by Leander He

august closes like a wound. it’s tradition now: makemy parents cry every summer by injecting something new,cover myself with body hair and tattoos so that someoneelse will love me. thrice now i’ve let a strangerset of hands touch and prod my skin(the third time i injected T i bruised my stomachfor a week because i didn’t apply pressure, was stupidenough to let it keep bleeding)until a line snakes down my arm in ink. to placatemy grandfather i tell him it is the river from ourhometown, wash it gently with soap and water. i amsorry i blemish easily. when my cartilage piercing bleeds,cut out with a scalpel knife onto silk pillows in rural chinai think back to when i let hands i loved pick idly, leavingacne scars on my back. crescents dotted where fingernailshad lingered. i never knew what it was like to be untouchedin this new body. now my arm bristles where i laymy cheek, and i am growing through every pore,every crevice craving to be held. i puncture my skinto air out the love that coils underneath, play ship oftheseus with my cells and organs. i dream of the daythey put drains in my chest—the blood and excess,collecting.

Leander He is a queer Chinese writer, studying linguistics at Yale University. What he has to offer includes obscure language facts and the occasional poem; the latter can be found in Couplet Poetry and CORTEX Magazine. He also reads poetry for The Yale Review and Hominum Journal.

by Eleanor Ball

I roll my hope down the Mount. Robe my heart
in pleasure. I sink to my knees,
swallow the blessing like honeyed wine.
Unthread my body. The eye of the needle is near.
I show my brothers and sisters my scars, pressing my thumbs to the wounds.
Take this, my body, which is given up for you. For you,
I ride to the Gates at dawn. Make of my body an inkwell:
If I am the rib, if I am the womb, then I am the ear
fallen on blood-spattered grass. Do this in memory of me.
When you parted the sea, I ran for the waves. I craved
the crush of drowning. The freedom of floating,
cradled by the sea, until I beached on the sands of Babylon.
In my palms, the kisses of birds. In my dreams,
I soar above the rippling waves, olive branch gripped in my teeth.
All love is conditional. I believed until the dust settled.
Forgive me, Father, for I fly back to you.

Eleanor Ball is an MLIS candidate at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in ballast, Barnstorm, Psaltery & Lyre, and elsewhere. Come say hi @eleanorball.bsky.social.

by Wes Civilz

The flaw arose ex nihilo last night
While I was sleeping solo. Like a line
Of bunched hives, there it was. Red, trailing snake-like
Out of one ear and down below my chin,
Helmet-strapping across the windpipe’s tube,
Meandering around the shoulder’s bend,
Folding around the elbow—subterfuge
And itch and slyness—finally to end
In tiny tendrils underneath my thumb.
I camouflage it when I leave for work.
I use a coat of flesh-tone paint and, um,
Feel almost normal. Like immoral artwork,
The winding, painted flaw is hidden soWell you could hug me and you’d never know.

Wes Civilz lives deep in the forests of New Hampshire. He posts writing-oriented videos on Instagram under the handle @wes_civilz, and his writing has appeared in journals such as The Antioch Review, The Threepenny Review, Arts & Letters, and Quarterly West.

by Sophia Carroll

I take it in turns, governess
& ungovernable.

Woman who fears knife-shine laughter,
& witch who descends from the attic.

Voice calling over the moors
& the one who answers it.

There is a hex in my blood,
& a trail of smoke from my pale hands.

Care is imprisonment
& I have learned to escape it.

Shut me in your skull-house
& I will burn it.

Sophia Carroll (she/they) is an analytical chemist and writer. Her work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, wildness, and elsewhere. She is also the co-founder of M E N A C E magazine. Find her on Substack at torporchamber.substack.com and on Bluesky @torpor-chamber.bsky.social.

by Sarah Mills

Mornings, we had an insatiable appetite for snow.
I served burnt toast, raspberry jam, egg-white snow.

Don’t you want to be happy? she asked, as if I could enter
happiness like the address of a website, store gigabytes of snow.

I knelt on a chevron rug and prayed while listening
to ruby-throated hummingbirds migrate. On the skylight, snow.

The meteorologist’s predictions were sharp as stalactites.
He assured me: below 32 degrees Fahrenheit—snow.

When I was a child, snow accumulated for days, like teeth
overcrowding Earth’s mouth—an overbite of snow.

I ask the postal clerk how long it will take happiness to arrive
in my mailbox. She sells me insurance, offers to expedite snow.

At night, his ghost visits me wearing a puffer jacket and red scarf.
He hovers above my bed like a satellite—midnight snow.

I gather the glitter from a broken snow globe.
It glistens like a future, a sword, an armored knight, snow.

These words fall like flurries and land on a blank page.
As the author of this poem, can I copyright snow?

The universe’s indifference gives me frostbite, so I rub my hands
together. With these sparks, I’ll write and recite snow.

The Tragicomedy of Sarah Mills. A curtain rises, a curtain falls.
Just before the lights dim, enter stage right—snow.

Sarah Mills’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in RHINO, trampset, Jet Fuel Review, HAD, Rust & Moth, Pithead Chapel, Beaver Mag, Identity Theory, The Shore, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is online at sarahmillswrites.com, and on Bluesky @sarahmillswrites.bsky.social.