by Ali A. Ünal

I refuse to name the animals I invent
part human, part baby kicks
established gods make fun of me
for having the beasts parse the music
or invent time before fire.

My brutes gnaw their chains into glyphs
escalating, escalating and
sinking in mud as opposed to gravity
or remembering forbidden falls
out of bliss, not of mild suicide.

Before the council of wizened lords
in the middle of death and debt
they bet on themselves out loud
jumping off worlds to split infinities
as far as the heart goes.

Then they learn how to celebrate the poet
in a language I know nothing of.

Ali A. Ünal is a writer from Turkey. He arrived in the USA with a fellowship to study creative writing at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His essays and stories have appeared in Willow Springs, Apogee, Third Coast, Quarterly West, Jersey Devil Press, and Necessary Fiction as well as in his native Turkish. He’s been longlisted on The Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2021. After earning his Ph.D. in English from University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he teaches creative writing at Central Washington University.

by Annette Sisson

Sharp as a pen,
as an ink-tipped

tongue, a horntail
snail leaks

iridescence in soil
where huckle-

berry canes
long as antenna

lean into speckled
light. Seeds

spill from a coiled
brain, words

curl across a page,
unfurl, flicker

like bits of fig,
like sun pearling

the hilltop, spirals
of flung stars,

their dusty arms
a syntax of silver.

Annette Sisson lives in Nashville, TN, and teaches at Belmont University. Her poems appear in The Penn Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cloudbank, Rust + Moth, Citron Review, Cumberland River Review, Sky Island Journal, West Trade Review, and many other journals and anthologies. Her second book, Winter Sharp with Apples, was published by Terrapin Books in 2024. Her first book, Small Fish in High Branches, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2022. In 2024 one of her poems was a finalist for the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and two were nominated for The Pushcart Prize; in 2025 her poems were named finalists in River Heron Review’s and Passager’s annual poetry prizes.

by Amorak Huey

Twilight, a squall of geese winging noisily north.
Walking, I imagine retracing their path —
south, toward silence, summer,
a whole season in your hands,
my heart already on its way.
I ought be careful here, foolish to wish
away a perfectly beautiful day and yet
I have walked in this direction
nearly every evening for two years.
What else to say? It’s right here, love:
gloaming sky where birds just were,
a vacant lot’s dandelions gone to seed,
field of wishes awaiting your breath.

Amorak Huey is author of five books of poems including Mouth, forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2026. Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches at Bowling Green State University. He is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). He is on BlueSky @amorak.bsky.social and Instagram @amorakhuey.

by Abigail Eliza

Don’t forget, you must sleep with your windows open tonight. This will allow the new season to wash over you: remember, everything comes with changes, even the ways you love her, even the ways the rain falls when it catches the wind, especially your body, despite the ways you’ve made it less fragile through subjecting it to pain. You’re right, the rain will warp the wood of your desk when you do this. No, it’s not too much to ask — better the wood than your body, you’d hate to wake with gills and realize they have to stay. Lay a towel across the grain. Ask yourself how to be stronger. Feel the wind rattle into your room and count how many years you could not go to sleep warm. Have you stared into the fire yet? Have you said thank-you to the ones who made this food? Yes, go, it’s okay to celebrate with people who would see you hurt. Just wash it off at day’s end and remember when you kiss her — it’s an act of love.

Abigail Eliza (she/they) writes the Audio Verse Award-winning audio drama Back Again, Back Again, a story about alternate realms, ex-prophecy children, and queer girls with swords. Their work is otherwise scattered online, including in Rainy Day, Bricolage, Folklore Review, and Washington State’s Queer Poetry Anthology. When not writing, she is a tournament longsword fighter, contra dancer, middle school teacher, and intrepid explorer of Seattle’s parks. She can be found on Instagram and Bluesky @abigailelizawrites

by Arushee Bhoja

When tomorrow comes, she rubs her hands
in oil and parts my hair. Yesterday’s pain
blooms my scalp. I remember

the last warm night
on my grandparents’ terrace,
sunlight pouring

through a hole in the sky.
We pressed ourselves
against the waist-high walls.

In the garden below, open mouths
of clay pots begged for rain. The plants
swallowed hard

when the monsoon came,
and our first day back I couldn’t sleep,
our house still as the bed of a lake.

Now my mother holds me
on the floor,
plants oil in my roots.

I wish I could praise
my mother’s hands—

my grandmother’s hands,
which too knew a child, hair loose,
on cold ground, shocked

with pain. Blades of dark palms
flash in the heat. Hands reach to hair
to hands to mother to daughter to daughter

to child. Each night they sharpen
their bodies and brush off
the shards. She braids my hair,

softly now, a moonflower falling
asleep, hemmed between
morning and light.

Arushee Bhoja is a queer Indian-American poet from California. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Dialogist, Dishsoap Quarterly, BRAWL Lit, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner and two cats, Frog and Toad. Find her on Instagram @arusheebhoja.