by Malene Lotz

there’s always
something
moving
under the skin

encasement is required
to feel oneself
against

the dark
will do

soft cheek
against a nightcurtain of sorrow

once a poet couldn’t
sleep
at night
on the wooden floor
of my apartment

she leaned into the nocturnal

her imagination
held
by thin skin

she wrote about butterflies
and wings
that cover
the bellies of birds

flying is never enough

the boats

with their black-brown
steep-iron hulls

they help

rubbing against the sea
at night
in dreams
like a Turner painting

fruits on board
ripening

with a lullaby
from dusk
into dawn

Malene Lotz has been a modern ballet dancer living and teaching intuitive movement in New York. She is Danish, currently living in Denmark north of Copenhagen, and is transforming into a poet.

by Wren Donovan

We choose where to dig
with soft brushes, careful,
string a polygon grid based on rumors.

Smoke-choked and salty, a stalker
in dark rooms, flashlight
over unconscious Eros.

Fluorescent light, stuttering
lays bare the butterfly
buried in bone and debris.

We seek fleshy red-scented certainty,
find only fossils and holes.

Wren Donovan lives in Tennessee. She studied at Millsaps College, UNC-Chapel Hill, and University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry can be found in Orca, Poetry South, Cumberland River Review, Yellow Arrow, Ink Drinkers, Harpy Hybrid Review, and elsewhere in print and online including WrenDonovan.com.

by Darren C. Demaree

Toward dusk, together,
pulling apart the trout
we caught

at her father’s private club
only a hundred yards
from the building women are not

allowed to enter
except for Sundays, when
I suppose their gender

can be blanketed by an easy god
that can keep all of the lazy beliefs
of rich men safe, Emily

& I tasted the fish slowly, we
ignored the crackers, we left
the iced tea in the fridge,

we thought about how much
fun our children had fishing there
& before I could say all nine

problems I had with the club,
Emily spit out a bone in the sink
& uttered a rare fuck

& I, the truly profane one,
waited to see just what she meant
by that, because I use fuck

a dozen fantastic ways, but Emily
she offered no explanation
other than to dump the rest

of the fish in the trash
& leave the room a sleeve
of cheap crackers.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, most recently “blue and blue and blue”, (Fernwood Press, July 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.

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.