by Becki Hawkes

I pretend I am a leaf. Obviously
I am the most beautiful leaf in the world.
My bones are strings and all my cells
are flayed to blood and gold. First
we must do the boring bits
where you gaze up at me. Soft, soft
against the light. I buy plant milk
cappuccinos from the hospital Costa,
visit every day, keep you lullaby safe
in the warm wet boughs. I am so good
at hospitals and late-night calls
and no-commitment
kneeling. I am so good
at being a distraction and at
falling. Being trampled
underfoot, under wellies, under you
hurts at first, but really
it is just another turning.
Parts of me
will be eaten by such kindly, faithful
worms. Parts of me
will stalk your wedding photos, years from now
and see if I still pity, care or break.
If it’s all three, I’ll shut my eyes

pretend I am a leaf.

Becki Hawkes lives in London (United Kingdom). Her first pamphlet, The Naming of Wings, was a winner of the 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize. A Best of the Net nominee, she has had poems published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Rust & Moth, The Shore, Lunate Fiction, and The Madrigal, among others. Becki is on Instagram @beckihawkes.

by A.D. Harper

The wildlife that comes to my house at night is unknown to the books. Maybe
I have the wrong books. Maybe all nature books are a lie. Maybe the creatures
do not exist and someone is slipping me hallucinogens in my tea but who?
Maybe my sight which is getting worse is playing tricksy games and what I
think is a long striped tail attached to a hybrid of a fox and a badger and a cat
is actually a piece of cable. I don’t know. I would phone the police but it’s not
an emergency, it’s just irksome: I used to think wildlife guides were complete
but here are the apocryphal in all their surefooted glory. It’s not a matter of
darkness, the security lights switch on when they are near. And the webcam
picks them up. I’ve asked the neighbours but they shake their heads and look
away, which is concerning. I’m worried these animals are part of a cult and I
am going to be their victim. Or, more happily, their king. I will proclaim
to them, the unhallowed ones, the off-the-books, the secrets on the lawn.
I’ll tell them our sideways logics will prevail, they have inherited the moon.

A.D. Harper’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rhino, The Shore, and Rattle, among others. He lives in England and can be found online at adharper.com and on Bluesky as adharper.bsky.social‬.

by Kate Efimochkina

The lights don’t go out—
it’s movement. And some places
don’t close for the night—
the airport.
A Greek man was smoking by the automatic doors,
no one around. I watched. I watched.
The plain and the tangled tree branches
in the distance.
The river under the bridge
sheltered swans and water voles.
It’s dark, and something is flowing away.

The saint fell into the water,
and a vagrant fell into the water,
and a bird died in the water;

in the morning, the ripples are serene and bright.

Kate Efimochkina is a writer and graphic artist. You can see her works in The Turning Leaf Journal, Outside the Box Poetry, Fixator Press. She is on Instagram @k081670. 

by Kathryn Weld

Eve is the small hours – as if hours have sizes –
large for embraces of a grandchild, the shocks
of grudge and grief; small with hushed movements –
a sigh, the stirring of a mouse beneath
the oak; it is owl-light, a turning from night
towards day, the half-light, hunting time;
is vespers – and prayer – is the start of crepuscule,
of dimday – pine boughs whisper, the pond lours
with backlit cloud. Street lamps turn on in a flash,
blind us to the peripheral. It is the point in time
at onset: cusp, threshold, edge. Someone
already inside the garden – (was there an outside
of the garden yet?) someone selling truth dangles
from the shrubbery and Eve opens the gate.

Kathryn Weld is the author of Afterimage (Pine Row Press 2023) and a chapbook, Waking Light (Kattywompus Press 2019). Her poetry and prose appear in journals such as The American Book Review, The Cortland Review, Gyroscope Review, The Southeast Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Wild Roof Journal, and elsewhere. A mathematician as well as a poet, she is Professor Emeritus at Manhattan University. Find her on Instagram @kathrynweld.

by Ben Starr

The dog knows his tiny onyx body is home to a multinational conglomerate of death, slowly boring for various ores and salted earth metals meant to erect a machine built to kill. Improbably small pickaxes pound away at marbled fat and ribbons of vigorous muscle. Microscopic palms wipe sooty brows leaden with a day’s morbid work. When we go for walks I can hear his cancer. The harmonic stomp of its cracked work boots. Shifts over for the day, dragging stained coveralls to the pub for pints of beer. Just one breath before it goes home to a wife run ragged by children more powerful than God.

Ben studied poetry in college and as part of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Dishsoap Quarterly, Bending Genres, Maudlin House, Gone Lawn, SoFloPoJo and other journals. Find more of his work on X @benjaminstarr and at benstarrwrites.com.