bones and flesh. I had failed; my womb becomes a void lined with broken glass.

My husband wraps me with linens in our bed, embracing through the trickling nights, a quiet funeral and purging of my naïve visions which are now all that remain.

When my grandmother heard, she said with good intentions, “‘They’ say that happens if something is wrong with it. You wouldn’t have wanted it anyway.”

But, damn it, I did—I wanted her.

Katie Robinson is an emerging writer of fiction and poetry. An English professor and M.F.A. student, she resides in coastal Virginia with her husband, two sons, and a flock of unruly hens. She is on Twitter/X @ktRobinson511.