by Joel LeBlanc

A voice sings a lullaby: “The animals
went in two by two, Hurrah! Hurrah!”

Noah is drunk in the corner,
grieving the past, he thought the ark

would make him happy.

Naamah is washing her blood-dried
hands in the sink, after stitching up

a sheep mauled by the dogs.

I’m standing not far away, staring
at the old peacock, lifeless in the dirt.

They forgot to feed it.

A year ago it lived in a pōhutukawa tree,
tattooed with monster eyes and

screaming with joy.

Noah tells me to sit still, be quiet,
glowering at me from his chair.

Naamah nervously tells me
to pretend to be happy, to smile.

The flood would have been easier.

I miss friendships, sports, cinemas, going
to school, learning about the world,

and not being trapped with enemies.

I need to mourn the dead before the
world rots inside me, before they

forget to feed me too.

In my dreams I live on a green hill,
with soft dry earth, gardens,

and birds.

I pour coffee on the ground, lay flowers,
scratch epitaphs onto stones,

wooden crosses, the sea.

In my dreams, I speak to my father
in a magic voice that sobers him,

flaying his self-pity into red dust:

feed the horses, check the water dishes,
be kind, stop raising your hand to the dog,

learn to love the work of loving,

sheer the sheep, fix the fences, weed the
convolvulus before it devours us all,

save the goldfish from their green prison,

and don’t let the chickens die alone
in the dust of their filthy coop.

They were gods once.

Joel LeBlanc (he/him) is a poet, freelance writer, reviewer, baker, and herbalist based in Wellington, New Zealand. His poems have appeared in various publications, including Takahē, Poetry NZ, Semaphore, Tarot, Aotearoa Poetry Yearbook, and more. His twitter and Bluesky are @cottageinwood

by Daniel Schall

You’ve seen this war of limbs before. Come on in.
Because no one questions their morals,
of course you imagine the cavemen will kill
tusked mammals and each other, shearing
fat from hair, surrounded by fir and ash,
reclining on a fallen elm—here, observe
sabertooth shoulder hunked in garnet bulges,
seared over those always-fading coals. They speak
through the bumping of their bodies.
Here, spear and snow, flocked with dripples
of sumac tallow, rear-reflector red,
the shiver of our own minds
backing up against the ice age. Ever
been to Disneyland? There, fuzz-glued
animatronics stumble, oblivious to the privilege
of movement, keyholes alloyed in their joints.
Tonight, I could drive home, plunge
my own body in a bed of wax. But here:
eye and hand had to choose
forever. What was I talking about
again? The Director’s attention
must have been torn towards the end
of the diorama, here, where the Artist
increasingly riffed: see Neanderthal
and Cave Human both slopping
into a space-age blender
leaves and chunks of purple meat.
Note the eyes, drawn to the button
labeled pulse—something distant
shucked into the pads of their fingers—
the shape of things begging to be pressed.

Daniel Schall is a poet and teacher living in Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Citron Review, Midway Journal, Elysium Review, Anthropocene Literary Journal, Philadelphia Stories, Thimble Literary Magazine and other journals. He can be found on Twitter @Dan_Schall, and online at danschallwriter.wordpress.com.

by Bex Hainsworth

La Specola Zoological Museum, Florence

She hangs like a novelty lampshade
in this bright aquarium, sterile light
crimping into pale waves across

the bristled balloon of her body.
Immortalised surprise, perplexed piñata,
preserved at her roundest; I am her image

reflected across the meniscus of glass.
She is salt-sick, static, yet brackish lips
are pulled into a grin, stretched over

protruding teeth the colour of coral.
Once blinded, she has been gifted glass eyes,
hemispheres the colour of home. Two fins,

fanned like scallop shells, reach for twitching
bulbs. In this glistening tomb, she is surrounded
by other celestial bodies: clownfish, tuna, and tang.

They form a system, orbiting her spiny globe;
in this little tank of moons, she is the star.

Bex Hainsworth is a poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, The McNeese Review, Sonora Review, and trampset. Walrussey, her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry, is published by Black Cat Poetry Press. Twitter @PoetBex / Instagram @poet.bex / Bluesky @poetbex.bsky.social.

by Erik Kennedy

I stored my plan for world peace
safely in my coat pocket,
and then I washed the coat.

The days when I was writing the plan
were dark, the nights frosty
and full of agues.

I don’t know what will befall me
as I rewrite the plan from memory.
I even forget

to eat lunch sometimes when I’m distracted,
so who knows how I’m going to remember
what mechanisms I came up with

for the end times, for stopping
hungry children feasting on zoo animals
and dentists pulling the gold teeth of widows.

Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections Sick Power Trip (2025),  Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), all with Te Herenga Waka University Press. His poems, stories, and criticism have been published in places like berlin lit, FENCE, The Florida Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Threepenny Review, and the TLS. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand. His Bluesky name is erikkennedy.com.

by Danny Rivera

In these first after-hours, while waiting for you beneath an olive tree
and lifting veils from our creased faces, the repeated shelling signals

the opening of another day: here is the battering, with their weapons,
launched deeply, forming a splintered arc into midafternoon;

there we find an oculus in the ceiling of the hospital, a gradual light
exposing a hand, open to the sky, extending from the rubble.

There is no music, or the striking of bells now, on the balcony.
Even the newspapers speak of absence, so familiar: Do you remember

being thrown into the sea, a casualty made and remade? Elsewhere,
on the handwritten note left behind, the broken scrawl of time:

the highlighted word, grief, arrives from the French, grever, to burden,
a reminder of the sudden weight before us. We now need an updated

list of the missing and the infirm, the restless and itinerant, a series
of names on walls, undone. Let us pray for more light to enter

the poem. Let us pray that every word from the acid-mouth carries
meaning; no words carry meaning when every voice is a conflagration.

It is like that first summer, when a bird, stunned and disoriented,
flew into the same house from which we were attempting to escape.

Perhaps this is how other animals fail to reach for language, express
a need. Perhaps this is how the body, forever this diminishing frame,

like history grinding into itself, continues to live without its own eyes.

Danny Rivera is the author of a poetry chapbook, Ancestral Throat (Finishing Line Press, 2021), and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Washington Square Review, Epiphany, Superstition Review, and other journals. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. Web: dannyrivera.co | Bluesky: @snareshot.bsky.social | Twitter: @snareshot | Instagram: @snareshot_.