by Angela Janda

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.
– Joan Didion

I was in the condo in Red River,
the one with instructions on all the walls:
Turn on / Turn off / Don’t move dial / Empty
upon departure & the youngest was napping
& the oldest was below the dull brown deck
in the swimming pool with his father & I was reading
Joan Didion in the king-sized bed behind the living
room couch & it had been crawling up inside me
the whole trip & at Chapter 17 the recognition was a full
circle, was an egg in my mouth, how in all the years
since the divorce I’d never grieved it, not properly
or improperly—not at all. & when I came
upon it, when I saw the width of my regret, I wrote
him a letter & would have walked south away
from my sleeping baby through the Sangre de Cristos
to deliver it to him, would have taken his face
into my hands so gently that the touch itself
was the transmission, so the touch itself
was what I’ve lost my chance to say

Angela Janda’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Rattle, HAD, and elsewhere. Her work was a finalist for the 2024 Jack McCarthy Book Prize. She is on most social media sites as @angelajanda (@arjanda on Twitter). More information is available at angelajanda.com.

by Josh Gaydos

Knowing not one of us will see a third jubilee
the prophet instead watches the planes land in Athens,
shade splits the olive tree, trunk splits the clay loam

Knowing the ache in her chest won’t wholly heal
the mother instead watches spokes spin the cul de sac,
her children laugh out the airy road, pedaling snowmelt

Knowing that man could not fly home in flesh
the seamstress instead watches him crash the stolen wings,
embroidery beads, gray stone and marrow

Josh Gaydos (he/him) currently resides in Washington D.C. He is an editor at South Broadway Ghost Society. Josh has been published in Barren Magazine, DIAGRAM, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine and Roi Fainéant Press. Follow him on X, Bluesky, and Instagram @jgwrites22.

by Jimmy O’Hara

I am the moth watching from your window,
hustling the night shift to collect shiny things;
steadily orbiting round and round then clinging
to the porch bulbs and flickering cellar lights,
my ornate fur staring back to lure and warn.

I am the spider weaving myth into the fold;
the furtive mirage never further than ten feet;
the shadow crawling into your mouth by night,
considering you eight different ways as I lunge
elusively past the patterned webs we are casting.

O the shy, the inward; the dear wallflowers;
the owls perched, watching ever peripherally;
those who observe and absorb, quietly merging
with a wider magnitude—we, too, keep this world
turning. Our work tilts the spiral axis of seasons.

We are the nightmare static freezing you still;
the top-hat phantoms grinning from bedposts
and ceiling corners; wicked aces of spades
waiting for your poker faces to drop
so we can move into the surreal.

We are the bioluminescence glowing
from the revived foliage of tomorrow;
that ancient signal the sea turtles trust
with their nests and lives; the blinking
miracles that June fireflies stir ablaze.

We are the silent fungi keeping the trees linked
and in motion; reserved morticians decomposing
your vitals, converting organ to rich nutrient grain;
the lunar undercurrent lighting an entire kingdom
beneath the layered forest soil and her secrets.

Jimmy O’Hara is a gay writer and editor based in Philadelphia. He often focuses his poetry on memory, spirituality, animal rights, natural systems, and social conscience. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Pictura Journal, Eunoia Review, and Literary Veganism. Jimmy is on Instagram @slimjimjam and you can reach him at jpohara4@gmail.com.

by Amanda McLeod

Yours is a strength I could never hope to summon
A resolute silence, no words without meaning ever pass your lips

Your stone skin is cold beneath my hand; your belfrey inhabited
by bronze shapes determined to tear sound from your shadowed throat

I ache in ways and places you will never understand
As I am forced along the path in search of safety, or a cliff to fall from

This fortune teller cannot take a leap of faith
When I am faithless, my beliefs a shattered portentous mirror

The endless need for answers has too high a cost
And I feel it in my abdomen, in every neat incision

Where the skin peels back, scarlet petals blooming as the blade
exposes glossy organs, secrets taut beneath their membranes

While I slice the veil of time in search of a foothold
A place to stand where waters flow in both directions

Fear is all the things I cannot see; the darkened room,
Although familiar, hides the monstrous in its shadowed corners

Where they heave beneath grey mucoused hides, their shapes
Undefined, reaching forth to suffocate, transmute, absorb

Tall and unyielding under midnight sky, you are anathema
To nightmares; they find no solace in the planes of you

What I cannot know, cannot control, pulls at me, an undercurrent
For which I have no stomach. Guesses flow from my lips

Like dirges, funereal attempts to rest the past and solidify what lies ahead
By casting light into the void, to be swallowed

Only time is constant, and only through its passing might I find the truth
It swirls around me, slipping through my skeletal fingers

But you feel the rhythm of time in your foundations
You claim nothing, but that days will pass and you will mark them

Guilt lies weightless on your shoulders, even as it
Presses down upon me like the scream of a thousand suns

And you predict the future better than I ever could
Sounding out each hour moments before it falls

Amanda McLeod is an author and artist based in Canberra, Australia. She writes and makes art in response to the things she loves, the things that drift through her daydreams and what keeps her awake at night. She loves good coffee and being outside, and hates noise. This year she plans to read her height in books. You’ll find her on the Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram @AmandaMWrites or at her website AmandaMcLeodWrites.com

by Jan Hassmann

Write about autumn, but
not the trees trembling.
Write about the strays born
with the first fog,
pleading why,
why, why this world?
Write about biding.

Write about autumn, but
not the leaves failing.
Write about the mold in
damp corners and the toadstools
rising from lone bodies.
Write about all life.

Write about autumn, but
not the eve glowing.
Write about the stout candles in
early-dusked windows,
ever wistfully steering.
Write about mothers.

Write about autumn, but
not the log fire burning.
Write about the moths and the grief returning,
every fucking year,
through bolted doors and latched shutters.
Write about dust.

Write about autumn, but
not the stew churning.
Write about mum still setting out
three sets of plates
and all the other things she’s forgetting.
Write about bliss.

Jan Hassmann first studied and then taught English Literature at universities far from home. He has recently returned to Europe, where he runs an amicable poetry club in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Some of his poems have gotten away, and more seem poised to do so.