by Hazelyn Aroian

and so you float through the twilit cemetery. pink ribbons threaded along the horizon, pink ribbons tasseled through your hair. the sound of September wind through dry grass is not unlike the sound of graphite, frazzled chicken scratch on a baby blue exam booklet. if death is a prickly essay question, a headstone’s more footnote than thesis. and if death is a physics lab report, at the moment you’re workbenched, stuck fiddling with your pendulum, your balance scale. but enough of that. look to the cemetery oaks, orange leaves shattering around you like dozens of satellites. in the heat of a brief supernovan bloom is it better to study the wrong thing? to study nothing at all? look to the graves, knit in such tidy rows. the symmetry makes you want to pull your own chair back, sit down for class. as the neighbor boy pedals past the wrought iron cemetery gate, as his wheels spin, whir, flicker in mechanical tandem like the phases of miniature moons: recite your times tables, aloof as a runaway helium balloon. keep rising all light and airy up into that most intimate infinite. keep racing towards that starless blank slate, black granite.

Hazelyn Aroian lives and writes in Massachusetts. She recently graduated from Northeastern University, where she studied computer science, English, and philosophy. She has worked as a software engineer, grocery store clerk, and movie theatre attendant. Her writing has been nominated for Best Spiritual Literature and can be found in The Shore and Strange Hymnal.

by Brendan Byrne

I only watched it once: that video of you in the
stick-trees, cradling a 20-gauge in your arms like
a child, like melting snow in the palms of spring,

firing it three times, with the crow’s crows, into
nothing, although it could have been anything,
the frame only holding your body and the gun’s

hot steel, glowing like a star, like a constellation
bit come to ground, broken off or freed. And
years ago, drowning in your brother’s clothes,

lying on the late-winter bed of leaves, having
followed me into the dark, both of us afraid
of the morning, sun spilling over the horizon

like wrath, like a hound, soft kiss to my temple,
I wondered if this were a sign, a flood, a grave
robbing, for when your hair grew long–as I hid

still, buried with a thousand undaunted beetles,
first snow coming for me–that buckshot might
fill me like rain, three thuds like the slowing

of a train, the sewing of a wound, lips pressed
into a wooden comb like the nape of a neck,
prayer bound in the squeal of a weather-vane.

Brendan Byrne is a student at Hamilton College in Central New York. His work has previously appeared with Green Ink Poetry Press, the Hyacinth Review, and The Shore Poetry. He will begin his MFA in Poetry at Florida State University this summer. 

by Olusoji Obebe

for Lagos Market Fire victims

there are fires in this world/ that have blotted the skies/ with histories of dark/ fires, that breathe away/ the innocence of buds/ & squeeze happiness dry.

there are fires/ that are songs only the dead sing/ fires, that clean memories/ & leave the soot hanging in the future.

there are fires/ that are old &/ need a touch of water/ fires, that burn without ignition/ but slip off from the hand of water.

there are fires/ locked up in your body/ fires, that put you out/ without ashes.

there are fires we do not see/ fires we nurse into a mare/ that we can no longer tame.

Olusoji Obebe is a Nigerian creative writer and poetry reader at Fiery Scribe Review. He is a 2x BOTN nominee and Winner of the Fidelis Okoro Prize for Poetry 2024. His works have been published in Brittle Paper, Pepper Coast Lit, Salamander Ink, Morrab Library, MUSE Journal No.51, The Shallow Tales Review, and elsewhere. He is on X @olusoji_obebe and Instagram @olusojiobebe.

by Nancy Huggett

While I was distracted by delible woes,
wallowing next door to my life,
it caught fire. Five-alarm flames billowed
the sky with soot as if to answer the question—
could it get worse? Neighbours offered
their own phoenixes, brightly plumed birds
whose beady eyes darted as they preened
their feathers of the falling ash that marred
their iridescence. How do they rise
above it all? I nest like a leveret in the hollow
under the barberry bush, my crown of thorns
spattered with red. Berries for the birds—
cathartic, but lacking any real sustenance
for this obstinate winter.

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Published in Event, Poetry Northwest, SWIMM, and Whale Road Review, she’s won some awards (RBC PEN Canada 2024 New Voices Award) and a gazillion rejections. She keeps writing. Nancy is on Instagram: @nanhug,  Bluesky: @nancyhuggett.bsky.social, and Facebook: @nancy.huggett.35.

by Tina Kelley

Ima put the bitch in obituary,
have a night funeral – why
aren’t these more common?
Super sad, candles, I made
the mix tape, to play hours before
dawn, then you all watch sunrise

together, like I never did because
I hate getting up early. Fill the bird
feeders and dog’s bowl before you
come. Wouldn’t it be rich if it fell
on winter solstice, with eclipse,
darkest night in 500 years!

As you file in take a packet
of forget-me-not seeds, feel
bad if you forget to plant them.
While I’m at it, bury me how I
sleep, tummy down, cozy, or
I’ll be restless, haunt you all. No,

keep me from dark graveyards,
stone surfaces flashing, reflecting
passing headlights, alive but not.
Let me be God’s ash passenger
on the Harley roaring over the GWB,
raising my ghost arms in trust

and freedom. That windy dawn,
spread my dust and fillings all
along the span. That’s joy. Save
a quarter cup to sift over my BFF
so we can dish about who’s in hell,
save four cups for the cinder blocks

of the home my husband builds next,
as some busty widow will snatch him
fast. For my son, enough for a diamond.
Plus a bunch for my daughter’s garden,
flowers that make her home look wifely,
herbs that make her hands smell of them,

basil, lemon thyme, mint, sage, oregano,
valorous beans that grow too fast to eat,
and taste sweet like the air here after rain,
and lastly, for her raspberries that hang,
free gifts, more than hands can hold.

Tina Kelley’s fifth poetry collection, Field Guide to North American Words, is expected this fall from Jacar Press, joining Rise Wildly, Abloom & Awry, Precise, and The Gospel of Galore, winner of a Washington State Book Award. A former New York Times reporter, she is the co-author of two non-fiction books, and she and her husband have two children and live in Maplewood, NJ. She’s on Facebook, BlueSky, x.com, and Instagram.